When I left the church of my childhood, I paid a terrible price.
My family didn’t speak to me for seven years. I lost every friend I’d attended church with but one. Because my paycheck came from the church, I had to start a new career without being able to ask for references from previous employers. For years after I left, I didn’t list the church school I’d worked for on my resumé, prompting potential employers to ask awkward questions about the hole in my job history.
During those years of family silence, my favorite aunt died. My mother didn’t tell me, though, because she didn’t want me at the funeral. When I was traveling and wanted to contact a family member, my mother — rather than risk having him learn I’d left the church — told me my cousin had died. An anonymous stalker still affiliated with the church sent me creepy, threatening email messages for months after I left. And before one cousin could visit me, she wanted assurances I’d never been “disfellowshipped” — my childhood church’s practice of shaming the unfaithful and instructing others to avoid them.
These things were difficult and painful. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble, trauma, and even embarrassment by staying. So: why did I leave?
I no longer believed our church had a monopoly on truth. I didn’t buy that our church, and only our church, had the right kind of “truth” needed to win a ticket into heaven. I didn’t believe all my friends and neighbors outside that church were bound for hell. I saw the evil in the idea that you should befriend people as a ruse to convert them, then drop them as friends if they wouldn’t convert. I recognized that our claim on exclusive insight into the truth was a cult tactic designed to make members afraid to leave.
I saw the self-deception involved in our approach to Scripture. We liked saying “Scripture is of no private interpretation.” But the truth was, we confused “following the Scripture” with “following one often uninformed and deliberately ignorant interpretation of Scripture based on mis-readings of the King James Version.” We were Biblical literalists until a literal interpretation didn’t suit us.
I saw how emotional and spiritual abuse were rampant in the church. Disfellowshipping and shunning people is an abusive cult tactic that destroys families. I saw how men who wouldn’t have been trusted with any authority anywhere else were given total authority over people’s lives. I saw how our approach to religion hinged on inspiring fear instead of hope.
I saw how rejection of facts made us less trustworthy. Of course the Bible contains contradictions; denying that meant arguing away what people could see with their own eyes. Of course current insights into language, world history, and culture should refine our understanding of the Scriptures; denying this made us dishonest and delusional. Of course the opinion of experts in these fields should hold more weight than the unsupported assertions of church leaders trying to protect their own power.
I was weary of lying and living a lie. I didn’t believe what they insisted I should believe. I was a little embarrassed I’d believed in these things for so long. And while my staying in the church made my family happy and kept the peace, I realized that living a lie was killing me inside — and perpetuating a system of ignorance and harm.
I have this experience very much in mind when I think of the people I love who are caught up in the MAGA movement — because being caught in a cult and being a caught up in the MAGA philosophy feel more alike to me every day.
Maybe stories coming out lately — about grift, about the Epstein files, about corruption — are helping some of us see the leaders of this movement in a different light. Maybe we’re remembering that in America, we used to could hold differing political views and still work together to get things done. Maybe we’ve begun to see how contempt for expertise empowers dangerously unqualified people and harms all of us. Maybe the denial of vaccine science and climate change — and watching the consequences unfold in real time, etched in the skin of our children — has started to feel less like conviction and more like a trap.
Maybe we question the real patriotism of a movement that attacks, arrests, and detains people without due process. Maybe we see detention camps for what they really are. Maybe we’re tired of being angry all the time, at political talk dominating our dinner tables and churches. Maybe we’ve begun to see how maintaining our anger limits us and keeps bad actors in power — that all this anger isn’t a fuel, but a leash.
Maybe we’ve always worn one label, and changing that label — even when it’s been seized by impostors — feels like losing something. Maybe it’s hard to admit that being a part of what MAGA has become runs counter to our God-given sense of what’s right. Maybe stepping away will cost us the love of friends or the admiration of neighbors or our career. Maybe it feels dangerous to oppose a system that relentlessly strikes down those who even think of opposing it.
I know what contemplating paying this kind of cost feels like. I’ve done it. I’ve lived it.
Please know this: we can do it. We can be ourselves. We can set aside old beliefs that just don’t fit anymore. We can reclaim a sense of self-direction and integrity. We can set aside propaganda and conspiracy theory and root our lives in fact again. We can start loving God and loving our neighbors again — as an end in itself, not as a strategy. We can remember that political ideas should be about how to get the work of government done, not about deciding who is worthy, who is lovable, who has dignity, who is human.
And when those of you who are realizing that MAGA doesn’t suit you anymore are ready to take that step, there are many, many of us here — people who love you and miss you — waiting with open arms.
We know what leaving costs. We know it isn’t easy, and we know it isn’t free. We are willing to do whatever we can to help you find the courage.
We are here for you. Just take that first step.
