You Are Not Alone – For All of Us Who Have Left White Evangelicalism

You know that scene in the movie where someone gets stabbed in the stomach? There are two people facing each other, and suddenly the protagonist looks down and sees a knife in their gut, and the camera pans up and you see the look of unbelief on their face. The person who stabbed them is a friend, someone they knew. And they look down again, like they can’t believe that it really happened, and then up and into the face of the person they trusted. A look of confusion comes over their face, they shake their head, they can’t seem to comprehend what is happening to them. To deepen the betrayal, sometimes the killer pulls them in for a hug as the life oozes out of them.

This is my image for those of us who grew up in white evangelicalism and have recently left. I’ve had the same conversation with many many friends, and a few strangers, and this is the image that makes sense to all of us. Most are people of color, though not all. Many are queer, though not all. What we have in common is that we are followers of Jesus, our primary formation was in white evangelicalism, and this last stretch of time has been really painful and traumatizing. Most of us were not the really conservative, “abortion is the only issue that matters and you have to be a Republican,” version of evangelicalism. Though some of us did grow up with some creepy purity ceremonies and an odd fixation on virginity.

Our evangelicalism was a practitioner of benevolent white supremacy.

You could be a Democrat!

We talked about racial reconciliation!

We read Piper and Keller, had dabbled in Nouwen.  

There was "a value for diversity."

And we didn’t think being gay was a sin per se… but "the gays" shouldn’t be getting married, and if they were around the church, their queerness should be real... hidden.

If none of that sounds familiar, then this post is not for you.

Once Upon a Time…

These conversations often loop back to a beginning point.

Why we attended that mostly white church.

Why we joined that mostly white evangelical ministry.

Why we went to work for that non-profit.

And the stories are sincere and full of falling in love with Jesus, important and formational discipleship experiences, deep experiences of community, learning about God’s heart for justice and reconciliation, and diving in with our whole hearts. We believed in the vision, the mission statement, the words of the leaders. We did the work of being many people’s first Black friend, first Latina friend from the hood, first women leader, first person to pull back the curtain on the experience of being a person of color, or a queer believer. However, soon there was emotional exhaustion. There was the fatigue of teaching not only friends, but being expected to teach and train supervisors, sometimes leaders who were decades older than us and multiple layers of management above us. Stories of being called in to lead and help whenever racial crisis happened, but never pastored in our own trauma. Being sent out to silence and subdue other people of color or queer people who were unhappy.

And we did it all, because we thought that that was faithfulness.

We had made a home in these communities, and invested huge portions of our heart and soul. We were committed and sacrificing so much of ourselves, because we thought it was the gospel. We believed that we were all in it together and if we educated and shared our stories, people would believe us and learn, and things would be different. We let them put us in their publicity photos... a lot. ( A special shout out to Black men in these spaces, who basically had second jobs as models for all PR photos and videos. ) 

Then came Ferguson…

Something began with Trayvon, but it exploded with Ferguson. As video after video appeared of unarmed Black people being murdered by the police, we looked around...hoping for comfort, for understanding, for concern from these communities that we had given so much to. We showed up at church, waiting for words of wisdom and leadership in this painful season. Then we lowered the bar to just hoping for acknowledgement and a prayer. And then felt a deepening trauma as week after week our communities were silent. Not only were they silent, they started saying those bizarrely aloof and silencing comments,

"Let’s wait for more facts,"

"We don’t know if it was racist,"

and how they didn't want to get "too political.

"But we believed!!! We were in deep!!!

We were sure that if we just explained why it was painful, if we just told them that it wasn’t political, it was personal. If we hinted at the fact that some mornings it was hard to get out of bed, that we felt depressed, scared, truly traumatized, that they would care. But again we were greeted with silence. We were respectful, we had our conversations behind closed doors. We explained that it wasn’t just us, but many of the folks in our community were feeling trauma. 

Then it got weird…

Instead of talking about what was happening, there was a shift in the air. People started telling us we were being ungrateful. We were disrespecting the leaders. We were disrespecting other leaders of color. They told us that other people were fine, it was just us. The other ethnics were not complaining, just us. They prayed that we would learn to manage our emotions better. They started to call us angry, maybe they suggested we were difficult to work with. We couldn’t quite name it, but they started treating us, like an outsider. Like we were the enemy.

And it was bewildering.

We were confused.

We were so sure, so committed, so deep in, that in spite of the intense pain and trauma we were experiencing, we pressed in with talking with our leaders. We were sure if we explained that what they were doing was like being stabbed in the gut, they would stop. But instead, it became clear that our complaints had made us the enemy. They said things like “If you don’t like it, you can leave.” They didn’t seem to understand that we loved these communities, we loved these spaces, we had poured out years of our lives and emotional labor. Our criticism meant we cared, we were trying to work it out. It was an expression of pain, it was a sincere and earnest cry to be seen, to be helped. But instead, all our emotional investment was dismissed, and we were treated like we had never been invested in the community at all. It was bewildering. It was so, so, so painful.

If there is a purpose to this post, it is simply to let you know that, you are not alone.

You are not alone.

You are not the only one that has felt this way. You are not the only one who went through this.You are not the only one whose pain was dismissed. You are not crazy. You are not making it up. It has been in incredibly sad and painful couple of years for many of us, as we were ousted from our spiritual homes. You are not alone if you took a break from church. Many of us could not go. And have still not returned. You are not alone in feeling incredibly sad, angry, and betrayed. Communites that we labored for emotionally, communities where we educated, taught, and pushed for racial reconciliation, utterly betrayed us in this season. And we were hurt. But nobody was registering our pain as sadness. We were labeled as angry, labeled as ungrateful, labeled as outsiders in the very places we had called home.You are not alone in feeling incredibly sad that the theologies and communities that shaped us and formed you can no longer hold you. That loss of home is real. And nobody seemed to understand that. Because suddenly you were just a critical outsider. And all your pain was read as outsider criticism, when it was a scream to be seen as a human.

But then…

We come to understand that the thing that we called Christianity, is actually white Christianity. And this painful terrible season has helped us find the saints who have gone before and who have done the work of paving a different way. That's the repeated phrase we end with.

There is a different way.

For me, it meant finding James Cone and Black Liberation theology. It meant finding Delores Williams and womanist theology. It meant sitting with Ada-Maria Isasi Diaz and Mujerista theology. It meant receiving the hospitality of Randy Woodley, and being given the best critique of the Western worldview I had ever heard, and being invited into Native American ways of knowing. It meant joining an Indigenous learning community. It meant fully embracing my queer brothers and sisters, no caveats. It is hard to leave white Christinaity because we are indoctrinated with the idea that white theology is the best and truest theology. But many of us are slowly regrouping on the other side, leaning into the reality that there is another way. Finding new spiritual homes. Realizing that what was called christianity, was really benevolent white supremacy. Naming the fact that we were commodified and used for the education and awareness of white people who never changed. And we labored for systems that didn’t see us. But the grief is real. The sense of aloneness is real. I want to say that there is life on the other side. There is liberation on the other side. And you are not alone. Feel free to use the comments sections to share your own story, so others can be in community with you. Black Jesus loves you, and we will make it through.