Deconverted Hearts in a Deconverted Church

The Therapeutization of Intra-Evangelical Deconversion

Abstract

In recent years, many evangelicals have been experiencing increasing discomfort with the conservative Christian subculture. While some leave organized religion entirely, others find a new spiritual home in more progressive evangelical churches. In this article, I analyze two such deconversions to “Churchome,” a megachurch based in Seattle and Los Angeles that particularly caters to disenchanted or deconverted evangelicals and in which I have conducted two years of ethnographic fieldwork. While both of my interviewees echo classic Protestant critiques as reasons for their deconversion, they do not express these in moral or theological but rather in emotional and therapeutic terms. I will show that, as my interviewees re-evaluate previously learned theologies and practices from the perspective of a new emotional and therapeutic style, their deconversions function like therapy. Churchome not only guides this process as a church for the deconverted, but also presents itself as a deconverted church, making “continuous deconversion” its primary identity.