Another Big Blow to American Conservative Evangelicalism
I Kissed Dating Goodbye helped shape purity culture for many Christian millennials. It sold 1.2 million copies worldwide. Many more books of Harris were to follow.
Harris was lead pastor of Covenant Life Church, the founding church of Sovereign Grace Ministries, in Gaithersburg, Maryland from 2004 until 2015.
In 2016, he announced that he was reconsidering the content of I Kissed Dating Goodbye and apologized to people who said that they had been “hurt by its teachings.”
In 2018, Harris disavowed I Kissed Dating Goodbye and discontinued its publication.
Harris married Shannon Boone in 1998. The pair has three children. In July 2019, Harris announced that he and his wife, Shannon, were separating.
Later that month, Harris posted on Facebook that he no longer considers himself a Christian.
Carl A. Trueman writes on FirstThings.com (July 30) that the style of Harris’ apostasy announcement was oddly consistent with the evangelical Christianity he used to represent,
“He revealed he was leaving the faith, with a social media post, which included a mood photograph of himself contemplating a beautiful lake.”
And, “The earlier announcement of his divorce used the typical postmodern jargon of ‘journey’ and ‘story.’ And both posts were designed to play to the emotions rather than the mind."
