I watched the Netflix documentary “Death of a Pastor’s Wife” recently. I thought I could approach it academically and analyze it like any piece of investigative journalism, but halfway into the first episode my chest tightened with a familiar, heavy ache.

It felt like the filmmakers had somehow stumbled into our sanctuaries and college Bible study groups and learned our language—the precise, cultural vocabulary that evangelicals share, the language that tells us we are safe. It is the music that whispers stay, even when the foundation beneath our feet is fracturing.

I haven’t been a part of an evangelical church in over five years. After covid, I left because the weight of institutional trauma and grief became too heavy to carry. I left because I could not look away from what I had witnessed of the quiet, systemic injustice of how women were treated, how even though I consider myself a critical thinker, believed in the autonomy of the local church, and never thought it affected me personally, that system had shaped who I was as a wife.

After my divorce I found some refuge in the Methodist church in my town. Under Pastor Brad Elrod it felt like a healing place, a quiet harbor. Yet, watching that documentary, I was hit by a wave of holy homesickness that caught me off guard.

The filmmakers capture the magnetic elements that make the evangelical subculture feel like a warm blanket on a cold night. They show how a congregation of just a few hundred people will somehow have enough raw musical talent to feel like a concert. They capture the sweet chaos of little children running wild after the........

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