Over the next few weeks, writers Michael Lecy and Sarah Southern will collaborate and mutually share four essays reflecting on various aspect of spiritual deconstruction. We hope these contemplative and thoughtful pieces will encourage and resonate with our many readers across the deconstruction spectrum.
There’s a scene in the brutally chilling Hulu show Under the Banner of Heaven that stunningly captures the raw anguish of a disintegrating faith.
While investigating the double homicide of a mother and her infant (by her fundamentalist Mormon family), detective Jeb Pyre (played by the brilliant Andrew Garfield) explores the hidden history of his own faith. He’s upstanding, devout, well-intentioned. He’s a tender father, a good church member, a non-questioning, life-long Mormon.
But as he investigates the murder and the extreme theology that compelled it, he’s no longer able to separate his seemingly good tradition from a tradition formed in violence. They are connected and the church’s cover-up of its bloody past makes it all the more horrific.
In this sobering scene while sitting in his parked car, Jeb is overwhelmed by grief as enlightenment descends. New knowledge means everything he thought was correct and true is now cast beneath a shadow of doubt. Though I’m not Mormon and know little about this particular religious tradition, I do know the despair of dying certainty, the grief of reconciling my faith tradition with its own dark history. This scene has stayed with me for months for its cinematic display of the profound loneliness of a deconstructed faith.
I felt similar anguish when I read Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise, the first book I’d ever read about the white evangelical church’s complicity in segregation, white supremacy, and horrific human rights violations. Tisby wrote of Christians who attended church on Sunday mornings and lynchings in the afternoons, who committed atrocities while citing scripture, and established Christian colleges to uphold racial segregation. Like Jeb, I felt I’d stumbled upon a well-known history that had remained hidden from me. And once I knew, there was no turning back, no excuses of “not all churches” or “not all Christians,” no penance for the sins of countless evangelical ancestors.
We were swimming forward in a polluted stream, convinced racism and white supremacy was far behind, far enough behind to ignore and disregard. My faith collapsed when I came face-to-face with a horrendous history; my faith tradition could not be separated from these revelations.
Loneliness accompanies illumination. On Sundays, I stood in the midst of a devout congregation within a denomination founded in hate. I could no longer bury my questions or ignore my grief, grief for a faith that had meant everything to me, grief for a version of faith that had oppressed and harmed in Jesus’ name.
Anyone who has deconstructed has a story, a final lynchpin that launched us from unwavering belief into great uncertainty. We hold our stories tenderly, often in loneliness as those around us remain blissfully naive or stubborn or even hard-hearted.
How do we salvage a faith rife with so much rot? We look to others for affirmation we’re not crazy for our crumbling theology. It’s not even a question of “where is God in the midst of suffering?” It’s: “where is God when his own people cause the suffering in the first place?”
Jeb Pyre is told to withhold his questions, trust church leaders, and carry on in faux ignorance. His wife makes it clear she cannot accept his spiritual unraveling. He’s abandoned in his despair.
Who am I to tell you what happens to a deconstructing soul? Whatever we call it (deconstruction or otherwise), if we’re honest, we’ve all known dark nights and spiritual abandonment. Our stories are diverse, our understanding of the Divine is complex and varied. We possess limited brain capacity and tender hearts. To deconstruct, to “self-clarify” (Abraham Heschel) is a natural part of spiritual formation.
It should be expected, encouraged, honored.
We can easily become complacent in ideology. But deconstruction often shocks us out of habit and routine. Uprooting everything may leave us feeling like we have nothing left, like everything we’d spent our lives revereing and building was complete deception. Perhaps this is why many caution against it—better to feign unwavering faith than publicly decry or question it.
I want nothing to do with a faith tradition that stifles questions, ignores the past, and offers “not all Christians” as a response to injustice.
In the novel Silence, author Shusaku Endo writes of horrific suffering with the underlying question: “Where is God when God is silent?” In confronting the past, we may feel overwhelmed by the same question. When considering human history and human atrocities, wars and crusades and genocides fought and carried out in Jesus’ name, in the anguish of the marginalized and the seeming success of the oppressors, we too demand a response from a silent god.
…
The past is never just in the past. And our ignorance doesn’t absolve us, especially when we can no longer claim ignorance. Like Jeb, I cannot go back to a more naive version of myself. Doubt festered with every new piece of information.
But
Our doubt and despair can sow generative seeds of renewed hope.
Polluted waters can be made clean, toxic traditions can be upended.
Deconstruction can be a catalyst towards necessary lament, followed by necessary action.
We deconstruct to rid our hearts of prejudice,
to acknowledge spiritual abuse,
to topple power structures,
to confront injustice,
to see God differently,
to undo toxic theology,
to provide welcoming spaces,
to seek the flourishing of the marginalized,
to grow in love of neighbor.
And perhaps in that neighbor love…we might glimpse the face of God.
Sarah Southern is a Denver-based writer who ‘writes from the spiritual desert where doubt and faith coexist,’ exploring themes of deconstruction, beauty, connection, home, and curiosity.
this was so good. thank you for saying these things out loud. i appreciate you so much friend. i will have to watch jen’s story now too!
Well written and I love this. You guys did such a great job depicting the feelings and experiences--especially the loneliness--of deconstruction. And still ended on hope. Beautiful.