There's little evidence that Trumpism is driving away American evangelical Christians, who still make up a solid one-quarter of Americans, but at least some of them are openly talking about the fact maybe Trump isn't the best spokesman for that whole Jesus forgiveness thing.
Even as evangelicals maintain their position as the most popular religion in the U.S., a movement of self-described "exvangelicals" is breaking away, using social media to engage tens of thousands of former faithful.
The big picture: Donald Trump's presidency, as well as movements around LGBTQ rights, #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, drew more Americans into evangelical churches while also pushing some existing members away.
What they're saying: Blake Chastain, the Exvangelical podcaster who's also credited with starting the use of the hashtag #exvangelical, tells Axios that, in the old days, people "might meet at a bar and speak in hushed tones about 'how weird that church was.’” Now, Chastain said, those kinds of discussions are far more public and ripple across larger networks of people because of social media.
What we're watching: There's a growing subculture of the "deconstructed" — a buzzword with a range of meanings, from stepping back from a certain kind of Christian culture or politics, to leaving organized religion altogether.
Instagram accounts like "Dirty Rotten Church Kids” and "Your Favorite Heretics" are providing an online community for those questioning or rejecting the evangelical church tradition. Podcasts including Exvangelical, Almost Heretical and Straight White American Jesus are garnering big followings.Google searches for "religious trauma" and "exvangelical" are on the rise, according to Google Trends.
How we got here: There were always diverse views among evangelicals, but "Trump's four years in the White House made painfully clear just how deep these divisions ran," said author Kristin Du Mez.
Du Mez wrote the 2020 book "Jesus and John Wayne," which chronicles ideas about masculinity in the white Evangelical church and politics. It has sold more than 100,000 copies. The differences within evangelicalism "can no longer be papered over with the kind of religious language of 'we're all in this together,'" Du Mez told Axios.
By the numbers: About a quarter of Americans describe themselves as evangelical protestants — that's tens of millions of people — according to polling by Pew Research Center.
14% are white evangelicals, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, and the evangelical population grew among white Americans over the past four years.
There's no concrete data on the size or demographics of the exvangelical population, or how fast it's growing. There’s also no data that would quantify how much of that movement has been driven by opposition to Trump, versus other political and cultural trends.
In the past five years, the white evangelical church in America has faced its own MeToo movement (#churchtoo) and massive cultural shifts in its pews over LGBTQ rights and systemic racism.
I've talked before how religious affiliation in America is stalling out, especially among younger Millennials and Zoomers. There are a lot more people willing to admit in America these days that they are non-affiliated, agnostic (like myself), or completely atheist.
It's good to see that people are joining churches in order to advance civil and human rights, and it's also kind of sad to see people leaving religions because they realize the people in charge of those religions are wholly uninterested in religious inclusiveness. Then again, it's not like that hasn't been a major problem with organized religions for the last couple millennia or so.
Still, if the numbers aren't concrete, it means that the inflow and outflow are close enough that one isn't overpowering the other, and considering how much damage white evangelicals do in general, I'm okay with that.
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