I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home
Lesson 9
Embrace Universal Life
Before I went to Malawi and early on in my evangelical walk in 1982 I got one major thing right. Faith in Jesus includes emulating his concern for the poor. I packed my bags, joined an evangelical relief agency and [...]

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home
Lesson 8
Science vs. Religion – Go Where the Evidence Leads
Us vs. them attitudes are in the science vs. religion and creation vs. evolution debates. Typically, the people debating are the extremists, who only see things in black and white. There can be no mixing of [...]

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home
Lesson 7
Support Gay Rights Not Wrongs
Most of my evangelical friends thought I went off the deep end when I changed my view on this issue. I have to admit, for years I had wondered how anyone could defend homosexuality in light of certain [...]

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home
Lesson 6
Have Sensible Sex
By now, I’m sure some have declared me a full-fledged heretic. Brace yourself, there’s more. Now for something totally uncomfortable—the subject of religion and sex. In my experience, with some noble exceptions (there are some excellent evangelical marriage manuals on [...]

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home
Lesson 5
Don’t Be Seduced by Political Power
I learned one of the warped mindsets of heavily financed political activism is an us vs. them mentality. Today, this attitude continues to fuel the Christian Right in their quest to save America from moral depravity and reclaim [...]

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home
Lesson 4
Don’t Be Deluded by the Last Days
As a brand-new believer in 1979 I tended to accept the pre-tribulation Rapture view that the Bible predicts Jesus would return a second time before a period of tribulation, to whisk believers up to heaven and [...]

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home
Lesson 3
Leave Churchianity
Surprise! Jesus didn’t found an institutional church.14 For that matter, he didn’t found a religion either. He also didn’t expect his followers to set up a Christian version of the synagogue, let alone create a parallel Christian universe where microbrews are [...]

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home
Lesson 2
Beware of Bible Abuse
With some notable exceptions, most evangelicals I know primarily read the Bible devotionally, meaning they read it in a superficial way without regard to the conditions of history, culture, genre, or its own literary context. They also believe it [...]

OK, I confess. There are only nine lessons, but ten sounds better.
A quest for a reasoned faith based on honest questioning. That was largely what my 25-year sojourn in evangelicalism was about. Although evangelicals are not a monolithic block comprised only of conservatives (progressive evangelicals are becoming more influential), I found the movement and my [...]