To Disentangle, Or Give Up On a Heap of Knots?

Decolonizing our deconstruction, part 2

Last week we explored part one of decolonizing our religious deconstruction by examining how modern American evangelicalism was purposely created as a white religion: meaning it centered the people and values that benefit from white supremacy. This ranged from the denominations that were included in the National Association of Evangelicals, to the causes white evangelicalism supported (i.e. not progressive civil rights movements in the 20^th century and beyond), to the general ethos and values it embodied (e.g. individualism, personal salvation).

Today we’ll discuss what’s left of Christianity once we disentangle white evangelicalism AND white supremacy from it (lolol as if I could adequately cover that in one post, but we’ll try to scratch the surface.)…and what it means to deconstruct faith while being mindful of those other issues.

Photo by Crawford Jolly on Unsplash

There’s more than the Christianity I was raised in

I wrote back in early December (before many of you were here) a bit about my experiences with the Black church and African American spirituality. Black Christianity has been one of the most redeeming aspects of Christianity for me. As you may recall, I got my counseling degree from a theological seminary, and a lot of my classmates were Black and training to be in ministry. I’ve sung in chapel choir with them, I’ve sat in Bible and theology classes with them, and I lived in campus housing with them. It’s not just theoretical: these are real people I specifically think of when I think of Black Christianity.

Unfortunately, this much richer understanding of Christianity was nowhere to be found in my childhood belief system. What white evangelicalism did was pretend – no, not just pretend, but literally indoctrinate us with the idea – that our version of religion was the only valid one that existed. Not just that Christianity was the only valid religion, but that our specific version of Christianity was the right one.

I’m still mad about this, because it doesn’t just impact you while you’re in the religion – it often sticks with you during and after the leaving of the religion.

What I want to do is try to navigate the tender line of deconstructing from religion that has actively harmed so many people – while also acknowledging that religion has been meaningful for lots of people, including people groups evangelicalism has actively oppressed, such as people of color and women – while ALSO recognizing how supremacist systems show up even in spaces that oppressed groups choose to belong to.

Easy peasy, right?

What do we find that’s redeemable?

Let’s start with the theory that a religion – or go more broadly and just say spirituality – based on the teachings of the person we know as Jesus Christ is going to be one that does not do harm to others, that stands up for the oppressed and marginalized, that extends grace and compassion to others, and that calls its followers to lead a more ethical, moral life.

Therefore, religious practices that do not align with the above are not the “truest” representatives of this type of spirituality. (Side note: I am aware of both sides of this argument, that you can’t just exclude people from a religion because you don’t like the way they practice it; but also that there are some truly twisted ways of practicing a religion. And I also know I have described a very simplified, idealized form of Christian ethics that has NOTHING to do with a Nicene or Apostles’ Creed and therefore is not orthodox Christianity).

Second, we can acknowledge that something can be good and helpful for you while still harmful for other people. When I was in it, evangelicalism provided immense order, meaning, and purpose for my life. It gave me a sense of connection with God / the transcendent.

But I wonder if my Jewish friends would feel that same sense of goodness, if (and when, because the question came up) they knew I believed they would go to hell because they hadn’t accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior? Or my Mormon friends, if they knew I believed they belonged to a cult?

Or what about the African American enslaved people who were told by their white enslaver that the Bible told them to be “submissive to their masters” and that slavery was God’s will? Or what about Indigenous people who freely roamed the land but did not own it, only to be greeted by pestilence-carrying white men intent on colonizing what was once uncolonizable (Mother Earth) and killing anyone who stood in the way?

To disentangle, or give up on the heap of knots?

It is extraordinarily difficult to disentangle Christianity from the ways it has caused immense harm. From Constantine to the Crusades to Manifest Destiny and colonization to justifying slavery and segregation… it’s a lot to clean up from. Even so, it has done immense good, too. And I’m not at all about raining on a parade that other people really love, even if I don’t really like the parade. EXCEPT – if it turns out the parade is actually really damaging to the town it’s parading through. Oh and also probably the parade participants. Ok, so maybe I’m rainier than I thought.

I found that I didn’t want to be associated with the things Christianity had come to mean. But even before that, I stopped being able to believe the things that would make one a Christian… and since I had been taught since I was a child that it was belief that made you a Christian, well, I couldn’t be one anymore. (that’s a post for another day, I suppose). I can love a lot of elements of following Jesus, and I can love a lot of people who follow Jesus. But to identify with the title of Christian right now feels like a too-tight shoe I put on the wrong foot and am trying to run a race in.

But when I do think of Christianity that I love: I think of my seminary’s chapel with my Black fellow students singing gospel songs, swaying and clapping. I think of my Mennonite friends for whom nonviolence runs in their blood. I think of every church hanging a huge pride flag outside their walls. And I smile. And I believe in that.

We’ll spend one more week next week discussing Christianity, whiteness, harm, and systems of power. I’ll talk about Tyre Nichols and that one time my town had a prayer gathering in seeming direct opposition to a Black Lives Matter march…a prayer gathering keynoted by a Black pastor.

What has your disentangling process looked like? What are the aspects you want to keep, if any, and what have you tossed out? And how have you wrestled with the damage inflicted by groups we once belonged to, while navigating your own religious trauma?

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