My Deconstruction Journey
I have come a long way in the last few years with regard to my faith and my understanding of God and the church. Many beliefs that I never felt comfortable with have been discarded, and other ideas that I had accepted as gospel have been dispelled as man-made and untrue. I have listened to a lot of podcasts and learned a lot from various forms of social media, but I have also read several books that have been very helpful. I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn, but I wanted to share the books I have learned from so far here.
An Early Foray into Deconstruction
The first book I can recall reading in the deconstruction area was in July 2020, and the book was Fierce, Free and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You by Jen Hatmaker. At the time it made me nervous to even be reading the book because some of her views did not align with the doctrine I had been taught all my life growing up in a pentecostal church and then moving into a charismatic church later on. I ended up skimming the book and not really looking for anything else like it.
A Year of Biblical Womanhood
Fast forward to November of 2023 and I had moved to an inclusive, justice-oriented church and was starting to embrace some new ideas and let go of some old ones. I then read A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans, which was a very readable book detailing how she spent a year trying to live out characteristics and actions commonly thought to make a biblical woman. She spent one month focusing on each of twelve different areas. It was fascinating and I felt my spirit opening up to more possibilities of what it could mean to be a Christian.
Fierce, Free and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You
After that, in December 2023, I decided to reread Fierce, Free and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You by Jen Hatmaker. I appreciated it a lot more the second time around. It is a self-reflective book and very encouraging.
Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again
In January 2024, I read another Rachel Held Evans book called Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again. This book focused on exploring the Bible in a variety of ways using different types of literary expression. Interestingly enough, one of my Bible professors in college talked a lot about the Bible as literature. He was considered borderline heretical by some of the students, but he was still pretty conservative in what he shared with us compared to some of what I have read and heard over the last few years.
She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up
The next book I read in March 2024 was She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky. This is a book aimed primarily at women who have daughters and want to give them better messages about their bodies and themselves than they would get from purity culture. I really enjoyed this book; even though I don’t have a daughter, it helped me with some of the internalized messages I still had from growing up in a conservative church environment. This book is based on strong research the authors have conducted and contains a lot of charts and graphs highlighting various results they found.
Where We Meet: A Lenten Study of Systems, Stories, and Hope
During the Lent season of 2024, I attended a virtual Bible study hosted by my pastor, and we read and discussed the book Where We Meet: A Lenten Study of Systems, Stories, and Hope by Rachel Gilmore, Candace Lewis, et al. The book contained daily reflections with a different topic for each week: Beginning the Journey, Diversity, Postcolonial, Equity, Contextual, and Innovation. I was introduced to a lot of new concepts that I hope to spend more time studying at some point.
The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
In May 2024, I read Beth Allison Barr’s book The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. In this book, Barr traces the history of the belief that God designed women to be submissive wives, virtuous mothers, and joyful homemakers. This was a well-written, easy-to-follow account of the historical events that have shaped this teaching into what it is today in American conservative circles. It really helped solidify my thoughts on this topic.
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez is another book tracing the history of the conservative American church. I read this in August 2024 and found it thoroughly fascinating and readable. Du Mez takes us through the last 75 years of white evangelicalism in America, showing us how rugged masculinity and Christian Nationalism have taken over and also how these developments have led to the championing of Donald Trump by the religious right.
The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church
In September 2024, I picked up a recently released book called The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon. This was a very well-written book that is part memoir and part informational discourse on the issues that arise for people who don’t fit or who start to question the church. I could relate to a lot of this book and found it very encouraging to the journey I have been on myself.
DNF (Did Not Finish)
I was recently reading Her Gates Will Never Be Shut: Hope, Hell, and the New Jerusalem by Bradley Jersak. This was my second time attempting this book. The writing is more dry and complicated, and I just had too hard a time getting through it. I have always had a lot of fear of hell (and the rapture!), and what I got from what I did read is that there is really no way to know definitively what is going to happen as the Bible can be used to support several different views of the afterlife. A related book I also DNF’d was Revelation for the Rest of Us: A Prophetic Call to Follow Jesus as a Dissident Disciple by Scot McKnight with Cody Matchett. That book was too esoteric for me.
Moving Forward
I have noticed that all but one of the books I have read have been written by women. I think that is interesting. I have listened to a number of male podcasters, so I’m not anti-men by any means, but it seems like I gravitate towards books that are written from a woman’s perspective.
I have a large list of books related to deconstruction on my TBR. Here is what I have at this point:
- Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions by Rachel Held Evans
- Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans
- A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today by Bonnie Kristian
- The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis by Karen Swallow Prior
- How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy by Terran Williams
- Marriage in the Bible: What Do the Texts Say? By Jennifer Grace Bird
- The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor by Kaitlyn Schiess
- The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here by Kaitlyn Schiess
- Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope by Esau McCaulley
- The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
- How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice by Jemar Tisby
- Beyond Fragility: A Skills-Based Guide to Effective Anti-Racist Allyship by Yara Mekawi, Natalie Watson-Singleton, and Danyelle Dawson (I think this is a secular book, but it seems to fit in this list.)
- The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky
- Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark: The Bible and Modern Science and the Trouble of Making It All Fit by Janet Kellogg Ray
- God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships by Matthew Vines
- UnClobber by Colby Martin
- Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith by April Ajoy
I am open to suggestions of other books you have found helpful in deconstructing harmful doctrines that are taught in the American church and in finding your way to a more honest and loving faith.
In So Many Words 