Thread by @mcjulie

Oh, great, it’s another one of those “exvangelicals are so boring that I don’t really want to try to figure them out, so I’ll just trash-talk them from a place of complete ignorance” takes

https://twitter.com/brchastain/status/1429821812091891719

There’s like a whole subculture of still-evangelicals who seem to think “Well, *I* examined my own religion & decided to stick with it, therefore this is obviously the only true, correct & sincere outcome.”

In one exceptionally wordy paragraph he credits "David Bentley Hart’s The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss—a bravado defense of classical theism" for putting him "back on track" --

"Hart’s book planted a seed of doubt that no criticisms of “the church” could ever really uproot: Maybe the problem is me. Maybe I don’t understand what it is that part of me wants to reject."

Implication: if (unlike him) you left the church after all MAYBE THE PROBLEM IS YOU

Oh, yes, I've certainly never had THAT suggested to me before.
"Church is just fine, the problem is you! You're too rebellious/sex crazed/intellectual/inhabited by demons!"

"Crucially, though, I went through all this before deconstruction really had much of a name, or a web of online communities devoted to connecting people undergoing the same experience."

Guess what! Me too!

This seems to be a common trope in the "well, *I* stayed in the church" essay -- the essayist had a crisis of faith or a period of "questioning" that ended with them staying -- but at the TIME, you see, there wasn't all this online chatter about deconstruction!

Implication: people "deconstructing" now are being trendy or otherwise unduly influenced by their online peers.

"What concerns me most about the contemporary deconstruction community is that, in my admittedly limited experience, it seems increasingly dependent on the assumption that certain “scripts,” or standard behavioral patterns, will hold true for most people involved"

"in my admittedly limited experience"

I could stop reading right there.

But also, as an evangelical, he's got a helluva nerve accusing EX-evangelicals of being "dependent on the assumption that certain “scripts,” or standard behavioral patterns, will hold true for most people involved."

"doing deconstruction right means proceeding through a very specific intellectual sequence, nicely illustrated by the “deconstruction guide” that was published by Josh Harris to accompany his course."

NOW HOLD ON A DANG MINUTE

The essay already pointed out that "Under withering criticism from all sides, Harris yanked the course" but now he's trying to critique the exvangelical/deconstruction message assuming that it's whatever Harris was going to teach.

He quotes from Harris' study guide, "three sections for three audiences: (1) those who want to make some fairly small-scale adjustments to their existing theology, (2) those questioning the general foundations of Christianity itself but not quite willing to pull the plug, and

"(3) those wanting to leave the faith altogether. Now, on its face, this structure is bizarre"

He's right! It is bizarre! It's not at all how I think deconstruction works!

Harris came under fire for 1. trying to make a profit 2. by "teaching" something he's not really an expert on anyway.

It's a pretty transparent straw man to try to blame US for HIM. Ugh.

If Harris was teaching a class that presumed "deconstruction" starts with the desired endpoint, I'm super, super glad that he gave it up, because that is a terrible thing to teach.

In fact, the whole topic of "deconstruction" seems like something... evangelicals *applied* that term to what exvangelicals were already doing, and now they're trying to blame us for it?

Still-evangelicals use the term "deconstructing" WAY more often than ex-evangelicals do -- it actually feels like the evangelical world is trying for rhetorical "ownership" of the term.

That's what a lot of these essays and commentaries are all about -- evangelicals trying to define the people who leave their faith in a way that makes THEM more comfortable.

He continues, "the overt implication here is that deconstruction is a road that, properly understood, leads inexorably in one direction—out of traditional Christianity."

That's not what was wrong with Harris' curriculum and also, isn't it the exact opposite?

"The intellectual possibility that you may not really understand what it is that you’re rejecting is simply excluded from the outset."

That's a... weird take.
Would you EXPECT a seminar on deconstruction to have a point 4. Maybe you just don't UNDERSTAND Christianity, actually?

And isn't deconstruction understood to be a journey TOWARD greater understanding? What does the essayist think deconstruction is, anyway?

Apparently he thinks it's some kind of cult. No, really.

