Recovering Evangelicals

The Sunday Assembly build a community and celebrate life by rejigging a traditional church service …… but leaving out all the “God-stuff”. Image by Hebi B. from Pixabay We’ve been hearing over the past few episodes how important community is in the faith journey … for devout believers returning to church (Ep. #51) … for those trying to now revitalize the church experience (Ep. #52)… and even for those trying to help those struggling through the journey of faith deconstruction (Ep. #53 and #54). Today, we’re going to talk to people who fully deconstructed their faith, and decided to leave church entirely behind, but felt they missed community so much, they would re-create the church experience entirely, replacing all the religious components with secular surrogates. The Sunday Assembly substitute most aspects of the church experience—worship songs and a sermon with inspirational but non-religious surrogates; prayer with meditation or a moment of reflection; communion with simply sharing a meal; infant baptisms/Christenings with baby namings; short-term missions with community clean-ups—all without any reference to God. And it started a wave that swept around the globe. The one group in London UK that started in January of 2013 has now grown to 45 chapters in 8 different countries around the globe (their growth trajectory hasn’t been as good as that sounds … we explore that within the episode). We talked to two key leaders in the movement: Colin Lee leads the one functioning chapter in Canada, and Matt Lockwood leads the one in London UK which started the ball rolling. We find out what drew them to the Sunday Assembly in the first place, why they invest so much time in leading their local chapters, what’s involved in pulling off their events, what the Assembly stands for (their mandate and charter). And we find out that they share so many things in common with traditional churches, including a vulnerability to COVID, a dependence on community … as well as a tendency toward denominationalism! You can find out more about the Sunday Assembly at www.sundayassembly.com As always, tell us what you think. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

Last week, we talked about believers starting out with a simple but passionate Christian belief (stage 1) which crumbles as doubts and questions erode the pillars of their faith (stage 3).  This is such an unsettling experience for anyone going through that, but Brian McLaren showed that it is still possible to find Faith after Doubt (stage 4).  But that transition can be a very long, and hard and lonely one, full of feelings of loss, confusion, disorientation, fear, rejection, anger … … not a happy place.  I’ve been there myself. And so has Phil Drysdale. We’ll hear his life story, which began in a very Evangelical setting, took him through Bible College and traveling world-wide to speak to large Evangelical audiences, before he found himself in a downward spiral of religious deconstruction. And also how he made his way through that and found a new passion in life: he started an on-line support network for others going through the same experience. A community (a word we’ve been hearing a lot about in the past several episodes). He’ll also tell us about research he’s done on the deconstruction experience, beginning with what a typical deconstructor looks like. You might be quite surprised about what he found. Contrary to what many might assume … that people left faith because they were hurt or because they weren’t really all that invested or involved … his statistics quash both assumptions. In fact, the numbers show that they tend to be “much more likely to read the Bible regularly … to pray regularly … to attend church frequently… to be involved as volunteers or even staff (including being a pastor) … to have a theological degree … than those who stayed in church.” He’s also researched some of the things that tend to derail people on their faith journey, and the things that help them through that rocky part of the path. In fact, his research shows that “one of the major ways you can mitigate how hard the deconstruction journey is, is to be surrounded by other people going on a similar journey.” Hence, his global, on-line Deconstruction Network. We also teased apart the various definitions of “deconstruction,” and how it really looks more like a process of “growing up,” something we talked about last week with Brian McLaren. As always, tell us what you think. You can learn more about Phil Drysdale and his Deconstruction Network at www.phildrysdale.com. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

Last week, we heard about people returning to church after COVID had kept the doors closed for over a year.  This week, we hear about people returning to faith after doubts and too many questions kept them locked out for much longer. In his latest book … Faith after doubt: why your beliefs stopped working and what to do about it … Brian McLaren describes to us a four-stage transition, beginning with the stage of simplicity, in which everything is black or white, good or bad, true or false, in or out.  Dualism. A worldview that’s easy to navigate.   Until one begins to read one too many books, or listen to one too many podcasts, and realizes that there are actually shades of grey. Doubts creep in, and questions multiply.  Maybe the world isn’t six thousand years old … maybe parts of the Bible do have some inconsistencies … maybe women can play some role in church function. This is the second stage: complexity.  A worldview that’s much harder to navigate, but still possible if you can maintain a degree of flexibility and open-mindedness. Until you’re trying to hold together so many incompatible statements, and things start slipping through your fingers.  There are just too many views on any given question.  One just doesn’t know what to believe anymore. This is the third stage: perplexity. But what comes next? Don’t immediately think it’s obviously stage four!  Some who find themselves overwhelmed at the bottom of stage three turn to an authority figure and say: “OK, there are just too many interpretations and viewpoints here … just tell me which one is true. What’s the Biblical view on this?”  Or they throw up their hands and give up entirely, saying “none of these things are true … it’s all simply garbage”; these give up their faith or even become militant atheists.  All three outcomes would be reverting back to stage one: the simpler worldview in which there’s one and only one right answer.  Others dive into fragmented and shape-shifting mysticism. Or cynicism. Or they move on to stage four: harmony and integration. Seeing things as a whole, and starting to see ourselves and others as connected. When I first encountered Brian’s idea, I thought stages one, two and three were simply what I had previously called deconstruction, and that stage four was reconstruction. But in hearing Brian explain where he got this new perspective … from scholars studying human development … I recognized that deconstruction doesn’t have to be seen as a downward journey of destruction, but instead is another word for growing up.  We all go through these four stages as we mature … as we learn about life … about politics … the world … sex … and the important things in life.  We start in the simple dualist world of childhood where there’s always one easy answer, then move on to the complex and perplexing worlds of adolescence and adulthood, and eventually mellow out into the more nuanced, big-picture worldview of the wise old sage. I now see that I didn’t deconstruct my faith. I grew up … into my faith. As always, tell us what you think. You can find more about Brian McLaren at https://brianmclaren.net To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

