Goodbye, My Tribe: An Evangelical Exodus is Vic Sizemore’s collection of personal essays chronicling two simultaneous transformations. One is the gathering of unconnected—and nonpolitical—evangelical congregations across the nation into the political juggernaut called the Religious Right; the other is the author’s own coming to terms with the emotional and spiritual trauma of his life deep inside fundamentalist Christianity, and his struggle to free himself from its grasp. Sizemore, whose father was a preacher and professor at a small West Virginia Bible college, attended Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, arguably the crucible of American evangelical Christianity.
Sizemore began writing these essays with the aim of exploring and understanding what happened when the mythology of his “tribe” crumbled from beneath his feet. He draws heavily on his upbringing and his family history as a framework for how his “tribe” of white evangelicals have found ways to reconcile Christianity with what the author finds to be troubling stances on many social issues, among them race, gender, sexuality, materialism, anti-intellectualism, and white supremacy.
In a clear-eyed and eloquent voice, Sizemore grapples movingly with his own bewilderment and chagrin as he struggles to reconcile the essential philosophical and moral decay that he believes many evangelicals have come to embrace. His insights, arranged topically and thematically and told through graceful and accessible prose, toggle between memoir and literary journalism, along a spectrum that touches on history, philosophy, theology, and personal reflections.
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Sizemore began writing these essays with the aim of exploring and understanding what happened when the mythology of his “tribe” crumbled from beneath his feet. He draws heavily on his upbringing and his family history as a framework for how his “tribe” of white evangelicals have found ways to reconcile Christianity with what the author finds to be troubling stances on many social issues, among them race, gender, sexuality, materialism, anti-intellectualism, and white supremacy.
In a clear-eyed and eloquent voice, Sizemore grapples movingly with his own bewilderment and chagrin as he struggles to reconcile the essential philosophical and moral decay that he believes many evangelicals have come to embrace. His insights, arranged topically and thematically and told through graceful and accessible prose, toggle between memoir and literary journalism, along a spectrum that touches on history, philosophy, theology, and personal reflections.
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In this cutting, earnest collection of essays, short story writer Sizemore reveals his growing disaffection with Christianity. Through a series of anecdotes about growing up as the son of a preacher and professor at a West Virginia Bible College, Sizemore explains his ‘tribe’ of white conservative evangelicals of the Jerry Fallwell tradition, which he depicts as mostly ‘warp and woof with southern bigotry.’ Lyrically capturing his angst as a well-heeled but emotionally traumatized son of an inveterate minister of ‘Premillennial Dispensationalism,’ the author frequently quotes, among others, Dostoyevsky, Malcolm X, and Nietzsche, to thoughtfully rebuke what he sees as spurious Christian mythologizing of the beneficial, superior nature of evangelicalism. A former marine, Sizemore also shares advice on confronting bullies great and small, as well as reflections on war. With other essays delving into his thoughts on how Christians have failed to show humanity to communists, those who support abortion, and secular humanists, as well as society’s failure to address concerns of the LGBTQ community and his disappointment in the role conservative evangelicals played in electing Donald Trump, the collection showcases a wide range of Sizemore’s thinking on hot-button issues. Readers who enjoy the essays of Jonathan Merritt will find much food for thought here.’
—Publishers Weekly
‘Goodbye, My Tribe is an excellent piece of creative nonfiction Sizemore clearly understands the world of Protestant fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.’
—John Fea, author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump
Goodbye, My Tribe is a beautifully written inside look at conservative white evangelicalism. Sizemore draws on his upbringing to explain how his ‘tribe’ of white fundamentalists reconciles Christianity with racism, sexism, materialism, anti-intellectualism, and white supremacy.’
—Diane Winston, Knight Chair in Media and Religion, University of Southern California
‘Vic Sizemore gives voice to an entire generation of American evangelicals like me who have lost their faith—in other words, we’ve exchanged myth for fact and hate for love. This beautifully written book explains an entire growing movement made up of survivors who escaped an evangelical upbringing. Goodbye, My Tribe is a literary nonfiction masterpiece and a roadmap for refugees from fundamentalist religion of all kinds to an inner space where peace can be found.’
—Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back
Vic Sizemore is author of the short story collection I Love You I’m Leaving, and his work has appeared in Story Quarterly, North American Review, Southern Humanities Review, storySouth and many other literary journals. He lives and writes in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Truth and My Tribe
The Rumble of Distant Thunder
The Evidence of Things Not Seen
The Holy Fool in Winter
Big Bully
For Flag and Empire
Capital T
My White Tribe
Man Up
Hey, Teacher, Leave Our Weltanschauung Alone
In Mammon We Trust
Suffer Not a Woman
A Life among Guns
Atheists, Demons, and Saints
Conclusion: Goodbye, My Tribe
Works Cited
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