Where do we go from here?
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Ever since most white American evangelicals decided to look past the disturbing words of Donald Trump in the Access Hollywood tape that leaked in 2016, a cottage industry of justification and rationalization has flourished. The language varied; but, in some cases at least, the self-told theme from white evangelicals was partially consistent: He was the lesser of two evils. We held our nose as we voted for him. We wish we didn’t have to do this. These words gave cover for white evangelicals to do what they supposedly did not want. They also barely masked a kind of cultural snobbery that we would come to learn was ironically rooted in a near total theological and moral relativism.
We know this because of what came next. The crises and crimes sparked or committed by Trump’s administration mounted. White supremacy descended on Charlottesville. More stories of Trump’s affairs and sexual assaults spilled into the public eye. Children were ripped from their parents at the border, often with gleeful encouragement from the Religious Right. This and more finally culminated into the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 , with white evangelicals playing a starring role in the brutal crimes committed that day.
Through it all, the justification and rationalization for continued white evangelical support mounted, sparking countless crises in countless local churches. But the justification and rationalization changed significantly, too. The “lesser evil” was rebranded as righteous. Many white evangelicals were proud to stand with Trump as he ruthlessly pursued dominance in their coveted culture wars. This was a joyful journey to a whitewashed promised land: one that would again elevate white evangelicals and their subculture they worship above all others, to the very pinnacle of American power.
There was a time when those of us on the inside who thought the white evangelical embrace of Trump was insane were beginning to ask the questions we should have been asking sooner. How did we get here? Why is this happening? How do we get out of this mess?
I was one of those people asking these questions, even before 2016. I do not write those words to pardon myself. On the contrary, I wasn’t brave enough back then to follow questions like these to their logical conclusion. I resisted seeing what was right in front of me. I didn’t want to believe reality; but, like so many others, the scales fell from eyes when reality finally cornered me. It’s no surprise that those of us who took the questions of how did we get here? and why is this happening? to their logical conclusion saw everything between us and the churches we believed to be home get blown up. That, in turn, would inform us how to get out of the mess: leave, or be cast out.
It has been two years since I began exploring these realities publicly. My life is very different today than it was back then. Like many of you who left a church that tried to destroy your faith, I am physically out of the mess. Things have gotten much better spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. Counseling helped. Being around new voices did, too. The shadow of the past is shorter than it once was. I now see much of what was in that shadow as being truly absurd, sometimes laughably so. When I do think back to the darkest moments, I do so knowing they no longer have any real authority over me. I can see those moments for what they are and go about my day, sharing parts of my story as needed to help others navigate the same problems in their own contexts, with little to no anxiety.
After two long years, I’m getting a clearer picture of how we got here. More and more I’m preoccupied with a new set of questions. What comes next? What are practical steps to reform and build into a renewed church? Where do we go from here?
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A season in the wilderness
Deconstruction is a term being debated ad nauseam between white evangelical and post-white evangelical spaces, groups, and people. On one hand, many white evangelical leaders and culture warriors predictably added the term to their always-growing repertoire of types of people and experiences their followers should fear and despise. Meanwhile, an array of post-white evangelical people —Christians, those who have left the faith, and plenty who are somewhere in between— use the term to describe what they are experiencing as they navigate doubts, severely poor experiences in the church that range from hypocrisy to outright abuse, and so much more.
Having been through the valley of deconstruction, I can testify that much of what is said in white evangelical spaces about the actual experience is misleading at best and outright lies at worst. Covering all of this again would be beating a dead horse though, and that’s not the purpose of this post. I only bring this up to point out that the deconstruction journey often leaves people feeling like they are stuck in a rut. Sitting for a time in the pain, confusion, and grief is a necessary part of truly healing and moving forward in a healthy way.
But ruts are…well…ruts. It’s easy to stay stuck in them. It’s not my role to know when it’s time for everyone to move on from the past or what they need to do so. It’s different for everyone based on who they are, what was done to them and what they heard and saw, and the kind of support they need and whether or not they have access to it.
All that to say I’ve come to see deconstruction as being just one stage of walking in the wilderness. I can’t speak for everyone; but, for many of us who have left the white American evangelical subculture and retained our Christian faith, we run the risk of retaining a fundamentalist posture that simply runs in the other direction. We can continue to emphasize being absolutely certain on “issues” and having “correct views,” such as we understand them, over loving real people. Self-righteousness and pride can then seep back in and, with it, the undercurrents of anxiety and insecurity that triggered us going down this road in the first place.
Undoing what was done, and what we did
It is wandering in the wilderness —only after seriously and critically examining our pasts— that we come face to face with the role we’ve played in our own anxieties, questions, and doubts. The deconstruction experience aims critical intellectual and spiritual firepower at bad personal experiences, severely problematic biblical teachings, and the many devastating expressions of those teachings. But wandering in the wilderness after deconstruction places a much higher emphasis on taking aim at ourselves. This helps us see the implicit legalism that may be hiding in our own hearts and minds. Wandering into the wilderness can cure those of us who have left this broken system and are asking where do we go from here?
