Are ‘Exvangelicals’ Cult Survivors?

Editor’s Note: This Story was orginally published on John Verner’s Substack, on Apr 18, 2023

When I reflect on the thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours that I spent studying to become a pastor, I never imagined that I would one day leave evangelical Christianity.

As a child, every Sunday I sat in a pew with my family, singing hymns and listening to sermons that instilled in me deep fear and skepticism about the outside world. I was taught that non-believers were going to hell and that the only way to avoid eternal damnation was to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

There was a sense of isolation that came with my indoctrination that made it hard for me to connect with others. I couldn’t form meaningful relationships with people who didn’t share my background. I felt like an eternal outsider, no one could understand the fear and bewilderment I felt. Even now, years later, the scars from functioning as an alien on my home planet remain.

I am not alone in my experience, as there has been a mass exodus from evangelicalism since 2017, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. Evangelicalism is a multifaceted movement within Protestant Christianity that emphasizes the importance of personal faith in Jesus Christ, the authority of the Bible, and the need for evangelism and missions to spread the gospel. The term gets misused as “conservative Christian” or “fundamentalist” often. It is broader than those ideas. Yet socially, the loudest evangelicals are often the most problematic variety. 

Whether this evangelical evacuation is caused by divisions over Trump support, loss of trust in the institutional church, or simply an evolution of humankind is up for debate. The coronavirus pandemic only amplified this trend of socially distancing from the church. These religious refugees are sometimes nicknamed “exvangelicals.” Online, the hashtag, slang, and branding have simulated a safe space of recovery for many. But that word hits my ears like a hammer. I dislike being defined by my former faith, which is implicit in the word. Instead, I choose to call myself a cult survivor.

Navigating life after leaving many identity-based groups is daunting. Dissenters often face intense emotions and can struggle to determine what exactly they went through. This confusion is amplified when there are no clear-cut lines between a cult survivor, apostate, or someone who just changed their mind. It depends on individual circumstances and who is in charge of the labels. 

When I wrote my book in 2019, “The Cult of Christianity: How Churches Control, Contain, and Convert,” I decided to think of the word “cult” in terms of indicators rather than giving it a strict definition. My observation is that cults are any group where leaders control, contain, and convert followers. Read more about that here:

Evangelical Christians don’t define themselves in this framework. But that’s the problem with cults; they never self-identify as a cult. 

Cult Criteria

Kacey, 29, hosts a podcast called “The Cult Vault.” She doesn’t publicly share her last name, fearing retribution, because the cult survivors she interviews often come from groups that attempt to suppress any exposure of their abuse. In her interviews with over 300 survivors, a common thread has emerged. 

“If somebody asks me, ‘What is a cult?’ or ‘Am I in a cult?’,” she said, “I think my first question is always, ‘How easy is it to leave?’” Kacey went on to describe how the psychological control present in cults can make someone feel stuck. “How do you even begin to go about building relationships with worldly people who you’ve been told your entire life are dangerous?”

Writer and journalist Tom Wolfe, claimed: “A cult is a religion with no political power.” But is a lack of political power the best indicator? 

Christian nationalism weds American and Christian identities in an imperialistic marriage. QAnon is a baseless belief system embraced by many far-right activists, which posits that the government is controlled by Satan-worshiping pedophiles. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is an evangelical congresswoman from Georgia who promotes both Christian nationalism and QAnon. While not all evangelicals support these movements, they have gained significant traction in conservative Christian circles and it’s translated to real political power. 

Self-proclaimed cult expert, Dr. Steven Hassan, author of “The Cult of Trump,” argues for what he calls the “BITE model.” Essentially, he finds that cults use specific methods of recruitment and jurisdiction, maintained through “behavior, information, thought, and emotional control.” 

Dictionaries tend to describe cults nebulously, like Merriam-Webster’s scattershot definition, “a system of religious worship,” or “enthusiastic but often temporary devotion to a person, idea, or thing,” or “a group of persons who belong to or show devotion to a cult.” Defining relative words, especially dealing with the complexities of humans, is laborious, as is leaving a church. 

