I think it’s true that groups will always have their difficult dynamics, and that inner work by individuals is crucial for growth, whether that be spiritual or any other kind. One thing I struggle with is how people go to church and expect that that is going to do the Internal work for them, not unlike people coming to therapy and expecting (and hoping and praying) that the therapist is going to do the work. I also admit to being church-adjacent in that there is a lot of amazing work by composers that I wouldn’t have gotten to engage with if I had stayed unwilling to enter a church. But wow, is there baggage. At this point in life I’m accepting of living in the struggle without clear answers. I try to be gentle with others and hope they are gentle with me. And the journey continues, and continues to change. I am glad we’re all here together!
Ooh that’s a great point about people coming to both church and therapy expecting someone else to do the inner work for them! I’m going to keep that framing in mind. Yes about church-adjacency (and the power of music)! I’m glad we’re all here together too! 😊
I really appreciate all your thoughts here, Christine. I've been trying to find safety from that same theo-bro, violent-God theology for a long time. While I was running away from toxic theology and exploring a lot of different options, I finally stumbled to a place I think I can stay. I'm staying Christian, but only because I'm starting to look at the Bible through an interpretive lens that actually takes seriously verses and promises that the Reformed tradition overlooks or explains away because of their theological filters. Passages like Isaiah 25:6-9, Rom 5:15-19, 1 Cor 15:28, Col 1:19-20, and one of my lifetime favorite verses, 1 John 4:18. I've learned to trust my instincts that if God is real, God has to be good and has to be love, and there is no fear in love. I've learned that salvation is not being saved *from* hell or punishment, but being set free *by* Jesus from captivity to sin and death, and saved *for* abundant life in God. Of course, I'm still figuring things out on this journey, but, I've been reading David Bentley Hart, and listening to a lot of other podcasts and sermons, and exploring early church fathers who believed in the ultimate reconciliation of everyone to God, and finding out, like you wrote in your post on hell, that the idea of an eternal hell wasn't even invented until the 4th century. To sum up, I've started to see things much like you wrote in this post: that the "point" of Christianity is not to see who goes to heaven or hell when they die. It's to be with God, know God, and labor with God here and now as he's reconciling the world to himself.
It’s such a tragedy how much Theo-bro Reformer theology has informed this modern iteration of Christianity! You’ve been doing so much inner work and theological reflection on your journey. Finding and creating your own places of safety!
Laboring with God as God reconciles the world to God’s self…yes! I am always much much more inspired at a church that speaks this way than all the ones I attended when I was younger!
I like “church adjacent” 😂 and my kid calls me a Christian Witch. I really love Brian McLaren and his writing has been a companion on the way for me. Another is “wholehearted faith” by RHE - I was getting very close to non-Christian and then I read her book and was like “dang it, if there are xtians out there like Rachel I can still hang”
I also took a class with a wonderful meditation teacher and the wall behind her (on zoom) was covered with pictures of her “teachers” ❤️ it made me reflect on how many teachers (I’d include mclaren) have helped me and taught me and I wonder what it would look like to make my own wall or altar space for them - Jesus included 😉
A Christian Witch, yes! 😄 I feel like that fits you nicely! Oh RHE (and yesterday being the anniversary of her death!) — so impactful! Haha I feel that so hard “dang it, if there are xtians out there like Rachel I can still hang” — Brian, Rachel, Diana, Barbara, Anne….jeez y’all make this in/out thing complicated 😂
I haven't read your post yet, just saw the shout out to libraries and particularly to interlibrary loan. I work at a university library and doing interlibrary loan is my favorite part of my job! I use it frequently for my own reading and love helping our patrons use it and find out how wonderful it really is. <3
Now that I've read your post, I totally relate to your finding mentors in authors. My faith journey has been fully in a community of authors who helped me slowly denconstruct and learn and grow. I started with Mister Rogers who led me to Henri Nouwen, and read Anne Lamott long before my deconstruction yet delighted in her faith in the midst of the seeming contradictory nature of her liberal beliefs, I found Sarah Bessey and Rachel Held Evans and Jeff Chu and Jen Hatmaker and R. Eric Thomas and Brian McLaren and soooo many others through Evolving Faith conferences. Books and authors have always been the gateway through which I found new ways of seeing things, windows to worlds I had never experienced, words to describe things I had felt alone with before and now found a community of "me too". It's still a process and I don't know exactly where I will land in what exactly I believe....but I have faith that I'm not alone, that there is something to believe in, that hope can exist despite all the horribleness.
Yay libraries!!! My work study job in grad school was to work at our seminary’s library, and I loved it so much. So much information held in these spaces!
