I Deconstructed My Faith — Here's Where It Went Wrong

For a while, deconstructing my faith made me a better Christian. At the time, I thought I was becoming more thoughtful and mature. I was reconsidering the politics, culture and theology I had grown up with, and I felt like I was finally developing a faith that actually belonged to me rather than simply repeating what I had been taught.

But eventually I had to re-evaluate those new beliefs — because of one uncomfortable question from my boss… 

What is religious deconstruction?

First, what is religious deconstruction?

One difficulty is that scholars still do not have one universally accepted definition of religious deconstruction. Mary Cole in her 2025 dissertation on religious deconstruction, notes that it is commonly used for experiences such as questioning doctrines, changing religious beliefs or practices, reconsidering biblical authority, and sometimes moving away from a previous religious identity altogether. Manglos-Weber et al and Angela Herrington describe deconstruction as a complex and highly personal process that can involve changes in spirituality, identity and a person’s relationship to religious institutions.

For this video, I’m using deconstruction to mean the sustained process of examining Christian beliefs, practices and authorities that you previously took for granted. Deconstruction begins when those assumptions stop feeling self-evident and you begin asking why you believe them and whether they are actually true.

Christianity itself gives us room for examination and discernment. In Acts 17:11, the Bereans are praised because they received Paul’s teaching eagerly but still examined the Scriptures to see whether what he said was true. Paul similarly tells Christians in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 to “test everything” and “hold fast what is good.” Questioning an interpretation, tradition or leader is therefore not automatically an act of rebellion against God. The more difficult question is what authority we eventually use to decide what is true.

Where does deconstruction come from?

The term deconstruction itself has a much longer history. German philosopher Martin Heidegger used the concept of Destruktion in 1927 to describe critically examining inherited philosophical concepts and uncovering their underlying assumptions. In the 1960s, French philosopher Jacques Derrida developed what became known as deconstruction. His project was not simply about destroying ideas, but examining how concepts that appear stable depend upon assumptions, oppositions and exclusions that may be less stable than we realise. Derrida’s Of Grammatology, published in French in 1967, became one of the foundational works associated with the term. [ON SCREEN: Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, 1967.]

Christian theologians began explicitly engaging these ideas during the 1980s. Then, during the late 1990s and 2000s, the Emerging Church movement helped bring the language of deconstruction out of academic theology and into Christian communities. Sociologists Gerardo Martí and Gladys Ganiel, in their 2014 book The Deconstructed Church, describe Emerging Christianity as involving a continual practice of deconstruction in which inherited religious forms, institutions and assumptions could be questioned and recombined.

By the late 2010s, deconstruction had become increasingly associated with the exvangelical movement. Blogs, podcasts and social media gave Christians and former Christians new places to reconsider teachings about biblical authority, gender, sexuality, purity culture, politics, race and church leadership. Research such as Brittany Gull’s 2022 dissertation on exvangelicals in the digital age examines this connection between religious transition, identity and online community. At this point, most people saying they were “deconstructing their faith” were not attempting to apply Derrida’s philosophy technically. The word had become popular language for critically reassessing beliefs and authorities that had previously been taken for granted.

Why are people deconstructing?

So, why are so many people “deconstructing”?

There does not seem to be one cause. Cole’s 2025 research identifies a mixture of intellectual, social, political, relational and spiritual factors in contemporary deconstruction. This is important because it means we should be cautious about saying that people deconstruct simply because they want to sin, or conversely that everyone who deconstructs must have been spiritually abused. Different people arrive there for different reasons.

Young People

First, age appears to be one factor in the contemporary phenomenon. A 2020 survey conducted by The Deconstruction Network found that most respondents who identified as deconstructing were under fifty, with 35 percent between eighteen and twenty-nine and another 33 percent between thirty and forty-nine. That survey is not the same thing as a representative peer-reviewed population study, so I would not use it to claim that we know exactly how many Christians are deconstructing. But it does support the observation that the online deconstruction conversation has been particularly prominent among younger and middle-aged adults.

