Deconstruction of faith

Review: Mid-Faith Crisis

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Cover image of "Mid-Faith Crisis" by Catherine McNeil and Jason Hague

Mid-Faith Crisis

Mid-Faith Crisis, Catherine McNeil and Jason Hague. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514010365) 2025.

Summary: When the foundations of one’s faith are shaken, it appears an endpoint, but may be a transforming experience.

You are the daughter of a pastor in a small town. Church was a wonderful place until it wasn’t, when dad was dismissed from his position and the family had to leave town on two week’s notice. Or you entered pastoral ministry after appearing on a national Christian television show and “stole the show.” But real life has been hard. A child with health difficulties, a bout with depression, and the untimely deaths of two friends. Combine that with disillusionment with the state of the church in your country. How does one write sermons when you are no longer sure of the things you are writing?

Those, in short, are the stories of the two authors of this book. Church hurt, disillusionment, existential doubt. While there are many paths, a number named in this book, to mid-faith crisis, the authors of this book write as fellow travelers. The question is, what does one do when the faith, once so central, no longer seems to address the challenges in one’s life? Or what does one do when that faith is a source of emotional pain, associated with hurtful experiences?

The authors begin by talking about stages of faith, that faith may grow and change as we do. The four they identify are inherited faith, confident faith, mid-faith crisis, and conscious faith. The latter emerges out of mid-faith crises, and usually at mid-life or later. It’s marked by a sense of coming home, finding peace, living with mystery and complexity.

But how does one move through the darkness of mid-faith crisis? Is it possible to emerge from this, not with a lost faith but a deeper one? Part Two of this book, “The Crisis” addresses the different forms of crises people most commonly experience. They address doubt, moving from intellectual uncertainty to relational trust and faithfulness. They address church hurt and stress the importance of naming the harms. But then the decision is one of courage, to trust even a few with these hurts, even if this doesn’t happen in a formal church structure. They explore when our heroes fall, betraying trust; when prayers fall silent; overwhelming suffering; the collapse of belief; the fading of feelings.

There are no glib answers. Often the question is moving from what one thought faith and the Christian life was like, beyond the tingles and the good feelings, to waiting, to trusting in the absence of feeling, to hanging on because the alternative is the abyss. The authors conclude with inviting us to exchange greatness for goodness. The crisis of faith really challenges our false conceptions of a great life, great church, great leaders, great experiences with God. Conscious faith is one without the illusions, where we recognize God’s quiet, hidden presence in a messed up world, and learn to walk in imperfect love, wandering steps and slow, in communities of flawed people like us slowly changing into the likeness of Jesus.

I appreciate the honesty of the authors throughout. We see how they are still on the way. For example, they offer no quick fixes to church hurt. Catherine still struggles with safety and acceptance in the church. But she still chooses community. She trusts friends with her struggle. Furthermore, the authors treat mid-faith crisis as a developmental step, not an aberration. They point to a faith for the second half of life, the opportunity to grow deeper rather than drop out.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Downsizing

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Cover image of "Downsizing" by Michelle Van Loon

Downsizing, Michelle Van Loon. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802884626) 2025.

Summary: A memoir of a fifty-year evangelical journey and the unhelpful ideas and practices to be downsized to embrace an authentic faith.

Downsizing. Many at my stage of life are engaged in the practice of deaccumulating the stuff we’ve acquired over the decades. Some of it we no longer need. Some of it we wonder why we ever acquired. It may be the reality that a smaller living space cannot accommodate all our goods. Or we are aware that we are moving toward the final deaccumulation when all our earthly goods are dispersed.

Michelle Van Loon offers the metaphor of downsizing for what she sees is needed in evangelicalism today. In one sense, evangelicalism is downsizing as people head for the exits. For many of the disillusioned, this has meant a process of faith deconstruction, a re-evaluation of beliefs and practices. Some emerge from this with a re-framed faith. Others walk away altogether. Instead, Van Loon proposes the metaphor of downsizing as a kind of spiritual rummage sale, allowing an uncluttered, authentic faith to emerge. Indeed, citing spiritual writer Phyllis Tickle, she proposes that the church has gone through such a rummage sale every five hundred years, the last being the Reformation and counter-Reformation. We’re due.

