NPR’s Sarah McCammon has covered critical election cycles including the 2016 presidential campaign, in which evangelical voters helped solidify Donald Trump’s road to the White House.
McCammon, who grew up in an evangelical household in the Kansas City area, said she often found her professional life intersecting with her religious background. And this melding of her professional and personal life was one of the reasons she wrote "The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church," an examination of how evangelical Christianity affected politics and people.
“I think it is a journey that many people can relate to whether or not they grew up evangelical,” McCammon said to an audience at St. Louis Public Radio last month. “I grew up evangelical. It's a particularly influential movement in this country and our politics. And so, I found my work intersecting with my personal background in ways I didn't really expect but felt like I wanted to explore.”
McCammon’s book, which became a New York Times bestseller, takes a deep look into the different facets of what prompts people to leave or stay with the evangelical church. One major element of the book is how evangelicals connected with Trump, who seemed like a flawed leader for a religious group often associated with strict moral codes around sexuality and marital fidelity.
Even though prominent evangelical leaders like James Dobson of Focus on the Family fiercely decried President Bill Clinton’s infidelity during his tenure in the White House, McCammon noticed less of an outcry around Trump’s lack of faithfulness during his marriages. And that led to McCammon connecting with people, known as exvangelicals, who questioned some of the aspects of evangelical Christianity.
“When I first heard the word ‘exvangelical,’ I was interviewing evangelical women right after the release of the 'Access Hollywood' video,” McCammon said. “Some of them were saying: ‘Look, this is a community that's talked about purity and monogamy and fidelity.’ And I think there was a real sense, for some, of disillusionment and betrayal.”
Some of the exvangelicals McCammon talked to for her book began to question evangelicalism for a multitude of reasons, including some evangelical denominations' opposition to the LGBTQ community.
“And there's data that suggests that younger evangelicals, even those who identify as evangelical, are much more accepting of queer people and of same-sex marriage,” she said.
A deeply personal book
McCammon talked to more than 100 people to explore evangelicalism’s impact on people and politics. But she also details her own upbringing.
"The Exvangelicals" delves into deeply personal stories of McCammon’s childhood, teenage years, relationships and professional life. When asked if it was difficult incorporating herself in her book, McCammon replied: “Absolutely.”
But McCammon added that, as a journalist, she has asked people who were unemployed, had an abortion or been affected by a natural disaster to “bare their souls” to her. And so she said, “I know the power of telling your truth.”
“And I thought if I'm going to do a book that is about why people break, often painfully, from their religious traditions, I needed to tell the truth,” McCammon said. “And so, unsurprisingly, some of the things that caused me to make that break were very painful. And I do talk about them.”
McCammon emphasized that for many people, “being religious can be really meaningful and helpful," adding that “I'm not here to be against religion, but I think there is a way that some people approach it that's very rigid.”
“And I think for many people who are raised in environments like that where there's a sort of a set narrative that you must believe, it can be difficult to sort of make sense of input of data that contradicts that,” McCammon said.
