Name: Why We All Need To Deconstruct Christianity
Uploaded: 2025-08-30T23:07:45.000Z
Duration: 9 min 38 s
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Deconstruction has been a hot topic in the church for about a decade, but why is that?

Transition words & phrases

Well, in part, because the internet has brought like-minded people together to start to recognize they weren't the only ones thinking what they were thinking about Christianity.

In fact, they had similar stories to share.

Stories about harm and abuse from within the church, making them question the religious structures that they had been told they should just accept as fact.

The power structures of Christianity, especially the ones espoused by conservative evangelicals in America, they don't want you to deconstruct.

They don't want you questioning the beliefs that keep you in line with their authority.

But I would argue the opposite, actually.

If you never examine your faith, is it really real?

Whether you're a Christian or firmly anti-religion, deconstruction is for you.

Because what deconstruction is ultimately about is standing up to the power structures of religion and sharing your story about the harm that it causes.

So let's look at some inspiration of deconstruction in action that even Christians can't ignore, starting with Jesus.

Jesus lived in a time where religion and politics were tightly intertwined, similar to today.

The Pharisees, Sadducees, and temple authorities had tremendous power, both politically and socially.

The Pharisees were the moral gatekeepers of the day, who built fences of purity around the laws of God.

They claimed authority by defining who was clean and unclean, who was in and who was out.

Similar to the voices of today, these figures' power came from controlling morality and appearances.

The Sadducees, on the other hand, were the wealthy elite who controlled the temple system, think priest.

They kept their power by collaborating with the Roman Empire, often enriching themselves at the expense of the average person.

Today, you might think of them as the megachurch pastors with deep political connections, or the Christian nationalist pastors, or the televangelists who build their fortunes on the back of regular people.

Their power came from aligning religion with money and political power.

So what did Jesus do in this environment?

He challenged purity culture by aligning himself with and spending time with those ostracized by the temple system.

He flipped social hierarchy by elevating women, children, the poor, and immigrants.

He called out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees by letting them know that their obsession with rules was in opposition to the scripture.

And he even confronted corruption in the temple, driving out the people who were turning religion into profit.

This is what makes Jesus a great example of deconstruction in the church.

He stood up to the systems of power that were harming people in the name of religion.

And if we look around today, the parallels are striking.

We have purity culture and hypocrisy running rampant among Christian nationalists and the prosperity gospel and culture wars.

Jesus was committed to dismantling a system that thrived off of oppressing people in the of religion.

The Catholic church is now the immense power structure in need of dismantling.

They didn't just control the church, but also social capital, political capital, and wealth.

Ordinary people were expected to submit to these rituals, pay indulgences, and live ordinary lives while the wealthy elite clergy often lived opulent lifestyles.

Wealthy clergy control the flow of money and impose what's called indulgences or attacks on sin, where a cash payment could reduce your punishment for a sin committed.

Their rigid hierarchies and rituals focused on obedience and following the rules of the church rather than developing a personal faith in God.

And their suppression of questioning ensured that their system would stay intact, because anyone that would question the system would risk being excommunicated from the social environment at play here.

Enter Martin Luther, who I'm sure you know who he is and exactly what he did for the Christian church.

But something that I don't hear talked about enough is how the things he did was deconstruction.

He challenged the financial exploitation of the rich elite leading the church.

He called out indulgences for being exploitative, turning grace into this weird commodity that hurt people.

He called out the hypocrisy of the Catholic priests living lavishly while calling their people to a must align with both scripture and personal conscience, not hierarchy or tradition.

His 95 theses were publicly displayed so that people would engage in thoughtful dialogue, which was a revolutionary act at that time.

And lastly, he risked everything to do the things that he did.

Like Jesus, confronting these abusive power systems meant facing excommunication, being socially isolated, or facing political pressure to stay The economic, social, political, and religious environments of this time were so intimately intertwined that Martin Luther really risked his entire quality of life in order to deconstruct these power structures.

And he didn't know if he would be the only one, the only one to feel the power imbalance and the abuse of power happening within this system.

What he discovered was that he was not alone.

As soon as he raised his voice, he found that there were others, other dissenters, other detractors who didn't like this system either and saw the same kind of abuses that he saw.

A revolutionary movement that came out of it.

We have an abusive power structure within the religious system, specifically in conservative evangelical movements that have been working on devising this plan and building it into a power structure for some time now.

These systems of religious exploitation are winning as long as we stay silent.

We need every voice in our communities flipping over the tables of injustice, nailing our opinions to the door, saying you can't just keep ignoring all of us.

Speaking out against abuses, holding these systems accountable when they won't hold themselves accountable.

And what's really cool is that we don't even need to wonder if we're alone anymore.

Social media has long proven that you are not the only one questioning these things.

You are not the only one with a story to tell.

You are not the only one who has been abused by this system, if in fact you have been.

Hey, did you know that Christians who deconstruct have abandoned the authority of God and made themselves their own authority, essentially becoming their own God?

I definitely have because I used to think it and I used to say it.

Fundamentalism creates a reality where our relationship with our parents is an extension of our fear of God.

Christina Cleveland said that her and her parents were patriarchally intertwined and that their relationship seemed intimate because she consistently submitted to their authority, confined herself to their spiritual world.

One of the greatest lessons I've learned since leaving evangelical Christianity in a leadership role is just how self-righteous it made me.

I would go travel the world, preach to all these groups, cultures, ethnicities, languages, and I would essentially ask them to become like me.

I would essentially say that, hey, I'm here because I believe this and you're here because you believe this and you're going to hell if you don't turn and believe like me.

And it essentially gave me a superiority complex.

John 3.16 says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and the world doesn't have any qualifiers in it.

In Matthew 22, 37-40, Jesus sums up the law by saying, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Neighbor doesn't have any qualifiers either.

And what I know about evangelicals is they're obsessed with the afterlife.

For Jesus, heaven wasn't some dreamy, ethereal afterlife.

It was God's world breaking into this world.

It was wholeness, justice, flourishing, and harmony on earth as it is in heaven.

The kingdom of heaven, he said, is not out there.

In hell, he was often warning about the hell we create here through our greed, injustice, corruption, and indifference.

Don't make deconstruction a personal, passive process.

It's understandable to do a lot of processing in private.

But if you've done that for a while, start speaking up.