Van Loon approaches this through the lens of a spiritual journey memoir over her fifty years as a Christ-follower. She came to faith out of a Jewish background during the waning days of the Jesus Movement. She introduces her journey as one where she:

“…immersed myself in fundamentalist faith, worshiped in Messianic Jewish gatherings, experienced the revivalism of second- and third-wave charismatic congregations, gathere in a living room for home church, experienced the rise of one of America’s most influential nondenominational megachurches, became part of the rising Anglican movement, and had pit stops along the way at other kinds of churches of all kinds, from a cult-like sect to a neo-Reformed outpost to a throwback mainline church that owned not one but two harpsichords in addition to its giant pipe organ” (pp. 3-4)

Her experience make her a well-qualified participant observer of the last fifty years of evangelicalism, both at its best and worst. Her first couple chapters offer a brief history of evangelicalism, including the number of parachurch ministries that arose after World War Two. Each of the following chapters trace her journey through different movements. She offers a brief historical backdrop for each, setting them in context, describes her experiences, and the “downsizing” she engaged in as she moved on–the unhelpful practices and beliefs she left behind and the valuable truths and practices she carried.

Several things stood out to me in her narrative. One is the recurring danger of abusing leadership positions and spiritual authority. Examples include the Shepherding movements, Bill Gothard’s “Umbrella of Authority,” or the Mars Hill Church of Mark Driscoll. She also recounts the chaotic revivalism characteristic of some third wave charismatic churches, emphasizing experience over discipleship. Van Loon traces the rise of Dominionism, spiritual warfare theology, and the New Apostolic Reformation, and how they have wedded themselves to conservative political movements. She observes how “[T]he hunger for dominion is at the heart of so much bad practice in the church and has overflowed in the ways in which many self-identifying evangelicals express themselves in American culture” (pp. 139-140).

For Van Loon, downsizing expresses the downward journey of following Jesus, the journey to the cross. She invites us to purify ourselves of the blemishes of evangelicalism’s harmful beliefs to become Christ’s spotless bride. The issue is not the core beliefs of evangelicalism but the craving for power and control. This could be our kids’ purity or our nation’s institutions or other members of our congregations.

Van Loon is slightly younger than I am but we share common roots in the Jesus Movement. I remember the heady passion for Christ and hopes that our generation would change the world. We did, but not in the way of our youthful hopes. I did not experience some of the movements in which she participated. But a reflective look at this fifty plus year journey is a chastening experience and moves me to lament. We failed to reckon with the lures of money, sex, and especially power. Too often, we fixed our eyes on idols rather than our risen Lord. We cannot merely “downsize” these things. We must destroy idols or they will keep cropping up, as Van Loon’s account illustrates.

Perhaps the separating of an apostate, politically captive evangelicalism from smaller bands of believers seeking to follow Jesus in witness and service, pursuing his kingdom, is all a part of God’s downsizing. Van Loon calls us to a downsizing that is not an abandoning of faith but am embrace of single-hearted pursuit of Jesus, shedding all that encumbers. I hope I might live out my days in that kind of downsizing.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Walking Through Deconstruction

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Cover image of "Walking Through Deconstruction" by Ian Harber.

Walking Through Deconstruction, Ian Harber, foreword by Gavin Ortlund. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514008560) 2025.

Summary: What it is, why it happens, the phases of deconstruction and walking with someone through this process.

I was both surprised by a statistic in the Introduction to Walking Through Deconstruction and found it confirming of something I’ve witnessed anecdotally. While we think of large numbers of youth walking away from Christian faith, the average age of the person deconstructing their faith is 54. And, having passed that age, I’ve seen it happen. All the beliefs and practices and ways of living one’s faith that worked in their twenties and thirties aren’t working so well at mid-life. It is as if they have hit a proverbial wall. Some give up and embrace a post-Christian life. Others go through a process of questioning and struggling with their faith, and for some, they end up with a reconstructed faith that is deeper and more resilient than when they started.

Of course, deconstructing faith occurs at different ages and for a variety of reasons ranging from intellectual questioning to some sort of abuse from a figure in power. It can be scary if you are a believer and watching this happen to a friend. You don’t want to see a friend walk away from Christ. And you want to support them while not making it worse.

Ian Harber has been there. First of all, he went through his own process of deconstructing faith, and nearly a decade later came to a deeper, reconstructed faith. Friends who cared and a different church that took him deeply into scripture, theology, church history, and a life of discipleship all helped. Second, he has ministered with many going through the same thing. His book explains what deconstruction is, why it happens, and the phases one goes through. Then he explains how a person may reconstruct with the help of Christian community.

He begins by defining deconstruction: “Deconstruction is a crisis of faith that leads to the questioning of core doctrines and untangling of cultural ideologies that settles in a faith that is different from before. For some, the issues are more cultural. And for others, they are more doctrinal.

Deconstruction is an experience of hitting the Wall. He cites Janet O. Hagberg’s The Critical Journey and the season when God seems absent and the old answers don’t work. One grieves the loss of God. It is a crisis on par with losing a loved one and we may observe the same stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

For many, their Christian faith is in an imaginative gridlock. We try harder, look for answers rather than ask questions, and engage in either-or thinking. For others, it is church that needs deconstructing. Churches are performative rather than formative. Biblical teaching is thin, they veer either into legalism or license. Some cover up abuse. Others have fallen into the captive embrace of politics.

