Book Review: Understanding Ex-Christian America
Bullivant’s new book stands out as not just about nones in general, but about those Americans who used to affiliate with a religion but no longer do. Usually, that means leaving evangelical Protestantism, mainline Protestantism, Mormonism, or Catholicism. Bullivant makes a solid case for the importance of such people for understanding American religion moving forward, and with Nonverts he has put another very fine book into the world. It is worth reading and pondering.
Christianity in America is currently going through a watershed period as society and culture continue to secularize. Among younger adults, for every one person who goes from religiously unaffiliated to affiliating with a religion, there are five people who switch in the opposite direction, toward no religion. Having no religious affiliation is increasingly becoming normal, and even the expectation among certain enclaves of American life.
The United States is more ex-Christian and post-Christian than ever before in its history. How did this situation come about? And what does it mean for the nation? The key number concerning the frequently referenced “rise of the nones” is likely familiar to many: Roughly one-quarter of American adults, or 59 million people, are “nones”—that is, atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular when it comes to religion. The proportion of “nones” in the US population hovered between 5 and 9 percent throughout the 1970s and 80s, but right around the year 1990, the percentage of nones began to climb to its current highpoint.
Less known is that only 30 percent of nones in the United States report having been raised with no religious affiliation. The rest, totaling about 41 million American adults, identified with some kind of religion earlier in life, but eventually left it. This segment of the population therefore is pivotal for understanding the shifting American religious landscape over recent decades. And it is those Americans—along with the social and cultural forces that tend to influence them—who are the topic of sociologist and theologian Stephen Bullivant’s book, Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America, recently published by Oxford University Press.
A Nation of “Nonverts”
Drawing from both survey data and interviews with a wide range of people, Bullivant provides a broad introduction to American adults who have thrown off their prior religious affiliations. The book is structured into nine chapters, which alternate between bigger-picture analysis/commentary and a series of “deep dives” into specific religious traditions. So, chapters 2, 4, 6, and 8 provide glimpses into disaffiliation from Mormonism, mainline Protestantism, evangelicalism, and Catholicism, respectively. Each of these tradition-specific chapters offers a helpful introduction to the character and troubles of each tradition. For anyone who wants to understand disaffiliation among one (or more) of those four traditions, these even-numbered chapters stand as quick and helpful overviews, brought to life by Bullivant’s skillful deployment of individual stories to represent larger themes.
Each of these chapters is, at the same time, broad and partial. They do not present findings that aim to be exhaustive or methodical. The chapters don’t analytically pick apart every conceivable reason that one might disaffiliate from a religion, the way past survey reports from Pew have done, for example. That’s not Bullivant’s purpose in writing. Instead, the chapter on “exvangelicals,” for instance, focuses on just three factors: purity culture, hypocrisy, and former President Trump. And readers hear about decades of sexual abuse scandals, devotional laxity, and simply not feeling it in various ways in the case of “recovering Catholics.”
As one would expect, Bullivant emphasizes that America’s “nonverts” are a diverse slice of the population on all sorts of metrics, such as age, race, and (to a limited degree) outlooks on politics. He also highlights that being religiously unaffiliated does not necessarily mean being entirely without faith of any kind, let alone an atheist. Only about 15 percent of nonverts are atheists, another 15 percent are agnostics, while 35 percent say they believe in a higher power of some kind (but not a personal God).
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What the Bible Says About Gender & Sex
When a generation waivers on gender, sex, and identity to the peril of God’s design, we are setting up future generations for destruction. Christians date, court, marry, reproduce, and raise up families based on a worldview regarding gender.
I want to give you a framework for conversations about gender. We can often get flustered or reactive in conversations about LGBTQ issues so it’s important to have some calm, clear, and biblical thoughts. This equips Christians to engage people who may hold different views with more intentionally, more love, and more truth.
The culture you live in regards truth as relative — not absolute. The problem is, by saying there are no absolutes people are claiming an absolute. When people say, “I don’t feel like it’s my right to tell someone if they’re wrong,” what they aren’t saying is that they would, of course, tell someone who said that gender was “absolute” that they are wrong. Perhaps more than any other topic, the truth about your gender is under assault from the culture.
How Culture Defines Gender & Sex
Culture defines gender as different than your sex. According to culture, sex is the biological difference between males and females. In other words, what you’re born as (or with) is your sex. Gender, on the other hand, is defined by Medical News as being different than your sex:
“In general terms, “sex” refers to the biological differences between males and females, such as the genitalia and genetic differences. “Gender” is more difficult to define, but it can refer to the role of a male or female in society, known as a gender role, or an individual’s concept of themselves, or gender identity.
Sometimes, a person’s genetically assigned sex does not line up with their gender identity. These individuals might refer to themselves as transgender, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming.”
As you can see, while sex is scientifically and biologically verified to be 100% genetic — as in, binary and set — modern culture has now chosen to work around that truth. Yes, there are some cases in which a baby is born with both sets of genitalia and parents have to make a decision what sex the baby will be. In some rare cases, chromosome counts vary, but most commonly, women have 46 chromosomes including two X’s and men have 46 including an X and a Y. The Y chromosome is dominant and carries the signal for the embryo to begin growing testes. Both men and women have testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. However, women have higher levels of estrogen and progesterone, and men have higher levels of testosterone.
Biology lesson over.
There are major differences between the male and female sexes, but culture wants to make a gender something more fluid. To the culture, gender is about how you feel. A transgender person will describe that they were born a boy but feel more like a woman. For some, they will say that they were born a girl, but they feel like a boy, so they identify as a boy. Based on the cultural norms of today, we are giving people the freedom to do whatever they want to whomever they want and for that to be okay. When this ends at its logical conclusion, you end up with men who identify as 7-year old girls and use the same bathroom as actual little girls, and that man can molest or harm those girls.
