SWAJ Rewind: Ex-Evangelical Apologetics: Are Leavers Broken and/or Just Giving Up?

Brad Onishi: What's up y'all? Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. My name is Brad Onishi, our social partnership with the Cap Center, UCSB. Today I wanted to just spend some time on a good old rebuttal to folks who continue to bad mouth those who are deconstructing and those who are ex-evangelicals. It just seems like a lot of Christian leaders and figures and luminaries and celebrities just can't stop—they just feel this need to talk about us ex-evangelicals.

I haven't done one of these in a while, so I wanted to do this. I had somebody reach out, Michael Taylor, who listens to the show, and say, "Hey, can you listen to this and watch this?" So basically, I want to respond to an interview with John Cooper, who's the lead singer of Skillet. Some of you will know who that is. Skillet is a pretty famous Christian evangelical band. Some of you out there will have memories of listening to their albums. He was on a radio show, a YouTube show called The Remnant Radio, and on there he talked about ex-evangelicals and why they're the worst thing ever.

This all started with a Facebook post that he made back in 2019, and that Facebook post made a lot of rounds. I just think some of the points in the post are worth talking about, and then what he said just like a month and a half ago is worth talking about.

So in the post titled "What in God's Name is Happening in Christianity," John Cooper says a lot of things, but he first says, "Okay, I'm saying it because it's too important not to. What is happening in Christianity? More and more of our outspoken leaders and influencers who were once faces of the faith are falling away, and at the same time, they're being very vocal and bold about it. Shockingly, they still want to influence others as they announce that they are leaving the faith."

Okay, I have no idea why that's shocking that they would want to influence others. The whole idea of being an evangelical is that you know the truth and you want to tell others about it. When we have folks like former worship leaders, former authors, former pastors that believe they have now come into a different understanding of the truth, it kind of makes sense, John, that they'd want to tell people about it.

He says, "I'll state my conclusion, then I'll state some rebuttals." He says he doesn't disagree with anyone outside of Christianity, but these people—these former youth leaders, these former worship leaders, these former whoever who are in the faith—he has to talk about them.

So first thing he says is, "We must stop making worship leaders and thought leaders and influencers or cool people or relevant people the most influential people in Christendom. I've been saying that for 20 years, and we're in a dangerous place when 20-year-old worship singers are our source of truth."

Okay, that may be true, and I understand what you're getting at there—that you're kind of putting young people in a place of influence. But you know, Martin Luther talks about the priesthood of all believers. The idea of the Protestant Reformation is built on the idea that every person is a priest of the Almighty God, and that if God has spoken to them, they have the ability to convey that truth to everybody else. So everybody seems pretty happy when young people are on fire for God and spreading the gospel and being local missionaries or leading Bible studies or playing music that they think glorifies the Almighty. And yet, when they step away, there's a situation where it's "Well, we can't look to them for influence." It's kind of hard to have this both ways, because not only do churches elevate 20-year-old worship singers, but they make 20-year-olds and 22-year-olds and 25-year-olds into pastors. I was a pastor by the time I was 18. So we can sit here and say that they're too young for this, but honestly, it doesn't really track, right? So that's probably just not a good excuse here for what's going on.

He says in the next paragraph, "Okay, I am stunned that the seemingly most important thing for these leaders who have lost their faith is to make such a bold new stance."

Why is that stunning? Evangelicalism is based on being a Jesus freak, on making bold stances, on telling everyone who will listen about your truth. We were trained for this. If you're trained in evangelicalism, you're trained to make bold statements and to tell as many people as you can about the truth. I mean, you're basically saying, "I'm surprised that they're doing everything we trained them to do. I'm surprised they're acting in the ways that we have trained them to act for as long as they've been part of the church and part of the evangelical culture." That's just a really weird thing to say.

You're stunned by—okay, basically saying, "I've been living and preaching boldly something for 20 years and led generations of people with my teachings, and now I no longer believe it, therefore I'm going to boldly and loudly tell people it was all wrong while I boldly and loudly lead people into my next truth. I'm perplexed why they aren't embarrassed."

Well, I don't know, John. When people convert at age 20 or 30 or 40 from something else—secular humanism, as I'm sure you like to talk about, or another faith, another religion, whatever—what do we do in evangelical culture when someone does that? We get them on stage to tell their testimony. Am I right? They say, "You know, I used to live in sin. I used to do this, and I used to do that. Guess what? Now I'm boldly and loudly telling you I'm here to tell you how Jesus saved me."

