Why Deconstruction Matters
Between 2009 and 2019 those identifying as Christian in the USA fell by 12% points from 77% to 65%. That’s more than a 1% of the population every year for a decade! Meanwhile those who identified as “unaffiliated” grew from 17% to 26%.[^1]
Meanwhile, belief in an “all-knowing, all-powerful God” has fallen from 86% in 1991 to 46% in 2021 in the USA.[^2]
To put these numbers in context both work out to roughly 6,000 people a day (accounting for population growth) over 10 / 30 years respectively leaving Christianity / ceasing to believe in God – in the USA alone!
For more significant facts and figures about Christianity and the growing trend of deconstruction check out our Deconstruction Research Findings page
The problem with defining Deconstruction
Describing Deconstruction can be difficult for many as we are so used to talking about religion and spirituality as what someone believe. Even when discussing a lack of belief in identities such as Atheist or Agnostic we typically talk about what people do and don’t believe.
However if you look at Deconstruction in this way you are going to have problems. In our soon to be released 2023 study[^3] we found the following spiritual identities when looking at the Deconstruction community:
As you can see people who deconstruct don’t have one clear identifiable belief. It’s made up of people who have a very diverse set of beliefs.
How do we define it then?
It is not that people who Deconstruct are Atheist, Agnostic, Christian or Buddhist etc. but rather that we can find Deconstructed people within Atheism, Agnosticism, Christianity and Buddhism etc.
Deconstruction is much more shift away from a prior belief than what someone presently believes.
Even then some who Deconstruct come from quite different religious backgrounds. With that said while Deconstruction as a process is probably present in every major religion in the world it is largely a term identified with by mostly those coming from Christian faith traditions.
People who leave their Christian faith tradition are not all Deconstructing however, so even that can be quite a problematic definition. For example some grew up Baptist but question tennents of the Baptist tradition and move to another fundamental form of faith. They a) wouldn’t identify as deconstructing and also b) wouldn’t tick our 3 markers… especially the third one as you’ll see below.
It’s also not as simple as saying it’s people who leave the Christian faith altogether. As shown in the study above as many as 27% of people Deconstructing still identify as Christian.
The definition:
So lets look at the outcome from our initial study conducted in 2020[^4], which looked to identify what the core components of who those who deconstruct are. The following three main components were present in over 97% of people who identify as Deconstructing or Deconstructed:
- A questioning of one’s faith tradition’s core values and finding it unable to satisfy the questions.
- A subsequent need to change some of one’s core beliefs.
- A reduced certainty/fundamentalism in areas of faith/spirituality.
If we were to try and sum it up in a sentence maybe a working definition could be something like:
Deconstruction is the process of questioning the core values of your faith tradition and having to significantly change them in one way or another leading to a life of decreased fundamentalism.
This page is still in development and will be updated soon… until then check out the following resources that may be able to ask your questions regarding deconstruction.
Further Resources for Understanding Deconstruction
Deconstruction, as experienced by the community of those leaving conventional Christianity, is not to be conflated with the philosophy of Jacques Derrida nor is it to be conflated with knocking down a building with a wrecking ball.
There is a lot more nuance at play and it is important we understand what Deconstruction is either if we are going through that process or if someone we know is.
When talking about faith deconstruction there are a lot of myths around why people do it. But what’s the truth?
What does the hard data point to? Why do people end up deconstructing their faith?
Everyone seems to have an opinion on deconstruction and that often comes with a concept of reconstruction.
But it is important to look at what drives this and why with the best of intentions many of these people can enter into some very questionably unethical behavior as they talk about reconstruction.
So many as they start to deconstruct panic about what is happening to them. Where is this going? Am I going to be OK? Is this normal?
Working with thousands on this journey we’ve found that understanding how humans develop psychologically can bring a great deal of insight into what is happening to us as we deconstruct. It turns out we aren’t backsliding or falling apart. We are growing up!
In deconstructing we can lose so much, our identity, our certainty, our relationship with God as we knew it, our purpose and direction and so much more. But none of those losses stings as much as the loss of family and friends that can occur as we deconstruct.
In this video, I share some helpful tips I’ve picked up along the way you may be able to use as you discuss deconstruction with your friends and family. This won’t be an easy process but hopefully, some of this makes it easier. Good luck!
In this episode, we look at how we can support people in our lives who are deconstructing. This will be a helpful video for most people who have someone in their life that is deconstructing, especially those who have deconstructed themselves.
The one exception might be conventional Christians. If you are still in that place this will be a hard video for you to watch. It might be hard to hear but its very possible that you may not be the right person to walk with your loved one through this journey.
- Pew Research Center – 2019
- Arizona Christian Univerisity – 2001
- The Deconstruction Network – 2023 (to be published soon)
- The Deconstruction Network – 2020