What I realized then, and have been processing ever since, is that the Christianity I converted to was as much about a particular myth of the United States as it was about the gospel of Christ. Scholars now call this “Christian nationalism.” I didn’t have the term to label it back then. In the decade after I departed the church in 2005, I identified how the American myth had twisted American evangelicalism into a tradition that prioritizes patriotism over compassion, national defense over loving one’s neighbor, and protecting the unborn more than loving anyone on earth.
