A New Fundamentalism
Out of one and into another
There seems to me to be only a couple of options of where to go after deconstruction. You can perhaps find a new community within the deconstruction movements, maybe form a new identity of belief there.
This is a great place to be… for a time. It is incredible that there exists resources and communities to help those who are deconstructing. Deconstruction is difficult, traumatizing for some, and most of all lonely. To have a community that stands by your side and walks with you makes all the difference. But what if you stay there?
The two most common things that will happen if you stay there are that you will deconstruct your previous beliefs and simply no longer believe anything anymore, becoming perhaps apathetic or agnostic to the questions that once were so vital. Or otherwise, you will form a new fundamentalism.
The new fundamentalism can be harder to detect, it’s new and unfamiliar after all. But if you feel that there is no room to ask if the deconstructive arguments are valid, or that your identity exists only in opposition to fundamentalism/whatever you deconstructed from—you may be in a new fundamentalism. It is likely less toxic and traumatizing both because it is new and also relatedly because it does not have the same institutional authority to wield greater power. But it is a new fundamentalism nonetheless.
I have been there, and have felt trapped. I know I’m not alone though. I see others asking about how to find new faith communities that will have a perspective of deconstructed, but still seeking faith. Or those who are asking about worship music that will avoid common pitfalls, and be more thoughtful and reflective about their language. More often than not, there is someone in the comments letting them know they just have to give it up. They need to deconstruct more, they haven’t let go of their past religion quite enough.
I think it is wrong that we have to entirely give up what we have deconstructed. There are serious problems to work through, but it does not mean that Christianity is irredeemably lost. We have to deconstruct our deconstruction or to put it in less obscure terms, we need to work on a theology of reconstruction.
There are many resources that provide better outlooks to the Bible, the church, and theology, but I don’t see any that are directly addressing those of us who have deconstructed, but desire to build back our faith in a better and stronger way.
My hope is that this publication will become a place for building out what that viewpoint would look like, and hopefully to be living and dynamic enough to avoid becoming the newest fundamentalism.