One of the most difficult lessons we learn in the wilderness is that certainty in a particular set of beliefs was the source of our rising anxiety. Why? Because those beliefs proved to be severely flawed at best and outright wrong at worst when they came into extended contact with the real world. It takes time to grieve the loss of much of what we believed was true and eternal. We lost a sense of safety, meaning, and purpose, too. Eventually we must swallow a bitter truth: we placed our faith in a belief system that propped up a self-serving subculture, not one that served the God of all people, even as we were lied to and unknowingly lied to ourselves that this was what being a Christian meant. We participated in the resulting cultural destruction and harmed real people, even if we felt like we stood against the worst excesses. Arriving at this place puts you on your knees.
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Thankfully, the wilderness is also where we meet Jesus, maybe truly for the first time. It is here we begin to discover new and ancient ways of reading Scripture that are centered much more on Jesus and others and much less on ourselves. When we do prepare to depart the wilderness and build a better, more outward looking faith, we can do so with much more intellectual honesty, a lot less anxiety, and an authentic humility that leaves plenty of room for experimentation in the world as it is.
But what does all of this actually look like in practice? Or, perhaps in more appropriate words, where do we go from here? I find myself returning to Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s closing words in her book Jesus and John Wayne (304):
“Yet understanding the catalyzing role militant Christian masculinity has played over the past half century is critical to understanding American evangelicalism today, and the nation’s fractured political landscape. Appreciating how this ideology developed over time is also essential for those who wish to dismantle it. What was once done might also be undone.”
After spending time in the wilderness, it is impossible not to see the trail of death and destruction left in the wake of the white American evangelical subculture. It is also impossible not to see at least some of the specific roles we played in it. If we are to take Jesus seriously, and I think we should, then we would do well to look at the two greatest commandments he gave: love God and love your neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40).
“What was once done might also be undone.” Our first step in loving God and loving our neighbor should be working to undo the damage that was done and dismantling the beliefs and systems in our own lives that gave space for all of it to happen.
We have damage to undo with God first because we have not loved God well. This is why it is healthy and life-giving to spend ample time in the wilderness before beginning the long process of rebuilding. The wilderness is where we meet Jesus again. It’s where we begin truly growing in holiness rooted in Him, not ourselves (1 Peter 1:13-16). And it’s where we ask forgiveness for being a part of something dangerous that hurt people in the name of God. The wilderness is where God becomes the primary, foundational relationship in our life. This changes our posture, preparing us to make amends with those we have hurt and sincerely commit to change.
Our next step should be joining efforts to undo the damage that has been done with our neighbors. What we do specifically largely depends on our personal situations, but I think whatever we do generally falls on three tracks:
The Personal - Odds are we all legitimately hurt someone during our time in white American evangelicalism. Whether they were inside or outside our previous subcultural bubble, what we said or did hurt them in a deeply personal way. If they will have us, we owe such people our ears to listen, a real apology, and a genuine offer to do what we can to set things right that we follow through on.
The Institutional - We owe it to the Church to join a local faith community that is legitimately trying to follow the example laid out by the best of the Early Church in the New Testament (Galatians 5:22-26, Acts 2:37-47). In the context of undoing what was done, that looks like being part of body of believers who do not worship gender and racial hierarchies and American individualism, do not confuse primary, secondary, and background beliefs, are not retreating into a bubble that is stranded from our broader culture, and actively resist influences to participate in these cultural realities. I think it is also well and fine to join a church that has any of these elements in their past and are actively moving away from them, especially if you feel like you are called to be part of that change (Hebrews 6). Such a body of believers are more than open to listening and putting into action suggestions for how they can do better when it comes to issues in the Church and our broader culture today. They are sensitive to the needs of those who have been hurt by people who claim the name Jesus.
I understand that some who are reading this get anxiety from the idea of walking into a church again. If that is your response, I encourage you to spend more time in the wilderness. There was a season in which our family was not part of an institutional church and that was good and right. I discovered then that I didn’t have much of an imagination for what the local church can be. I’d argue that some of the churches we see on street corners aren’t really churches, but social clubs. When you are ready, join a community of other faithful Christians and work to strengthen the family you find, be it close friends who are believers who meet weekly, a house church that offers a bit more structure, or an institutional church that has their own physical space.
The Cultural and Political - Finally, we owe a sincere apology and a firm commitment to change to our fellow citizens, be they Christian or not. Even if we were not hardcore participants in the hellish culture wars white evangelicals unleashed, we were part of and protected the institutions that directly supported those who were and are. We resided in places that looked at the world with fear and anger in a threatening way, places that do not see the world the way Jesus and the New Testament invite us into (John 18:36).
In our online world, a social media post that speaks this truth, offers an apology, and pledges a real commitment to the common good (Jeremiah 29:4-7, Galatians 6:10) can be helpful. Perhaps more importantly, we must be willing to engage with those who approach us with questions and doubts. That’s where we can really show that we mean what we say.