Disillusionment with the Church

A second cause is disillusionment with Christian institutions. Cole discusses people questioning churches because of perceived hypocrisy, racism, sexism, harmful teachings surrounding sexuality, failures around abuse, political entanglement and other experiences where the behaviour of Christian institutions appears inconsistent with their stated beliefs. Research on religious doubt and disaffiliation more broadly likewise shows that people can experience serious distress when their religious worldview begins to conflict with their experiences or moral convictions.

Political Differences

Politics has also become part of this story, mainly in the United States but even abroad like here in Australia. The 2016 election of Donald Trump is considered one recurring point of tension in contemporary deconstruction narratives. For some Christians, strong evangelical support for Trump conflicted with the moral standards they believed Christianity had taught them. Then came COVID, lockdowns, vaccines, Black Lives Matter, debates about race and sexuality, and an increasingly fractured political culture. For many people, political and religious identity became so intertwined that questioning one began to destabilise the other.

Intellectual Dissatisfaction

Fourth, intellectual dissatisfaction matters too. Ann Marie Fisher describes doubt as part of a much broader process of religious change, while other studies examine what happens when people encounter ideas or experiences that their inherited worldview cannot easily explain. This might involve science, biblical scholarship, another Christian denomination, another religion, or simply meeting good and intelligent people who do not fit the categories someone was raised with.

Religious Trauma and Spiritual Abuse

Finally, there is also an important body of research on religious and spiritual struggles. Alyson Downie’s 2022 article on Christian shame and religious trauma, for example, examines ways Christian contexts can become associated with shame and psychological distress. Other research by scholars such as Julie Exline, Kenneth Pargament, Christopher Ellison and others has examined religious doubt, perceived punishment from God, interpersonal conflict in religious communities and other forms of spiritual struggle. This research should not be simplified into the claim that Christianity itself causes trauma, but it does show that religious commitments can become closely connected to both wellbeing and serious distress.

My experience with deconstruction

Now, I want to tell you my story.

I grew up in a loving Christian home and was homeschooled from fourth grade. I actually enjoyed being homeschooled, and I don’t regret it. But the broader homeschooling world I grew up around was very conservative, and some of the Christian material we encountered came out of fundamentalist environments. There were strong expectations surrounding dating, gender, sexuality, entertainment and what respectable Christian life was supposed to look like.

My family was nowhere near the extreme end represented by people like Bill Gothard or the Duggars, and different homeschooling families approached these things very differently. But I still grew up with a relatively narrow picture of what faithful Christianity looked like. Certain political and cultural positions seemed naturally connected with biblical Christianity because nearly everyone around me held them.

Then I went to Biola University, which I loved, and began meeting committed Christians who didn’t fit that template. Some were politically liberal. Others thought differently about culture or lifestyle. I was encountering people who clearly considered themselves Christians but did not share all of the assumptions I had associated with Christianity growing up.

As I continued into postgraduate study, my social world expanded further. My friends and coworkers increasingly included people who were centre-left politically, and many of my old homeschool classmates were also changing. At the same time, I wanted to fit in with some of these new groups. Looking back, that part matters. Some of what I called intellectual development was genuine learning, but some of it was ordinary social influence. I liked certain people, respected them and wanted to belong with them, and my opinions gradually moved in their direction. And of course, there was a guy I wanted to impress -- and failed.

By 2020, American politics had become extraordinarily polarised. I became increasingly uncomfortable with evangelical support for Donald Trump, conspiracy theories, and some of the rhetoric I was seeing from Christians on the political right. At the same time, many of my friends were moving politically left, so I moved with them. I voted for Joe Biden, became increasingly sympathetic to progressive politics, read books such as Jesus and John Wayne, and began distancing myself from much of the conservative Christian world I had grown up in.

