'I Was Told Satan Had a Hold on Me': The Real Reason So Many People Are Leaving the Church

From Illinois to Texas and California, Christians who once served, tithed and led worship now describe themselves as 'exvangelical' or simply done, saying they left after painful clashes over politics, power, sexuality and how women and vulnerable people are treated.

Using Pew Research Center data and first-person accounts from former churchgoers, this feature explains why many 'exvangelicals' say they walked away from church life, and why the reasons are often less about doctrine than power, exclusion and exhaustion.

Church Attendance And The Slow Unravelling

Pew's latest Religious Landscape Study shows that 62% of US adults identify as Christians, a figure that has held in the 60% to 64% range since 2019 after years of decline from 78% in 2007.

The same research found that 49% of adults seldom or never attend services in person, while only a third say they go at least once a month.

The news came after years of reporting about the rise of the term 'exvangelical', a label that emerged around 2016 for people who left evangelicalism, whether for another faith, no faith, or something much harder to define.

Some drifted away slowly. Others say they were pushed.

'Exvangelicals' And The Politics In The Pews

Many 'exvangelicals' say the trigger was not a crisis of belief in God so much as a crisis of trust in church leadership. Politics, in particular, looms large.

Patrick, from southern Illinois, spent almost 35 years in non‑denominational evangelical churches before he left. In his telling, sermons that once focused on scripture gradually mutated into something more combative.

'At some point, the preaching became more and more "us vs them" focused,' he said, with the church's self‑declared role in the culture wars 'becoming a central topic more often, and always alluded to no matter what was being preached.' For him, the culture war itself was 'a scam perpetrated on the public by unscrupulous people seeking power.'

His congregation stayed open through much of the pandemic. He says he never saw a mask inside the building. After a high‑profile memorial for a murdered state trooper, the church boomed from 2021 to 2023 as people defected from more cautious congregations. They built a new hall. The mood hardened.

'Men wearing red MAGA hats in the sanctuary, our auditorium, was the last straw for that place,' Patrick said. He finished his volunteer commitment, then walked away.

He now places himself closer to Taoist philosophy than to any Christian label, talks about 'Wu Wei flow with the Tao', and describes his church as a back porch full of birds and wind chimes. He still calls the Bible a sacred book, but one written by men 'trying to explain their immediate reality'. Jesus, in his view, was 'an enlightened individual — a Buddha.'

Concerns on Church's 'Apolitical' Position

Albert, from Kentucky, left for almost the opposite political reason. His non‑denominational church was, in his words, 'how apolitical they were' even as Donald Trump and his supporters, in his view, 'were doing and saying heinous things.'

The church leadership, he felt, stayed studiously neutral while congregants polarised around LGBTQ rights and abortion.

He began to notice coded language: lines like 'You must be strong in your faith, for the enemy is always planning their next step', which could mean anything depending on who the 'enemy' was in the listener's head.

The breaking point was discovering bylaws that quietly required staff and volunteers to affirm marriage as between 'one man and one woman' and to sign up to specific stances on abortion. The slogan that 'everyone is welcome' suddenly looked, to him, very conditional.

After quitting the worship team, he read titles such as Jesus and John Wayne, Star Spangled Jesus and The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, explored evolution and other worldviews, and now describes himself as an agnostic atheist.

'Satan Had A Hold On Me': When Doctrine Meets Trauma

Others left not because their churches were too political or too quiet, but because doctrine collided brutally with real‑world suffering.

Noelle Giuliano from Texas says she had always struggled with her church's stance on LGBTQIA+ people. What finally pushed her out was a Bible study on Matthew 19's teaching on divorce, which her congregation interpreted as virtually banning divorce except in cases of 'sexual immorality.'

When someone asked about women in abusive marriages, leaders suggested that while a woman could find safety, 'reconciliation would be the goal, and divorce is not allowed.' Noelle, herself a survivor of abuse, challenged that and broke down in tears.

She later shared her story and some statistics in a Sunday school group chat. According to her account, 'everything blew up.' She was called into meetings where she says she was told that 'Satan had a hold on me' and that she believed in 'science and statistics more than faith.'

A senior pastor sat through those exchanges and, she says, said nothing beyond barring her from choir 'until this was resolved.'

She left in August 2025. She now avoids church altogether, saying it is hard to find an affirming congregation and harder still to sit in a pew without reliving what happened.

'So many "Christians" are showing their true colours, and I don't want to be around that,' she said. Her faith, she admits, 'is not doing great', yet she still prays, listens to worship music and reads her Bible.

Power, Accountability And Quiet Exits

Alongside politics and doctrine, several exvangelicals point to church governance. For them, the issue is not just what is preached, but who gets to decide and who can be held to account.

Vinny Kopilow, from northern California, describes leaving a church where a husband‑and‑wife team of co‑pastors hand‑picked a leadership circle that, to his eye, answered mainly to them.

People without formal theological training were given the title 'pastor', while those with degrees were called 'directors' or something more decorative. The priority, he felt, had shifted towards growth at almost any cost.

He also heard first‑hand accounts from senior members about teenage girls feeling uncomfortable in youth groups after regular leaders were pushed out, describing behaviour he saw as the early stages of harassment. That combination of centralised power, flimsy oversight and worried whispers about young women was, for him, untenable.

'Leaving was a mix of resentment, frustration and relief,' he said. He and his spouse had poured time, money and effort into the church, only to conclude that their energy was better spent on family, community work they actually believed in and his own education. He no longer attends any church. His belief 'comes and goes', but he still holds to what he calls the core tenets of Christianity: 'loving my neighbour and following Jesus' example.'

Alice, in northern Illinois, left after years of feeling sidelined as a woman and as a disabled person. In her former church, women were barred from leading men. Despite having more biblical training than a younger male co‑leader, she was expected to be subordinate whenever her husband's job kept him away. Once she stepped back from leadership, she says, lifts to women's events dried up, and a snide comment about her service dog became 'the last straw.'

A second church was, in her view, worse: endless group confessions, credit‑card details flashed on‑screen for giving and an emerging embrace of Trump that she could not reconcile with the label 'Christian.'

She still believes in God, she says, but not in the Bible as the literal word of God. If churches genuinely want people like her back, she argues, they would need to become 'more open‑minded and open‑hearted' and stop treating disabled people as charity projects.

Fewer In The Pews, Complicated Faith At Home

The wider numbers suggest these stories sit within a measurable shift rather than on its fringe. Pew's latest Religious Landscape Study finds that only around a third of US adults now attend in‑person services at least monthly, with roughly half saying they seldom or never show up. About 40% say they participate in services at least monthly in person or online.

That does not mean faith itself has evaporated. Some exvangelicals now meditate on the Tao or read Buddhist texts. Others cling to a quieter, more private Christianity stripped of pastors, platforms and church bylaws. What binds them is not a shared doctrine but a decision that the institution which once claimed to hold them together has, in one way or another, lost its moral authority.

The backdrop to these individual accounts is a broader shift in American religion. Pew Research Center estimates that roughly 60 to 64% of Americans still identify as Christian, yet that proportion has been slipping since 2007.

At the same time, about 49% of US adults say they seldom or never attend services in person.

The term 'exvangelical', which began circulating around 2016, has become a loose banner for those who have walked away from evangelical churches, whether they now sit in another pew, follow another faith, or avoid organised religion altogether.