Interdisciplinary Book Reviews

Identity, Trauma, and Cultural Change in Sarah McCammon’s The Exvangelicals Sarah McCammon’s The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church is more than a memoir. It is a cultural document, a psychological case study, and a map of a movement that has no headquarters, no creeds, and no formal membership — only a shared ache. McCammon traces how a generation raised on purity culture, end times fear, and political absolutism has begun to unravel the worldview they inherited. Read alongside Daryl R. Van Tongeren’s Done: How to Flourish After Leaving Religion (2024), the picture becomes even richer. McCammon shows what is happening culturally and relationally; Van Tongeren explains why it feels the way it does psychologically. Together, they illuminate the inner and outer landscapes of leaving a totalizing religious system. A Childhood Formed by Fear, Love, and Certainty McCammon’s early chapters capture the emotional atmosphere of evangelical childhood: salv...

  The Missionary Kids   By Holly Berkley Fletcher Reviewed By   Geoffrey W. Sutton The Missionary Kids Abstract In The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism (2025), Holly Berkley Fletcher combines memoir, oral history, and historical analysis to examine the lived realities of missionary children (MKs). Drawing on her upbringing in Kenya and interviews with other MKs, Fletcher challenges romanticized portrayals of missionary life by exposing the cultural dislocation, spiritual neglect, and emotional burdens often carried by children in missionary families. The book is structured around four parts: the myth of parents as martyrs, the imposed nature of missionary “calling,” the spiritual neglect of MKs in boarding schools, and the collective testimony of resilience and loss. Fletcher’s dual perspective as both historian and former CIA analyst enriches her critique of evangelical institutions and their impact on children. This work contributes to schola...