Some of that change was healthy. It helped me see that Christianity and conservative American politics are not identical. It made me more aware of other people’s experiences, and it forced me to question assumptions I had absorbed without seriously examining them.

Over time I also became strongly identified with the political left. Social media reinforced that. My feeds were full of people who largely agreed with one another, while people on the other side increasingly looked irrational, immoral or dangerous. In some respects, I had left one social environment with very strong assumptions and entered another one with its own strong assumptions.

Yet a few years later, I became disillusioned with that political world as well. My confidence in the Democratic Party declined, including my confidence in Joe Biden and in some of the narratives I had accepted during that period after his debate performance in 2024. But the most important part of my reconstruction was not changing my opinion of a politician or political party. It was realising that my politics had become one of the lenses through which I now judged Scripture.

That danger exists on both sides. In either case, we can start reading the Bible primarily to confirm what our community has already taught us.

Romans 12:2 tells Christians not to be conformed to the pattern of this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. I don't think that warning only applies to whatever political group we dislike. My own side can form me just as powerfully as somebody else's.

The turning point

Then, there was a turning point.

When I moved to Australia in 2022 and began working in ministry, I had some distance from the American political environment for the first time. Being outside the country helped me recognise how much of my thinking had been shaped by the social environment I was living in. But the more important change was spiritual rather than political.

After I had been working in ministry for a while, my supervisor asked me a very uncomfortable question: “How often do you read the Bible?” 

I was embarrassed and cagey. Despite having studied the Bible academically for years and despite working as a pastor, my own devotional life had become inconsistent. I could discuss theology, politics and Christianity endlessly, but I wasn't consistently spending significant personal time in Scripture and prayer.

I said, “Every now and then.” She then responded, “I can tell from your emotional reactions that you are not spending time with the Lord on your own. In your role as a pastor here, it is crucial that you are spending time with God.” I had worked for two churches previously and had been a part of other churches and ministries along the way -- still, NO ONE had ever asked me that before. No one had ever held me to account. It knocked me sideways in a new way.

See, studying the Bible academically and allowing Scripture to form you spiritually are not necessarily the same activity. Hebrews 4:12 describes the word of God as living and active, able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 2 Timothy 3:16–17 describes Scripture as useful for teaching, correcting and training us in righteousness. For Christians, Scripture is therefore not only something we analyse. We also allow ourselves to be challenged by it.

So I changed my routine. I began reading Scripture every day and intentionally giving prayer a serious place in my life again. I began asking God for wisdom rather than assuming that the loudest voice in my social environment had already given me the answer. James 1:5 tells believers that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God for it.

Over time, I became increasingly aware that I had spent several years asking how Christianity could fit my changing worldview rather than allowing my worldview to be challenged by Christianity. That became the turning point for me.

It doesn't mean I simply returned to every position I held when I was eighteen. I didn't. One of the genuine benefits of my deconstruction period was discovering that Christians can disagree about many things without one side automatically being wicked or stupid. I became less interested in ideological purity and more comfortable recognising complexity and nuance.

It also forced me to decide whether Christianity was actually mine. Growing up, I was on this road partly because my family and community put me there. Deconstruction allowed me to step outside of that inherited framework and examine it. Eventually I returned to Christian convictions, but when I did, I realised that I was now choosing that road for myself.

That is why I cannot say deconstruction was entirely bad for me. It helped me separate Christianity from some of the cultural baggage surrounding it. It taught me empathy toward people who doubt. It also showed me how easily we can leave one echo chamber only to enter another.

Where deconstruction can go wrong

So, where can deconstruction go wrong?

This is now my biggest concern with the way deconstruction sometimes operates online. Questioning something is not the same thing as disproving it.

You can discover that a belief was taught badly without establishing that the belief itself is false. You can discover hypocrisy in a church without proving Christianity false. You can discover that Christians have abused a biblical teaching without proving that Scripture does not teach it. You can also discover that something you were taught as biblical was actually cultural, denominational or political.

