Blake Chastain

Hello - I'm Blake Chastain, host of the Exvangelical and Powers & Principalities podcasts, and writer of The Post-Evangelical Post newsletter. I'm also writing a book for Convergent, an imprint of Penguin Random House.I coined the #exvangelical hashtag alongside the launch of the Exvangelical podcast in July 2016. Since then, exvangelical conversations and communities have proliferated online across social networks like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit."Exvangelical" functions as both a way to find others who have left white evangelical beliefs and communities behind, as well as a helpful frame for criticizing white evangelical institutions and practices. It is not a wholesale replacement of evangelicalism, but a shared starting point--it acknowledges that we are rooted in similar experiences, and celebrates the new and diverse ways people find to flourish.For a working definition of "exvangelical," please read my essay on The Post-Evangelical Post. For more of my story, watch the CBS Religion documentary Deconstructing My Religion on the CBS website. The trailer is embedded below.

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The Exvangelical podcast launched in 2016, and features interviews with authors, musicians, and people from all walks of life who were committed to evangelicalism, but one day had to leave. These personal stories demonstrate the difficulty of finding a new sense of self & community after leaving evangelicalism - and illustrate both the broad trends (like religious trauma and purity culture recovery) and idiosyncrasies of the process now commonly referred to as "deconstruction."

In August 2020, I launched season 1 of my new podcast, Powers & Principalities, which focuses on the systems and institutions that prop up white evangelical Christianity in America. Season 1 focused on white evangelicalism & Christian nationalism.