One of the most traumatic events in life is experiencing an American religious community from the inside and from the outside. I spent most of my life living, working, and ministering in the “Bible Belt,” the cultural and political epicenter of American evangelical Christianity. Still, I’ve been progressively branded a traitor to the faith during the past eighteen years. The process has been excruciating, but I’m grateful for my new vantage point.
When you’re inside evangelicalism, leaders spew stories of Christians under threat — of social media discriminating against Christian groups, of a business denied permits because it refuses to serve LGBTQ+ people, or of churches that faced discriminatory treatment because of their ultra-conservative political stances.
Combine those stories with anecdotal tales of Christians who supposedly faced death threats, intimidation, and online harassment for their views, and it’s easy to tell a story of American persecution—a nation that once respected or even revered Christianity now inflicts suffering on godly people. They believe America has only itself to blame for evangelicals seeking the protection of a pagan like T***p.
But when you escape the Christian walls, the real world looks very different. You see evangelicals attacking the fundamental freedoms of their opponents. Red-state legislatures passing laws restricting the free speech of anyone other than white heterosexual Christians. Repressed soccer moms and Christian school board members banning books and rewriting history in the name of their medieval dogma. They applaud the overthrow of Roe v. Wade and seek to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges to bring legal recognition of same-sex marriages to an end. They do nothing to help stop gun violence, daily mass murders, and the horrific slaughter of school children.
Contrast those stories with personal testimonies of everyday people experiencing death threats and intimidation by conservative Christians, and you begin to see why the Christian persecution complex rings hollow. And if conservative Christians are angry at ordinary people for labeling them hate-filled hypocrites, they have only themselves to blame.
After living inside and then outside conservative evangelicalism, I now have a different view. The Christian persecution complex is not valid. America isn’t persecuting Christians; in the words of NYTimes columnist David French, America is living with the fallout of consequential constitutional mistakes that distort our politics and damage our culture.
He shows that religious liberty proponents haven’t lost a significant Supreme Court case in 14 years. During that time, the court established that people of faith enjoy equal access to school facilities, equal access to public funds (including tuition assistance to fund private religious education), and extraordinary independence from nondiscrimination laws that would otherwise interfere with the hiring and firing of ministerial employees.
Still, the religious liberty culture war rages on anyway—in part because millions of Christians refuse to strike a balance. They prefer domination to accommodation. Many conservative evangelicals want to require everyone to have their medieval beliefs. This is part of the impulse behind the recent Ten Commandments law in Louisiana and the requirement to teach the Bible (an X-rated book) in every school classroom in Oklahoma.
Combine these laws of religious domination with red-state legislation aimed at progressive and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans and one could reasonably assert that Christians are persecuting everyone different than them.
When conservative evangelicalism erased me from its ranks, I encountered a level of anger and malice that eclipsed anything I experienced from the most vitriolic “sinners.” I hear from former Christians and ministers who have experienced the same thing almost daily. Others who rely on their Christian business income are terrified they will be exposed, torn from their closet, by these vengeful religious fanatics.
Christians are wrecking lives in the name of righteousness. Evangelicals who scream “unfair” and lament the hostility to their faith should be humbled by a sad reality. When it comes to inflicting pain on their ideological enemies, evangelical Christians give far worse than they get. But unless they get outside, they will never see the truth.
Gina and I often exclaim that we can’t believe we once believed and practiced the fanatical beliefs of evangelicals. Sitting on the outside (of the church and the country) on our peaceful terrace in Barcelona, watching the chaos and hate in America, it seems like a horrific nightmare. If we had not escaped the church, would we support T***p? Would we still be Republican? Would we have adopted the hatred for others different than us? Would we still believe in an eternal burning hell? Would we think God created the earth in 6,000 years (two thousand years after the Sumerians created glue)?
Today, I had an erotic tantric massage; walking there, I saw gay couples unafraid and unashamed to show physical affection in public. I passed sex shops and nude beaches and watched a beautiful transgender person proudly window shopping. The colorful sidewalk cafes were filled with families and friends laughing and talking with no thought of a lunatic about to unleash an assault weapon. The school children were playing outside without a fear in the world—no gun drills here.
The city was bathed in peace, so sweet that I felt one should be able to taste it. Yes, life outside the church and America is replete with pleasure, the freedom to love who you wish, be whatever gender you want, openly shop for sex toys, enjoy psychedelics, be nude in public, frolic, and cavort all night long. Sounds like Sodom and Gomorrah, right? Hell no! It sounds like freedom. It is the real world. We were lost, and now we’re found. We were inside, and now we are out.
Note: Barcelona and Spain are far from perfect. Many issues need addressing. But for us, the big ones (love, acceptance, open-mindedness, freedom, equality and justice for all, minor violence, tranquil lifestyle) distinguish it from America and evangelicalism.