Again, the person who's leaving the faith and trying to tell others about why they're leaving the faith is doing exactly what they have been trained to do. They're doing the thing that they supposedly are supposed to do. I don't understand why that is shocking.

He says, "My second thought is, why do people act like being real covers a multitude of sins, as if someone is courageous simply for sharing virally every thought or dark place? That's not courageous, it's cavalier. Have they considered the ramifications?"

Again, evangelicalism is really good at telling people to be Jesus freaks, right? To boldly claim things, to go and tell anyone who will listen. And now it's supposed to be something that is cavalier. So when you boldly claim your faith on social media, when you talk about the glory of God on YouTube, is that cavalier, or is that doing God's work? It seems like the only thing you're upset about is they're just proclaiming what they take to be the truth in ways that don't line up with yours.

"There's a common thread running through these leaders and influencers that basically says no one else is talking about the real stuff. This is just flatly false. I just read today in a renowned worship leader's statement, 'How could a God of love send people to hell?' No one talks about it, as if he is the first person to ask this. Brother, you are not that unique. The church has wrestled with this for 1,500 years. Literally everybody talks about it."

They actually don't. When you bring this up in Sunday school, as he mentions, a lot of times you get shut down. When you talk about real things like doubts, like not being sure about your faith, about not being sure that God should send people to hell who are good people, whatever—in evangelical spaces, you often get shut down. You often get told to be quiet. You often get told that, "Hey, you know, leave that up to the Lord." So yes, people talk about it, but you don't get to just project this back into history and say, "Oh, we've had a church for 2,000 years or 1,500 years, and therefore everybody's been talking about it. You're not a big deal."

I don't care what happened with St. Augustine in the fourth century. I don't care what happened with Thomas Aquinas in the 13th. I don't care what happened with Martin Luther in 1517. If no one's talking about it now, or if you are an individual in an evangelical movement, in a place where you're being shut down and it feels like no one's talking about it, then what's the big deal? Why aren't you allowed to talk about it? Why are you being rebuffed for that?

And lastly, and most shocking, "As these influencers disavow their faith, they always end their statements with their new insight or new truth that is basically a regurgitation of Jesus' words. It's truly bizarre and ironic. They'll say, 'I'm disavowing my faith, but remember, love people, be generous and forgive others.' Why?"

So he's upset that people who are leaving the faith are taking with them some of the good things that they learned in the faith. I don't understand that. Why would you be upset that somebody is leaving, and yet some of the things that they've learned there, they're taking with them, and think that that is deeply ironic or something else?

There's so many of us who have left who have said, "You know what I find in Christ? An example of generosity and love. I find in church, I find in evangelical doctrine, I find in evangelical politics, hypocrisy and hate and exclusion and myopia and everything else." It's possible to find in Christ, John, some things that are admirable and amazing and exemplary, while finding everything about evangelical doctrine, culture and politics abhorrent. That is not that hard to understand.

Now this leads me to the interview he did on The Remnant Radio just a couple of weeks ago, and he talks in this interview about what happens to folks who are leaving the faith.

John Cooper (audio clip): The holiness of God—you just want to just dishonor that on social media and not expect any pushback. So that really irritates me.

Brad: Okay, so it irritates him that somebody is pushing back on social media against the Almighty God. Well, I just have always taken this to heart, and I guess maybe I'm weird or something, but I don't think the Almighty God needs defending if He is the Almighty God. I mean, people can say all they want about the Almighty God. Does that threaten that God? No. If that God actually has the power of retribution and control and omnipotence and omnipresence and all that stuff, then does he really need you, the lead singer of Skillet, to defend him on social media? Does he really need you to push back? Why not work to do other things? Preach the gospel, help people understand what's going on, or do the thing that you folks never do, and that's actually listen to the ex-evangelicals, try to understand where they're coming from, try to understand why they've reached this new place in their life, and maybe take that to heart and reform your community. All right, here's more of the interview.

John Cooper (audio clip): Most of these people, their lives are falling apart. They're getting divorced, their wife is leaving them for a same-sex relationship. Their kids are on drugs. They tried to commit suicide. Their lives are falling apart, yet they still retain this like, "Yeah, but now I found the truth."

Brad: So this is just the most cliche stuff ever, right? "Hey, you know why you're leaving? You know why you're so upset? You know why your life is blah, blah, blah? Well, you know, your life's falling apart, and it's because you're falling away from God." It's always a cause and effect, and the cause and effect works both ways. It's either, right, you left God so your life is falling apart, or your life is falling apart and so you no longer have faith in God, right?

