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Outposts in the Wilderness: Post-Evangelical Feminist Communities on Digital Media, 2004–2024
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2025
Abstract
Since its inception, evangelical Protestantism has attracted passionate converts and produced anguished deserters: people with intense conversion experiences who have later chosen to flee their churches and the peculiar stream of Christianity that once held their devotion. In past generations, a person exiting evangelicalism left community into seclusion. However, I argue that in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, post-evangelical feminists used digital media to create online post-evangelical feminist communities that alleviated isolation for those leaving conservative evangelical communities. This paper explores the invention and adoption of digital technologies in light of the evangelical history of media innovation. Using blogposts, social media posts, and interviews, it examines the experiences of twenty-first century post-evangelical feminists who participated in digital communities. The metaphor of outposts in “the wilderness,” commonly used by post-evangelical feminists, suggests that digital communities acted as havens of theologically and politically progressive sociality outside evangelical institutions. These communities provided an important function for those early twenty-first-century post-evangelical feminists who left evangelicalism but maintained a Christian faith. Those marginalized by their gender and their theological positions used digital media as a structure to forge religious belonging in a period defined by the rise of the religiously unaffiliated. This history illuminates the promises and the limitations of digital religious communities.
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- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture
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Notes
My thanks to the editors and reviewers of Religion & American Culture and to my graduate advisors David Holland and Catherine Brekus for their generous feedback. Research for this article was supported by Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Social Science Research Council, the Fetzer Institute, and the Religious Research Association. I thank these institutions as well as their administrative staff.
1 Interview with the author, Zoom, July 29, 2022.
2 The paper is based on a larger study of post-evangelical feminism through digital and print text published online from 2004 to 2024, consisting of fieldwork from 2021 to 2023, including participant observation at in-person and digital events, and seventy-five ethnographic interviews.
3 David Hempton, Evangelical Disenchantment: Nine Portraits of Faith and Doubt, 1st ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 17.
4 Hempton, Evangelical Disenchantment.
5 The word “post-evangelical” began circulating in the 1990s with Dave Tomlinson’s book The Post-Evangelical. This work, which is centered on Britain but was republished in the United States with a chapter on American evangelicalism, argues for a return to an earlier version of evangelicalism. David Gushee, an ethicist, prolific author, and former evangelical, uses the term “post-evangelicalism” in several of his recent works to describe the form of Christianity to which he currently subscribes. In contrast to Tomlinson’s definition, Gushee refers to post-evangelical Christianity as having intentionally separated from evangelicalism in its institutional forms. Several of the authors in my study, including Rachel Held Evans and Katelyn Beaty, self-identified with the term. By using the term “post-evangelical,” I signal a break with evangelicalism while also noting a persistent historical connection to evangelical theologies and practices. I also wish to distinguish “post-evangelical” Christians from those described as “ex-evangelical,” a broadly used term which does not always signify a continued affiliation with Christianity. Dave Tomlinson, The Post-Evangelical, rev. ed. (El Cajon, CA: Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2003); David P. Gushee, Still Christian: Following Jesus out of American Evangelicalism (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017); David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020).
6 Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012).
7 Complementarianism refers to a late twentieth-century version of patriarchy that was articulated in the “Danvers Statement” in 1987 and popularized by the authors John Piper and Wayne Grudem and the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Complementarianism was a reaction to evangelical feminism and became dominant, but not uncontested, in American evangelicalism. Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, “The Danvers Statement,” CBMW, December 1987, accessed June 19, 2025, https://cbmw.org/uncategorized/the-danvers-statement/; John Piper and Wayne A. Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991).
8 Rachel Held Evans, “Women of Valor: It’s about Character, Not Roles,” Rachel Held Evans (blog), June 11, 2012, accessed June 19, 2025, https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/mutuality-women-roles.
9 I have chosen to use the past tense instead of the ethnographic present to situate my data in historical context. Digital media change so rapidly that some of the media discussed in this article have changed in name or form since my data was collected.
