The Unignorable Plight of the Exvangelicals

White evangelical Christians often paint themselves as the target of secular elites hell-bent on eviscerating society's traditional values and outlawing the preaching of the gospel. However, some of the most vocal (and effective) opposition to mainstream evangelicalism within the past five years has, ironically, come from those formerly inside the movement. Twitter hashtags like #ChurchToo, #ExposeChristianSchools, and #EmptyThePews have been discussed on prominent news outlets like Fox News, Christianity Today, and the New Yorker. These Twitter hashtags were birthed within the exvangelical movement, a group of former evangelicals who are voicing their grievances toward their past faith tradition and aim to present an (often secular) alternative to it. Compared to critics from outside of evangelicalism, who might be prone to caricature or surface understandings of the evangelical subculture, exvangelicals' insider knowledge and first-hand experiences within evangelical families and communities that make them formidableâ??and deeply motivatedâ??critics who are capable of encouraging others to follow them out the church door.