But what John Cooper's saying here is the most cliche thing ever. This is what everyone in every church where somebody has become an ex-evangelical says: "Hey, your life's a mess, and it's a mess because you're not obeying God and you're leaving is a big part of that," or "You left the church, and that is why your life is a big mess."

I mean, think about what he just said here. "They're getting divorced, and their kids are on drugs, and their partners are leaving them," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? What's amazing too to me is that, again, this is proof to him that they have no ground to stand on, that they have nothing to say. They should not be seen as leaders. And it's the exact opposite in church. When you come from a situation where you're going through a hard time, you're getting divorced, you're having a hard time with your kids, and then God saves you—when you give a testimony about that, you're seen as amazing. You're seen as like, "Wow, he's really putting his faith in God now to fix everything."

And yet, when it goes the other way, it's, "Oh, these people are a mess, and I can't believe that they're talking." All right, here we go. Here's some more.

John Cooper (audio clip): And I'm still the one that can teach you a thing. And that smacks of such pride. If it were me, and I've been preaching something for 20 to 25 years, and then had such a life change that I not only had a crisis of faith, but I actively fought against what I've been saying for 20 years, I would be embarrassed, really.

Brad So you're saying everyone who gives a testimony about how they're 38 years old and believed this for 38 years and now is giving a testimony about how they believe something else should be embarrassed. Is that right? That seems—that's not what happens in evangelical spaces. That person is celebrated. That person is revered. They're held up as like, "Oh look, they didn't know the truth, but now they do. They were in the darkness, but now they see the light." You just don't like it when it goes the other way.

John Cooper (audio clip): I would be ashamed. I would want to go away and not let anybody know. But not this generation.

Brad: It's weird because, again, the person who does this in church is not sent away. They're put up on the stage to give their testimony. I'm just saying it 100 times, but I got to keep coming back to it. All right, here you go. Here's more of the interview.

John Cooper (audio clip): This generation doesn't have that. No, no, I gotta be myself, and being yourself will earn you a lot of judgment.

Remnant Radio Host: So, man, I like what you said, even in there. You talked about wanting to be a guy who inhabits the cultural space and is able to—I don't want to use a big theological word for people watching—exegete, just exposing what's the truth, bringing the truth out of what is in the culture right now, and really trying to explain to people what culture is doing. You just touched on so many things within progressive Christianity and within just the culture, which really is just the culture making disciples of the church. That's what progressive Christianity is. It's a non-Christian worldview that is discipling people who claim Christian faith, and it's producing all kinds of what he believes, right? Can you think—

Brad: This is really fun, right? This is the host who's talking now, the host of The Remnant Radio, and it's really fun because he's saying, "Hey, you know what progressive Christianity does is it lets culture make disciples, rather than letting Christ make disciples."

And this is fun, because if you listen to the three years of our show, we have all the receipts. If you want the receipts, we got 160 episodes of how modern evangelicalism has been formed by cultural and political influences in ways it never acknowledges. Its first barb is always, "Hey, you over there, progressive Christian, ex-evangelical, I don't know—you're allowing culture to dictate your life and form you. We don't do that over here."

And yet, if you trace—and I've done this on the Orange Wave—the development of evangelical politics from 1960 till now, you see that the evangelical church has been taken over by political operatives and mercenaries such as Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, going all the way back to the 60s and 70s, all the way up till now, when Donald Trump is still the sort of figurehead of not only the GOP, but of evangelical politics and culture. You see that culture has shaped evangelicalism in ways that go absolutely unacknowledged.

If you read Kristin Kobes Du Mez's book Jesus and John Wayne, one of the main theses is evangelical masculinity has been formed by non-biblical sources: John Wayne, Braveheart, all kinds of other influences about what it means to be a man. It's just one example.

When it comes to things such as abortion, we have shown that evangelical culture has been shaped by political operatives rather than by church history. I mean, just a minute ago, John Cooper was talking about 1,500 years of church history. You know what 1,500 years of church history tells us? It tells us that the idea that life begins at conception is not theologically deep, does not hold any weight and is not subscribed to by most Christians throughout that time period. So you can appeal to church history if you want. You can say that all these other folks are letting culture shape them, but if you listen to our show, if you read and dig and analyze into what's actually going on in modern evangelicalism, you realize that modern evangelicalism has been shaped by political and cultural influences in ways it never acknowledges.

