Child liberation theologian and abuse survivor advocate Ryan L. Stollar died June 28 at age 42.
The author, speaker and counselor left a detailed note titled “The End” on his website. According to that note, his death was not an impulsive decision but one he had been contemplating for years. The note indicates a pending divorce from his wife may have been a factor in his timing but was not the reason for his death.
Multiple close friends have confirmed in online posts that Stollar has passed, although there has been no official announcement.
In his final blog post, he wrote of his struggles with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, substance abuse, PTSD and suicidal ideation. He also cited the “fascist hellscape” he saw in America today and his despair over that.
Ryan Stollar
“I have spent my whole life making excuses for a god who never raised a finger to spare me from being molested as a child or the lifelong consequences of that abuse,” he wrote. “Those consequences have slowly but surely consumed everything in my life, including now my marriage and soon here me as well.”
Homeschooled from kindergarten through high school graduation, he worked eight years as a public communications educator for high school students in homeschooling communities. He authored the first and only comprehensive curricula on child abuse awareness and suicide prevention specifically tailored to homeschooling families and communities.
He also was author of the 2023 book The Kingdom of Children: A Liberation Theology, published by Eerdmans. Publicity for the book described it as “a liberation theology of the child. Stollar begins with a theoretical framework that centers children in our theology and ecclesial life. Reframing biblical stories to center children, we can see how the binding of Isaac reflects the spiritual effects of child abuse, or how children like Miriam can serve as leaders in their communities. Using scriptural examples as well as real studies of children’s spiritual lives, Stollar asserts that children can be priests, prophets, and theologians in our communities.”
Stollar co-founded the website Homeschoolers Anonymous, and his work was cited in other bestselling books, including Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
Last year, BNG columnist Rick Pidcock interviewed Stollar for his “Highest Power: Church + State” podcast.
“Ryan Stollar was a rare beacon of rest for those of us who felt traumatized by the abusive theology of conservative evangelical patriarchy,” Pidcock said. “After John MacArthur, Voddie Baucham and James Dobson passed away in three successive months, I interviewed Stollar to help those of us who survived their teaching process the wounds they caused.
“Stollar told me: ‘Child liberation theology is a call to us as adults that we need to change our ways. We have to create communities in our churches, in our schools, even in our government, where there’s space for children to be seen and heard as fully human.’ I’ll always remember him as someone who, more than anything else, loved the white evangelical empire’s ‘least of these.’”
Stollar earned a master of health science degree in child protection from Nova Southeastern University and a master of arts degree in Eastern classics from St. John’s College. He lived in the California Bay Area.
His last known writing aside from the death note was a blog post dated June 27 and titled “You Are Not Your Own: And Other Lies Evangelicalism Taught Me.”
Evangelicals fear the exvangelical movement because those who leave evangelicalism understand what they have experienced was, in fact, traumatic, he wrote. “The more evangelicals avoid looking at how their theology itself is actively damaging to many people, the stronger the #exvangelical movement will become.”