Discovering Life After Leaving Church

For those of us who grew up within evangelical or fundamentalist Christian churches, and have since walked away from the church (and possibly our Christian faith altogether), there is often a major sense of “separation anxiety” to deal with. The doctrines and teachings we received Sunday after Sunday, month after month, and year after year, were deeply ingrained into our very souls. All of that indoctrination we received ended up forming both our identities and worldviews. One can’t hear sermons (allegedly from the Bible) on a weekly basis, year in and year out, and not be somehow impacted on a very deep level by this sort of communication.

One of the most common issues that ex-evangelicals report is how, after leaving the church behind, they are triggered by all sorts of strange things. These stem from such things as their years spent within the church with little to show for it; the slanted “biblical teaching” they received; religious or sexual trauma they may have suffered; or perhaps they were treated shockingly badly by other Christians. As time goes on, and they move farther and farther away from their past beliefs, and gain some objective distance, they begin to notice just how emotionally scarred they are from those experiences. They begin to understand just how messed up they are emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and perhaps sexually too.