Jason Kirk’s newly released novel Hell Is a World Without You shouldn’t be my usual reading fare. Nor is his book CT’s usual coverage fare. As you’ll gather from our conversation below, Kirk has left evangelicalism behind and is reflecting on the church of his youth with a critical, if somewhat sympathetic, eye.
I used to be too shy a young person to actually embrace early 2000s youth group life, but Kirk’s childhood church setting—which serves because the backdrop of his book—was mainly the setting of my childhood too. Many evangelical-exvangelical conversations of today, which could be charged, in the event that they occur in any respect, also arise from this setting; so I used to be intrigued on the prospect of a author not only willing but wanting to discuss that divide. I reached out to Kirk, a sports journalist at The Athletic, to debate his experience and depiction of evangelicalism, exvangelicalism, deconstruction, and more.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Let’s start with the fundamentals: Tell me a bit about yourself, the book, and the way you got here to put in writing it.
I used to be raised Southern Baptist in Atlanta and grew up attending church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night—the entire thing, all the way in which until early college. I had your complete evangelical kid profession.
As a young person, I began having the vague, gnawing, constant sense that I didn’t slot in with high-control, conservative religion, although it’s where all my friends were and where we experienced all of the fun and joy and music and hugs and laughs and pizza. That disconnect involved a mixture of emotions, politics, social stuff, philosophies, events I witnessed, and more—as is the case for almost any major shift in anybody’s life.
In my 20s, I ignored religion as hard as I could, though I felt only a gentle bitterness. But after college, I began working in sports media, and it was there I began meeting loads of people from across the country, a few of whom had an identical upbringing. Through that, I began realizing that every one the things I assumed I’d left behind once I left church during college were still with me, and that other people had had similar experiences: Oh yeah, that was form of weird that Wednesday night in church when someone did a hell performance, and someone made a child read a pretend note from someone who was in hell asking why nobody had shared the gospel with him.
In conversations comparing those memories, it began to emerge for me that there’s a story here that feels so underrepresented in fiction. Obviously, there are loads of great nonfiction books [about evangelicalism and deconstruction], and loads of people know the “lapsed Catholic” version. But there’s so little fiction that tells the story of somebody who left this very specific form of church—this turn-of-the-century evangelical church. I made a decision, That book should exist. I assume I should start on it.
I’ve seen a number of the reception for the book, but I’m curious who you’d say is your typical reader. Is it mostly individuals who recognize themselves within the story—millennial-ish exvangelicals? Have you heard from readers who still consider themselves evangelicals?
It’s been a mixture between individuals who grew up evangelical and left that space but additionally individuals who knew nothing about evangelicalism. And I’m type of taking them on a tour. I’ve had loads of people reach out to me to say, either, Thank you for showing me myself within the story, or, Thank you for explaining why my neighbors are the way in which they’re.
As far as people who find themselves still inside conservative evangelicalism, I haven’t heard from a ton of those folks yet. I’m very interested to listen to what they should say because the book makes its method to them.
You’ve told a story that in some ways is so evocative—the AOL Instant Messenger transcripts were frankly too recognizable—but in fact, it’s also only one story. Did you’re feeling a tension, given how many individuals who grew up in that turn-of-the-century evangelical church didn’t feel mistreated and didn’t leave?
I attempted to represent quite a lot of characters, to have a spread of non secular perspectives among the many characters who—hopefully—readers like even in the event that they don’t share their exact experiences. Many of them proceed to be various sorts of Christians. My wife has been mainly a mainline Protestant her entire life. Loads of my best friends I met in church, they usually’re still Christians.
And I’m still a form of Christian. In my 30s, I finally began going back, examining things I’d never realized were deep traumas, learning to forgive myself and lots of others, after which finding theological and political answers that reframed all the things going forward. It seems the Christians who’d molded me were improper to say that unless I agree with them on all the things, I can’t keep any of it.
So I actually have come all the way in which back around to a version of Christianity—partly resulting from the strategy of writing this book, finding so many things concerning the Bible, about Jesus, about sorts of Christian theology and Christian politics that I really like. I’ve come back around to a spot where I really like the mystery of God. I really like the concept that the universe is progressing toward all things being made latest. I really like the politics of Mary in Luke chapter 1. I really like the anti-imperialism that we see from Exodus through Revelation.
