Faith After Evangelicalism 🙏🏽
I Believe! Wait...What Do I Believe?
Where will you go?
December 30, 2022
A few weeks into my year of exile from New York I found myself drinking an exquisite cup of coffee at the house of a man who was an elder of a conservative Presbyterian church in Ohio.
I had told him my story of woe, how I had grown up with white evangelicals, joined a conservative Presbyterian church in college, and gone through two painful church breakups in New York City. I was done with evangelicalism.
He had a similar story to mine: he was the son of immigrants with a loose connection to an ancient Orthodox Christian tradition. But he wasn’t sure where I could go if I left the evangelical world.
Was I on the path to leaving Christianity altogether?
April 6, 2023
It’s because the pastor ran after me, I suppose. By this point I had left Ohio for New Jersey. I had snuck into the back of a Maundy Thursday service, making this this my first exposure to the progressive Presbyterian church just down the street.
The service felt familiar enough, with the exception of a woman pastor. I thought I’d sneak out silently at the end. But somehow the head pastor beat me to the door, and he remembered my name from when I came in.
He and I got coffee. Slowly, I re-engaged with Sunday services. I wasn’t sure if these pastors were good people, or if the people in the pews would betray me like the Christians in New York, or if I was just too broken to be part of a church again.
June 9, 2024
I was back in The Big Apple. The pastor from New Jersey had suggested a big shiny church in Midtown. I tried it out but found myself lost in the crowd.
I had wanted to find a Syrian Orthodox church like the one my Dad grew up in. But for a variety of reasons, I wasn’t able to connect with one here in the city.
So I went to a smaller church closer to home. Still a progressive Presbyterian church. It had been around for a while and had plenty of money. I wasn’t sure about it that first Sunday. And I’m still not sure about it now.
After leaving two churches in spectacular blow-ups, I wasn’t eager to become a member. And even if I did, I would have to unlearn old habits of making church my only source of friends and support.
Still, I kept showing up.
November 6, 2024
By this point, I had questions. And I was unemployed. So I started going to Wednesday afternoon Bible Study to try and wrap my head around the mainline theology that everyone at the church seemed to be comfortable with.
Sure, I had deconstructed evangelicalism with “Jesus and John Wayne” and “The Making of Biblical Womanhood.” I had found theological backing for affirming the LGBTQIA+ community in “Changing Our Mind.” But the book that blew my mind was called, “The Bible: A Biography”
Was it possible that the exodus never happened? That king David was a myth? That the ancient Israelites were polytheistic until the time of Ezra? What if the Bible wasn’t infallible? What if the text had errors and contradictions?
Today
I haven’t resolved all those questions. My faith is stretching and cracking and twisting into something strange and new.
But for now, there are a few things I still believe:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth,
And in Jesus Christ his only son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.
Amen.