Perhaps the most challenging chapter is on the deconstruction of self. The culture emphasizes our self-fulfillment and our digital devices help us curate our own lives, albeit, disembodied ones. This stands in contrast to the idea that we are not our own and made for community. Harber follows with a chapter on possible ends for deconstruction. Inevitably, we will reconstruct in some way, either into a secular intellectualism, or some form of ideology or idolatry, or into a renewed faith.

The second part of the book, then, envisions the process of reconstruction into a renewed faith. One key component is non-anxious friendships. These are people who are present, who pray, on are patient with questions, and who persist but don’t push anxiously. Suffering may be a real issue, whether physical or emotional. To walk alongside someone in suffering is to walk the path of the cross from the grief of Mary to her dawning hope in the resurrection, allowing suffering to form character.

Belief needs to be reconstructed as well. Instead of just propositions, doctrine may be understood as the story in which we live. Harber also encourages distinguishing essential, doctrines from those that are urgent, then important, and finally indifferent. In place of performative church, Harber discusses a discipleship that focuses on devotion, formation, and mission before God’s face.

This requires reconstructed churches. They are devoted to scripture, sacrament, and a social life of hospitality. Finally, instead of taking the route of some who deconstruct in saying God is unknowable and defies our attempts to capture him in our theologies, Harber speaks of what we may know of God. He is united, crucified, and alive.

I hear Harber saying that deconstruction is both a crisis to take seriously and an opportunity for God to deepen a reconstructed faith. We should not write it off as the decision to pursue a sinful lifestyle. Real deconstruction, as messy as it looks, is a process in which one seeks God amid the clutter of an inadequately formed faith. Instead, Harber invites us to be the non-anxious presence through which God works. And he invites churches to move from being performative institutions to formative communities, offering substantive models of faith and discipleship. This book is full of wisdom and hope.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Knock at the Sky

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Cover image of "Knock at the Sky" by Liz Charlotte Grant

Knock at the Sky. Liz Charlotte Grant, foreword by Sarah Bessey. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802883759) 2025.

Summary: After losing faith in biblical inerrancy, the author returns to Genesis with all her questions, seeking God in the story.

Liz Charlotte Grant grew up as a card-carrying evangelical. Mission trips, a minor in Bible from a Christian college, quiet time, and kissing dating good-bye. And then, approaching her forties, the certitudes stopped working. She joined the ranks of those deconstructing her faith. This included giving up her faith in an inerrant Bible. But, as this book shows, it did not mean giving up on either the Bible or God. In fact, it led her into an intense reading of Genesis, not to determine its historicity but to bring her story, with all her questions to the story of Genesis 1-32. She describes her approach as midrashic. She writes, as she invites the reader to join her:

“What else can we find in the Bible besides fact? What does the Bible say about reality, about death, about the purposes and origins of humanity? What does the Bible reveal about God? Ask and you will receive. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will blow wide open. Thanks be to God.”

In succeeding chapters Grant weaves her close reading of Genesis with Jewish commentators and Christian theologians, contemporary music and art, and archaeology and nature. Most of all, she weaves in her own questions, “knocking at the sky” as she seeks God. In the creation account, she considers how unlike God’s voice is to any other voice. The closest she comes to it is whale songs. She suggests we might well try standing on our heads as we read! In the narrative of the fall, she explores how deeply God values human freedom, unlike some controlling churches. She references James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, discussing how important the process of moving through doubt is to mature faith.

Succeeding chapters explore the flood narratives, Babel, and then focus on the life of Abraham. Why does he answer the call of God to leave Haran? Then what do we make of Sarah’s infertility in light of the promise, and her resort to Hagar as a surrogate? What do we make of the fact that God spoke to Hagar and was named by her? But the most troubling is the binding of Isaac. In this case, did Abraham hear God wrong and what do we make of God’s provision? Finally, we come to the night of Jacob’s wrestling. Not only does all his checkered past come to focus, but also his resolve to be blessed.

Not only do we encounter different interpretive possibilities and a host of questions. We also, as we read with Grant, encounter the mysterious, transcendent presence of the God who welcomes the questions, the wrestling, and the knocking.

