Named one of the Top 10 Books of the Year in 2020 by the Academy of Parish Clergy
Millions are getting lost in the evangelical maze: inerrancy, indifference to the environment, deterministic Calvinism, purity culture, racism, LGBTQ discrimination, male dominance, and Christian nationalism. They are now conscientious objectors, deconstructionists, perhaps even “none and done.” As one of America’s leading academics speaking to the issues of religion today, David Gushee offers a clear assessment and a new way forward for disillusioned post-evangelicals.
Gushee starts by analyzing what went wrong with U.S. white evangelicalism in areas such as evangelical history and identity, biblicism, uncredible theologies, and the fundamentalist understandings of race, politics, and sexuality. Along the way, he proposes new ways of Christian believing and of listening to God and Jesus today. He helps post-evangelicals know how to belong and behave, going from where they are to a living relationship with Christ and an intellectually cogent and morally robust post-evangelical faith. He shows that they can have a principled way of understanding Scripture, a community of Christ’s people, a healthy politics, and can repent and learn to listen to people on the margins.
With a foreword from Brian McLaren, who says, “David Gushee is right: there is indeed life after evangelicalism,” this book offers an essential handbook for those looking for answers and affirmation of their journey into a future that is post-evangelical but still centered on Jesus. If you, too, are struggling, After Evangelicalism shows that it is possible to cut loose from evangelical Christianity and, more than that, it is necessary.
Thinking about Christianity after evangelicalism is neither trendy, alarmist, nor faithless, but rather it carves out a needed path forward for those millions of exvangelicals who have found the movement that birthed them to be irrelevant, traumatic, and even abhorrent and are seeking a place to land. Few have earned the right to speak to this topic with such prophetic clarity and practical insight, not to mention approachable writing style, as David Gushee.
—Peter Enns, author of How the Bible Actually Works
“[F]resh and thrilling . . . demonstrates to post-evangelicals that there is the possibility for faith beyond the conservative evangelicalism to which they can no longer be bound. . . . His constructive post-evangelical theology will likely enliven those who have been gatekept from the richness of the Christian tradition and the varieties of scriptural interpretations that empower a life lived to love God and neighbor.”
If you’ve read this book, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
Also consider reading After Evangelicalism in your group or faith community using the After Evangelicalism Group Study Guide.
