Hating Evangelicalism Isn't Deconstruction

Sometimes being an "exvangelical" just means you switched sides in the culture war.

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A few months back, this video was going around of what looks like some sort of youth group summer camp situation in which a bunch of big teen boys were moshing to “Jesus Loves Me.”

@biglovekevJESUS ENERGYYY #jesus #christian #jesuslovesyou #ywamkona #ywam

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It was the sort of doofy youth group moment a lot of people reading this are probably familiar with, but it went viral because an account called “Christian Nightmares” asked its followers “what would you call this?” and got all the responses you’d expect. “Cringe.” “Hell.” “A cult.” “Grooming.” You get the picture. There were also lots of snarky assumptions about these guys’ repressed sexual orientations but it’s woke somehow. 

Now, to some extent, I get where this is coming from. A lot of people making these posts have spent enough time in youth group to make some educated guesses about what’s actually going on in these settings. It’s not necessarily justified, but I get that people are processing a lot of church hurt online and this is one way of doing so. But we also need to be clear about what’s happening here.