WB Deconstruction
If you’re paying attention, you notice a broad movement of ex-evangelical Christians deconstructing their faith. Particularly, people who were raised to believe in a very black and white model of Christianity and biblical infallibility are questioning everything they ever believed. While many are walking away from the faith, many are also developing a richer, more meaningful faith. I haven’t seen any studies on how this compares to James Fowler’s stages of faith model, but I’m fascinated by what seems to be the natural progression of faith. A living and growing faith is one that must be deconstructed, you know…death and resurrection.
I want to call a little attention to two of the six stages:
Stage 4 – ”Individuative-Reflective Faith” (Ages Mid-Twenties to Late Thirties). This stage is often characterized by angst and struggle as the individual takes personal responsibility for her beliefs or feelings. Religious or spiritual beliefs can take on greater complexity and shades of nuance, and there is a greater sense of open-mindedness, which can at the same time open up the individual to potential conflicts as different beliefs or traditions collide.
Stage 5 – “Conjunctive” Faith (Mid-Life Crisis). A person at this stage acknowledges paradoxes and the mysteries attendant on transcendent values. This causes the person to move beyond the conventional religious traditions or beliefs he may have inherited from previous stages of development. A resolution of the conflicts of this stage occurs when the person is able to hold a multi-dimensional perspective that acknowledges ”truth’ as something that cannot be articulated through any particular statement of faith.
Source: www.institute4learning.com/
Critical Thinking Matters
Baber ident 300
The people who are threatened by critical thinking in faith development tend to be stymied at Stage Three, Synthetic-Conventional Faith. Many of us entered this stage of faith when we were teenagers, through profound religious experiences that gave us the feeling of being “saved” or rescued from this world. For many of us, these Aldersgate moments of the faith can have a longterm effect of connecting us deeply to the Divine. To have your heart strangely warmed by the Holy Spirit is reminiscent of falling in love, attaching us to the Divine for the long haul. I am of the opinion that the evangelical church wants to keep its constituents in this stage of faith development, assuming that when everyone toes the line of same belief, we have reached the pinnacle of church unity and faithfulness.
But love must grow in the truth. Love can’t feel like falling-in-love all the time. Love is an action. Our worldview continues to expand as we meet new neighbors and see the pain experienced by different groups of people. So we either double down on our previously narrow beliefs, ignoring new discoveries or worse, seeing these new discoveries as threats to our sacred beliefs. Or we question our previously held beliefs against real world experience, and allow room for spiritual growth and an ever-expanding inclusivity.
I feel like I am always in a state of deconstruction and reconstruction. I continue to believe in a crucified and risen Jesus Christ as the true hinge of history. But I struggle with so much man-made tradition (emphasis on “man”). It’s hard for me to imagine a beautiful future with our present church structures, and I pray for and try to imagine the birth of something new. As I go through my own faith configuration, I find help in the structure of John Wesley’s Three “Simple” Rules: Do No Harm, Do Good, Attend to All the Ordinances of God. Actively participating in what I believe to be God’s Kingdom is part of the reason my faith deconstructed in the first place, but it’s also the source of what helps me reconstruct who I’m becoming.
I hope you find today’s ramblings useful. It’s really just my observation, not a detailed researched report. My main point is that critical thinking that leads to deconstruction is a good thing, and instead of being afraid of it, we should walk alongside each other through it.