The unhealthy version of deconstruction I experienced began when I wanted the Bible to arrive at conclusions I had already decided were morally or politically correct. At that point, I wasn't really asking Scripture to form me. I was asking whether I could find a way to make Scripture agree with me.

Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” If Christians genuinely believe that, then truth cannot simply mean whatever best affirms our present identity or political commitments. Following Jesus includes the possibility that He will disagree with us.

At the same time, none of this means Christian leaders should be protected from criticism. Jesus Himself condemned religious leaders who placed heavy burdens on others while failing to live faithfully themselves in Matthew 23:4. 1 Peter 5:2–3 tells church leaders not to domineer over the people entrusted to them. Scripture therefore gives Christians reasons both to submit ourselves to God and to scrutinise human beings who claim to speak for Him.

This is also why I think we have to be careful with the assumption that every difficult religious experience proves that the underlying doctrine is wrong. Research can establish that particular teachings, environments or forms of spiritual struggle are associated with distress without resolving the theological truth of the doctrine itself. Psychological research and theological argument are answering different questions, and I think Christians need both intellectual honesty and pastoral sensitivity here.

How I think Christians can deconstruct more healthily

So, how can Christians deconstruct in a healthy way?

If you are questioning your faith, do not panic or suppress every doubt. Research in the psychology of religion has studied doubt for decades. Fisher's 2017 review, for example, treats doubt, disaffiliation and related religious changes as complex processes rather than reducing doubt itself to pathology. Research by Lisa Upenieks has likewise examined changes in religious doubt and their relationship with mental and physical health during emerging adulthood.

The Bible itself contains people bringing difficult questions directly to God. Psalm 13 begins with David asking, “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?” Job demanded answers from God for his troubles. Biblical faith does not require pretending confusion, grief or anger do not exist.

I would therefore protect your relationship with God while you're asking questions. If you're angry with God, tell Him. If you're confused, tell Him. If Christians have hurt you, tell Him that too. The temptation during deconstruction can be to stop praying and reading Scripture because those practices are associated with the religious world you're questioning. In my own experience, abandoning them made it easier for other voices to become my primary authorities.

If trauma, anxiety, shame or spiritual abuse are part of the story, I would also consider working with a qualified counsellor. Research on religion and psychotherapy has increasingly emphasised the importance of treating a client's spirituality seriously rather than dismissing or imposing upon it. 

A good spiritual director can also be helpful, particularly if you want someone to help you examine what is happening in your relationship with God rather than simply debating doctrines with you.

I would be careful to bring this to a pastor or ministry leader. Pastors are not given robust training in this area, especially for those who did not attend Bible college and do not pursue further training in their field. So you need to be discerning with non-professional counselors, like a pastor, as sometimes this can do more harm to you than good. They think they are doing the right thing but are actually hurting you in the process.

I would also deliberately expose yourself to thoughtful people who disagree with you. Proverbs 18:17 says that the first person to present a case can seem right until another comes forward and examines it. That is remarkably relevant to an algorithmic media environment. If you only consume material from one side of a theological or cultural debate, you are not necessarily becoming more discerning. You may simply be replacing one authority structure with another.

If every podcast, Instagram account and YouTube channel you consume tells you that your former church was evil and everyone who disagrees with you is dangerous, you've probably created another echo chamber. The same is true if your Christian media diet tells you that everyone asking serious questions has been corrupted by the world.

Read widely. Read the strongest arguments for the positions you disagree with rather than caricatures of them. When dealing with Scripture, look for serious biblical scholarship instead of viral claims that conveniently confirm whatever you already believe. Learn enough church history to recognise when something your community presented as “obviously biblical” is actually one interpretation among several Christian traditions. But also don't make the opposite mistake of assuming that the existence of several interpretations means there can be no better or worse interpretation.