10 “Episode 4: Belonging, Courage, and Evangelical Darlings with Jen Hatmaker,” Evolving Faith, July 15, 2020, accessed June 19, 2025, https://evolvingfaith.com/podcast/season-1/episode-4-jen-hatmaker.
11 Christopher W. Boerl and Katie Donbavand, A God More Powerful Than Yours: American Evangelicals, Politics, and the Internet Age (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015).
12 Candy Gunther Brown, The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789–1880 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
13 Marla Faye Frederick, Colored Television: American Religion Gone Global (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 24.
14 Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
15 Susan Friend Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
16 In Watch This!, the ethicist Jonathan L. Walton argues that, despite a rich history of progressive Black Protestant evangelicals who were involved in Civil Rights-era desegregation movements and other progressive movements such as anti-war and anti-poverty campaigns, the Black Christian messages that were televised in the late twentieth century were those characterized by “commitments to hyper-American patriotism, free-market capitalism, and patriarchal conceptions of the ordering of society.” This emphasis in messaging applied not only to Black televangelism but also to white evangelical broadcasting on television and radio. White fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and host of The Old-Time Gospel Hour, with overtly political messages, gained enormous viewership. Often, successful radio hosts and televangelists blended the prosperity gospel and fear-inducing culture war rhetoric.
17 Isaac Sharp argues that evangelical gatekeepers systematically excluded liberal, Black, progressive, feminist, and gay evangelicals from the evangelical mainstream by defining the evangelical movement against them. Isaac B. Sharp, The Other Evangelicals: A Story of Liberal, Black, Progressive, Feminist, and Gay Christians—and the Movement that Pushed Them Out (Chicago: Eerdmans, 2023).
18 Brantley Gasaway and David Swartz examine the zenith of progressive evangelicalism in the 1970s, which failed to become the dominant form of evangelicalism. In the 1980s, with the election of Ronald Reagan and the rise of the Religious Right, conservative politics became an increasingly visible and integral part of American evangelicalism. Brantley W. Gasaway, Progressive Evangelicals and the Pursuit of Social Justice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014); David R. Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism, Reprint ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).
19 Boerl and Donbavand, God More Powerful Than Yours, 29–30.
20 Stewart M. Hoover, Religion in the Media Age (London: Routledge, 2006).
21 Daniel Vaca, Evangelicals Incorporated: Books and the Business of Religion in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). This shift in religious media on the internet created a change in established media forms. Even if the books were not sold by Southern Baptist-owned Lifeway Books, Christians could buy them on Amazon. The nichification reached institutions like the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, which created a number of blogs targeting particular groups of Christians, including one for women entitled Hermeneutics, edited by Katelyn Beaty and Sarah Pulliam Bailey.
22 Heather Hendershot, Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Travis Warren Cooper, The Digital Evangelicals: Contesting Authority and Authenticity after the New Media Turn (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022); Corrina Laughlin, Redeem All: How Digital Life Is Changing Evangelical Culture (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022); Robert Glenn Howard, Digital Jesus: The Making of a New Christian Fundamentalist Community on the Internet (New York: New York University Press, 2011).
23 By racial ignorance, I mean what Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has called color-blind racism, and what Charles W. Mills has pointed to as global white ignorance, or intentional ignorance of racial harms that have resulted in systemic racial inequities. Racial ignorance and racial neutrality are dominant, though not uncontested, in conservative white evangelicalism. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, 5th ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018); Charles W. Mills, “Global White Ignorance,” in Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, ed. Linsey McGoey and Matthias Gross (London: Routledge, 2015), 235–45.
24 Kate Bowler, The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
25 Sarah Bessey, “Answering Your Burning Questions on Banff, My Health Right Now, Friendship, Writing, Devotional Recommendations, School Choices, Amy Grant, Lipstick Colours, and Much More,” Sarah Bessey’s Field Notes, August 2, 2022, accessed November 2, 2022, https://sarahbessey.substack.com/p/ama-august2022?publication_id=4420.