Authors and other writers/thinkers are such a lifeline in times of existential angst, questioning, or aloneness! Or…just in general, too. Lots of overlap with your list - I’m grateful for all the people that have poured themselves out so we can feel less alone! Also, the faith that hope can exist despite all the horribleness…mmhmm! That resonates.
Wow! Thank you for that very personal and relatable article, Christine. Now you’ve reached the core issue for all of us deconstructors--where do we go from here?
Speaking only for myself, I am a contemplative, mystical personality and I need spirituality (not religion) like I need to breathe. I’ve also learned to trust my inner guide (the divine voice if you will). So I can drop into books, conversations, events, or services of any kind that my inner voice guides me to, get a bit of helpful teaching and maybe some socializing, and move on. My spirituality has become like an eclectic series of self-guided graduate seminars in diverse spirituality. Along the way I have made a few wonderful likeminded friends, some online, some in real life. I feel I’m making strong spiritual progress and growing constantly in mental/spiritual health, love and connection to others and the divine via multiple methods, and it’s enough for me. More than enough; it’s often very rich and deeply meaningful.
I’m happy for you that you have found a core group with whom you can have a spiritual connection on Sundays and friends here and in your books and elsewhere who can help you fill that spiritual need. It seems like you have done something similar to what I’ve done, and I hope it is rich and meaningful for you as well.
Your journey and all that you’ve learned is so inspiring and interesting to me! I love that idea of listening to your inner voice of wisdom and pursuing the things that are drawing your attention - learning or experiencing something new, deepening spiritually, and making connections. May we all learn to attend better to that inner voice!
I’m grateful for the people and experiences that have come across my path, and I’m hopeful for many more years that add richness and depth to my life!
Very relatable. Right now, as far as labels, I joke that I'm UCC during the week (because that's where I work in an office part-time capacity), Lutheran on Sunday (because that's where I typically attend), Catholic on Fridays/Saturdays (because that's where I study spiritual direction), and witchy on my days off--though all of these identities inform me all week, including the experience of being raised evangelical. I also LOVE attending interfaith events. Sometimes I just say I'm an interfaith Christian. Cheers to the (often label-less?) journey! If we're formed in love, we are enough.
Haha! So many identifications - I love how many types of places you’re involved in. And witchy on your days off! “If we’re formed in love, we are enough” indeed!!
I’m intrigued by the idea of communities committed to love and transformation.
Of course there are difficulties (communities are complex and people-y, love of who?, transformation into what vision?).
But when I use that lens, I see that there are so many kinds of communities that are facets of making the world a better place.
The company I work for. (I hope) the family my spouse and kids and I are building together. Our community theater. A local land conservation group. My interfaith prayer circle.
And yes, imperfectly, the non-evangelical church I attend, where the Christian story inspires their work to love and welcome all and make the world a better place.
I’m sure my answer to this question will keep changing. I’m still averse to so much around me that uses the name “Christian” to describe harmful beliefs and institutions. But here I am, today.
I love all the places you’re identifying in your life that are helping make the world a better place!❤️ And that they are real communities of real people. (You’re inspiring me and making me hopeful for more of this in my life!)
I am in "No" space at present. I know the evangelicalism I was raised in isn't the only valid expression of a sort of Christian faith... but it still shaped how I view Christianity and it is hard for me personally to see a reason to stay in a form of Christian faith after so many fundamentals flipped the other direction for me. I am able to hold space for things working out differently for others though.
I feel like I'm still early in my healing journey for religious trauma, and I find myself mostly repelled from Christianity (and I 100% am with you on "hell no" for ever returning to evangelicalism). Parts of me feel nostalgic for some elements of religion, but I'm trying to find those in other places - to not return to a totalizing / all-consuming high control environment, to find community and belonging and purpose in a variety of places, while I also no longer outsource my reasoning and identity to a religious group.
Another way I look at it, at present, is that I gave over 30 years of my life to [high control] religion, and denying self in so many harmful ways, so I'm going to allow myself at least some time away from it, up to possibly even the rest of my life - it had enough of me. I am unsettled in my own beliefs - they're probably not even all mutually compatible, but for now I'm okay with that, as pushback to the inner fundamentalist who expects everything to fit perfectly and needs certainty. I am not shutting the door on ever becoming religious again, either, though. No interest at present in me in non-Christian religions.
I truly respect where you're coming from and what your approach is! It's such a long and winding journey. I feel like us ex-fundies have a very sensitive alert system for anything that feels totalizing or all-consuming -- I know I definitely do, and I start running the opposite direction when I sense that!
