Is Deconstruction the Same as Deconversion? A Few Reflections on Reforming the Church

The last few years have been a rough stretch for the evangelical church. Plagued not only be a complex and intractable health crisis with COVID, the church has also faced an increasingly polarized cultural-political environment as well as numerous internal scandals involving abusive leadership.

Perhaps it is not surprising that this same period of time has seen a rise in so-called cases of deconversion—people who once claimed to be fairly run-of-the-mill evangelicals but then, for whatever reasons, decided this was not the life for them. And they walked away from the faith.

The high-profile cases of deconversion stories are well known: Rob Bell, Rhett and Link, Joshua Harris, etc. And for every high-profile case, there are countless ordinary folks who are also leaving Christianity behind. There is even a recent book devoted to this phenomenon: John Marriott, The Anatomy of Deconversion: Keys to a Lifelong Faith in a Culture Abandoning Christianity (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2021).

At the same time, something else has been happening in evangelical Christian circles—some believers are engaging in the task of deconstruction. Read More