From Embodied Contradictions to Self-Authorship: Survivors of Abuse Leaving Evangelical Churches

Abstract Sociological research on women evangelicals has tended to focus on how they exercise agency within a gender traditional context. But what happens when it becomes untenable to stay, such as in cases of abuse? This article draws on interviews with survivors of abuse in evangelical contexts to understand the pathways and experiences that brought survivors to leave. We theorize embodied contradictions between religious identity and bodily experiences in the wake of abuse as central factors in survivors’ decisions to leave. We argue that leaving after abuse involves a shifting interpretive relationship to the body, sparked by the recognition that continuing to live with embodied contradictions is untenable. We discuss two processes by which our participants came to see the embodied contradictions they were living as unsustainable and demonstrate how coming to this recognition initiated a shift from an interpretive relationship to their bodies associated with the male gaze, patriarchal authority, and feminine submission to one that emphasized bodily autonomy and self- authorship.