Jason Kirk’s new novel Hell is a world without you is not my usual reading fare. His CT book isn’t the usual cover fare either. As you will understand in our conversation below, Kirk has left evangelicalism behind and reflects on the church of his youth with a critical, if somewhat sympathetic, eye.
I was too shy a teenager to really embrace early 2000s youth group life, but the setting of Kirk’s childhood church—which serves as the backdrop for his book—was also basically the setting of my childhood. Many of today’s evangelical-evangelical conversations, which can be charged, if they take place, also arise from this framework; so I was intrigued by the prospect of a writer not only willing but eager to talk about this divide. I contacted Kirk, a sports journalist has Athleticismto discuss his experience and representation of evangelicalism, evangelicalism, deconstruction, and more.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Let’s start with the basics: Tell me a little about yourself, the book, and how you came to write it.
I was raised Southern Baptist in Atlanta and grew up going to church Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening, until I started college. I had quite the career of an evangelical child.
As a teenager, I began to have a vague, nagging, constant feeling that I didn’t fit in in a conservative, highly controlled religion, even though that’s where all my friends were and we had all the fun, joy, music and hugs. and laughter and pizza. This disconnect involved a mix of emotions, politics, social things, philosophies, events I witnessed, and more, as is the case with just about any major life change of each one.
In my twenties, I ignored religion as much as possible, although I only felt a slight bitterness. But after college, I started working in sports media, and that’s where I started meeting a lot of people from all over the country, some of whom had similar upbringings. Through this, I began to realize that all the things I thought I had left behind when I left the church during college were still with me, and that other people had had similar experiences: Oh yeah, it was a little weird that Wednesday night at church when someone put on a hell of a show and someone had a kid read a fake note from someone who was in hell asking why no one had shared the Gospel with him.
In conversations comparing these memories, I began to understand that there was a story here that seemed so underrepresented in fiction. Obviously, there are many excellent non-fiction books (on evangelicalism and deconstruction), and many people are familiar with the “outdated Catholic” version. But there is very little fiction that tells the story of someone who left this very specific type of church – this turn-of-the-century evangelical church. I’ve decided, This book should exist. I guess I should start.
I’ve seen some of the reception to the book, but I’m curious who you think is your typical reader. Is it mainly people who recognize themselves in the story – ex-millennial evangelicals? Have you heard from readers who still consider themselves evangelical?
It’s a mix of people who grew up in evangelism and left that space, but also people who knew nothing about evangelism. And I kind of take them for a ride. Many people have contacted me to tell me either: Thanks for showing me myself in the storyOr, Thanks for explaining why my neighbors are the way they are..
As for people who are still in conservative evangelicalism, I haven’t heard from a ton of those people yet. I’m very interested to hear what they have to say as the book comes to them.
You told a story that, in many ways, is very evocative: the AOL Instant Messenger transcripts were frankly Also recognizable, but of course, it’s also just a story. Did you feel any tension, given how many people grew up in this turn-of-the-century evangelical church doesn’t feel mistreated and doesn’t leave?
I tried to portray a variety of characters, to have a range of religious perspectives among the characters that I hope readers will enjoy even if they don’t share their exact experiences. Many of them continue to be Christians of various kinds. My wife has been essentially Protestant all her life. I met many of my best friends at church and they are still Christians.
And I am still some sort of Christian. In my 30s, I finally started to go back, examine things I never realized were deep trauma, learn to forgive myself and many others, and then find theological and political responses that reframed everything for the future. Turns out the Christians who shaped me were wrong to claim that if I don’t agree with them on everything, I can’t keep anything.
So I’ve come back to a version of Christianity – in part through the process of writing this book, discovering so much about the Bible, about Jesus, about the kinds of Christian theology and Christian politics that I love . I have come back to a place where I love the mystery of God. I like the idea that the universe is progressing toward the creation of all new things. I love Mary’s politics in Luke chapter 1. I love the anti-imperialism we see from Exodus to Revelation.
