'Robbed us all of autonomy': Former evangelical leader explains why she left life behind

Author and speaker Jen Hatmaker said the evangelical system she once thrived in “robbed" her of her "autonomy,” marking a decisive shift away from the life script she followed for decades.

Hatmaker, who married at 19 and for 26 years lived what seemed an enviable evangelical life, complete with a pastor-husband, five children, a home-renovation TV show and a national platform as a women’s ministry leader — says she now sees that path as deeply scripted by evangelical culture.

In an interview with Religion News Service published Monday, she described growing up steeped in what she calls purity culture, complimentarian gender roles and ministry zeal, all of which she believes constrained identity and agency.

Discussing her new memoir, Hatmaker reflected that everything she ever learned about being a woman — wife, mother, minister — came from her religious environment, and that there was “no separating the two.”

The result, she says, was the erosion of her own agency, saying: “That system robbed us all of autonomy.”

Her book, Awake, was released last month and is a divorce memoir, but "it is also an evangelical testimony — whether or not she would claim that label for herself," according to the article.

"Though these beats may sound familiar to anyone who has read of or personally experienced evangelical deconstruction, Hatmaker’s offering is fresh and funny and, given her history as an evangelical women’s leader, may serve as something of an archetype," the piece added.

Hatmaker's journey of “ditching the evangelical scripts," as the article put it, is central to the memoir, as she grapples with the ways in which that system both propelled her career and, in her view, sowed the seeds for its unraveling.