Exvangelical: How a Young Man who Loved His Church Became a "Heretic" Who Still Loves the Teachings of Jesus

By Dan Laubach

People are leaving the American Evangelical church in unparalleled numbers. Many Christians are left wondering why their beloved children, grandkids, and church members are fleeing the faith they once loved. Those who left the faith often ask the question "what now?" If Evangelical Christianity wasn't good enough for them, do they have to completely discount this ancient faith practice? Is there any baby within Christianity, or is it all just bathwater?

 

Dan Laubach grew up as a star child within the Evangelical Christian movement. He graduated from a Christian university with high honors and immediately found a ministry job at a Christian Camp in Vermont. He, like St. Paul, could claim "I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could." Why then did he find himself dreading going to church Sunday mornings and no longer able to swallow much of the theology passed down from his religious leaders?

 

As he began to question and eventually leave the Evangelical faith of his youth, he was forced to ask if there was any value in this ancient spiritual tradition. This book is a collection of stories, parables, poems, explorations and ideas that demonstrate what Dan's Exvangelical journey looked like. If you wonder why your friend has left the faith, maybe Dan's journey will help you understand them from a new perspective. If you too are questioning the faith of your childhood maybe Dan's writings can provide companionship as you search through the bathwater of Christianity. Is there a divine child hiding in its midst? Does this ancient faith tradition have anything meaningful to say to modern Westernized humans? 

 

Spoiler alert—it does.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Laubach
• Release date: Aug 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201599294

Book preview

Exvangelical:

How a Young Man Who Loved His Church Became a Heretic Who Still Loves the Teachings of Jesus

Dan Laubach

Copyright 2021 Dan Laubach

Please quote and share sections of this book freely.

If you do, please give the author credit for their work.

Edited by Monica Schroeder at backyardproofreading.com

Cover Art by Kellyn Boyden at capjoyphoto.com

For all those who are willing to listen.

Contents

Introduction

The Four Sane Women

1. The Divine

2. The Book

3. The Book (Part 2)

New Earth Parable

4. The Earth

5. The Beginning

6. The End

7. The Good News

8. The Kingdom of God

9. The Church

Epilogue

Appendix: Further Readings

Notes

About this Edition of the Book

Acknowledgments

Introduction

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And so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.

― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.

― Jesus, Mark 2:22

I’m completely captivated by the story of the Apostle Paul. The biblical book of Acts tells us that in a single moment a Divine light shattered this religious zealot's worldview by providing the sudden realization that everything he had staked his life on was a lie. Paul killed people for worshiping Jesus as the living God. What went through his mind when he met the living Jesus on the road to Damascus?

How did he expect to be received by his friends and family after this change in worldview? Paul grew up in a conservative Jewish home. How did he tell his mother that he now followed a progressive Rabbi murdered for his heretical beliefs? Did he try to convince her that despite this change he still felt like he was following the same God she did? Did Paul even expect her to understand?

Paul says that after his spiritual experience he spent three years sequestered away in Arabia.¹ He must have filled that time by slowly deconstructing his whole worldview and then carefully building it back up with Jesus as the cornerstone. I wonder, however, if those three years were solely for spiritual contemplation. A man who murdered Christians would not be easily welcomed into Christian circles. How many nights did he wake up in cold sweats after dreaming of the day where he had to stand face to face with the leaders of the movement he once persecuted? As Paul reconstructed his faith, he must have also contemplated the consequences of that new faith.

Paul left the accepted beliefs of his Jewish family, friends and rabbis. He turned his back on the teachers who trained him by following Jesus—a man who those same teachers and peers crucified for his heretical beliefs. Possibly, Paul spent three years wrestling with the understanding that if he were to go back home, all of his old friends would consider him a traitor and a heretic. That fear likely tempted him to hide his heretical beliefs in Arabia and live a two-faced life—attending Synagogue on Saturday and worshiping Jesus on Sunday.

Christians are, however, eternally grateful that this man accepted his fate of being labeled a heretic and dying for the same cause his new Rabbi died for. This heretic became the most prolific New Testament writer and an important part in spreading stories of Jesus to the whole world—Jew and Gentile alike.

I think about Paul almost daily because I too feel like a heretic.

I too had a spiritual experience that forced me to deconstruct and reconstruct the faith I once loved. I feel like a heretic because instead of rigidly defending my old faith, I feel the Divine drawing me forward into a new direction. I openly celebrate this emerging spirituality even when it means that I’m forced to deconstruct the faith I have loved since childhood. The Divine is moving in the world and I don’t want to miss it.

I’m not alone in this journey. A quickly growing population of people are emerging from the Evangelical Christianity they were handed and are looking for a new way forward. While I’ve found that my generation (Millennials) make up a large portion of these Exvangelicals, these individuals represent a diverse range of denominations, ages, and nationalities.²

While many agree that Evangelicals make up a large portion of U.S. religious groups and the Republican party, no one can quite agree on who Evangelicals are. Frankly, categorizing Evangelicals is difficult because many who appear to fit within this category would rarely use the word Evangelical to describe themselves. Many Evangelical Christians instead use descriptors like born again, protestant, non-denominational, follower of Jesus, etc. To help define this group for research purposes the National Association of Evangelicals and LifeWay Research use a set of four statements. Essentially, if someone strongly agrees to these statements, they would be classified as an Evangelical:

The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.