You may not agree with Grant on her doctrine of scripture. But do you read scripture with the fierce tenacity she brings to the text? You may claim that you bring everything to God in prayer. But do you “knock at the sky” with the unvarnished honesty Grant brings to her study? Instead of certitude, I found in what Grant writes a gritty faith that hangs onto God through doubt and keeps expecting God to show up. When we hear of faith deconstruction, we fear people are abandoning Christ. While that sometimes is the case, Grant offers an example of moving from unquestioning certainty to truly seeking after and being found by God.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Deconstruction of Christianity

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The Deconstruction of Christianity, Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Elevate, (Forthcoming, January 30,) 2024.

Summary: A study of what the authors term the “deconstruction movement.” why this needs to be taken seriously, and how to respond to loved ones who are “deconstructing.”

As I read some of the copy associated with this book, I was initially inclined to be somewhat skeptical of the contention that there is a “deconstruction movement.” I’ve worked in collegiate ministry for over forty years and have witnessed alarmist scares over a series of “movements”: scientism, postmodernism, New Age Aquarian conspiracies, the new atheism, Critical Race Theory, and more. We get people in the pews very concerned with “be afraid, be very afraid” rhetoric. And it sells–at least until the next scare arises. In a few years to a decade, the prominence of these ideologies tends to recede into the melange of ideas that shape our cultural mindset. None of these has been a “slate wiper” for the Christian community but rather an intellectual challenge to be met and engaged in the lives of real people who hold these ideas and embrace these beliefs.

The authors of this book made a case for me that faith deconstruction is more than merely a personal experience a number of Christians are undergoing, one that may actually lead to a deeper walk with Christ. For one thing, it encourages a mindset that goes beyond asking questions, expressing doubts, or processing negative, even abusive experiences with the hope of reformation, coming to a deeper grasp of what one believes, discerning what was a false expression of biblical faith, and more deeply loving God. Rather, it pursues a route of not only denouncing abuses but dismissing the Bible, rightly understood, as the authoritative source for our lives, first questioning and then deny what God has said, making the only authority in our lives the autonomous self. There are not toxic aspects of Christianity. Christianity as an undifferentiated whole is dismissed as toxic. And young people who once identified as Christian are walking away in droves.

The other aspect is the network of communication channels, podcasts, and figures who self-syle themselves as deconstruction coaches. They document the number of figures in the Christian celebrity culture who have “deconstructed” and proclaim their deconstruction as vigorously (and sometime profitably) as they proclaimed their faith. One of the authors, Alisa, was part of the girl group, ZOEgirl and describes the corrosive aspects of that culture that could be disillusioning and more.

The authors’ suggest that we not use a distinction between “good” and “bad” deconstruction. They propose instead, the idea of reformation for a process of winnowing out cultural falsehoods, wrongful abuses from the truth of the gospel. They freely admit to a number of the problems that many exiting churches note: biblical literalism, patriarchy, homophobia, political conservatism, and nationalism. They note how many were discouraged from asking questions by leaders but also the thin veneer of instruction and formation in the faith many received. Reformation brings all this to God, examines all of this in the light of scripture, brings lamentations of trauma and hurt to Christ. Deconstruction is different, not only leaving behind toxic elements, but branding it all toxic, including God.

The authors look at the rhetoric used on social media. They observe how scripture is distorted, often in convenient meme statements. The identify the methodology behind deconstruction of identifying a societal problem, showing ways the church was complicit, and concluding that the cause is warped evangelical theology. They explore what we mean by “true” and “faith.”

The book concludes on a note of hope. The authors explore the importance of questions but also of helping questioners be honest about whether they are seeking answers or exits. They offer wise counsel for loved ones of those amid deconstruction, including prayer, being a safe presence, doing triage (are they truly deconstructing or simply asking questions, are they moving away from or toward God, and they set and respect boundaries. They tell stories of those who have returned to a deeper, vibrant faith.

I think the one place where the book weakens its argument is in its attempt to defend complementarianism against charges of patriarchy in the church and its brief attempt to refute Beth Allison Barr’s critique in The Making of Biblical Womanhood. Complementarianism as it has been lived out in many churches, including the ways it was reflected in purity culture, has contributed to the disillusionment of many with the church. I can envision some putting down the book at this point, which is unfortunate because it is ancillary to the basic argument of the book.

That argument, what people are doing when they deconstruct, the complex of ideas that undergird deconstruction, and the network of speakers, media channels, and coaches advocating and supporting deconstruction, needs to be reckoned with as we try to understand what is happening with youth who are walking away from not only from churches but the Christian faith. The alternative, reformation, is one we would hope many would take. But it is not only disillusioned youth in need of reformation. The deconstruction the authors describe can point to toxic practice and theology, albeit distorted and exaggerated by deconstructors in their rhetoric, for which the church is also desperately in need of reformation. Even as we hope to point those questioning back to scripture and to King Jesus, so we need to join them to hear what the Lord would say to us all.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.