26 Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women (New York: Howard Books, 2013); Sarah Bessey, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith (New York: Howard Books, 2015); Sarah Bessey, Miracles and Other Reasonable Things: A Story of Unlearning and Relearning God (New York: Howard Books, 2019); Sarah Bessey, ed., A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal (New York: Convergent Books, 2021); Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith (New York: Convergent Books, 2024).
27 Jamie Wright, “So, You Wanna Be a Missionary. . .,” Jamie Wright (blog), December 6, 2012, accessed July 23, 2025, https://web.archive.org/web/20221005185920/https://theveryworstmissionary.com/2012/12/so-you-wanna-be-missionary/.
28 Jamie Wright, “The VWM Gets Censored . . . Kinda. . .,” Jamie Wright (blog), February 6, 2010, accessed July 23, 2025, https://web.archive.org/web/20221005184010/https://theveryworstmissionary.com/2010/02/vwm-gets-censored-kinda/.
29 Bessey, “Answering Your Burning Questions on Banff.”
30 Jen Hatmaker, “Ree Drummond on Microwaved Ding Dongs and Other Real-Life Cooking,” For the Love (podcast), March 2, 2021, accessed June 19, 2025, https://jenhatmaker.com/podcasts/series-33/ree-drummond-on-microwaved-ding-dongs-and-other-real-life-cooking/.
31 Bessey, “Answering Your Burning Questions on Banff.”
32 Sarah Bessey, @sarahbessey, Instagram, July 29, 2022, https://www.instagram.com/sarahbessey/?hl=en.
33 Facebook was used in 2021 by 79% of those aged 18–29, 79% of those aged 30–49, and 68% of those aged 50–64. Andrew Perrin and Monica Anderson, “Share of U.S. Adults Using Social Media, Including Facebook, Is Mostly Unchanged since 2018,” Pew Research Center (blog), accessed October 6, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media-including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018/.
34 In 2021, 73% of Twitter users were under fifty; 60% of Twitter users leaned Democrat, in comparison to 52% of the general population. Perrin and Anderson, “Share of U.S. Adults.” Stefan Wojcik and Adam Hughes, “Sizing Up Twitter Users,” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech (blog), April 24, 2019, accessed June 19, 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/.
35 Corrina Laughlin, “#AmplifyWomen: The Emergence of an Evangelical Feminist Public on Social Media,” Feminist Media Studies 21, no. 5 (2021): 807–21, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1711794.
36 Perrin and Anderson, “Share of U.S. Adults.”
37 In 2022, this algorithm changed, and users began to see posts from those they did not follow pushed onto their feeds. Instagram also transformed from photo-based to video-based to mimic TikTok. Nicolas Six, “Instagram Algorithm Changes Confuse Content Creators,” Le Monde.Fr, September 22, 2022, accessed June 19, 2025, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2022/09/22/instagram-s-algorithm-changes-confuse-and-distress-small-content-creators_5997905_13.html.
38 Cole Arthur Riley, @blackliturgies, Instagram, July 20, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/blackliturgies/?hl=en.
39 Convergent also publishes the post-evangelical authors Jen Hatmaker and Matthew Paul Turner, and the Catholic religious authors Joan Chittester and Henri Nouwen. “Convergent,” Penguin Random House, accessed July 12, 2025, https://www.randomhousebooks.com/imprint/convergent-books/.
40 Lisa Sharon Harper, @lisasharper, Instagram, July 25, 2022, https://www.instagram.com/lisasharper/?hl=en.
41 Lisa Sharon Harper, @lisasharper, Instagram, July 1, 2022, June 10, 2022, and March 28, 2022.
42 Otis Moss III, Jacqui Lewis, Michael-Ray Mathews, and Lisa Sharon Harper, “The Four,” accessed March 20, 2024, https://www.audible.com/podcast/The-Four/B09SVT8Z5T.