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As in all things, we should guard ourselves against pursuing such changes from a posture of arrogance rooted in a false belief that we are some sort of savior of the Christian faith or the Church. The white evangelical worldview we left behind is built on this posture and false belief, benefiting the us by heaping up burdens and oppression on the them. It is not built for the world as it is and the world followers of Christ are called to help build (Galatians 6:7-10). This is why when white evangelicalism collides with the real world the predictable happens: communities fracture, those who try to commit to change are betrayed and their efforts sabotaged, and the subcultural climate becomes more anxious, reductive, and dark. The roots of authoritarianism find fertile soil in the hearts of those remaining in the veil. And we wind up where we are today.
Spend enough time in the wilderness and you realize this truth, that this posture is unhelpful. There is a diverse array of sincere believers in many other lanes and denominations of the Christian faith who aren’t in the crises we came out of and who don’t face some of the challenges we do. We should always learn from them, as they already inhabit spaces we seek to join or who we can mimic as we build something new.
It is also important to recognize that it is far too easy to create the illusion of change in and around us without anything of substance actually changing. White American evangelical institutions and churches —and especially the elites in those spaces— are notoriously talented at making sweeping and grandiose proclamations of change and pledges to listen and do better that lack any real substance. The underlying issues that lead to sabotage and communal implosions in churches —idolatry to gender hierarchy and toxic masculinity, racism or racial insensitivity, cultural elitism, hermeneutical and moral arrogance, etc.— almost always go unaddressed.
We would be wise to remember that even though we spent a season in the wilderness, we were once fully immersed in this system that ruthlessly heralds false change for its own preservation. This is a trap we can once again fall into if we are not careful.
Closing Thoughts
There’s a word for all of this: repentance. Some of us shudder to use the word because we’ve seen it be abused in the past. In white American evangelicalism, repentance is often degraded to being a mere tool for restoring a fallen leader to their position of power with no real accountability or change, or wielded as a cudgel against those who speak out against the harms of this subculture. Repentance is twisted into a weapon, just as all good things eventually are in the white evangelical realm.
But this is not true repentance. Repentance is a turning away from the bad and the ugly toward the good and the beautiful. It requires real movement across our daily lives, not empty words and hollow gestures. Repentance leaves no room for the spin of institutional gatekeepers. It is an act of love. It is hard work. Repentance leads to change and a new faith that can be verified truthfully by others.
Those who emerge from the wilderness and begin the long process of rebuilding discover that much of the Christian walk is shrouded in mystery, with only rare flashes of certainty here and there that serve as guideposts along the way. Replacing one rigid system that harms people with another that harms people for different reasons is a telltale sign that we have not spent enough time in the wilderness. Fundamentalism is found in every corner of Christianity. It comes into being through an unwillingness to see sin and brokenness in our own lives. In my last piece, I closed with a call to be cautious when faced with absolute certainty for this reason:
“What this all looks like for us as individuals has a lot to do with examining where we are. We all need to have the courage to speak up and be willing to pay a price for doing so. We could all be more wary of those who make aggressively bold claims about what the Bible says, with little to no regard for church history, the complex cultures found in Scripture, theology from other Christian traditions, or what the Spirit would have us do. We need to have more humility in understanding that aggressively narrow interpretations of Scripture and confusing Gospel truth with the rules of a specific subculture may not line up with what God says or wants for us at all. Indeed, if there is one thing we can be certain about with regards to these matters, it’s that the greatest threat to Christianity is not secularism, but subcultural certainty.”
I want to briefly expound on these words here in light of our asking the question where do we go from here?
Once our time in the wilderness has changed us, we will find ourselves arguing less and listening more. Jesus critiqued plenty in his day; but, more importantly, he created a truly viable alternative. Therefore, we will sow new seeds in healthier soil. The inward looking nature of deconstruction and our resulting time in the wilderness will give way to an outward looking posture that uncenters ourselves. We will savor the moments when we recognize kindred spirits, a remnant, who came out of the same environment as we did and are on the same journey as we are (Hebrews 10:19-25). We’ll discover joy in a new faith, one centered in Christ that lives in the world as it is. We will be more easily drawn to truth when we do see it.
This does not mean that the many outward-facing aspects of the Christian life boil down to a mushy cultural or political centrism or moral relativism that is effectively ineffective. There will always be battles to fight and those who need lifting up (James 2:14-17). But when those moments come, we will be much more likely to see them for what they are, not what we want them to be. And our response can be much more compassionate, intellectually honest, and helpful because of it.
After all, the Gospel always becomes enculturated because we are human beings. The least we can do is ensure the culture we are bringing is Heaven to Earth.
I explore faith and American church culture from Memphis, TN. Never miss an article by signing up for my free newsletter or becoming a member to keep my site free and open to all. You can also subscribe to my podcast.