Have you found community and belonging in other spaces, or does it feel like you're still looking?
I feel like I've found some, in a hobby group, and by investing more energy and time into my friendships. I'm still looking for more though, I suppose.
Christine, I think you must be more evolved than I am. :) I find myself too fixated on my anger and the fear that's still living in my tissues un-processed to be able to hang out with any group that has any connection to the Abrahamic deity, so Muslims and Jews are out, but definitely Christians are out, no matter how progressive. I don't know what to make of the Unitarian Universalists. Sometimes there are Christians in attendance at the UU services (or so I have heard--I attended once and got just totally flummoxed, which prevented me from feeling any sense of community). The UUs allude to "God" and/or "the divine" sometimes, which I just.... nope. Can't handle hearing words such as "God" or "divine" without my blood pressure going up! Good on you, I say, to be able to be so flexible as to get a basic need (i.e. for community) met even though it might in some cases mean hanging out with people who share some key beliefs with others who harmed you so deeply. You are strong and amazing and I admire you.
Wellll MK I think we would both agree that perhaps you're coming out of a place where your personal traumas have had whatever profound impacts they've had on your life, and it's certainly not due to your lack of strength / courage / resourcefulness that you're not able to hang out with those groups! Maybe EMDR focused on religious trauma specifically can help clear some of that up... if you feel drawn to doing that :). (I will have to reply more in depth by email!)
When I left Catholicism, I had only two beliefs: there is a God -Trinity, including Jesus, and that there is life hereafter. I had no confidence in the Bible. Then I spent 40+ years as an Evangelical. Now, as I leave Evangelicalism, I leave with two beliefs (see above.) I suppose I'm now needing the "How."
Amen! BTW, did you see the Note I posted about the film "Women Talking"? I thought it especially apt for those who are writing about High Control Religion like you and DL. It's about a remote Mennonite colony (fictitious) in which the women (and girls as young as four) have been drugged and raped by their men. This was done at the witting allowance of the Elders who have also set up their society to keep the women illiterate and voiceless. The men are being released from prison and they must decide whether to stay and live as usual, stay and fight, or leave. Powerful! Starring Claire Foy and Rooney Mara.
I think it’s true that groups will always have their difficult dynamics, and that inner work by individuals is crucial for growth, whether that be spiritual or any other kind. One thing I struggle with is how people go to church and expect that that is going to do the Internal work for them, not unlike people coming to therapy and expecting (and hoping and praying) that the therapist is going to do the work. I also admit to being church-adjacent in that there is a lot of amazing work by composers that I wouldn’t have gotten to engage with if I had stayed unwilling to enter a church. But wow, is there baggage. At this point in life I’m accepting of living in the struggle without clear answers. I try to be gentle with others and hope they are gentle with me. And the journey continues, and continues to change. I am glad we’re all here together!
Ooh that’s a great point about people coming to both church and therapy expecting someone else to do the inner work for them! I’m going to keep that framing in mind. Yes about church-adjacency (and the power of music)! I’m glad we’re all here together too! 😊
I really appreciate all your thoughts here, Christine. I've been trying to find safety from that same theo-bro, violent-God theology for a long time. While I was running away from toxic theology and exploring a lot of different options, I finally stumbled to a place I think I can stay. I'm staying Christian, but only because I'm starting to look at the Bible through an interpretive lens that actually takes seriously verses and promises that the Reformed tradition overlooks or explains away because of their theological filters. Passages like Isaiah 25:6-9, Rom 5:15-19, 1 Cor 15:28, Col 1:19-20, and one of my lifetime favorite verses, 1 John 4:18. I've learned to trust my instincts that if God is real, God has to be good and has to be love, and there is no fear in love. I've learned that salvation is not being saved *from* hell or punishment, but being set free *by* Jesus from captivity to sin and death, and saved *for* abundant life in God. Of course, I'm still figuring things out on this journey, but, I've been reading David Bentley Hart, and listening to a lot of other podcasts and sermons, and exploring early church fathers who believed in the ultimate reconciliation of everyone to God, and finding out, like you wrote in your post on hell, that the idea of an eternal hell wasn't even invented until the 4th century. To sum up, I've started to see things much like you wrote in this post: that the "point" of Christianity is not to see who goes to heaven or hell when they die. It's to be with God, know God, and labor with God here and now as he's reconciling the world to himself.
It’s such a tragedy how much Theo-bro Reformer theology has informed this modern iteration of Christianity! You’ve been doing so much inner work and theological reflection on your journey. Finding and creating your own places of safety!
Laboring with God as God reconciles the world to God’s self…yes! I am always much much more inspired at a church that speaks this way than all the ones I attended when I was younger!