One of the final things I'll say, because they're going to talk a lot about it here, is the Bible. The idea that the Bible is inerrant is a modern concept. That's something that arises in the wake of biblical criticism in the 19th century and into the 20th century. The idea that the Bible is inerrant is not something that's been held for 2,000 years of church history. It's a modern reaction to a modern issue made by the evangelical culture and movement that itself is informed in relationship to culture.

So this whole charge of just allowing culture to dictate things—if you just do a little reading and a little digging, you'll realize what hypocrisy this is. All right, here's more of the interview.

Remnant Radio Host: Think of people in the progressive Christianity space, or people who go even further and entirely walk away from their faith—the main objections are things like the relativity of truth. So the world says, like you said, postmodernism, truth is relative, therefore truth is relative. Then the sufficiency of Scripture needs to be put in question, right? Can it really have authority? Is it really completely inerrant? Is it really—

Brad: He just mentioned inerrancy, which I already talked about, and then he says, right, the authority of Scripture. Can it really be authoritative if you live in a society where things are relative? This is, again, just a classic evangelical line. It's either absolute truth or no truth, right? It's either all or nothing. It's always this binary. It's either one or the other. You have to choose, right?

There's no—and I talked about this with Owen Strachan last week—there's no wading into the complexity of the formation of the Bible, of the difficult histories of the canon, of the complex readings that are demanded, right, of being people of faith. It's just one or the other, and it's either inerrancy or you're obviously one of these crazy progressive Christian slash ex-evangelicals who have lost it and are really just awash in secular humanism and are really gonna garner some judgment from God, right? All right, here we go.

Remnant Radio Host: Our sole rule for saving lives in practice, and it's probably been tampered with, and it's probably been shamed, it's probably been edited. You know, if truth is relative, the naturalist, right, where the secular world is hyper-naturalistic, right? So the idea of a resurrection and a virgin birth is an offense to the human faculty. So we go, if it's all naturalistic, then we can't really—we gotta change the resurrection. We gotta change the virgin birth. That's just not physically possible. That couldn't happen.

The secular world right now, progressive Christianity hates atonement theory right now. We have pedophiles who assault and rape innocence—I'll just leave it there for people who are watching with their children—horrible, heinous acts, right? Three years in jail and then a slap on the wrist with some kind of small probationary period of a couple of years. And then they turn around and they say, "How could God be just by sending someone to hell? How could God possibly pour out wrath on his son?" Because there's no context for justice. And, man—

Brad: I would love—so how does that—sorry, I got to stop again. How does that go together, right? How does any of that go together? How does the idea that we have a justice system that may or may not punish people the right amount have to do with God and the idea of atonement?

What he's just done there—and he doesn't realize it—is he slipped in legal theory, right, the legal theory of retribution, for theology. This is how God's forgiveness and justice works, right? What he doesn't realize he just did is base theology on legal theory. And he can turn around and say, "Oh, well no, no, this and that—it's just, you know, God's wrath and retribution are one, and they should be mirrored on Earth."

But you're basically saying that unless you agree with a certain legal theory of punishment and of atonement, then you don't have a biblical theology. Again, who is being formed by culture? It seems like the kettle is calling the pot black in this instance. All right, just a little bit more.

Remnant Radio Host: For you to just kind of speak into some of these—like, for instance, suffering, right? We live in the West, and there's just so much provision, we don't suffer.

Brad: We don't suffer. All right, I'll just leave that there. But I mean, y'all can just run away with that one. We don't suffer. That is amazing. It's an amazing statement to make. We don't suffer. Don't get me wrong, there are first-world problems, but the idea that you don't suffer if you live in the United States or Western Europe, if you are a person of color, a Black American, a Native American, somebody who's been the victim of the kinds of sexual abuse you talked about, the sexual abuse that often happens inside the church—I mean, I could talk about this for three hours. I don't think I need to prove this to y'all, so I'll just let you chew on that one.

Remnant Radio Host: What does a Christian position of suffering look like, and how are you seeing Christians fold under the pressure and go into agnosticism, or go into this progressive Christianity, because they can't make sense of Christian suffering?

Brad: Once again, the ex-evangelical is treated like they have folded, rather than as if they are making a conscious decision, right? I mean, think about what he just did there. He just said that if you go into progressive Christianity or you become an ex-evangelical, it's because you folded under pressure.

