STORY OF THE WEEK: The Nine Stages of Faith Deconstruction
Charting a Course Through Doubt and Disillusionment
For the first three and a half decades of my life, the church was more than just a place of worship. It was my second home. And I never imagined myself leaving. In fact, I envisioned myself faithfully occupying a pew until my final days, laid to rest among familiar faces and hymns.
When the first murmurs of dissent began among some of my church-going teenage friends, I was steadfast and did my best to defend God and the church. Despite my evangelistic fervor, one by one, my friends seemed to lose interest in church and forsake their Christian upbringing until finally, in my mid-twenties, it felt like I was the last man standing.
My friends, for their part, gave Christianity their best shot. I truly believe that they did. But, in the end, they found the church an unsafe place to ask their honest questions and share their legitimate doubts. I witnessed firsthand the Church’s systematic ostracization of those who voiced uncertainty. Leaders urged congregants to sever ties with the departed, cautioning against their perceived negative influence.
And so I lost contact with many of my departed friends.
And while I was sad about the fact that they had given up on God, I was simultaneously glad that my faith had stood the test of time. In fact, I wore it as a kind of badge of honor.
Little did I know that my time would come.
Like many people, my time of doubt was precipitated by a life crisis that caused me to examine everything I believed in. I was a pastor in a church when I went through burnout. It snuck up on me like a thief in the night and left me bereft of all the certainty that I once had. All the doubts and questions that I had came rushing to the surface. In truth, they had probably always been there, but I had always been so busy trying to please the Lord that I’d never stopped to address them.
The church mistreated me terribly during my struggle, and after experiencing what I perceived to be a staggering lack of empathy and support, I finally resigned and walked away.
And, suddenly, I found myself in a place of terrifying doubt.
Yet, at the same time, I was free! Free from the expectations of ministry and the need to appear to have it all together. And I was free from the pressure to conform my beliefs to the faith group to which I belonged in order to find acceptance — because I no longer belonged. This was made clear to me.
It really hurt, but it came with the unexpected blessing of being in a safe place to really examine my faith for the first time in great detail, to work out what exactly I believed and why.
And so, my deconstruction journey began.
What is Deconstruction?
The best definition of deconstruction that I have heard comes from the late Rachel Held Evans in her book Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church. She defines faith deconstruction as taking a “Massive inventory of your faith, tearing every doctrine from the cupboard and turning each one over in your hand.” The point of faith deconstruction is to break down every idea, practice, belief, and tradition of a religious system into tiny pieces and then examine each fragment one by one to determine the truthfulness and usefulness of each part. In the end, the goal is to piece it all back together minus that which is peripheral, burdensome, and distorted.
The risk, of course, is that one can deconstruct their faith out of existence altogether. Some people do. It is a scary place to go — to lay everything you once held true on the table of reasonableness for testing. However, those who do the journey well usually end up with a much deeper and stronger faith because, well… they’ve actually checked it all out for themselves rather than mindlessly believing everything they’ve been told by some so-called expert who happens to grace the pulpit on a Sunday morning.
My experience has taught me that there are nine stages to faith deconstruction. Of course, everyone’s journey is different, but these stages provide a helpful framework for understanding the process:
Stage 1: Disruption
For some people, the decision to deconstruct their faith is the result of the accumulation of lots of little doubts that pile up one on top of the other. More often, though, the decision to deconstruct comes as a result of some catastrophic, earth-shattering event that shakes their faith to the core.
For me, it was a combination of both.
But there is always a disruption to the status quo.
Take the problem of suffering, for instance; when faced with profound suffering and unanswered questions, it’s easy to wonder why a good God would allow such hardships. Faith crisis activated.
Then there’s the discord between church teachings and attitudes towards marginalized communities like the LGBTQ+ community, where the clash between compassion and condemnation can lead to deep soul-searching. Systematic sexism and misogyny within the church can also be a catalyst as people wrestle with the disconnect between biblical teachings and the treatment of women in modern-day congregations.
The church’s unfriendliness towards doubt and questioning can also push believers away, leaving them feeling isolated and misunderstood in their quest for truth. Add to that the disillusionment when Christianity fails to deliver on its promises of peace, prosperity, and fulfillment, and you have a recipe for a profound existential crisis.
Yet perhaps most insidious of all is the experience of spiritual abuse and church hurt, where mistreatment at the hands of fellow believers leaves deep scars on the soul, driving individuals to re-evaluate everything they once held sacred.
That was part of my experience. I was left wondering, “If this is how I am treated by the so-called people of God, then what does that say about God?”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Backyard Church to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.