Where Would You Be...If Not for Evangelicalism?

A little thought experiment

Do you have an alternate reality you wonder about — a road not traveled that you are maybe wistful you didn’t take? Do you ever think about the myriad impacts being an all-in evangelical had on your life and what would be different if that religion hadn’t formed you?

All of our lives are made up of a million tiny changes that we have no idea of their impact, so I know it wouldn’t be as simple as I’m making it out to be. But one moment stands out to me as a choice not made that I imagine shaped my career trajectory.

Photo by Alexander Milo on Unsplash

When I was in college, I was a devoted “progressive evangelical” who’d shed some of the anti-LGBTQ beliefs (but not the internalized ones!), who voted for Barack Obama, and who read the Bible without a literal lens. I had shifted to a social justice mindset but with the same ferocity of my once-fundamentalist mindset: guilt-laden, black-and-white thinking, and trying to make myself as small as possible (in more ways than one, but that’s a post for another day!). I had a horrible internal conflict about the money and privilege I lived amongst while there were homeless people camped outside the elegant gates of my college’s aboretum campus. I felt a constant need to atone for my sins, whatever they were, which often included my very existence. My existence was too much: I was undeserving, I was wrong for having the comforts I did, and anything I could do to undo the opulence of my presence on earth was going to be a good thing.

Oof, it was a heavy way to live. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, in many ways.

When I was preparing for my senior year of college, I had the opportunity to participate in a prestigious research program where I could do a summer-long research project in my field (child development / community development: yes of course I was a do-gooder with my major!). AND it came with a stipend of $4000, which was approximately a million dollars in my mind.

My other option I had found was doing an internship at the Denver Rescue Mission, working to help unhoused people get back on their feet and in secure housing again. I would be doing case management work, sustained by a stipend in the ballpark of $100 / month, living in a converted motel room with two other female interns my age. DRM, like many rescue missions, upholds conservative Christian values.

You can see where this is going.

I firmly believe life is not about status or money, and that the fancy degrees you hold or the number of digits in your salary say nothing about you as a human being and how you treat other people. But yes, I took the internship at DRM. My rationale at the time was that this was the choice in line with my values — serving the poor and needy, living on as little income as possible, living in community with other interns and the people in transitional housing.

Those are not bad values! But I can see how I limited my options heavily based on my sense of worth and deserving. I associated money with evil, with selfishness. I had too much guilt to take an exciting research position in my little ivory tower.

There’s no way of saying what was the “right” or “wrong” choice (and frankly, I don’t believe any of the choices like that are right or wrong — they just are.).

I met one of my best friends at the DRM who I continue to be close with to this day. I learned that I definitely don’t like case management, which I suppose was an important ruling-out for a future job. I met a group of gung-ho guys (also interns) from Cambodia who were fervently Christian, and occasionally had brief theological spats with one of them. I did get to have that summer-camp type intensity of community with others, going on guilt-tinged 14er mountain hikes, early morning runs, and adventures to downtown Denver.

But I still wonder. What if I had taken the research position? What if that had encouraged me to pursue a PsyD or a PhD down the line? What if I were a psychologist today? What if the skill set I could offer people (in terms of more testing in addition to therapy) were broader? [I especially feel this way after finding that it costs thousands of dollars to download testing materials to clinically diagnose autism!]

If I were doing a program like that today, I think I’d want to do research around ADHD and autism in girls and women. Me of 2010 didn’t know that, so I’m sure I would have done something different. But it makes you wonder.

So? Where do you imagine you might be, without the influence of evangelicalism? What’s one thing you could point to as your fork in the road where you went one way and alternate you went another way?