In Name Only
Life after death (again)
The end of IN NAME ONLY. And the beginning of figuring out what’s worth keeping, what must be left behind, and what we’re building instead.
Part 5: Life After Death vs Living Forever
I want this book (Living In Sin) to be an exploration and exposé of how and why deconstructing from social media has felt almost exactly the same as deconstructing from the evangelical church.
And how I think we made a mistake in forming the deconstruction community.
Blake Chastain, who coined the term exvangelical, has wrestled with the efficacy of that term. Like, how good can it be long-term to describe a group of people in opposition to something? Like, exvangelicals are still beholden to evangelicals.
And I understand his sentiment, but I don’t completely agree with it. Because there’s a long history of that.
We — in our main character energy of referring to ourselves as Christians — we forget (or don’t even know) we’re actually Protestants.
And Protestants branched off from Catholicism. So the basis of our faith has always been anti-something else.
Our definition has always been found in opposition to something else.
And just the same way that Protestants broke away from Catholicism only to end up becoming a similar type of corporation struggling with similar corruptions — exvangelicals have done the same thing with evangelicalism.
We broke off and branched out, only to circle back and do the same old thing — devalue and downplay the learned and hard-earned wisdom of marginalized folks, while rushing to platform and praise basic ass white men with a hint of charisma.
Because instead of being brave enough to disavow the thing, we keep trying to reform it.
And it cannot be reformed.