Thanks Christine :)
I like “church adjacent” 😂 and my kid calls me a Christian Witch. I really love Brian McLaren and his writing has been a companion on the way for me. Another is “wholehearted faith” by RHE - I was getting very close to non-Christian and then I read her book and was like “dang it, if there are xtians out there like Rachel I can still hang”
I also took a class with a wonderful meditation teacher and the wall behind her (on zoom) was covered with pictures of her “teachers” ❤️ it made me reflect on how many teachers (I’d include mclaren) have helped me and taught me and I wonder what it would look like to make my own wall or altar space for them - Jesus included 😉
A Christian Witch, yes! 😄 I feel like that fits you nicely! Oh RHE (and yesterday being the anniversary of her death!) — so impactful! Haha I feel that so hard “dang it, if there are xtians out there like Rachel I can still hang” — Brian, Rachel, Diana, Barbara, Anne….jeez y’all make this in/out thing complicated 😂
Exactly!
I haven't read your post yet, just saw the shout out to libraries and particularly to interlibrary loan. I work at a university library and doing interlibrary loan is my favorite part of my job! I use it frequently for my own reading and love helping our patrons use it and find out how wonderful it really is. <3
Now that I've read your post, I totally relate to your finding mentors in authors. My faith journey has been fully in a community of authors who helped me slowly denconstruct and learn and grow. I started with Mister Rogers who led me to Henri Nouwen, and read Anne Lamott long before my deconstruction yet delighted in her faith in the midst of the seeming contradictory nature of her liberal beliefs, I found Sarah Bessey and Rachel Held Evans and Jeff Chu and Jen Hatmaker and R. Eric Thomas and Brian McLaren and soooo many others through Evolving Faith conferences. Books and authors have always been the gateway through which I found new ways of seeing things, windows to worlds I had never experienced, words to describe things I had felt alone with before and now found a community of "me too". It's still a process and I don't know exactly where I will land in what exactly I believe....but I have faith that I'm not alone, that there is something to believe in, that hope can exist despite all the horribleness.
Yay libraries!!! My work study job in grad school was to work at our seminary’s library, and I loved it so much. So much information held in these spaces!
Authors and other writers/thinkers are such a lifeline in times of existential angst, questioning, or aloneness! Or…just in general, too. Lots of overlap with your list - I’m grateful for all the people that have poured themselves out so we can feel less alone! Also, the faith that hope can exist despite all the horribleness…mmhmm! That resonates.
Wow! Thank you for that very personal and relatable article, Christine. Now you’ve reached the core issue for all of us deconstructors--where do we go from here?
Speaking only for myself, I am a contemplative, mystical personality and I need spirituality (not religion) like I need to breathe. I’ve also learned to trust my inner guide (the divine voice if you will). So I can drop into books, conversations, events, or services of any kind that my inner voice guides me to, get a bit of helpful teaching and maybe some socializing, and move on. My spirituality has become like an eclectic series of self-guided graduate seminars in diverse spirituality. Along the way I have made a few wonderful likeminded friends, some online, some in real life. I feel I’m making strong spiritual progress and growing constantly in mental/spiritual health, love and connection to others and the divine via multiple methods, and it’s enough for me. More than enough; it’s often very rich and deeply meaningful.
I’m happy for you that you have found a core group with whom you can have a spiritual connection on Sundays and friends here and in your books and elsewhere who can help you fill that spiritual need. It seems like you have done something similar to what I’ve done, and I hope it is rich and meaningful for you as well.
Your journey and all that you’ve learned is so inspiring and interesting to me! I love that idea of listening to your inner voice of wisdom and pursuing the things that are drawing your attention - learning or experiencing something new, deepening spiritually, and making connections. May we all learn to attend better to that inner voice!
I’m grateful for the people and experiences that have come across my path, and I’m hopeful for many more years that add richness and depth to my life!
Very relatable. Right now, as far as labels, I joke that I'm UCC during the week (because that's where I work in an office part-time capacity), Lutheran on Sunday (because that's where I typically attend), Catholic on Fridays/Saturdays (because that's where I study spiritual direction), and witchy on my days off--though all of these identities inform me all week, including the experience of being raised evangelical. I also LOVE attending interfaith events. Sometimes I just say I'm an interfaith Christian. Cheers to the (often label-less?) journey! If we're formed in love, we are enough.
Haha! So many identifications - I love how many types of places you’re involved in. And witchy on your days off! “If we’re formed in love, we are enough” indeed!!
I’m intrigued by the idea of communities committed to love and transformation.