It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.

Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.³

These four statements are useful but not the gold standard for defining this community. The Barna Group has a set of nine questions they use to clarify who fits into this Evangelical box.⁴ Many have also just used the single question, Would you consider yourself a ‘born again’ Christian?

Evangelicalism is a recent appearance within Christianity. Historians date its inception as early as the 18th century, but its true growth came during the mid 20th century with revivalists like Billy Graham.⁵ Despite its recent appearance, strains of Evangelicalism have found their way into many Christian denominations. It’s widely recognized that Evangelicals attend Baptist, Mennonite, Methodist, Pentecostal, Reformed and nondenominational churches. Philip Gulley, a Quaker minister, has identified Evangelical influences in his Quaker communities.⁶ I’ve even read some Catholic books and devotionals that felt very Evangelical.

This is more than a set of beliefs. It often presents itself as a way of life. Evangelical media floods our radios, movies, televisions and even billboards. Many of these networks push pro-life, anti-gay and anti-evolution messages. Evangelicals hold a large political majority within the Republican party.⁷ They were, for example, crucial in electing Trump as president in 2016.

Many books and articles have been written about Evangelicalism within America. This is not one of those resources. This is instead a book about someone whose heretical beliefs led him to leave this strain of Christianity.

I may be a heretic, but I wasn’t always one.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania to a loving mother and father, Evangelical Christianity presented itself to me from the moment of my birth. My father ran a Mennonite summer camp where I heard a variety of pastors, preachers, and saints share Biblical truths to young people year-round. My whole family attended church faithfully every Sunday, even while we were on vacation.

Despite living over 30 minutes away from our church, I often went an additional one or two times each week for Youth Group, choir practice, play practice, Vacation Bible School, and more. My mother homeschooled me through 5th grade providing a kind and loving Christian bubble for my most formative years. Even in public school, I continued to make faith a priority in my life by inviting friends to youth group events, joining Bible studies at my school, and spending time reading God’s Word each day before I left the house.

My childhood home provided a beautiful and loving place to spend my most formative years. My parents daily demonstrated the love of God and taught me to love as well. Although going to church felt like an expectation, they were quick to remind me that I could freely choose a new church to attend if I wanted to. My pastors and youth pastors poured their hearts out to teach me to love God and love others. I felt embraced, loved, welcomed and encouraged to grow.

When I graduated high school in 2010, I decided to continue my spiritual growth at an accredited Christian university. For five years I studied at Cairn University, a place that taught me how to serve Christ in the church, society, and the world as a biblically minded, well-educated, and professionally competent man of character.⁸

My double degree in Bible and Music Education prepared me to lead church choirs, teach Christian students to sing God’s praise, and open atheist students to the beautiful truths of scripture through song. I ended my education with a 3-month student teaching experience at one of the premier Christian high schools in Pennsylvania, then decided to take a break from music and instead accept a full-time ministry job at a Christian camp in Vermont.

By the time I graduated from Cairn University, I had two degrees earned with high honors, a loving wife, and a stable ministry job. My future had the perfect trajectory of a solid, Evangelical, Christian life. Like St Paul, I could easily claim that if anyone had confidence in the flesh, I had even more. (Phil. 3:4)

Also like Paul, it was a long walk that destroyed my faith.

In short, it was a two-hour podcast that changed everything for me. Looking back, I realize that I had been hiding my fair share of doubts by shoving them down with simple answers provided by my pastors and professors. Answers like this:

-  God allows evil to exist to give us free will.

-  God is God and I have just to trust Him... Even if I don’t understand why something is happening.

-  God doesn’t send anyone to Hell, it’s something they choose for themselves.

This episode of The Liturgists podcast with Science Mike and Michael Gungor finally brought my doubts to the surface and provided a safe place to seriously contemplate them.⁹ Ultimately this podcast episode destroyed my faith.

While out hiking through the deep snowdrifts of an early Vermont spring, I listened to these two men share their testimonies of how they lost the faith of their childhood and started to find it anew. One of them, Science Mike, described how he ran to the Bible to give him arguments to use against his adulterous father. Instead, he found errors, inconsistencies, and ethical questions that his Biblical Worldview could not provide satisfying answers to (despite desperately seeking those answers). He went on to keep his newfound atheism a secret from his friends and family out of fear of disappointment and ruining a comfortable lifestyle. Even his wife went unaware of his atheist beliefs for over three years. He was a self-described secret atheist man.¹⁰ His atheism didn’t prevent him from being a Deacon in his church, teaching Sunday School, and baptizing his daughter; all for the sake of holding his way of life together and not hurting his wife and children.

