Reader Recommendation: The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the Evangelical Church, by Sarah McCammon

Recommended by: Proclamation Project’s Preacher Book Club

The Exvangelicals was a Preacher Book Club selection in June 2024.

From the publisher:

Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and—most of the time—a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she’d been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world.

After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right.

Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the “alternative facts” of their childhood.

Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact.

For Disciples preachers whose congregations include people who have left or are questioning evangelical Christianity, The Exvangelicals offers essential context. McCammon names and documents a generational movement — one that many preachers are already encountering in the pews, without always having language for it. The Preacher Book Club selected it in June 2024 as a resource for preachers navigating these conversations with honesty and pastoral care.

Check it out

You might also find helpful:

• When Church Stops Working — resources for preachers serving people who are questioning or leaving institutional Christianity
• Christian Nationalism is the Wrong Sermon Illustration — a Proclamation Project reflection on preaching in a politically charged religious landscape
• Preaching and Social Issues — tools and tactics for empowering prophetic preaching in complex cultural moments