This is cliche. It's trite, but it's still offensive, right? I mean, you go back and listen to my episode, "We Are the Dones, Not the Never Weres." It explains how it's not folding under pressure. It's giving everything you can to an incoherent system, an unjust culture, and saying, "I don't want to be part of that anymore," right? I didn't give in to pressure. I gave everything I had, and when I got to the end, I thought, "Wow, I need to go pursue something that is actually true and real and just in ways that honor the complexity of those ideas and concepts," rather than staying in a place where it doesn't seem like that's allowed.

John Cooper (audio clip): Go around and around with these arguments. But my honest, sincere question would just be this: if truth is not absolute, then why believe in Christ at all? Like, how are you going to decide which parts of Jesus that you're into and which parts that you deem unholy, or maybe that you deem not really good enough? A God that would send someone to hell, for instance, or the fact that, well, why would God want us to suffer here? That just—that's a mean thing for a father to do.

Brad: All right, I'm going to stop there, because we're running out of time. So I just want to make a couple more comments. Let's just think about the argument he just made. A: it's either absolute truth or nothing. That, again, is a modern idea. It's something that was invented in relationship to—I mean, the idea of absolute truth phrased in that way is a sort of 100-year-old idea. I'll leave that there.

The second thing, though, I'll say is that, again, it's a binary, it's either/or, right? And what he assumes is that if you're leaving evangelicalism, you're leaving Jesus. And the progressive Christian is saying, "I'm not." I mean, Diana Butler Bass has a new book out called Freeing Jesus, saying, "I'm leaving evangelicalism so I can actually pursue my understanding of Christ in ways that are much more expansive and complex, nuanced and so on and so forth," right?

The second thing he did, and he just smuggled it in without realizing it, is he just brought in theology. So there's a theology that says God sends people to hell. There's a theology that says that you have to suffer for these reasons, right? That's all theology. That's all garnered from a certain reading of the Bible. Now we can argue about whether that reading is accurate or not, or warranted or not, but what he doesn't even realize he's doing is saying, "Hey, you're leaving Jesus." And then he goes on to talk about evangelical theology: "You're leaving Christ. I can't believe that. What are you just going to pick and choose like it's a buffet with Jesus? No way." And then he goes on to talk about all the evangelical theology rather than Christ Himself.

It's a classic evangelical move. I'm going to conflate Jesus, the Gospels, and any approach to those things with evangelicalism, because evangelicalism is the only true and warranted way to be a Christian, right?

We're out of time. I can post the link to this if you want to watch the rest of it. I don't recommend it, but you can. And I guess I'll just say it felt like a good part of the summer to just do a kind of classic rebuttal to just very trite and worn out criticisms of ex-evangelicals and progressive Christians, and to just point out the ways that evangelicals continue to attack and berate us rather than asking, "Why are so many people leaving? What's wrong with our culture? What's wrong with our systems? What's wrong with our institutions? What's wrong with our universities? What about this culture is leading to these folks leaving?" That's never the question. The question is always, "How can we criticize them? How can we talk about how they're wrong? How can we stand up for the Almighty God who apparently needs us to stand up for him?" rather than some inner reflection.

You know what John Cooper said earlier? "Hey, for 20 years, I believed something, I'd be embarrassed, I'd go away, I would hide my face." You know what he didn't say? "Hey, there's a lot of people for whom Christianity, for 20 years, has been their life. And you know what they're doing? They're leaving. So well, you know what I'm going to do as John Cooper? You know what I'm going to do as a church leader? You know what I'm going to do as a theologian, anyone—fill in the blank in the evangelical space? I'm going to go away for a while and think about why they're all leaving."

It's never the response, right? It's always, "Oh, they should be embarrassed. Why aren't they hiding? Why are they telling everyone about their newfound progressive faith or their newfound ex-evangelicalism? Why aren't they hiding that?"

The response is never, "You know what? We've got millions of people leaving our movement. We have a lot of young people who are just rejecting the whole faith that their fathers and mothers and elders presented to them. We've got a shrinking demographic in the United States. You know what we should do? We should go away for a while. Time for a retreat, reflection, prayer, silence. That's what we should do. We should think about what they're saying, take it seriously and see if we can change somehow, or adjust, or at least understand where they're coming from." Never the response, right?

It's always, "Hey, look at these idiots who are leaving the faith. I can't believe they're on social media, spreading the gospel, evangelizing, or at least just giving their testimony about their newfound understanding of the world." Kind of ironic, right?

I'm Brad Onishi, thanks for listening today. I appreciate it. As always, you can find us on Instagram at @StraightWhiteJC, on Twitter @StraightWhiteJC, can find me @BradleyOnishi. Thanks for being here. We'll catch you next time.