It is a very common misconception that one of the reasons people deconstruct is because they did not know their Bible well enough or were not faithful enough in reading their Bible.
However, it has long been shown in various studies that those who leave their conventional form of faith behind tend to have attended church more than their peers, prayed more, and read the Bible more.
In Nov 2021 we conducted a simple multi-choice Bible quiz among 1657 people who identify as deconstructing. The quiz was based on a study done by Pew Research Center in 2019 which we will be contrasting the results against below.
The questions (and possible answers) in the quiz were as follows:
- Which Bible figure is most closely associated with leading the Exodus from Egypt? Moses, Daniel, Elijah, Joseph
- Which figure is most closely associated with killing an enemy with a stone? David, Isaiah, Joshua, Solomon
- Who is most closely associated with willingness to sacrifice his son to obey God? Abraham, Jacob, Cain, Levi
- Who is most closely associated with saving Jews from murder by appealing to king? Esther, Ruth, Sarah, Rebecca
- Which of these is NOT in the Ten Commandments? Golden rule, no adultery, no stealing, keep Sabbath holy
- Who delivered the Sermon on the Mount? Jesus, Peter, Paul, John
- Where did Jesus live during his childhood and young adulthood? Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Jericho
When we look at the results we find that those who identify as deconstructing score on average significantly higher (91%) than even the best scoring conventional Christian denominations (Evangelicalism (73%) and Mormonism (72%))
This new data seems to reinforce the fact that those who deconstruct do not do so for a lack of knowledge on the Bible.
With the majority of those in our sample having deconstructed from Evangelical forms of Christianity, we have given a full rundown of each of the questions comparing the average Evangelical Christian’s scores and the average Deconstructing Christian’s scores.
It is important to note that while many of those who deconstruct maintain Christian beliefs and many of those people continue to have a relationship with the Bible to some degree or another, the majoirty of those who deconstruct do not. In many ways this makes their high scores all the more impressive as presumably many will not have read these Bible stories for a very long time.
Are you a Deconstructing Christian? Take part in our research here.
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