Book Review: Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church
Leaving Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity was one of the best decisions I ever made but also one of the hardest. On the one hand, leaving Evangelical Christianity allowed me to embrace my bisexuality and to let go of expectations of religious perfection and the immense amount of shame that results from never being a “good enough” Christian. On the other hand, up until the age of 17, my whole world revolved around my childhood Pentecostal church. Most of my close friends attended the church, I attended services multiple times a week, and my whole identity was based being a devout Pentecostal Christian.
For someone who struggles with mental illness and an unstable sense of self- Evangelical/ Fundamentalist Christianity provided me with structure. It gave me a strict list of beliefs to adhere to, regulations on how to dress, what to listen to, and what to avoid. It let me know that while I was a horrible sinner, I was also a beloved child of God. Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity provided me with a sense of stability that was lacking in my family life.
When one leaves Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity behind, you aren’t just leaving a church or a denomination but you are saying goodbye to a worldview that has shaped every facet of your life. Leaving it, is like being forced to leave your home country and dropped into a foreign country, having zero knowledge of the local language. It’s terrifying and incredibly lonely.
It’s been over a decade since I left Evangelical Christianity behind and I am still struggling with my faith and my sense of identity. My faith as currently expressed is expansive and much more inclusive than my childhood faith and it has at its core not “sin” or “hell” but compassion and social justice. However, it also less structured and absolute than my childhood faith. Instead of having answers, it propels me to keep asking questions. The certainty I had as a child is gone. The community that comes automatically with Evangelical Christianity is gone. And damn it, sometimes I miss it.
But it’s hard to explain to others this sense of loss. For those still within Evangelical Christianity, I am a heretic, a “fake" Christian, doomed to hell. For those who have never been a part of Evangelical Christianity they simply see my leaving it as, “having dodged a bullet” and they can’t quite grasp why I would still struggle, a decade later, with leaving my old life behind when I’ve built a new one-as disorganized and messy as this new life may be.
Reading, Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church edited by Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal, felt like having a conversation with a circle of close friends. I could see glimpses of my own story, within the stories of other people, though many of the specifics, of course differed. I remember the anguish I felt realizing I liked not only boys but also girls.
An Aside: I would like to blame Lucy Lawless as Xena Warrior Princess, for that realization that I am Bisexual. I mean, I remember clearly coming home from grocery shopping with my mom, turning on the TV, and bam, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen comes on the screen. My not yet hit puberty brain was shook.
In her essay, “Gentrify My Heart,” Juliana Delgado Lopera describes looking for someone, “…as lost as I am…I scan for someone undone. Someone who shouldn’t be thinking about eating pussy, but like me, can’t help it.” I remember the desperate attempts as a child to be “straight” and holy. I remember the intense feelings of loneliness as I struggled to repress my feelings towards men and women, yet who also continually failed, no matter how many times I prayed or went to church.
Rooney Wynn, in her essay, “Cracks” details the cracks that developed in her faith. First, over questions regarding the massive amount of violence in the Bible and God’s constant need for praise. The cracks become more pronounced after her father gets very sick and her family falls apart, as a result of the stresses that having a sick family member can place on other family members. The church was a lifeline for Wynn’s family. Congregants provided the family with food, they helped Wynn and her siblings have some semblance of a childhood, yet there was also an undercurrent of judgement. Wynn describes how some congregants had no qualms about stating that Wynn’s parents must have committed some terrible sin for her dad to be having such horrible health problems. What else could explain why the hours, days, spent praying for healing didn’t work?
The stress on the family became worse after Wynn’s three older brothers left, leaving her, her mom and her younger siblings to try and pick up the slack. In addition to Wynn’s family struggles, she was also grappling with her queerness. Wynn tried to keep up appearances of heteronormativity and faith, while inside her faith was in tatters. But Wynn’s story does not end with a shattered, broken irrelevant faith. Wynn goes on to detail how reading works by authors such as Anne Lamott, allowed her to discover a different faith-one that is feminist, pro-choice LGBTQ affirming. One that is inclusive and open to shifting.
Empty the Pews is filled with tales of heartbreak but also incredible strength. Regardless of whether the contributors as individuals decided to stay within Christianity, adhering to a more “Progressive” or “Liberal” form, or they eschew Christianity all together, the stories weave together to discuss the pain and harm that Christianity, can inflict. A religion that demands the suppression of gender identity and sexual orientation, that provides easy answers that divide the world into “good” and “bad,” and that mixes faith and nationalism, deeply wounds people.
The stories chronicled in Empty the Pews are both varied and astonishingly similar. Different because as individuals, the contributors have their own unique stories and histories to tell. Similar in that they recount the pain and disorientation that comes with questioning one’s worldview and eventually walking away from it. Yet the stories are not hopeless, angry diatribes. They point to a strength and resiliency in the human spirit.
For ex-Evangelicals, particularly those struggling to make sense of their past, and unsure of their present and future, I encourage you to read this book and find that you are not alone. The wounds that were inflicted by this particular strain of Christianity are real, you are not crazy, you are not an awful person, and you will survive.
I encourage Evangelicals to read this book. You may disagree with every single person in this volume, but instead of dismissing them as “lost” or as “turning their backs on the one true faith,” truly listen to the anguish and pain that is evident in many of the stories within this volume. Be brutally honest with yourself and ask yourself if this really is the type of faith you want to endorse? Do you really want to hold onto a faith that condemns LGBTQ+ people to hell, that leaves children agonizing over whether their loved ones will spend eternity in hell?
To my Progressive/Liberal Christian peers, I also encourage you to read the book. Not so that you can puff up your chests and say, “we are so much better than Evangelical Christianity” because, let’s be honest, many Mainline Churches are not in actuality all that progressive and still struggle with racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. But I encourage you to read Empty the Pews and explore your own congregation’s dynamics with a critical eye. Moreover, perhaps this book can help you work with the ex-evangelicals in your midst and understand why we flinch at some theological concepts, or why our distrust for churches, even “Progressive” churches persist.