There are so many things about Christianity that I love, and that has always been the framework in which I think. It’s just that I managed to change the scaffolding a bit, I suppose.
Hell appears in the title, so it’s no spoiler that this is a major theological issue in the book, and particularly for the protagonist, Isaac. This is a topic I have also struggled with, relating to what CS Lewis wrote in The great divorceand I understand how to discover different theological perspectives within the confines of the small-Oh orthodoxy can be a kind of lifeline.
But I have a thesis on deconstruction of which I am more and more convinced: it is that few people deconstruct or deconvert mostly because of theology. Many of the reasons people leave the faith…and there is research on this– are more mundane and much less a matter of principle, like the difficulty of finding a new church after moving or after being forced to do things as a Christian that you don’t want to do. Am I too cynical?
I think you are right. I think it’s a mix. For me the questions started with, I don’t like what an adult said to me. RIGHT? I admit it, absolutely. It started with, What this adult just told me makes no sense. This adult just told me that I should believe this thing, but the Bible says this something else, and this other adult says this something else.
For me, theology was something of a death blow, but having a head full of shame, guilt, and anger was far more motivating for me than any theological discovery. But once I started seeing God not as something we can’t even escape even if we die, but rather as someone who loves us no matter who we are when we die, it was a turning point. It was a recovery to leave This thing made me feel bad throughout my teenage years has Wait a minute, there are parts that I loved, and those are still mine, and no one can take them away from me just because a pastor said crazy things to everyone in the room for a twenty years.s.
I would like your perspective on evangelical-evangelical relations. This point of contact often seems very tense, certainly within families, but also on the Internet. Sometimes these are people who act in bad faith, but they are also people who talk about each other to the point that neither party can imagine that the other could be sincere or sincerely seeking a good end. Do you think this relationship can – on any scale – be good or better than it is?
Obviously, I’m very biased. But for me, what will remain a gigantic sticking point is the complete and utter embrace of right-wing politics by much of evangelicalism. I do not want to say each evangelical or each evangelical church, of course, but we arrive at a point where this word, evangelicalwill become for all intents and purposes synonymous with Right wing.
And for me, a biased person, I do not see right-wing politics in the words of Jesus preaching unity, forgiveness and redistribution of wealth. The gospel is political, and it always has been, and I don’t think there’s any wiggle room as to whether (Christians) should love their enemies or not. Jesus said we should love our enemies. There isn’t much wiggle room when it comes to whether we should love our neighbors.
So when I hear prominent evangelical leaders say, in essence, that we should not love our neighbor, it is difficult to find common ground. It’s (a little unfair) to say: Well, these people should change, and then we’ll stop arguing. But for me, it’s a choice: Is Jesus Lord or is America Lord? Because they can’t both be Lord.
You exalt the commandment to love our enemies, and I fully agree with that. I spent a lot of time in the Mennonite tradition. But aren’t the right-wingers your enemies to love? Even if it’s their failure to love their enemies who puts them in this category?
Of course, absolutely. I mean, look at the Gospel and see which enemies Jesus loves the most: tax collectors. Who would be a tax collector today? A cop, right? And for a leftist, who would be more offensive to kiss than a cop?
If Jesus were here right now, yes, he would hang out with people the right despises, and he would hang out with people the left despises at the same time. He would have a point of view – he would have a worldview – and when it comes to deciding who is right, I don’t see him siding with people who promote what I consider oppression.
And when it comes to love, I mean, I don’t consider disagreement to be hate. Without wanting to return everything to the book…
No no. This is why we are here.
One of the characters is a pastor who adheres to right-wing politics because he is motivated by fear that his church is not leading enough people to what he believes is the gospel. His church is moving toward Christian nationalism, but that’s because this man wants to keep people from going to hell. He adopts this kind of policy because it gets them through the door where they can then meet him at the altar.
I tried to write a story where if the bad guys are right, then they do the right thing. Ultimately, it comes down to the question: If this is how God works, how do we respond to God? If God designed an afterlife that works this way, will we accept it or not? And for me, that’s the fundamental question of the book.
