What keeps gnawing at me is the question, what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us today?
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters And Papers From Prison (Letter 137)
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This is my last article of 2026 —do keep an eye out for my annual reading list in December— so I was looking back through my writings to see if I needed to clarify anything. Having felt like I made some personal progress, specifically with exploring ideas of enchantment and faith, nothing jumped out at me as needing further attention, at least for now.
So what to finish the year with? Well, I recently made the mistake of logging onto Facebook, which I avoid as much as possible, and got an answer. Besides the family and pet photos, I was greeted with a slew of religious voices railing against all manner of things that bother them: more nuanced takes on gender, the new Narnia adaptation, a Muslim dude running for elected office in a state they don’t live, and the phenomenon of religious deconstruction.
It’s been a few years since I wrote about deconstruction directly, as that experience has receded so far into the background for me. A lot of folks are still very much in it though, while others who aren’t find the experience genuinely confusing, as some religious voices have weaponized the language of deconstruction for their own benefit. As we continue shifting into post-modernity, I expect we’re going to see more people question the picture of reality that was handed down to them in religion, politics, culture…it all feels less captivating and irrelevant the further we move away from modernity.
The future looks messy in part because deconstruction is messy and extends well beyond Christian spaces. When lived experience no longer matches the story we are told about reality, deconstruction becomes the logical, inevitable result. From an article I wrote way back in 2021:
“Faith deconstruction is the systematic taking apart of one’s belief system for examination. This can mean asking a wide array of questions ranging from the theological to the practical. It can mean questioning concepts such as biblical inerrancy, the culture of their church, the practical application — or misapplication — of the Gospel, and much more. Faith deconstruction can begin at many different points for many different reasons.
If this just sounds like an intellectual exercise it definitely is not. Deconstruction is confronting hard questions triggered by grievous experiences that a believer has suppressed for years, forcing them to finally deal with the doubts and concerns that have always been there, lurking in the shadows.
Doubt stemming from church hurt is usually what drives deconstruction. The question underneath all the other questions is relatively straightforward: ‘Can I trust my beliefs and the way I operate in them anymore?’”
I don’t believe these words were wrong, but they are just an explanation of the starting point for a lot of people. So I want to share a little about the nature of deconstruction itself, including for the religious folks who believe asking sincere questions is a threat to the Gospel, the Church, or whatever term they want to use today.
The problem of language
Like most words that serve as a catch-all for various messy experiences, deconstruction means different things to different people. On one hand that makes some of the confusion understandable, including by those who are wary of it. On the other it makes it too easy for bad actors to hijack the term for their own gain.
When deconstruction comes up in white evangelical spaces —the dominant form of acceptable religion where I live— it is usually talked about as people leaving the faith or becoming progressive or being deceived by wokeness or something like that. Considering how right-wing and brittle this subculture has become that’s as unsurprising as it is frustrating. When most everything is to your left politically and culturally, including conservatives, perceived threats and enemies will be seen everywhere even when they don’t exist.
I think this is why using the term deconstruction to describe those breaking away from acceptable religion has probably become less than helpful. Not because the white evangelical bubble has twisted the term into something it is not, although that’s certainly at play, but because the term is too much of a grab bag to describe a number of specific experiences. Human language is an imprecise tool, and the term deconstruction is useful as an identity marker for those searching for others who are on the same or similar paths. There are real benefits and loneliness can be overcome in that, but that’s where most of the benefits of the term’s usage seems to end.
Melting idols, ongoing temptations
In reality, often times deconstruction ends up melting down the idols that those inside acceptable religion foisted upon you. What emerges after tends to look more like faith and less like religion. This explains the fear and attacks in some Christian spaces toward those who are deconstructing, even though what’s usually happening is that people are simply refusing to bow to the idols anymore.
None of this means deconstruction is a perfect process that delivers a guaranteed outcome. There’s a lot of muddling along through broken beliefs and shattered relationships, followed by growing self-reflection that often leads to feelings of guilt for what you were once a part of. So much of what passes for acceptable religion in my cultural context especially is just a branch of empire and stands opposed to the Kingdom of God. People feel guilty when they come to understand this, because we are guilty. Simply walking away isn’t an option as empire, by its very nature, inflicts harm on those it rejects and marginalizes. One cannot truly ignore empire because empire doesn’t ignore you. Its appetite can never be satiated.
This explains the outrage and anger people feel in their darkest hours as they sift through the ashes of their beliefs and the notions of what they thought used to be home. Not only do they see the damage being done in the name of biblical truth or the will of God or Christianity, they feel the damage done to themselves, too. And because the knee-jerk impulses are often times still there, there can be some lashing out from those struggling through deconstruction. This has sometimes been described as fundamentalism running in the other direction, which there can be some truth to, at least if it goes on for long enough. At the outset though, it has more to do with those who are deconstructing beginning to identify with those who have long been harmed by acceptable religion. People do and should feel upset about that.
In my experience, if there is something to fear about deconstruction, it’s neither that the person’s life will change for the worse —it probably will for a time— nor that people will leave the faith entirely. Even those who do leave the faith tend to behave in more Christlike ways than those inside the fold of acceptable religion do. From my article on enchantment a few months ago:
“This begs the question: who is actually ‘Christian’ in our situation? Is it the person who goes to church every Sunday with a mostly inward-looking, individualistic set of beliefs? Or is it the person who has left religion and even core beliefs behind, but who genuinely thinks and acts and feels more like Jesus did in the world? What about the people struggling to be better in between? And where is God to be found in all of this?”