"Like candidates ascending through Scientology’s “OT” stages, early-stage deconstructors might not find themselves ready for the harsher truths offered by the “higher levels” of Harris’s guide

"but when they’re ready to face the truth, the materials will all be there to usher them into a brave new post-Christian future."

Hmm, that seems like an awful lot to put on a table of contents for a canceled webinar.

The idea that deconstruction involves some "deconstruction expert" sharing "deconstruction secrets" with "deconstruction initiates" is 1. hilarious 2. typical of the evangelical mindset, and 3. EXACTLY WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HARRIS' WEBINAR IDEA

Evangelicals don't believe that people belong to themselves or think for themselves, this is very clear from, ahem, *deconstructing* their rhetoric.

Like, it's obvious evangelicals don't really believe that a person could *all on their very own* read the Bible, pray, think about it a lot, ask questions, read apologetics, and decide to walk away from the church.

So they're always looking for someone to blame -- some pied piper, some enticing siren who lured us down the wrong path, whether it's Joshua Harris or exvangelical Twitter or liberal atheist college professors or what have you.

"And what, perchance, does this future look like? If “exvangelical Twitter” is any indication, it mostly looks like a fairly boring repetition of progressive mantras."

Oh, does it? I thought it mostly looked like making fun of essays like this one. There's a LOT of that.

"If zealously arguing for police abolition and Medicare for All is your thing, then hey, carry on"

Notice that his nod to "progressive mantras" but doesn't touch on the ones that are much more central to the ex-evangelical conversation.

Things like supporting reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights, which the church opposes, or objecting to racism, misogyny and abuse within churches.

This strikes me as an entirely disingenuous point anyway -- because the modern evangelical church is so dedicated to politically right wing causes, OF COURSE people who leave the church are going to represent a lot of politically left wing people.

He's getting cause and effect backwards, deliberately so, in order to construct a flimsy strawman.

"but it does seem rather surprising that in the majority of cases, “deconstruction” doesn’t seem to lead to the adoption of any more interesting religious or philosophical commitments. Where are the post-evangelical Sikhs or Theravada Buddhists or Middle Platonists?"

Another argument in transparently bad faith. Many people leave the evangelical church for other religions, including other types of Christianity.

But, true fact, many people of many faiths & philosophies express "progressive mantras" online, especially when those "progressive mantras" involve protections for religious pluralism and resistance to Christian nationalism.

"I think it’s safe to say that what’s happening here is less a process of intellectual maturation than a substitution of one set of culture-derived norms (those of evangelicalism) for another (those of the blue-state internet)."

Wow, nobody smugs like evangelicals smug.

But I'm getting tired of saying "disingenous straw man" (because all his arguments are) and pick out a point he's making that he doesn't seem to know he's making: that being an evangelical is primarily a political identity.

That is, he looks at EX evangelicals and thinks he sees a bunch of lefties, why? Because evangelicals are assumed to be all Republicans & Trump fans.

"the thoughtful deconstructor should be equally willing to interrogate the foundational claims of the new subculture they join"

The subculture I joined when I first left the evangelical church was SFF fandom, do they even have foundational claims?

"To name just one example, if appeals to personal religious experience are per se intellectually invalid, why are routine appeals to “lived experience” unchallengeable?"

Not only is this wordy, opaque, and self-important, but also, he answers his own question & doesn't notice.

Your personal religious experience, like your lived experience, is your own. My personal religious experience, like my lived experience, is mine. See how that works?

An evangelical might say, sincerely, "but my religion really helped me" and to that I say "good for you, I guess, it didn't do anything good for me except maybe provide material for horror fiction."

"appeals to personal religious experience" are intellectually invalid when the intent is to argue that YOUR religious experience obligates ME to some feeling or action.

"the exvangelical internet is uncommonly keen to defer to whatever is taken as conventional cultural wisdom, “science,” or “expert opinion.”"

"Uncommonly keen to defer to experts in the field"

Only an evangelical would think it was WEIRD to listen to experts.

