Who are our people?
the moment it changed, for me, from “Christians” to “folks pursuing love and justice”
A couple years after I left the church of my twenties* and moved across the state for seminary, I sat down for coffee to catch up with one of my favorite pastors from that church. Still a pastor at the same church; still very evangelical. I always liked and respected him, and I still do, but we’re in pretty different places in our beliefs now.
One moment in that coffee catch-up felt pivotal for me. My former pastor was excited about new ways my former church was collaborating with all sorts of other (mostly evangelical) churches. He named a few.
I had to admit that the excitement wasn’t exactly shared. Collaborating with who exactly, now?
Now, I’m not trying to implement ideological purity tests to determine who can and can’t work together toward shared goals. (I wrote a whole post about this not too long ago, lol; it’s over here.) So maybe I’m walking a bit of a fine line. I’m not saying I think progressive folks should never collaborate with conservative folks to do something clearly good together.
I am saying, though, that in that moment, sipping our respective coffee and tea, I was able to articulate a truth that had been stirring in my soul for a while but I may not yet have spoken out loud—definitely not to an evangelical pastor, that’s for sure.
I said something like this: These days, I don’t necessarily feel like I have much in common with conservative Christians, the kind who subordinate women or exclude queer people or voted for Trump.** Maybe we all read the Bible and pray to Jesus, but we see the world so very differently. Our most fundamental values are so stunningly different. I feel like I have more in common with people who may not identify as Christians but who care deeply about social justice in our world, who are working toward love and inclusion and equity and peace.
This realization was a game-changer for me.
For those who identify with the post-evangelical journey, I wonder, have you experienced a similar epiphany? What was that like?
For me, I felt a jarringly shifting sense of belonging. Who are—and are not—“my people”? The answers had changed. The answers were continuing to change.
In some sense, of course, everyone is “my people.” We are all interconnected, like it or not. But there is a comforting familiarity I once felt among fellow evangelicals, and I lost this as my beliefs shifted.
These last few years, if I learn someone is a Christian, I no longer automatically think, Yay, a sibling in Christ! I think, What kind of Christian?
It’s not that I can’t be friends with people who still fit in well in evangelical spaces; it’s that we don’t share all the common assumptions we once shared (or at least I thought we shared), all the ways of seeing and being in our world that once felt like home. This can feel hard.
At the same time, I felt a strong sense of relief in being able to articulate this shift. In being able to say: These are no longer my people in the way they once were. But that doesn’t mean there are no people for me.
Even as I’ve felt the sadness of this shift, I see so much hope and beauty in it, too. So much opening of possibilities—for learning, for growth, for relationship, for community, for creative collaboration.
My current church receives government grant funding together with local non-religious organizations who all share a desire to support the most vulnerable people in our communities and make ways for our whole communities to thrive. How cool is that?
And how limiting is it to only see evangelical churches as potential partners in the good work we can do in our communities? To see everyone else not necessarily as bad people, but as a mission field whom it’s our job to convert. I don’t miss this.
Maybe I was thinking about all this recently because I was looking at the lists of my favorite fiction and favorite nonfiction books from 2024 and noticing that, with one exception (The Mystics Would Like a Word, by
, who, to be clear, is a lovely free and wild thinker), they aren’t particularly Christian. They’re written by people with all sorts of different faith backgrounds and commitments, including none in particular.If I’d recommended some favorite books ten or fifteen years ago—nonfiction, especially—this would certainly not have been the case. I didn’t read then nearly as much as I do now***—and what I did read was mostly evangelical books. Books recommended by a pastor or friend; books discussed with a church small group.
My mental and spiritual world is so different now.
I think of another pastor at the church of my twenties, who once told me something like this: I don’t really read Christian books anymore. I’ve read enough that I feel like they all say the same things, things I know already. I don’t really feel like I learn from them anymore.
I thought, Really? There’s no Christian author out there who has anything interesting to say, anything you haven’t heard before? I mean, maybe, if you’re only willing to read a particular type of (white male) evangelical authors…but even then, I’m skeptical.
I don’t read as many specifically Christian books anymore, either. But it’s less because I don’t think I have anything to learn from them, and more because over time I’ve become more and more aware of how very much I can learn from authors who aren’t speaking from or writing to a specifically Christian audience. It’s exciting, really.
And if the beating heart of Christianity, the way I see it, is love and justice, books like the ones I mentioned as recent faves—ones like Be a Revolution, and Birding to Change the World, and Women Who Work Too Much—are so, so good and helpful toward this shared goal.
I believe there’s goodness within the Christian tradition, which is why I’m still here. (Or at least somewhat still here, at least some days.) I also believe just as fully that there’s so much goodness outside of the Christian tradition. I’m looking forward to continuing to learn from it.
How about you? Have you found yourself wrestling with questions of “Who are my people, now?” Or, “Where do I belong, now?” How has that changed over time?
I’m so glad to be on this journey together with you.
*Age eighteen to twenty-nine, to be precise.
**We’re talking 2016, here.
***After all, in a particular hardcore evangelical mindset, isn’t reading a selfish pursuit—or at least less urgent than evangelizing and leading Bible studies and mentoring younger church folks and volunteering as a tutor with the local Christian nonprofit?
If you need more…
I’m aware that the Christmas season came and went (hey, we’re not far past the end of the 12 days, right?), but I wanted to share a couple things from December that I don’t think I’ve shared here yet:
I got to contribute to
’s series, which is a super cool set of posts. Here’s mine; I recommend poking around and exploring others, too!As I was reading the Christmas stories this year in the First Nations Version of the New Testament (translated by Native North American scholars), I was struck by a couple of highly unladylike things Mary and Elizabeth both say. And obviously I’m here for it. I reflected on this a bit in a post for Feminism & Religion.
This is so relatable! It feels like, post-2016, even the word "Christian" has been redefined in many spaces to mean people who don't necessarily even attend church but vote MAGA. We're living through weird times...
Resounding yes to your questions of "who are my people, now?" Writers and deep thinkers like you and Shannon keep the hope alive that there is community out there for those of us feeling adrift in the current Christian landscape.
Thank you for putting this into words and affirming those complicated feelings around this season of faith!