According to research from Pew Research Center, about 60 to 64% of Americans identify as Christians. Since 2007, that number ticked steadily downward each year (though it seems to have leveled out last year, at least temporarily).

Some identify but don’t attend traditional church services. According to Pew, around 49% of U.S. adults seldom or never attend physical services. Increasingly those who do segue younger. While older Americans once dominated congregations, young adults ? Gen Z and millennials ? are now statistically the most frequent churchgoers. (Interestingly, young men in the U.S. now surpass young women on importance of religion and attending church.)

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Around 2016, the term “exvangelical” emerged to describe people who left evangelicalism, whether to join other Christian traditions, adopt other religions or leave organized religion altogether.

What’s led some former churchgoing Christians to step away from traditional places of worship? As several former evangelicals recently told us, many grew uncomfortable with the blending of religion and politics: Too often, many of them said, conservative political goals started to be framed as a divinely ordained religious fight.

Exvangelicals’ reasons for leaving are complicated, though. Below, in their own words, they share why they walked away and what their spiritual status is now.

Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity, and some last names have been excluded to protect identity.

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‘Men wearing red MAGA hats ... was the last straw.’
“I became a believer at 28-years-old and attended various non-denominational evangelical churches for almost 35 years, the last seven at my last church, which was Evangelical non-denominational, aka non-accountable and personality driven.

At some point, the preaching became more and more ‘us vs. them’ focused with the church’s fight in culture wars becoming a central topic more often, and always alluded to no matter what was being preached. I have always believed the culture war is a scam perpetrated on the public by unscrupulous people seeking power who are willing to manipulate and screw over our entire civilization to meet their ends.
The church stayed open through much of the pandemic lockdown, and I never saw a single mask worn in the church, ever. Because of this and the pastor preaching the high profile memorial of a local state trooper who was murdered, the church more than tripled in size from ’21 to ’23, mostly by people from other churches who were pissed that those churches were following pandemic protocols.

They quickly built a new building to accommodate. Men wearing red MAGA hats in the sanctuary, our auditorium, was the last straw for that place. I finished my service commitment, and I was out of there for good.

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If I have to put a label on it, I’m most closely aligned with Taoist philosophy. I’ve dug into Zen Buddhism as well but even that feels a bit restrictive to the free ‘being’ the Wu Wei flow with the Tao delivers. I’m now happily just 62-year-old me without any self-appointed authority telling me the way I ought to be living and thinking. My church is my beautiful back porch with chimes and birds and flowers and a fountain and sunshine on a Sunday morning.

I see the Bible as a sacred book, but one written by men trying to explain their immediate reality. Jesus was an enlightened individual ? a Buddha ? that expressed his enlightenment in terms of his Jewish culture and understanding.

I see God in everything, and no longer presume to know the mind of God, and no longer believe that God is an individual personality making arbitrary decisions about everyone’s daily life. I just seek to perceive the Tao in all things and my natural place in the flow of it.” ? Patrick from Southern Illinois
‘A big part of why I left was actually how apolitical they were.’
“I had been raised a Christian and had committed my life to Christ around 20 years ago. I had been active in a few Baptist types of churches through early adulthood. The most recent church we attended was a non-denominational church, and we had been there for about eight years when I left.

A big part of why I left was actually how apolitical they were. Even as Trump and his followers were doing and saying heinous things, they just kind of sat on the fence and let congregants continue down that path without opposition. I know several people who are deeply MAGA that still attend this church, and I know several people who publicly support LGBTQ rights and are pro-choice that also still attend this church. I had also started to notice how, in a lot of messages, the language was coded in a way where it could be palatable to a wide variety of people. A statement like, ‘You must be strong in your faith, for the enemy is always planning their next step’ seems innocuous at first, but the meaning changes greatly depending on who the listener defines as the enemy.

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The straw that broke the camel’s back was finding out that in the church bylaws there were several points that staff and volunteers must agree to: a statement affirming that marriage is between one man and one woman. A statement about abortion. There were a few others, but those were the big ones. So it seems that in a church where ‘everyone is welcome,’ everyone, indeed, was not welcome to serve in the full capacity. Learning this was really what tipped me off to consider everything. I realized I needed to stop serving on the worship team, at that point, and also decided that I really didn’t want to go to church anymore.

After leaving, I took a lot of time off to evaluate my status. I read ‘Jesus and John Wayne,’ ‘Star Spangled Jesus,’ ‘The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory,’ as well as listened to some testimonies from people like Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal. I started looking into evolution, which I had largely ignored, out of fear, and opening my mind to other worldviews. I consider myself to be an agnostic atheist, at this point.” ? Albert from Kentucky