After Evangelicalism Group Study Guide

The Path to a New Christianity

David P. Gushee

Study Guide written by Steve Watson

“Drawing on his own spiritual journey, David Gushee provides an incisive critique of American evangelicalism [and] offers a succinct yet deeply informed guide for post-evangelicals seeking to pursue Christ-honoring lives.”

Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne

Millions are getting lost in the evangelical maze: inerrancy, indifference to the environment, deterministic Calvinism, purity culture, racism, LGBTQ discrimination, male dominance, and Christian nationalism. As one of America’s leading public scholars on these issues in religion today, David Gushee offers a clear assessment and his book After Evangelicalism shines a light on the path forward.

The After Evangelicalism Group Study Guide encourages people to read and reflect together on Christianity after evangelicalism.

This study guide, written by someone who taught the material himself, can be used by individuals or groups to accompany the reading of the book. The guide is structured in five sections, each dealing with two of the book’s chapters. Each week of the guide offers three sections: Getting Ready, giving a summary of the big ideas from the book as well as questions for personal reflection; Group Discussion, offering five or six discussion questions; and Paths Forward, providing supplementary material for going further or deeper. There are also one or two spiritual practices people can try, as well as an optional simple Bible study.

Praise for After Evangelicalism

“Gushee’s book provides an insightful analysis of the evangelical movement. After Evangelicalism is a helpful guide forward for those disillusioned with the church and looking to reconstruct their faith in Jesus.”

Sarah Bessey, author of Miracles and Other Reasonable Things

“As progressive Christians exit evangelical churches and parachurch organizations in droves, many have felt rudderless, unsure of how to reconstruct their theological framework after saying goodbye to the worldview that has shaped them. After Evangelicalism is the compass they need, pointing the way toward a biblically rooted, pro-LGBTQIA, antiracist, justice-oriented, Christian humanism. If there is one book that ex-evangelicals need to read, it is this one.”

Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Professor of practical theology and pastoral care at Columbia Theological Seminary

“Thinking about Christianity after evangelicalism is neither trendy, alarmist, nor faithless, but rather it carves out a needed path forward for those millions of exvangelicals who have found the movement that birthed them to be irrelevant, traumatic, and even abhorrent and are seeking a place to land. Few have earned the right to speak to this topic with such prophetic clarity and practical insight, not to mention approachable writing style, as David Gushee.”

Peter Enns, author of How the Bible Actually Works

“I generally like [Gushee’s] books, but this is my new favorite.”

Tripp Fuller, host of Homebrewed Christianity

“. . . As much as I’ve loved all of David’s books, this one strikes me as his magnum opus, the one most not-to-miss, the one that should not be put on your shelf until you’ve read through to the last page, come what may.” (from the foreword)

Brian McLaren, author of Do I Stay Christian? and Faith after Doubt

“This is the kind of book that church people need to read together: in Sunday School classes, Zoom book clubs, and discipleship groups. It is personal, powerful, and pointed in all the right directions.”

The Meeting House

“After Evangelicalismcould very likely attract significant attention. There are many well-educated, fair-minded, and service-oriented white evangelicals who lack the shortsightedness, insensitivity, and intellectual shallowness Gushee decries. So his critique of their more flawed faith-compatriots rings sadly true. Perhaps his book will be a wake-up call for both.”

The New York Journal of Books

“What distinguishes After Evangelicalism from other critiques and gives the book great value is how Gushee comes to his criticisms…. He begins, in the mode of classical political theology, with Scripture and critically, its exegesis. The through-line of the book is methodology: how does one explore sacred texts for political and personal ethics today? …Gushee’s book is precisely, inspiringly political theology.”

Political Theology

Rev. Prof. Dr. David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, Chair of Christian Social Ethics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Senior Research Fellow, International Baptist Theological Study Centre. He is also the elected past-president of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics. Dr. Gushee is the author, co-author, or editor of 27 books, including the bestsellers Kingdom Ethics and Changing Our Mind. His other most notable works are After Evangelicalism, Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, Introducing Christian Ethics, and The Sacredness of Human Life. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading Christian moral thinkers. Gushee and his wife, Jeanie, live in Atlanta, Georgia. Learn more at davidpgushee.com.

 

Steve Watson is the senior pastor of Reservoir Church, a post-evangelical church in Cambridge, MA. Steve’s life and career have been teaching, coaching and mentoring, organizational and community development, and public healing and justice. Steve has a B.A. in music from Brandeis University, a Masters in Education from UMass-Boston, and is enrolled in Doctorate in Theology and Ministry program at the Center for Open and Relational Theology with Northwind Seminary.