Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion

In this landmark account of American women leaving the church, award-winning journalist Sarah Stankorb, author of Disobedient Women, asks why they leave--and where they land.

Ordinarily, women are more religious than men. But these are no ordinary times. In America, where Christianity is still the most common religion, women are vacating churches. In the past decade, 16 million women have left the church. Younger women are disaffiliating from religion faster than men. For some women, leaving is like a dramatic divorce; for others, as one woman tells Stankorb, it's more like women and the church "stopped calling each other."

Exploring trends from the 1980s to today, Damned If She Does is an intimate account of women whose stories got missed during the Christian Right's headline-grabbing rise to power. Their exodus is marked by harm, disillusionment, and drift: from pastors' wives and a national Christian TV show host, to girls whose horrific abuse gives another face to the Catholic sex abuse crisis. Some couldn't stand by a church that cast out their queer friends. Others were maligned for who they loved. Churches with strong opinions on sexual purity and abortion stood beside men with histories of assault. With horror, women who loved the church watched the rise of Christian nationalism and saw their faith bastardized.

Finally, they've had enough. Some are atheists. Others are forging new spiritual avenues through astrology or energy work or connection to their ancestors. Some have a Christian faith they no longer entrust to an institution.

Attuned to emotional subtlety, women's agency, and religious longing, Stankorb asks what happens when a woman realizes that she's damned both if she stays and if she leaves. This consequential work of narrative nonfiction is a poignant reminder that women deserve better, and a tale of what happens when they don't get it.

Sarah Stankorb is the author of Disobedient Women, a USA Today national bestseller, and her reporting has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Slate, and VICE, among others. She covers the intersection of religion, politics, and gender. Stankorb studied religion and philosophy at Westminster College and ethics and South Asian religious history at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her work has received awards from the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Professional Journalists. She lives in Wyoming, Ohio.