Wrestling with Christian faith—questioning, doubting, reforming, and even falling away from it—has been a part of the Christian tradition so long as there’s been a Christian tradition. Christianity asserts some big claims concerning the world, and a healthy faith can mean wrestling with these claims sooner or later along our faith journey. The result can be a more robust faith, even whether it is a somewhat reformed faith.
But that is actually not the way it goes for everybody. Sometimes one can’t get past an objection that calls the reality of Christianity into query. Other times, living by ethical claims that run counter to current cultural norms proves too heavy a burden. Sometimes the sheer audacity of the claims of Christianity leads people to dismiss them as unbelievable and unserious. And then there’s the presence of scandal and abuse inside the ranks of church leaders. With church-related trauma all too common nowadays, some people simply want out.
These experiences, often lived out on social media and other online channels, travel under the banner of religion deconstruction. Deconstruction is considered one of those terms that feels familiar, even when most individuals know little about its roots. While it began as a term of art with Twentieth-century postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida, I think most faith deconstructions aren’t being informed by a study in Derridean semantic theory! Today, deconstruction may discuss with a wide range of experiences.
To help with the confusion, Alisa Childers and Timothy Barnett offer their latest book, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How to Respond. As their subtitle makes clear, Childers and Barnett take a critical stance toward the deconstruction movement. Their tone is decisively polemical toward what they discover as a grave danger facing the church.
Two potential misunderstandings
Before going further, it’s value highlighting a pair ways the book may be misunderstood. First, it shouldn’t be primarily a book for those going through deconstruction. As the authors stipulate, its primary audience is “Christians who’re experiencing deconstruction from the skin.” The book, then, is written for individuals who are watching another person, perhaps a member of the family or a friend, undergo deconstruction. And the authors hope we may be equipped to observe and potentially guide that process in fruitful ways.
The second possible misunderstanding has to do with the goal of the book’s criticism. Childers and Barnett have a quite narrow focus. This is seen of their definition of deconstruction. They say, “Faith deconstruction is a postmodern means of rethinking your faith without regarding Scripture as a normal.”
Those who see deconstruction in a more positive light probably won’t appreciate this definition. One might even see the book’s criticisms as aimed toward a straw man that doesn’t resemble one’s own experience of doubting or questioning Christian faith. But this might be since the book isn’t aimed toward addressing every possible number of deconstruction.
As I understand the authors, they don’t bear in mind someone who merely doubts the reality of Christianity, and even someone who’s abandoning the religion after evaluating it on the premise of the evidence at hand. Instead, they’re responding to those that use subjective standards—what they call a postmodern process—to come back to views that align with cultural norms quite than biblical norms. While this may increasingly not be everyone’s type of deconstruction, the authors argue that it’s (all too) common and support this claim with a raft of statements from leading voices within the deconstruction movement.
Truths of fact and preference
Childers and Barnett make use of an analogy made famous by the ever-prescient Twentieth-century theologian Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer imagined a two-story constructing for instance two different sorts of truth.
On the lower story, we’ve got objective truths, resembling those present in science and arithmetic. You would operate in a lower-story framework if, as an example, you were constructing a bridge, fixing your automobile, or doing all of your taxes—all tasks that may’t be accomplished without reliance upon objective facts. On the upper story, nevertheless, we’ve got the truths of preference and what we take to be personally meaningful. Within the upper story, you would possibly give opinions in your favorite ice cream, how someone should decorate their house, or what you personally find inspirational.
In sum, lower-story truths are facts made true by the best way the world is, whereas the upper story consists of subjective truths which might be, in a way, as much as us and our preferences.
In many deconstruction stories, argue Childers and Barnett, lower-story truths play a minimal role. In other words, we see little concern for evidence that either does or doesn’t substantiate the reality of Christian claims. Instead, we frequently hear assurances that one needed to follow one’s heart or be true to oneself.
In a related vein, deconstruction narratives sometimes report a means of discovering that certain Christian doctrines are toxic or oppressive. It’s often quite unclear what makes a claim toxic or oppressive, and in lots of cases the accusation amounts to an expression of subjective distaste. But this shifts the claims of religion from the lower story to the upper story. If a selected flavor of ice cream is distasteful, then by all means reject it. But this doesn’t work so well for lower-story matters like medical diagnoses. The truth about one’s medical condition may be quite unpleasant to listen to, but it surely could be silly to reject the bad news simply for its undesirability.
Connecting this theme to the Christian faith, Childers and Barnett acknowledge that we may find some parts of it distasteful. But such evaluations, they argue, should take a back seat to considerations of objective truth and falsehood. Just like a medical diagnosis, what ultimately matters is whether or not the claims of Christianity correspond to reality.
Recovery or ‘improvement?’
It is typically said that the deconstruction movement is an extension of the Protestant Reformation. After all, reformers like Martin Luther rejected key doctrines professed by the church. Seen on this light, Luther was deconstructing the religion long before there have been any YouTube and TikTok channels.
Childers and Barnett see little affinity between the Reformation and the contemporary phenomenon of deconstruction, as they’ve defined it. The thrust of the Reformation was a return to biblical fidelity. Proponents of deconstruction, alternatively, seek to “‘improve’ [Christianity] in line with their very own personal beliefs and preferences quite than to get well the unique, which they feel is harmful or oppressive.”
The authors admit that there are “many areas where the church has lost its way.” But even when people have legitimate concerns, this calls for a spirit of reformation, oriented toward the recovery of biblical truth quite than an impulse for wholesale deconstruction.
Childers and Barnett make the purpose that virtually all deconstruction stories mention the place of questions in launching the deconstruction journey. Questions must be encouraged, they emphasize, they usually chide Christians who give overconfident and pat answers or, worse, no answers in any respect. But we’ve got to be mindful of where the questions are coming from and what their askers may be looking for. As the authors observe, “Some questions seek answers, and a few questions seek exits.” They advise taking care to discern where individuals are within the deconstruction process and assessing their readiness for substantive conversations about faith. Where we see that readiness, we engage their questions as best we are able to.
What comes next
Childers and Barnett are primarily focused on deconstruction. But deconstruction is a fundamentally negative project. When we deconstruct, we take something apart. What good does that something provide when it lies before us in pieces? At some point, we’ll replace our deconstructed view with one other view about reality and the nice life.
While there are a variety of ways, each good and bad, to take something apart, I’d suggest that a more vital focus is the means of putting it back together. I fear that in all our discussions about deconstruction, we lose sight of what to do in light of the beliefs we’ve discarded.
To be clear, there are some really ill-advised ways to rethink our faith, and The Deconstruction of Christianity does a worthy job of highlighting them. Unfortunately, people can sometimes blow up their faith in ill-advised ways. Rethinking one’s faith could be an emotionally charged experience, and for some, it should be difficult—if not nearly inconceivable—to do it in a really principled way. So it’s going to get messy.
What comes next, though, is what’s crucially vital. Now that we’ve called all of it into query, what’s going to we consider? How will we go about determining it? Will we be as tough on our latest view as we were on traditional Christianity? Or will we just accept uncritically whatever is culturally fashionable? Deconstruction could also be difficult and painful for a lot of reasons, but the toughest work lies in what comes next.
Travis Dickinson is professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University. His books include Wandering Toward God: Finding Faith amid Doubts and Big Questions.