43 Hillary L. McBride, Wisdom of Your Body (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2021).
44 Tim Nash, “Rachel Held Evans – Losing My [Evangelical] Religion (N97),” Nomad Podcast (blog), May 23, 2015, accessed June 19, 2025, https://www.nomadpodcast.co.uk/nomad-83-rachel-held-evans-losing-my-evangelical-religion/.
45 Jen Hatmaker, For the Love, accessed August 19, 2023, https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast/.
46 Devi Abraham and Jessica Van Der Wyngaard, Where Do We Go from Here?, November 16, 2019, accessed June 19, 2025, https://wheredowegopod.com/.
47 Kristin M. Peterson, Unruly Souls: The Digital Activism of Muslim and Christian Feminists (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2022), 83.
48 Heidi Campbell, Exploring Religious Community Online: We Are One in the Network, Digital Formations 24 (New York: P. Lang, 2005).
49 Sarah Bessey, interview with the author, Hunt, TX, May 21, 2022.
50 Austin Channing Brown, “Pack Your Bags, Friends. We’re Moving!,” Wild Holy & Free, January 11, 2025, accessed January 27, 2025, https://austinchanning.substack.com/p/pack-your-bags-friends-were-moving.
51 Interview with the author, Windsor, CT, June 2, 2022.
52 Evolving Faith, @evolvfaith, Instagram, October 10, 2022, https://www.instagram.com/evolvfaith/?hl=en.
53 Catherine A. Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740–1845 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent:The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
54 Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims, 15.
55 Suzanna Krivulskaya, Disgraced: How Sex Scandals Transformed American Protestantism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025), 104–26; Amy Collier Artman, The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019).
56 Artman, Miracle Lady, 5.
57 Timothy Larsen, “Evangelicalism’s Strong History of Women in Ministry,” Reformed Journal, August 31, 2017, accessed June 19, 2025, https://reformedjournal.com/evangelicalisms-strong-history-women-ministry/. Also discussed by Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2021), 175–81.
58 Bowler, Preacher’s Wife.
59 Mark Chaves, “National Congregations Study,” 2015, accessed June 19, 2025, https://sites.duke.edu/ncsweb/.
60 Deborah Whitehead, “The Evidence of Things Unseen: Authenticity and Fraud in the Christian Mommy Blogosphere,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83, no. 1 (2015): 121, 122.
61 Emily Hund, The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), 159.
62 Hund, Influencer Industry, 5.
63 Jessica Turner, @jessicanturner, Instagram, accessed July 23, 2025, https://www.instagram.com/jessicanturner/?hl=en.
64 Rachel Held Evans, “You Don’t Hate Me. You Hate My Brand,” Rachel Held Evans (blog), August 15, 2013, accessed June 19, 2025, https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/brand.
65 Sarah Bessey, “I Took Seven Weeks off Social Media Posting and Then, of Course I Make My Grand Return with a ‘Look What I Made!’ Knitting Post. . .,” Instagram, November 22, 2024, accessed June 19, 2025, https://www.instagram.com/p/DCriLD6PzEp/.
66 Heidi Campbell, When Religion Meets New Media (New York: Routledge, 2010).
67 Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone showed the role of communities in producing social capital, and the declining membership in local communities in the age of mass media in the late twentieth century. While digital communities fulfill some of the purposes of in-person communities, they do not fulfill all of them. For instance, post-evangelical digital communities produce more “bonding” connections between those with similar theological and political viewpoints than “bridging” connections, which are more effective in local religious communities. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
68 Andreas Rauch, Johannes S. Deker, and Arch G. Woodside, “Consuming Alone: Broadening Putnam’s ‘Bowling Alone’ Thesis,” Psychology & Marketing 32, no. 9 (2015): 967–76, https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.20830.
69 Hempton, Evangelical Disenchantment.