Last week, we talked to people considering the possibility/opportunity of going back to church. We learned about the things they missed most about not being able to go for so long … whether that was over a year because COVID kept them locked out, or whether it was much longer than that because of a personal faith crisis. One thing that both groups agreed upon was that things would have to change: “doing church” would have to look very different moving forward. This week, we asked many of them exactly how they saw the church experience needing to change. Once again, we talked to non-pastors and to pastors. And once again, we perceived a common refrain: it would have to be less of a spectator event, and more of an involved discussion of difficult topics trending in culture today, and that technology (like Zoom) would be needed more and more to connect those people. So we asked ourselves: “who could we talk to about doing church differently … in a way that involves small groups, discussion of difficult and deeply personal topics, and the use of technology?” And one name came to mind: Bruxy Cavey. Bruxy is the senior pastor at the MeetingHouse, one of the largest churches in Canada. Their headquarters in Mississauga is connected to 19 satellite sites via live-streaming every Sunday, and to small groups all over the globe meeting throughout the week. We asked him about how they had already been doing things quite differently long before COVID — which had them fully prepared to continue when the pandemic shut most other churches down — and even how they might take lessons learned through the pandemic to do things yet differently again. And we learned about “barnacle Sundays” and Bruxy hearing voices in his head!? As always, tell us what you think. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

COVID-19 is blamed for a lot of bad things, but there is one good thing it’s done for us: it forced us to stop everything and re-evaluate. Our healthcare system … government … business … schools … and even church.  Almost two years after slamming the church doors on us, we’ve had time to re-evaluate what we really miss … and perhaps also what we really don’t miss. Now churches are re-opening again, and some people are cheering and straining forward to get back to what we used to do. Some, not so much.  They got used to lazy Sundays … longer weekends … and enjoying church from the comfort of their sofa with a coffee in hand. All the benefits, without … Other people stopped going to church long before COVID, often because of a faith crisis, but kept it percolating in the back of their mind (“scratching the itch”). And now they find themselves ready to carefully begin re-exploring that part of their identity. Both groups are now coming at the same question … “why should I go back to church?” … but from very different angles. We talked to people.  All kinds of people. Regular, steadfast churchgoers, who you’d think would be relatively comfortable in their faith. Members of our private Facebook Discussion group, a majority of whom are seriously re-thinking many things about their spirituality. And pastors, who are seminary-trained and, frankly, have some “skin in the game.”  And we asked them all that same question: “Why go back to church?”  You might be surprised at how some of them answered. One word that came up in almost every response was “community,” or other words very much like it. Which prompted us to ask a follow-up question: “what is a church community?”  If people regularly gather at a coffee shop, or a pub, in each other’s living rooms, or through some kind of on-line group, and talk about theological/spiritual things, and care about each other, can that substitute for church? Again, you’d be surprised what some of them said.  Especially the pastors! As always, tell us what you think. To help grow this podcast, please share with a friend and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

We’re back!  Here’s a sneak peak of what we’ve been preparing for Season 3. We began with a simple question: “Why should we go back to church?”  Some people were forced out by COVID; others elected to drop out long before COVID because of a faith crisis.  And many in both camps are now wondering whether/why they should go back.  We talked to church members, our Facebook Discussion group, pastors, an internet pastor, a mega-church leader, and a best-selling author.  And what we thought would be one episode blossomed into a five-part miniseries! We also thought we needed to do another COVID update. But before doing that, we thought we should look at why certain church-folk can be so resistant to solid, data-driven science. And that also got us exploring their contrarian views on the climate crisis. Once again, a single episode turned into three. And then we’ve put together another mini-series under the title: “The origin and evolution of …” You’d be totally right that this will have us filling in the blank with predictable and scientific things like: … of the universe … of life … of species … of humans. But we’re also going to fill in that blank with unexpected, theological things like: … of the ancient Hebrew concept of YHWH … of the “Old Testament” … of the New Testament … of heaven/hell/afterlife. And so many other ideas that we’ve got baking in the oven. As always, tell us what you think. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please share with a friend and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