No, the real concern should be around how easy it is to build new idols out of old ones. We humans are exceptionally good at making idols, and idols are notoriously difficult to fully destroy. Deconstruction often does melt the idols down; however, the beliefs, materials, cultural bits, and ideas that allowed those idols to exist in the first place lie hidden in the melted pool of what remains. These things don’t disappear overnight. This is why there needs to be some grace for people coming to terms with just how much they need to uproot in themselves and, hopefully, begin a deeper work to be freed from empire.
There are some real critiques to be made if these things are not dealt with. Many deconstructing spaces are overwhelmingly, culturally white, chiefly because this phenomenon emanates from white evangelical spaces. And there can be a tendency in those who are deconstructing to speak for or over long-oppressed people instead of with them. The impulse of this acceptable religion to see selfish action as the will of God usually carries over into deconstruction, and more harms can be done to those who have always been marginalized as a result. This impulse also does not disappear overnight, but it should lessen with time. If it doesn’t then there is a problem.
In summary, deconstruction does make it easier to identify the acceptable idols of the day, which can create further space to discover the more subtle and sinister ones lurking in the ruins of the idols that have been melted down. But that’s where the real work begins and it can;t be finished overnight.
Closing Thoughts
Deconstruction may not be something I identify much with anymore, but I find it frustrating that the places pushing people into deconstruction still seem to have no ability to understand they are the cause of the very phenomenon they dislike. Much worse, their beliefs and actions —and sometimes lack thereof when it matters most— are the cause of so much harm we are seeing today.
Going back to the problem of language for a moment, I suppose what I’m getting at here is a question: how do we defang the beast that is acceptable religion, a beast that defines peoples’ experiences untruthfully for its own material and cultural gain?
I don’t have an answer to the first part of that question, but I think there is something helpful with regard to the second. Picking another term for deconstruction isn’t a solution, as those inside acceptable religion will just reinterpret another overly broad word into whatever they want it to mean. Instead, maybe we just need a handful of more precise words that better explain the various deconstructive experiences people are having.
This is one reason why disenchantment has resonated with me. It is a much more precise component of deconstruction, one that is very real for a lot of folks and that acceptable religion doesn’t know what to do with. What do I mean by that? Even if white evangelicals are correct in their religious and cultural beliefs —and I don’t think they are— it still doesn’t matter with regard to them persuading others. As I previously wrote:
“Even when the language is softer and politics is put aside, a lot of what is being said in sermons, Bible studies, and more about God and the nature of atonement is just hard to connect with. It often doesn’t feel relevant to daily life or makes God feel two-dimensional.”
A core belief of today’s acceptable religion is that it has all the answers and all the right language to explain those answers. From a followup article to the above one:
“If Christianity is rooted in historical events as so many evangelicals claim it is —something I happen to agree with, although likely in a different mode— then Christianity as a religion is subject to the same historical forces all religions are, whether we like it or not. Christianity is not holy because we call it holy. It is not unique because we say it is unique. Christ is not at the center of our religion just because we mindlessly say he is. No acceptable religion of the day is above critique, especially historical and Scriptural critique. Indeed, if Christ is already at the center of the world and already redeeming it, then the Jesus story is the first to call our religion into question.”
Put another way: language, needs, and our understanding of reality change with time. This is not a value statement. It’s simply the reality of being finite beings living in history. Acceptable religion is rarely capable of understanding this; as such, it believes it is above critique entirely, all the while not understanding why a broken world looks back in confusion and exasperation at its’ culture and language that were always flawed to begin with.
In the end, deconstruction is defined in large part by loss. For those holding the looking glass up to their own lives and seriously questioning what they have been a part of, it’s the loss of a tribe that once felt safe. For those who remain inside acceptable religion with an idolatry they genuinely believe is being biblical, it’s experiencing the loss of people who see their idols and realize the situation cannot stand. This kind of loss struck me as inevitable recently, whens my wife and I rewatched The Rings of Power in anticipation of the imminent new season. At the very end of season 2, while holding back tears, the little Harfoot Poppy shares what their recently killed community leader told her after her parents died:
“And sometimes the winds blowing against us are just too strong. At those times, Mr. Burrows said, ‘We just got to accept it. What’s broke is broke and won’t fix. And all anybody can do is try to build something new.’”
So how does one begin doing that in the primary world? Two things come to mind, both from Bonhoeffer. The first is from his letter After 10 Years, which I’ve quoted before:
We will not need geniuses, cynics, people who have contempt for others, or cunning tacticians, but simple, uncomplicated, and honest human beings. Will our inner strength to resist what has been forced on us have remained strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves blunt enough, to find our way back to simplicity and honesty?”
I think Bonhoeffer’s wisdom here is so applicable to our own times. We still have space to be honest with people and persuade them that there’s a better road than the one that leads to ruin. But even that must be preceded with another question Bonhoeffer asked, one that should always be a perennial one for Christians across time and space:
“What keeps gnawing at me is the question, what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us today?”
Instead of listlessly answering this question with the language passed down us —language many of us have only begun to question the last few years— we’d be wise to take a step back and ask anew with as much honesty as we can muster.
The answers may be something that we do not expect.
About Me
I explore faith, church culture, and formation in the American South from my hometown of Memphis, TN. I often feel as if I don’t fit into the dominant church culture around me. Everything here is an expression of my faith and love for the Church as I try to figure this Jesus thing out.
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