Ex-Evangelicals and the Search for a Deeper Faith
Modern Christianity
Why do evangelicals become ex-evangelicals? The answers vary: some leave because they have been wounded by unwise or even abusive leaders; others depart because they come to doubt the truthfulness of Scripture; for still many more, there is no one obvious reason, just a long, slow drifting away. But for a significant number of ex-evangelicals, their disillusionment is not about religious apathy or aversion but, rather, quite the opposite. The ex-evangelicals I am thinking of here are those who hunger for something more in their religious experience—more depth, more seriousness, more spiritual engagement—and become convinced that such things are not to be found within the evangelical tradition. They want genuine spiritual formation but fear that the evangelical cupboard is bare. So instead of becoming agnostics or joining liberal mainline Protestant churches, they turn to other traditions—notably Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy—convinced that these traditions foster the sort of spiritual growth that had eluded them as evangelicals.
This phenomenon was recently highlighted in a widely shared article in the New York Post, which profiled converts to Eastern Orthodoxy. One such individual is Elijah Wee Sit, who was raised as an evangelical but now dismisses “modern Christianity” as unacceptably “watered down.” Reflecting, presumably, on the evangelicalism that he experienced growing up, he describes this “watered down” faith as follows: “People go to church on Sunday, they sing a few songs, they listen to an hour-long sermon that seems more like a TED talk, and then they go home, and they just go on with their lives.”1
A Heart Aflame for God
Matthew C. Bingham
A Heart Aflame for God explores spiritual formation practices that are consistent with the 5 solas, presenting the riches of the Reformed tradition for 21st-century evangelicals.
Similarly, in his recent book Living in Wonder, bestselling Eastern Orthodox author Rod Dreher muses on the experience of American Christians who become dissatisfied with a felt lack of spiritual depth and begin wondering whether the ancient and medieval traditions of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy might point toward a more excellent way:
On summer vacations, Americans sometimes venture to Europe, visit the great medieval cathedrals, and wonder about the kind of faith that could raise such temples to God's glory from societies that were poorer than our own. We read old tales of miracles, visions, pilgrimages, and religious feasts and feel the poverty of our own religious experience. We dutifully drag ourselves to church on Sunday, we read our Bibles, we follow the law, we work to serve our nation or our community, we stay current with our reading, but we still may wonder, Is this all there is?2
That last question captures the sense among some evangelicals that there is something lacking, paltry, and underdeveloped within the evangelical spiritual tradition: Is this all there is? Does evangelicalism actually possess the resources and tools to support a robust and sustained experience of spiritual formation and Christian growth?
And whatever one makes of the varied answers given in response, one cannot dismiss the significance of the question itself. One of the most basic biblical assumptions about the Christian life is that it will be a growing life. Whether depicting the blessed life as that of “a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season” (Ps. 1:3) or portraying believers as “newborn infants” who “long for the pure spiritual milk” of God’s word so “so that by it” they “may grow up into salvation” (1 Pet. 2:2), the Bible assumes throughout that authentic spiritual life is marked by development, maturation, and growth.
The How Question
But as clear as that might be, what sometimes feels less clear is the how question: How do I nurture and sustain the sort of spiritual formation that the Bible clearly calls me to? Among evangelical Christians, answering such questions about personal spiritual growth has sometimes been complicated by the movement’s frequent emphasis on growth of other kinds, namely numerical growth and geographic spread. Rooted in the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, evangelical Christianity has always prioritized a zeal to see the gospel spread to more people and more places. Innovative evangelists like John Wesley (1703–1791) and George Whitefield (1714–1770) took their sermons outside the church walls to reach constituencies that their more traditional contemporaries were neglecting. And in our own day, evangelicals continue to work tirelessly and creatively to reach ever-wider circles with the gospel.
This, of course, is a good thing. The risen Jesus told his disciples, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Evangelical Christians have taken that mandate seriously, and we should thank God for their witness. And yet, as is so often the case in a fallen world, even insights that are good and right and true can fog up our windows when they are emphasized to the exclusion of other insights that are likewise good and right and true. In the case of evangelicalism, the movement’s zeal for expansion and outward growth has sometimes come at the expense of discipleship and inward depth.
One of the most basic biblical assumptions about the Christian life is that it will be a growing life.
The famed evangelist Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) captured an important aspect of evangelicalism’s historic DNA when he declared, “It makes no difference how you get a man to God, provided you get him there.”3 Surely one can applaud the evangelistic passion in that statement while still recognizing that an unrestrained and ultimately counterproductive pragmatism lies close at hand. When pragmatism pushes out principle, the result is a Christianity long on excitement and short on spiritual maturity. As evangelical theologian and author David Wells has put it, “What results, all too often, beneath all the smiling crowds, the packed auditoria, is a faith so cramped, limited, and minuscule as to be entirely unable to command our life, our energies, or, as a matter of fact, even much of our attention.”4 If that description accurately reflects the evangelical experience of the ex-evangelicals who now seek spiritual depth through Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, then one can’t help but sympathize with their decision to leave, even if we ultimately disagree.
I don’t question that some expressions of evangelical Christianity lack depth. But what I do question is the assumption that such shallowness is in any way intrinsic to the logic of the evangelical tradition itself. My confidence on this point comes not from surveying current practices among contemporary evangelicals but, rather, from looking backward to the Protestant Reformation tradition out of which evangelicalism arose and to which evangelicalism is theologically indebted.
The Reformers and their heirs were committed to reforming not just theology but also their approach to the practice of the Christian life. They sought an approach to spiritual formation that was deeply rooted in Scripture, understanding both that any God-honoring spiritual practices must be derived from Scripture and that God’s word itself is the primary means through which the Lord shapes his people. Over and against a medieval tradition that effectively sidelined personal engagement with the Bible in favor of pilgrimages, relics, and a host of practices that were, at best, extrabiblical, the Reformers understood that living, growing faith was a word-based affair: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” (Col. 3:16).
In support of this end, Reformers like John Calvin (1509–1564), post-Reformation pastor-theologians like the English Puritans, and later exemplars like the eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) all wrote extensively on the how question that sometimes feels so elusive. Our problem, then, as evangelicals is not that we lack a tradition of spiritual formation but, rather, that we often have failed to notice that it was there. As the secular culture becomes increasingly hostile to the historic Christian faith, believers who wish to stand firm will need to become more intentional than ever in their pursuit of authentic spiritual formation. For some evangelicals, this desire for depth will sadly lead them away from Protestantism and towards religious practices that find no basis in Scripture. But for those who wish to find it, there is a rich heritage of word-based spirituality right here at home.
Notes:
- https://nypost.com/2024/12/03/us-news/young-men-are-converting-to-orthodox-christianity-in-droves/
- Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2024), 10.
- William G. McLoughlin, Billy Sunday Was His Real Name (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 158.
- David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 14.
Matthew Bingham is the author of A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation.
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