Of course there are difficulties (communities are complex and people-y, love of who?, transformation into what vision?).
But when I use that lens, I see that there are so many kinds of communities that are facets of making the world a better place.
The company I work for. (I hope) the family my spouse and kids and I are building together. Our community theater. A local land conservation group. My interfaith prayer circle.
And yes, imperfectly, the non-evangelical church I attend, where the Christian story inspires their work to love and welcome all and make the world a better place.
I’m sure my answer to this question will keep changing. I’m still averse to so much around me that uses the name “Christian” to describe harmful beliefs and institutions. But here I am, today.
I love all the places you’re identifying in your life that are helping make the world a better place!❤️ And that they are real communities of real people. (You’re inspiring me and making me hopeful for more of this in my life!)
I am in "No" space at present. I know the evangelicalism I was raised in isn't the only valid expression of a sort of Christian faith... but it still shaped how I view Christianity and it is hard for me personally to see a reason to stay in a form of Christian faith after so many fundamentals flipped the other direction for me. I am able to hold space for things working out differently for others though.
I feel like I'm still early in my healing journey for religious trauma, and I find myself mostly repelled from Christianity (and I 100% am with you on "hell no" for ever returning to evangelicalism). Parts of me feel nostalgic for some elements of religion, but I'm trying to find those in other places - to not return to a totalizing / all-consuming high control environment, to find community and belonging and purpose in a variety of places, while I also no longer outsource my reasoning and identity to a religious group.
Another way I look at it, at present, is that I gave over 30 years of my life to [high control] religion, and denying self in so many harmful ways, so I'm going to allow myself at least some time away from it, up to possibly even the rest of my life - it had enough of me. I am unsettled in my own beliefs - they're probably not even all mutually compatible, but for now I'm okay with that, as pushback to the inner fundamentalist who expects everything to fit perfectly and needs certainty. I am not shutting the door on ever becoming religious again, either, though. No interest at present in me in non-Christian religions.
I truly respect where you're coming from and what your approach is! It's such a long and winding journey. I feel like us ex-fundies have a very sensitive alert system for anything that feels totalizing or all-consuming -- I know I definitely do, and I start running the opposite direction when I sense that!
Have you found community and belonging in other spaces, or does it feel like you're still looking?
I feel like I've found some, in a hobby group, and by investing more energy and time into my friendships. I'm still looking for more though, I suppose.
Christine, I think you must be more evolved than I am. :) I find myself too fixated on my anger and the fear that's still living in my tissues un-processed to be able to hang out with any group that has any connection to the Abrahamic deity, so Muslims and Jews are out, but definitely Christians are out, no matter how progressive. I don't know what to make of the Unitarian Universalists. Sometimes there are Christians in attendance at the UU services (or so I have heard--I attended once and got just totally flummoxed, which prevented me from feeling any sense of community). The UUs allude to "God" and/or "the divine" sometimes, which I just.... nope. Can't handle hearing words such as "God" or "divine" without my blood pressure going up! Good on you, I say, to be able to be so flexible as to get a basic need (i.e. for community) met even though it might in some cases mean hanging out with people who share some key beliefs with others who harmed you so deeply. You are strong and amazing and I admire you.
Wellll MK I think we would both agree that perhaps you're coming out of a place where your personal traumas have had whatever profound impacts they've had on your life, and it's certainly not due to your lack of strength / courage / resourcefulness that you're not able to hang out with those groups! Maybe EMDR focused on religious trauma specifically can help clear some of that up... if you feel drawn to doing that :). (I will have to reply more in depth by email!)
PS: You may have inspired me to write an article on my own spiritual life post-deconstruction! Iron sharpens iron as the Bible says. 😊
Haha! Yes, please do!!
When I left Catholicism, I had only two beliefs: there is a God -Trinity, including Jesus, and that there is life hereafter. I had no confidence in the Bible. Then I spent 40+ years as an Evangelical. Now, as I leave Evangelicalism, I leave with two beliefs (see above.) I suppose I'm now needing the "How."
Very consistent with those two beliefs! Hopefully we can all be figuring out and moving towards the “How” together here!
Amen! BTW, did you see the Note I posted about the film "Women Talking"? I thought it especially apt for those who are writing about High Control Religion like you and DL. It's about a remote Mennonite colony (fictitious) in which the women (and girls as young as four) have been drugged and raped by their men. This was done at the witting allowance of the Elders who have also set up their society to keep the women illiterate and voiceless. The men are being released from prison and they must decide whether to stay and live as usual, stay and fight, or leave. Powerful! Starring Claire Foy and Rooney Mara.