"I read all these exvangelical Twitters and they seem uncommonly keen to accept what these "experts" and "scientists" say about the germ theory of disease, but what does the Bible say?"

"Exvangelical Twitter is uncommonly keen to defer to historians on matters of history and doctors on matters of medicine and evolutionary biologists on matters of evolutionary biology"

"Exvangelicals prefer to listen to people who know what they're talking about, unlike evangelicals, but isn't "listening to experts" just another kind of ideology? Hmm?"

"All of this, taken together, is basically why I find the standard “exvangelical” script"
which I made up myself and explained poorly
"so comparatively uninteresting, as well as intellectually unconvincing."

"those reconsidering their foundational beliefs should be invited to explore the possibility that they themselves are not reliable exponents of the tradition they claim to represent"

Wait.
What?

He seems REALLY stuck on this idea that... I guess... you have to UNDERSTAND the evangelical faith in order to leave it?

Which seems like the opposite of the way it really works. I mean, just imagine how the conversation goes:

"Hi, Pastor, I was raised in the evangelical faith but it's not making sense to me anymore, I have some questions."

"Child, has it occurred to you that you don't UNDERSTAND the faith?"

"Yes, exactly, I just said that."

"Child, maybe you don’t understand what it is that part of you wants to reject."

"Huh? Pastor, that doesn't even make any sense."

"Here, Child, let me tell you about natural law."

"Uh... [backing away] thanks for clarifying, Pastor." [walks away, never to return]

"those who derive their identity from “deconstruction” seem, at least anecdotally, to have an unusually high number of broken relationships and questionable financial practices"

Uh.... "questionable financial practices"? Like what, exactly?

I mean, it's not EX-evangelicals out there giving their money to TV preachers, pillow hucksters, conman ex presidents, and dubious missionaries.

Unless he's talking about Joshua Harris again, I don't know what he's getting on about.

"one might reasonably question whether happiness and wholeness really lie at the end of the exvangelical path."

That's not the right question. The question is "would any of us be MORE happy and MORE whole still in the church?" and the answer is a resounding HELL NO

I mean, maybe that's something good I got out of the church: I was so miserable as a child & teen that, no matter how miserable I am as an adult, how much is going wrong in the world, I can still tell myself "well, at least I'm not in church anymore"

"An important caveat to all this: I’m very sorry that some who end up deconstructing have had miserable or downright abusive experiences in the church, and I certainly don’t want anything I write here to minimize that pain."

PFFFFFT like anybody believes that.

I mean... does he think people deconstruct because they're HAPPY in the church?

"Tim Keller once quipped"

Oh, THIS asshole again

“doubt your doubts”

Um... okay? You think we didn't do that?

"he’s inviting the thoughtful listener to ask an important question: on the basis of what assumptions about truth and reality am I finding my existing religious tradition inadequate?"

Oh, hey, that's a great question! Let me see...

I assume that reality exists, but my experience of it is necessarily subjective, so subjective, in fact, that I can't really PROVE reality exists, so I have no choice other than to ACT as if it does, until proven wrong.

I assume that "truth" the word is used to mean both philosophical truth and objective fact, and that evangelicals are often quite lazy in conflating the two --

Lazy, that is, when they're not downright deceptive.

So, what do I assume about truth and reality that leads me to reject the evangelical faith? I assume that a religious tradition should not be grounded in the rejection of scientific or historical fact.

I assume a religion that demands inhumane treatment of designated "unclean" groups is harmful.

I assume a religion that denies me the full measure of my humanity is not worthwhile.

I assume a religion highly concerned with money and secular political power is corrupt.

I assume a religious tradition that is strongly associated with humans acting their worst -- racist, cruel, reckless, greedy, anti-democratic, etc. -- cannot be very much good.

And I also assume, if I'm wrong about any of the things I assume, God knows where I am, they're free to contact me anytime.

The final line of the essay: "The collapse of one plausibility structure is always the genesis of a different one; a deconstruction” is always a conversion."

Right, according to evangelicals, you can't escape.

But at first I read that as "a deconstruction is always a conversation" and thought he said something true.

And that's the end, I need to get some actual work done.