I wrote a guest piece of Samuel James on his Substack, Digital Liturgies. It explores the dynamic of grief, anger, and exvangelicals. You can start reading here and finish over on his Substack. Subscribe while you're over there. Samuel is an insightful writer.
It’s almost a cliche at this point: the angry exvangelical on TikTok sharing their story of church hurt, or how they discovered that something they were taught as a child was untrue. Cliches become cliches for a reason: truth. Many, myself included, have sadly had these kinds of experiences. And for lots of people, these experiences lead to real anger toward their parents, youth pastors, or someone/something else. Anger—or some derivative of anger like disgust, contempt, bitterness, or judgment—is arguably the dominant emotion expressed in online exvangelical spaces.
In a lot of cases, the anger is warranted. Anger is the proper response at abuse, whether experienced firsthand or covered up. Anger is the proper response toward a pastor, leader, or family member’s devastating moral failure. Their anger is a justified reaction to the failure of Christians and Christian institutions to live consistently by the teachings of Jesus they espouse. Still others express anger that they were not given the tools to support a robust, authentic faith that holds up the truth, beauty, and goodness of God in the face of non-Christian counterfeits. In some ways, it seems to me that if you can’t empathize at least a little with the anger of exvangelicals, you’re probably in denial or just not paying attention.
But anger is not a solution. In the throes of anger, many of us want nothing more than to burn stuff down. In a digital age, our box of matches often looks a lot like the 6-inch piece of glass we all keep in our pockets.
People often take to the social Internet to share their story after they have been removed, one way or another, from the context that hurt them. Their compelling narrative tears apart a person, group, or institution, laying bare the perceived failures and shortcomings of the exvangelical’s teachers, but from a distance. Lighting a fire in an attempt to purge the world of the source of their pain, they often don’t have in mind the unintentional consequences of their actions for the others who are still in the institution and haven’t experienced hurt.
There is certainly a place for holding people who have caused a great deal of harm accountable. But as a means of holding people accountable, social media is less like a surgical knife which removes the tumor for the good of the body, and more like a bomb that indiscriminately spreads collateral damage. As Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who coined the five stages of grief, wrote about anger, “Anger is a natural reaction to the unfairness of loss. Unfortunately, however, anger can isolate you from friends and family at the precise time you may need them the most.” In our quest for justice and vengeance, our indignation ends up hurting the very people we most need in our pain.
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