No matter who I’m talking to, it’s a question that comes up when I tell people that I spent seven years as an evangelical.
“So, after all that, what do you believe?”
Am I atheist? Agnostic? Buddhist? Episcopalian?
My most frequent answer: agnostic, leaning towards atheist, and I usually leave it at that. Talking about spirituality on a deeper level is exhausting and, sometimes, re-traumatizing for me. I spent 7 years digging through the innards of my personal beliefs and having others warp them to fit a tyrannical agenda. It’s a sore spot, but also a tired subject.
Why should it matter? I think. I’ve stopped letting spiritual beliefs define me.
But last weekend, I was talking to a Wiccan friend after dinner, and I found myself weirdly wanting to go deeper. She asked me the question, and something inside of me opened up. Perhaps it’s because I spent some time in my teenaged years walking counter-clockwise around a pagan statue chanting “Earth, Air, Fire, Water”—an act that I was told to repent of multiple times as an evangelical.
I still find her belief system comforting in its mysticism, filled with possibilities. I wanted to share, despite my usual inclinations.
“I want to believe in something again,” I said, “but the last time I did that, I was taken advantage of.”
I didn’t just open up to her in that moment—I opened up to myself. I started explaining a fear of belief that I didn’t know I had. I told her that belief sits at the core of every person, informing our emotions and what we do physically. I told her that when someone gets access to your belief, they gain the ability—by proxy—to control how you feel, and what your body does with that.
Belief, I told her, is powerful. And I handed mine over to the wrong people. I did things that I regret, things that I can’t take back.
I never want someone to have that kind of power over me again.
My friend sat there and listened, understanding and compassionate. “I get that,” she said, and not a thing more. No rebuttals, no defenses. No “my kind of faith wouldn’t do that do you.”
It was so nice to be vulnerable and not capitalized upon.
*
When I left evangelicalism, I couldn’t embrace another form of Christianity. I couldn’t embrace anything at all on a spiritual level, really. I tried going to a few progressive Christian churches, beautiful places where LGBTQ+ people were pastors and in leadership positions, where women were interpreting and teaching scripture—no longer relegated to children’s church and baking for Sunday potlucks. I sat through gorgeous sermons that questioned the words of Jesus in all the ways that I was, that didn’t tie anything up in a bow. I heard them refer to people of other faiths as “brothers and sisters.”
No more exclusivity. No more dictatorship. Just genuine, curious, awe-inspiring faith in a higher power.
I loved it. I was so happy that I had witnessed it.
But I couldn’t be a part of it. I still can’t.
There’s something practical in my decision to stay away: I don’t have the time to be involved in a church anymore, and whatever time I used to have was stretched thin by evangelicalism. I spent 7 years giving hours and money and effort to that movement every Sunday. I opened up my living spaces for congregations throughout the week, did the selfless giving thing and made meals, ordered pizzas for Bible studies and post-church gatherings.
When I left, I started wanting to be selfish with my Sundays. I wanted to take that day, and every day, back for myself.
Taking those days back, while worthwhile, has been a lonely process. Leaving the church meant losing community, and I have never been able to replace the drop-of-a-hat support that was given to me by 200 people any time I needed it.
But the greatest loss, deeper than any interpersonal connection, has been the comfort of my faith—the relationship I had with the god I worshipped. The knowledge of his unconditional love, the purpose and reasoning I garnered from his omnipotence, his existence. The certainty that there was a heaven, and I was going to it, and all final decisions would be good and just.
I’m still sad that I can’t say for sure that this isn’t all more than just chaos.
There has been, and still is, so much grief in that loss. Praying is still a reflex, but I don’t trust what’s on the other end. I don’t know that opening myself towards spirituality won’t swallow me whole again, won’t take away everything that I’ve worked so hard to build for myself since leaving it.
*
Here’s where I am now.
There was a still, small voice inside of me all those years in evangelicalism, and I was told that voice was the holy spirit. That voice brought me words of wisdom and peace, relief in moments when I should have been spinning.
I still hear and feel that voice, but I believe that voice is actually me. I had the capacity to give myself the love that I needed to receive, bestow upon my mind the insight that would help me grow.
And that, I believe, is one of the greatest threats to evangelicalism: the idea that we can be sources of love for ourselves. It’s why they teach us that we’re reprehensible, only desirable to god if we’re allowing Jesus to transform us. They break us down so that we can’t recognize where the goodness is coming from—and that we don’t need them to help us find it.
Realizing our ability to care for ourselves robs them of their power over us.
There was so much pressure in evangelicalism to know God, to dig into him and understand his heart. They wanted me to define my beliefs, say them out loud, make sure everyone around me knew that I belonged to Jesus.
Now, it’s not important to define my beliefs anymore. I am digging into myself, getting to know who I am better, finding all the safe chambers and sacred ways I can nourish my own spirit. If there is an all-powerful, omnipotent creator of the universe out there, I don’t believe it needs me to submit to it, because if it did, it wouldn’t be worth worshipping.
Whatever good the god of evangelicalism was for me, I now am for myself—and I’ve come to realize I was all along. It’s a challenging kind of faith, but I’m learning to trust myself enough to embrace it.