There are so many things about Christianity that I really like, and it has at all times been the framework of my head. It’s just, I’ve managed to vary the scaffolding a bit, I assume.
Hell comes up within the title, so it’s hardly a spoiler that that is a serious theological issue within the book, and specifically for the protagonist, Isaac. It’s a subject I’ve wrestled with as well, moving toward what C. S. Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce, and I understand how discovering different theological perspectives inside the bounds of little-O orthodoxy is usually a form of lifeline.
But I actually have a thesis about deconstruction of which I’m increasingly convinced: It’s that few people deconstruct or deconvert primarily due to theology. Loads of the explanations people drop out of religion—and there’s research on this—are more mundane and far less about principle, like the issue of finding a latest church after moving or being required to do things as a Christian that you simply don’t need to do. Am I too cynical?
I feel you’re right. I feel it’s a mixture. For me, the questions began with, I don’t like this thing an adult told me. Right? I’ll admit that, absolutely. It began with, What this adult just told me doesn’t make sense. This adult just told me I actually have to imagine this thing, however the Bible says this other thing, and this other adult says this other thing.
For me, theology was type of a final blow, but having a head stuffed with shame and guilt and anger was way more driving for me than any theological discovery. But once I began to view God not as a thing we are able to’t even escape from even when we die but slightly as someone who loves us regardless of who we’re after we die, that was a turning point. It was a reclamation to go from This thing made me feel terrible for my entire adolescence to Wait a minute, there have been parts of it I loved, and people are still mine, and nobody can take them from me simply because a pastor said insane things to everyone in your complete room for a few decades.
I’d prefer to get your tackle evangelical-exvangelical relations. That point of contact often seems very fraught, actually inside families, but additionally on the web. Sometimes it’s people acting in bad faith, but it surely’s also people talking past each other to the purpose that neither side can imagine that the opposite could possibly be sincere or sincerely in search of a great end. Do you think that that relationship can—at whatever scale—be good or higher than it’s?
Obviously I’m very biased. But to me, the thing that may remain a huge sticking point is the entire and total adoption of right-wing politics by a lot of evangelicalism. I don’t mean every evangelical or every evangelical church, in fact, but it surely’s coming to a degree where that word, evangelical, will turn out to be for all intents and purposes synonymous with right-wing.
And to me, a biased person, I don’t see right-wing politics within the words of Jesus preaching unity and forgiveness and wealth redistribution. The gospel is political, and it at all times has been, and I don’t think there’s wiggle room on whether [Christians] should love our enemies or not. Jesus said we should always love our enemies. There’s not much wiggle room on whether we should always love our neighbors.
So once I hear outstanding evangelical leaders saying, essentially, that we should always not love our neighbors, it’s difficult to search out the common ground there. It feels [kind of unfair] to say, Well, those people should change, after which we’ll stop arguing. But to me it’s a alternative: Is Jesus Lord or is America Lord? Because they will’t each be Lord.
You raise the command of loving our enemies, and I’m fully on board there. I’ve spent loads of time within the Mennonite tradition. But aren’t right-wingers, then, your enemies to be loved? Even if it’s their very failure to like their enemies that puts them in that category?
Sure, absolutely. I mean, have a look at the gospel and see which enemies Jesus loves most: the tax collectors. Who could be a tax collector without delay? A cop, right? And for a leftist, who could be more offensive to embrace than a cop?
If Jesus was here without delay, yes, he would hang around with people whom the proper wing despises, and he would hang around with people whom the left-wing despises at the identical time. He would have a viewpoint—he would have a worldview—and when it got here to deciding who’s correct, I don’t see him siding with individuals who favor what I view as oppression.
And in the case of loving—I mean, I don’t view disagreement as hate. Not to show all the things back to the book—
No, no. That’s why we’re here.
One character is a pastor who embraces right-wing politics because he’s driven by the fear that his church isn’t leading enough people to what he believes the gospel to be. His church is veering toward Christian nationalism, but it surely’s because this man desires to keep people from going to hell. He’s embracing this sort of politics since it’s getting them within the door where they will then meet him on the altar.
I attempted to put in writing a story during which if the villains are correct, then they’re doing the proper thing. Ultimately it comes all the way down to: If that’s how God works, how can we reply to God? If God designed an afterlife that works like that, can we go together with that or not? And for me, that’s the elemental query of the book.