Like Paul on his way to Damascus, my hike also led to a burst of revelation and insight that upended my faith and changed the trajectory of my life. I knew clearly that Mike’s story foreshadowed the future path of my own life. It was not a fear or a concern. It was, in all reality, a fact. The questions and doubts that I pushed down with simple phrases like God is God, He knows best, I just have to trust Him would eventually burst out and cause the same pain and chaos that Mike described.

While listening to his story of loss I too felt myself parting from the religion and beliefs I held so dearly. This departure did not come from a place of hatred or anger. Nor was it from a lack of faith or an attempt to hide a specific sin. It wasn’t even from a lack of answers. I knew how to defend my faith! I had taken a three-credit college class in defending my faith. I knew the answers, I had the faith, I had the right way of living, I had the love and respect. I just knew those weren’t enough. I knew that Evangelical Christianity just didn’t cut it for me anymore.

Thank God I kept listening.

Both men then went on to share about how they came back to a life of faith—albeit a different one. Science Mike shared about a mystical experience he couldn’t deny or set aside. He dove deep into the study of brain science to explain away this experience but instead was only brought closer to a realization of the Divine. Michael Gungor, the other co-host, shared about meeting Science Mike. He shared how some of Mike’s "Axioms about Faith"¹¹ helped him reconcile his frustration with Evangelicalism and his deep understanding of something more and something important going on within Christianity.

I continued to find their journeys prophetic of my own. I knew that I couldn’t completely run from the faith that had impacted me so powerfully for the entirety of my life... but I also knew that certain aspects of this faith’s worldview no longer resonated with me.

I was gone for two hours and came back a different man. Over the next few weeks, I started compiling the words needed to adequately describe my experience to my wife, Judith. Tears, hugs and smiles all filled our conversations during those weeks. Tears mourned my loss of something incredibly meaningful. Hugs demonstrated Judith’s unconditional love for me, no matter the journey I was on. And smiles came from joy for the promise of new life and understanding about an important topic.

I spent the next few years exploring, in detail, the questions I quickly skipped through during that two-hour hike. I began to wrestle with my approach to big questions regarding God, the Bible, environmental care, Heaven, Hell, the Church and more. Instead of finding answers to confirm what I already believed, I let big questions guide my exploration and earnestly sought answers that connected with me even if those answers led to a change in belief, lifestyle or worldview.

I came away from my many explorations with more questions than I did answers. And that felt good. It felt good to not have to fit all of my thoughts and beliefs in a nice tidy gift-wrapped box. It felt freeing to let big questions be just that—big, knotty, difficult questions that were worth wrestling with.

In this book, I hope to, in part, guide your thinking around some of the major worldview ideas that I had to deconstruct and reconstruct.

There is an old story about a Buddhist monk who led a group prayer in the temple courtyard each morning. One week a local alley cat interrupted their prayer time so thoroughly that the monk started tying the cat to a tree before the morning prayer. This practice went on for some years before the monk passed away. His followers continued to tie this cat to the tree each morning until the tree collapsed in a thunderstorm. The monks went out the next day and planted a new tree in the same spot so they could continue to tie the cat to it. When the cat passed away a few months later, they went into town to purchase a new cat.

As I entered my phase of Deconstruction I started to recognize many of the things in my life that I did without question. I started to see beliefs, actions, phrases, thoughts and more that I realized were handed to me from my youngest years by my most respected peers. Yet, I realized that I never actually gave myself the space to question and think about these beliefs or actions on my own. I tied the cat to a tree because it’s what my pastors, parents, or professors always did. I went to church every Sunday because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do. I read the Bible for my morning devotions, shot down theories on Evolution, and believed in a torturous afterlife for non-believers because that’s what my community had always done. I never questioned why I tied the cat to the tree. I never asked if there was another way to do things. I just did what my community had always done.

Here in this book, I want to give you the space to ask these big questions. I’ll share some of the answers I’ve come to throughout my short journey. I share these answers not to convert you to my way of thinking but simply to make you aware of where this journey led me.

Perhaps you, too, are questioning your faith. Maybe working through some of the same questions I did will help you construct a faith or spirituality that can be more honest and meaningful for you.

Maybe you’re a parent, grandparent or pastor who doesn’t know why your much-loved daughter, grandson,

Reviews for Exvangelical

[Susie Moore · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved this book so much. It is really helpful to hear some of the honest reflections of someone else’s experiences with Christianity and the Christian Church. I appreciate that the author recognizes and calls out some of the problematic elements of Christianity and the Church while at the same time entertaining some of the ways in which meaning and wisdom can still be found within a Christ tradition. I am very grateful for this book.

[Kelton tupper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a helpful, humorous, honest, yet also kind and generous account of leaving behind a restrictive religious experience in search of more beauty and wholeness. Definitely with a read if you are processing your own relationship with Christianity or you want to better understand the thoughts of someone you know who is.

[Daniel · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was challenging and entertaining. I really enjoyed it this book.