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Sovereignty and Salvation
Just as our sovereign creator created from, or out of, his own being, and created all things for himself, so too has he redeemed, or saved a people for his own possession by making them alive in Christ.
Recently, while picking up my daughter from school I asked my customary question: “So, how was your day?” Normally, the response is brief, but this day was one of those exceptions. “History class was interesting. We had a discussion on predestination.” As it turned out, since they were studying the Renaissance and dealing with the precursors to the Reformation, the topic came up. Sadly, it came up for the first time in the lives of many of her classmates. I say sadly because it reveals they don’t understand the gospel very well at all, and maybe not at all. After all, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is about his and the Father and the Spirit’s sovereignty over all things and the exercising of it so that some sinners are saved from their sin and into the glorious freedom of God’s children.
As the creator, the Triune God brought his creation into being. In particular, Colossians 1:15-20 states the following regarding the Lord Jesus Christ:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
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A Response to “The PCA Presbytery of The Ascension Receives Report On “Still Time To Care”
I realize his book relates to what he calls, “the church’s failed attempt to cure homosexuality.” Really! Let’s face it, none of us are “cured from” sin or any sinful propensity or proclivity. We are “covered” by Christ’s blood, but not necessarily “cured.” I’m sure there are many heterosexual men and women who would confess confidentially that their sinful propensities and desires remain strong and are a continual struggle, but they are able to resist due … by the enablement of the Holy Spirit.
I appreciate the Ascension Presbytery’s report inasmuch as is made available in this article. Most books dealing with such controversial issues such as homosexuality or any sexual sin may not be totally flawed. Yet their aim and emphases have serious influence and ramifications in diluting biblical truth by either softening the exceeding sinfulness of sexual sins or ignoring the universality of total depravity that affects all people, not only those with homosexual desires. The latter relates to the tendency of homosexuals and lesbians considering themselves exceptional or unique. No, immoral sexual desires afflict heterosexuals, pedophiles, and more. Universal depravity in the area of sexuality implies in Scripture that regardless of the direction such desires, temptations, or urges take, God’s Word and the work of the Holy Spirit would be the same for all.
Nonetheless, when it comes to the issue of same-sex sexual desires or actions, we cannot escape the fact there is nothing in Scripture that even hints at sympathy for either. The same can be said for heterosexual adultery, fornication, or addiction to pornography. Throughout God’s divine revelation and Church history, sin—and particularly sexual sin—is/was treated as egregious. Perhaps we are dealing with what Carl Trueman refers to as The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.
Additionally, nowhere in God’s divine revelation do we find any positive reference to identifying ourselves or our personhood with sin, sexual or otherwise, especially not as Christians, disciples of Jesus Christ. We cannot escape the fact that God hates sin or that Jesus clarified that even the mental or emotional lust is sin. I realize this requires boldness on my part to say, but I believe Greg Johnson desperately needs to be encouraged to repent. Whether he realizes it or not, he is normalizing and promoting an identity that God has clearly communicated to be serious, to be unnatural, to be abhorrent, and to be renounced. Both sadly and unfortunately, he is wrongly influencing others. Any and all sexual sins must be fled.
I realize his book relates to what he calls, “the church’s failed attempt to cure homosexuality.” Really! Let’s face it, none of us are “cured from” sin or any sinful propensity or proclivity. We are “covered” by Christ’s blood, but not necessarily “cured.” I’m sure there are many heterosexual men and women who would confess confidentially that their sinful propensities and desires remain strong and are a continual struggle, but they are able to resist due to their knowledge of God’s will for holiness and purity, determination, and by the enablement of the Holy Spirit. Joseph fled Potiphar’s wife; Paul warned Timothy to flee youthful lusts. It’s the same with many other sins unrelated to human sexuality.
So, Greg Johnson probably relates to some who admit they are unable to abandon or stop their particular struggles, but that ignores they are not alone or unique. All Christians struggle with some besetting sin in their lives. He would do more spiritual good by counseling them to abandon their mental and emotional sense of uniqueness and aloneness to join the rest of Christianity. And a vital first step is to stop identifying one’s Christian identity with sins and sinful lusts.
One thought about the issue of orientation might be helpful. The majority of people are orientated to opposite-sex relationships. That doesn’t preclude or dismiss their sinful propensities, temptations, or urges to sexual immorality. And they don’t identify themselves as “straight” or “heterosexual” Christians. They are also in the same boat as to desires and actions.
Greg Johnson ends his book with this statement: “I’ve been walking with Jesus in celibacy as a Christian adult for more than thirty years. I’m here to say it’s worth it. Jesus is worth it. And the best is yet to come.” That is definitely laudable, but . . . But it’s based also on identifying himself and his walk with Jesus with a sin Jesus died for and for which He cleansed and covered him with His blood. Many of us are life-long single men and women living chaste lives (I prefer that definition, as it puts us in the same company with chaste married people), but . . . But we are not choosing any of our many sins or sinful temptations to identify ourselves for which Jesus paid such a high price and penalty to atone for and our natural propensity to sin.
Dr. Johnson definitely means well, but he is called to be a shepherd to a large diversity of people struggling with the diversity of the fall’s consequences. He certainly wouldn’t ask everyone to publicly identify with some prominent sin or temptation in their life, would he? Neither should he. No biblical shepherd, apostle, bishop, elder, pastor, teacher identified with sin. Nothing could be clearer to us as Christians: we are redeemed not only from the penalty for our sin; we are also redeemed from identification by or with our sin. And it’s because we really do care both in truth and love that we are compelled to resist a false approach to sin, and a trend never before allowed or imagined in the Church of Jesus Christ and to humbly and graciously warn against.
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.
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