Deconstruction, Deconversion, and the Rise of the Ex-vangelical

While in many ways the political power of evangelicals seems stronger than ever, evangelicals are not immune to the trends of decline taking place across American Protestantism. This growing exodus has given rise to a subsection of former evangelicals known by a variety of names: exvangelicals, post-evangelicals, recovering evangelicals, un-fundamentalists, and more. This paper explores the relationship between ex-vangelical deconstruction and religious deconversion. How do former evangelicals understand their process of deconstruction, and how does it relate to deconversion? Does deconstruction itself constitute the process of evangelical deconversion, or is it just one framework to understanding a broader shift in personal identity? By studying former evangelical social media engagement and a set of ethnographic interviews I conducted in 2024, I will consider what ex-vangelical narratives reveal about the relationship between “deconstruction,” deconversion, and the shaping of religious/non-religious identity.