One big difficulty for those of us who are post-evangelical and yet still Christian is the fact that the toxicity which drove us out of white American Evangelicalism was not the only thing present in that space. For all of it's faults white American Evangelicalism was not all bad. Poisoned soup is still soup, even if poison is one of the ingredients. I certainly did find God through white American Evangelical style Christianity. That isn't to say that I might not also have found God through any of a million other faith traditions, it is only to say that white American Evangelicalism happens to be the vehicle through which (and, yes, in some ways in spite of which) I did find God. And also that is where I found the Devil.
Having spent some significant parts of my life with refugees it strikes me that there are some worthwhile parallels. Refugees are people who leave countries which have become entirely inhospitable to them, whether through wars, famines, or political tyrants. Countries fall apart; sometimes countries collapse. But many refugees can remember a time when their home countries were still habitable places, even places where they thrived. But then the rot set in, the war began, the economy collapsed, the crops failed. In some cases the rot was there all along; maybe the war was already being waged and they were protected from it for a time.
White American Evangelicalism is failing; it is collapsing; the center can not hold and it leaves behind a throng of refugees wondering who will take us in. Some of us are finding new homes, and some of us are still wandering. My family and some of my friends were accepted, welcomed, into a loving, Jesus-centered, LGBTQ+ affirming Mennonite Church in North Baltimore. I have seen other friends find refuge among the Episcopalians and the Eastern Orthodox, a few new groups have established themselves in the embers or on the edge of the desert. As so many refugees do, we are making real home, finding new citizenship among these lovely new communities (God has special blessing for those who welcome in the outcasts and the wanderers) and sometimes they let us bring a bit of our culture--the gold we smuggled out of Egypt--with us. And for all of that, some days it is hard to know how to feel about the death of the "land that gave us birth"--the communities where we found God and the Devil and were taught a love of both. "Home" must always have two meanings for us now because we are immigrant peoples finding home, making home, finding new Life away from the toxic home where we first found Life. But then, I suppose, that is what death and resurrection is like isn't it?
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