In this season finale, we take a look back at our journey with you. Boyd and I had planned to take it in one direction, but as all great conversations go, this one went in a direction we completely did not expect! It really took on a life of its own. A couple episodes that we had simply thought would be warm-ups as hot-button cultural or societal stories put a spotlight on some really strange things about the Evangelical movement, which then had us dissecting Evangelicalism in detail. One of the distinctive features of Evangelicalism is the claim that we have a “personal relationship” with the Divine. We found we had to ask the challenging question: “Really? What does that mean?” So the second deep-dive was a search to find out how exactly we humans experience relationships, how we can manufacture the experience in our heads, and how we can get it all so horribly wrong. Much of this was fueled by listeners writing in to us with their questions and personal perspectives, and our private Discussion Group page on Facebook. We treasure that. So, as we take some time off to enjoy the summer and prepare for teaching responsibilities, we ask for two things from you: (1) keep writing in about where we should take this in Season 3 (maybe go back back through the Archive and see where we left threads hanging); (2) help increase our listener base by simply telling a friend or two, and writing a review/rating at your favorite podcast catcher. It’s been fun! Have a great summer holiday! See you again in the Fall. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

Over the last two weeks, we’ve looked at how the Gospel of Jesus was changed from being a message of love, forgiveness and liberation into one of fear, guilt, shame, and unworthiness. This distortion was reinforced in the home, the Sunday Schools, Youth groups, and from the pulpit. And in the eyes and minds of people within the church and outside of it, this version of the Gospel became Evangelical Christianity. In this episode, we’re going to explore another distortion from an entirely different angle: how the Jesus of that Gospel was replaced with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez has written a book which has taken the literary world by storm. And not just the Christian literary world: it’s a New York Times Best Seller. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Kristin takes us on a walk through recent Evangelical history, and shows how another distorted version of the Gospel was also taught from the pulpit, in the Sunday Schools, and within popular Christian literature. And this one too is seen by many American churches as entirely normative. As always, tell us what you think. If you want to find more from Kristin: https://kristindumez.com/ If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please share with a friend and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

In this second half of our look at religious trauma, we talk to Dr. Marlene Winell (PhD, Psychology), who literally wrote the book on this topic … Leaving the fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion … and is now the director of a large counseling service for those dealing with religious trauma (https://journeyfree.org/). Marlene shares her clinical experience of over 30 years dealing with this problem, one which she lived through herself. We look at many of the medical aspects … cause(s), manifestations, treatment … as well as some of the neurobiology behind it. This in turn led us to unpack our own view of the evolutionary origins of religion and religious trauma: the latter taps into our primal urges of tribalism (our need to be part of the group; our fear of “the other”), basic fears (of suffering, ostracizing, death), our need to follow the alpha male of the tribe, and how organizations use these urges against us to control us. Not just churches and religions … we also look at many completely irreligious groups and organizations that follow the exact same playbook. That having been said, we did look at how Christianity has contributed to religious trauma. And when we asked her “what should the church and Christian believers do about this”, this atheist answered: “You need to go back to the original teachings of Jesus.” As always, tell us what you think. If you want to find more from Marlene: https://journeyfree.org If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please share with a friend and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

In the past few episodes, we’ve learned about the important role that other people play in one’s spiritual experience: we see, feel, and hear from God in part through our encounters with other people. This makes sense if the church is “the body of Christ.” Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to this fact: many people are traumatized by their encounters with other believers and with the church. From childhood, they are raised to see themselves as evil, wicked, and worthless; to always be fearful of an eternal, fiery hell, especially if they think they might have committed “the unpardonable sin” (which is never fully defined); to feel always surrounded by demons hell-bent on a mission to attack us at every step. Women are taught that they are second-class citizens in the kingdom (“After all, it was ‘the woman’ who deceived Adam”), and are responsible for tempting men in the way that they act and dress (“you don’t want to cause the brothers to stumble, do you?”). Indigenous people are taught that their heritage is evil; their children can be taken away in order to “give them a better life.” And when believers struggle in their faith, and begin to ask questions, or find that they can’t walk the walk anymore, they’re shunned by their family and their community. They become a pariah. Ghosted. “The Christian army is the only army on earth that kills its wounded and leaves them on the battlefield, rather than trying to bring them back.” This is all religious trauma. And the problem is, these things go on all around us all the time, and yet we don’t recognize it as evil. Or we don’t admit it: “see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.” In this episode, we talk to Janice Selbie, an ex-Fundamentalist believer who experienced religious trauma on a national level (her family were part of the Canadian version of the indigenous people story), on a personal level (her own religious deconstruction story), and a clinical level (she is now a certified counselor specializing in religious trauma). Boyd and I found we had much to learn from her. As always, tell us what you think. If you want to find more from Janice Selbie: https://www.divorcing-religion.com/ If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please share with a friend and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page