The Fear Factor

In my case, I was so dependent on my religion that I could never make a decision without prayer. I experienced anxiety about everything, from small things like picking out groceries to long dialogues with the Almighty about my vocation. I was taught to be afraid of living because my life was worth nothing without an evangelical God’s direction.

“It comes down to controlling individuals through fear,” Kacey finds in her Cult Vault interviews. “Fear of how the group will speak about you, fear of losing your family and friends, fear of what will happen to you without the security of the group that you’ve grown dependent on.”

Kyle Smith, director of the history of religions program at the University of Toronto, recently published a book called “Cult of the Dead: A Brief History of Christianity.”

Smith writes that Christianity has an “obsession with martyrdom” and that “the remains of the dead [early church martyrs] begins with the cross.” 

He explains how early Common Era history had many suicide cults, especially Christian ones. While that may seem too distant from American evangelicalism, there is one strikingly similar fact. “One of the biggest things you’ll see is ‘doctrine over self,’ no matter the type of cultic group,” Kacey told me. “The belief system is more important than the individuals that believe in that belief system.” Even to the point of death, as far as I was concerned. When I was a Christian, I was taught, and fully accepted, that I needed to be prepared to die for my faith. But spotting such brainwashing as a problem doesn’t necessarily look the same for everyone. 

Beyond Belief

“I do not identify with the term ‘cult survivor,’” said Lilly McCarrell. She was my first guest on my podcast, “The Cult of Christianity.”

I asked her why she agreed to come on a podcast with that title. She said: “I came on the first time because I wanted to share my niche experience with Christianity, and why it is the religion, and not specifically the church, that I have an issue with.” It is common rhetoric in evangelical circles to dismiss folks who leave the church as suffering “church hurt,” or assuring “my church would never do that,” blaming one’s particular church’s upbringing rather than dealing with larger trends in Christian dogma and doctrine. 

Weeks before my podcast pilot, McCarrell had dropped her given name of Galilee. Her former name is often associated with Christianity because it is the name of a region in northern Israel where Jesus lived and carried out his ministry, according to the Bible. The name had been a weight on her shoulders, reminding her of the tangled relationship she had with her mother, and how it functionally identified her as Christian. Introducing herself as “Galilee” often led to awkward assumptions about her faith and questions about what church she attended. But now, freed from those expectations, McCarrell had found solace in spiritual avenues beyond the bounds of Christianity.

“I believe that I am divine in nature and that I do not need additional influence from any other source to be divine,” she said. “This innate divinity directs my spirituality.”

Spirituality is a more broad category than religion and certainly constitutes more than evangelicalism. Some may say the difference between a cult and a religion is the size, the structure, or the amount of time the group has been around. Others simply label any collection of people that don’t subscribe to their particular religious beliefs as a cult. My evangelical churches were perfectly happy to label Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and sometimes even Catholics as cultists. 

But the fact is, the exodus of evangelical Christians in the United States has proven to be difficult for recusants. There are a plethora of books, conferences, and specific therapy services to address their distinct religious trauma. 

Clinical psychologist and researcher Margaret Thaler Singer describes post-cult trauma like this: “[They] may feel relief to be out of the group, but also may feel grief over the loss of positive elements in the cult, such as friendships, a sense of belonging or the feeling of personal worth generated by the group’s stated ideals or mission.” Religious trauma, in my experience, is practically identical to this syndrome.

While I miss the pseudo-family I encountered in the valley of my evangelical identity, my journey was not predestined and I was able to escape. When I turned away from religion, I found comfort in the community of those who identify as cult survivors. I also found strength beyond what I’d ever realized I had. The idea of “survivor” encompasses a shared history of pain and recovery, validating the hardships of those who weathered the weight of a harmful ideology, and a reminder that the metaphorical crosses I bore couldn’t stop me from the literal new life I’ve found outside the evangelical cult.