And if you know somebody who is deconstructing, don't assume their questions prove they never sincerely believed. Cole's research explicitly cautions against that assumption, and the wider literature on religious struggles shows that highly committed religious people can experience profound doubt and distress precisely because their faith matters so much to them. Listening seriously does not require agreeing with every conclusion someone reaches.

Galatians 6:1 speaks about restoration being carried out gently, while also warning believers to watch themselves. First Peter 3:15 tells Christians to give reasons for their hope with gentleness and respect. I think those are much healthier models than humiliating people for asking questions.

At the same time, people going through deconstruction need to be willing to take responsibility for themselves. Some of us genuinely were taught unhealthy things. Some people experienced serious spiritual harm. But our parents, pastors and churches are not responsible for every conclusion we later reach. In my own story, I can identify environments that influenced me in both directions, but ultimately I am responsible for what I believed, posted and said.

Conclusion

Today, I am grateful that I questioned some things but still found my way back to God.

For me, healthy deconstruction ultimately became less about asking, “How can I make Christianity fit who I am now?” and more about asking, “What is actually true?”

I think that is the question Christians on every side of these debates have to keep asking. We should be willing to examine the traditions, politics and cultural assumptions that we attach to Christianity. We should test what we are taught, as the Bereans did. We should recognise that pastors, denominations, parents, political parties and Christian subcultures can all be wrong.

Yet, the goal of faith cannot simply be to construct a version of God who reliably agrees with us. That makes God our servant, not we who serve God.

Sometimes questioning what we inherited is part of growing spiritually. Sometimes reconstruction means rejecting something we were wrongly taught. Sometimes it means discovering that a belief we disliked is nevertheless true. The challenge is remaining humble enough to consider that the thing God wants to change may not always be our theology. Sometimes it might be us.

In future videos, I’ll discuss topics like spiritual abuse, being burned by the Church, and why church leadership allow these things to happen, from the perspective of an actual pastor who has been on the inside. For now, if you found this video helpful, please give it a like, and subscribe to the channel. Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you next time.

REFERENCES

Cole, Mary C. “Religious Deconstruction: The Process, Themes, and Psychosocial Dynamics of Deconstructing Evangelical Beliefs and Practices.” PhD diss., Adams State University, 2025. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, 32043678.

Derrida, Jacques. De la grammatologie. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967.

Downie, Alyson. “Christian Shame and Religious Trauma.” Religions 13, no. 10 (2022): 925.

Ellison, Christopher G., and Jinwoo Lee. “Spiritual Struggles and Psychological Distress: Is There a Dark Side of Religion?” Social Indicators Research 98 (2010): 501–17.

Exline, Julie J., and Ephraim Rose. “Religious and Spiritual Struggles.” In Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 315–30. 2005.

Fisher, Andrew R. “A Review and Conceptual Model of the Research on Doubt, Disaffiliation, and Related Religious Changes.” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 9, no. 4 (2017): 358–67.

Gull, Brittany L. “Becoming Exvangelical: The Faith Journeys, Identity Work, and Activism of Former Evangelicals in the Digital Age.” PhD diss., University of Utah, 2022.

Herrington, Angela J. Deconstructing Your Faith Without Losing Yourself. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2024.

Manglos-Weber, Nicolette, Claudia Alvarez Hurtado, and David C. Wang. “The Spirituality of Deconstruction in United States Theological Schools.” Religions 15, no. 2 (2024): 188.

Martí, Gerardo, and Gladys Ganiel. The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Nica, Andreea A. “Leaving My Religion: How Ex-Fundamentalists Reconstruct Identity Related to Well-Being.” Journal of Religion and Health 59 (2020): 2120–34.

The Deconstruction Network. “Who Are Deconstructing Christians? The Deconstruction Network’s Initial Survey 2020: Executive Summary.” October 2020.

Upenieks, Laura. “Changes in Religious Doubt and Physical and Mental Health in Emerging Adulthood.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 60, no. 2 (2021): 332–61.