My escape from fundamentalism
How values over dogma set me free
A Note From Megan | Publication Date: November 24th, 2025
I have never been much into theology or apologetics.
Even at the height of my commitment to my faith during late adolescence, I never really felt the need to prove why I believed what I did.
I was very much a “vibes-only” kind of believer.
And given how incredibly isolated I was all throughout my childhood and adolescence, I think this makes a lot of sense.
I never really needed to have theological arguments to support my beliefs because I was literally never exposed to alternative viewpoints—not even competing Christian viewpoints.
So finding my way out of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity basically followed the vibes-only process that tethered me to it in the first place.
And that’s what today’s Note From Megan is all about.
Why my faith was all about the vibes
I was never really exposed to much theological rigor.
Although I was homeschooled K–12 with a faith-based curriculum, my mom’s stated goal in homeschooling me and my siblings was more about keeping us away from the so-called evils of the public system and less about providing us with a rigorous education.
We were, of course, exposed early and often to fearful messaging about hell, demons, and the ever-impending “end times,” but we were not really exposed to theological debate or intellectual reasoning.
Sunday school classes, Wednesday night AWANA, youth group meetings, and church sermons were all oriented towards having blind faith and accepting that there were certain things about god we would never be able to fully understand or comprehend.
I also remember my grandmother used to love to sing the song “Trust and Obey” to us.
Even well after we reached adulthood, she would spontaneously burst into the tune:
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey
Classic spiritual bypassing all around, but it worked.
I happily hummed along through my childhood and adolescence content in simply believing (and therefore knowing) I held the keys to the kingdom.
Because we’re a “Christian Family”
I was recently reminded of my family’s failure to use any kind of logic or rationale to support their beliefs when my youngest brother (only 17 years old and still living at home) recounted a conversation he had with my mom.
He couldn’t understand why she insisted on tithing 10% of their income even though they can barely pay their bills and are essentially living hand to mouth every month.
Her response: “Because we’re a Christian family.”
End of story.
Although he tried to point out scriptures that he thought refuted her dogmatic stance on tithing, she wouldn’t even engage in a discussion with him.
And that was the story of my upbringing.
My family held fast to certain values and rules, and we weren’t permitted to question them. If we tried, we were shut down.
Even if we found Bible verses that raised questions, we were to simply “trust and obey.”
And while I was still living at home, it wasn’t hard for me to do this because my beliefs were never really challenged in any kind of meaningful way.
Values became my faith foundation
It’s probably not hard to see how my vibes-only upbringing resulted in my Christian faith being rooted in values rather than theology.
Although I loved to memorize Bible verses, this practice was more about keeping me on the right track and not so much about creating an argument to support my beliefs.
And even though I was clear on the rules I was to be following as stated by my caregivers and church leaders, I mostly only followed them to avoid consequences.
However, I always felt a deep, abiding conviction that the most important thing we could do was care for our fellow humans.
I certainly wasn’t super bought in to the 10% tithing rule or the rigid modesty standards or the no drinking alcohol.
But I absolutely have always felt an urgency to help those in need—the poor, the oppressed, the disenfranchised.
And ultimately, this values-over-theology foundation to my belief structure is what eventually caused the whole thing to implode.
I just really wanted to help people
I entered Eastern University, a small (fairly progressive) Christian college just outside of Philly, when I was just a babe of 17.
I chose Eastern for two reasons: it was only a 2-hour drive from home and it was a Christian school.
I was still very afraid of “the world” and checking the box on these two criteria seemed to ensure my safety.
My only idea of what I wanted in terms of a career was “to help people.” To me, that was what I had been called to do.
When I enrolled, I hadn’t even heard of social work, but it just so happened that I landed in an Intro to College class primarily made up of social work majors.
After comparing notes with what they wanted to do with their professional lives and what a career in social work was all about, I quickly declared as a social work major and never looked back.
I graduated in 2009, worked for one year, and then returned to graduate school for my Master’s in Social Work, completing my MSW at the end of 2011.
Even now I’m a little amazed at how values-aligned my career path has always felt despite the fact that I originally entered the field of social work because I thought that was the best way to “be a light” to others.
Finding myself at odds with the church
So now that you know about the wishy-washy, vibes-only, values-oriented faith structure I started out with, it probably won’t come as much of a shocker to you that I quickly began to find myself at odds with the bigotry of the white evangelical church once I was able to step outside the insular bubble constructed by my family of origin.
I found it impossible to reconcile the church’s views on homosexuality (i.e. it’s a “sin”) with my deeply held value that people are people and love is love.
I couldn’t move past the encounters I had with people who claimed the 13-year-old who had been sexually abused by the church’s worship leader over the course of four years had “seduced him.”
I couldn’t accept the way people were being shamed and blamed for all kinds of things in their lives (poverty, mental health issues, abuse, illnesses, etc.) because they weren’t “right with god.”
And I definitely couldn’t get on board with the folks from my hometown who told me that psychotherapy wasn’t going to do anyone any good unless I also “led them to the Lord.”
My Christian values led me out of Christianity
I think it’s wonderfully ironic how I became a social worker because I believed it was my calling from god and the best way to “be a light” to others, and it was my social work values that eventually led me straight out of the religion.
Once I was a full-fledged adult, no longer dependent on my family of origin for basic survival, I began to really sit with the cognitive dissonance I kept bumping up against as a social worker.
I really didn’t make it very far into my career before I decided the religious dogma was a source of oppression rather than a refuge from oppression.
The churches I had been attending were all rooted in control—coercive control—and I wanted no part of it.
Even though I’m told that progressive, inclusive churches exist, I feel very suspicious of organized religion because I think it’s rare to find a religious group that isn’t wielding some kind of carrot or stick for the purpose of behavior control.
Where I’ve landed
One thing I’m grateful for is how remarkably consistent my values have always been.
Even though I’ve needed to deconstruct the harmful doctrines I was raised with in order to make sense of my experiences and heal from my own religious trauma, my overarching worldview has remained largely the same.
I still want to help people.
I still want to make the world a better place.
The biggest difference between the current version of me and my adolescent self is that I have a radically different perspective on the source of human suffering.
I think we live amidst many systems of oppression, one of which is coercive religious ideology.
Of course, oppressive religious groups don’t exist in a vacuum. Rather, they often work hand in hand with other systems of oppression such as patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and queerphobia to keep people afraid, compliant, and small.
And it is precisely all these intersecting systems of oppression that create and perpetuate suffering—not a “fallen sin nature.”
My goal now (or “calling,” if you will) is no longer to be a light but to dismantle these systems of oppression and to support people as they recover from the harm they’ve experienced.
It’s such an amazing privilege.
Now I’d love to hear a bit about your journey!
Was it theological discrepancies, value differences, or a combination of the two that led you out of your toxic religious group?
Share some of your story in the comments.