By James Gómez in Reconstructing Faith — 12 Jun 2023

10 Resources to Guide You Through Christian Deconstruction to Reconstruction

I spent 15 years in some capacity of pastoral ministry. During this time, I was a youth pastor in an Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) church, I helped plant a small Korean church, spent time in non-denominational circles, served in various capacities for about a decade in a mega-church affiliated with Acts 29 and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), spent time in Atlanta with an SBC church, worked for the North American Mission Board (NAMB, the church planting wing of the SBC), and finally had my time in ministry epically come crashing down at a small church affiliated with the Crete Collective. Not to be too provocative, but when it comes to evangelicalism, you can say, "I've been around."

Through my experience in these spaces, I came to a place where I'd seen too many things that I couldn't unsee. From narcissistic celebrity Christianity, toxic leadership structures, fear-mongering, gas-lighting, fundamentalism, patriarchy, sexual abuse (#churchtoo anyone?), hypocrisy, and weaponizing the Bible to control congregations, what was left of my faith was in tatters.

Since leaving the ministry, I've incessantly been asking myself things like;

What the hell do I even believe about God anymore? Do I believe in God?
Am I still a Christian? What does being a Christian even mean?
What do I believe about the Bible, Jesus, Faith, Heaven/Hell, etc...?

For most of the last year, I emotionally oscillated between rage and sorrow regarding anything faith-related. Initially, all I had to go off of was raw emotions. Eventually, Richard Rohr became an exceptional resource in giving me language and buckets to understand the process I was working through. According to Rohr, there are 3 phases of the Christian life, order, disorder, and reorder. I've modified them a bit to better make sense to me in this season. My version is order, deconstruction, and reconstruction.

I won't describe each phase in detail but will offer a summary. Rohr describes order as;

We begin with almost entirely tribal thinking, mirroring the individual journey, which starts with an egocentric need for “order” and “self.” Only gradually do we move toward inclusive love. (Order, Disorder, Reorder)

Order is going with the flow, trusting what your pastor, church, or tradition teaches, and taking it at face value. Often, Christianity or religion, in general, is systematized and packaged so that God becomes compartmentalized so that we can then make sense of the world based on each compartment. For example, we can ask why people do bad things. Answer: Adam and Eve ate an apple and introduced sin into the world.

Deconstruction is usually triggered by trauma, abuse, hypocrisy, all of the above, etc., where the individual begins to stop taking what they've been taught about faith at face value. In this phase, the deconstructionist starts asking questions and looking for new perspectives and viewpoints around what they've been taught as the truth. Keeping with the Adam and Eve example, the deconstructionist may ask:

Were Adam and Eve real people?
Was the author of Genesis even trying to describe how sin entered the world?
Is Genesis even meant to be taken literally?

This is where I've been for the majority of the last year. Lots of questions, emotions, loss of relationships, accusations of losing my faith, becoming a heretic, and feelings of rage and sorrow. I've learned along the way that you can only tear down so much before you get to a point where the healthiest next step is to rebuild, or as Rohr calls it, reorder, as I see it reconstruct.

Reconstruction is about figuring out what you believe about God and faith without turning faith into another belief structure to create us vs. them, a list of rules determining who is in and who is out with God, or hierarchies disproportionately empowering one group over others. Reconstruction is rare because it requires the deconstructionist to use their pain and trauma as a source of strength. Strength in knowing that God uses the darkness of our stories to grow our trust, break us free from the abusive religious system we were in, and ultimately bring us closer to God and others through our mess and brokenness in new and deeper ways.

For those seeking to take a step toward reconstruction, here are ten resources that have helped validate my experiences by showing the magnitude of toxicity in the American church or have helped me rebuild my faith in a new way.