Creating space for former evangelicals is risky because we are an incredibly traumatized group of people who lost (among other things) a belief in final justice — brought about by punishment — that would set all things right. Consequently, many of us think that’s our job now.

That doesn’t mean it can’t work, it can’t be helpful + healthy, or that it’s always doomed to fail. If I believed that, I wouldn’t be doing any of the things I deeply love that also happen to pay my bills BUT — what I am saying is:

When you think about it like this — that many of us are trying to recover a sense of the belief that helped us survive abusive environments — the self-destructive patterns we see in exvangelical communal spaces make more sense and deserve less shame.