God After Deconstruction

By Thomas Jay Oord and Tripp Fuller

Deconstruction is hard!

Bad views of God and harmful experiences lead many of us to deconstruct. But we're right to run from the nonsense we've been taught and from those who hurt us.

God After Deconstruction will not be welcomed by traditionalists. It's not a book for people who want the status quo or who think conventional theology works. It isn't for people who just want to tweak a bit what they've been taught.

Thomas Jay Oord and Tripp Fuller offer an open and relational vision of God. This vision makes sense; it fits our experience; it's livable. The open and relational view aligns with our deep intuitions about love and freedom.

God After Deconstruction is for those deconstructing and those wanting help after deconstruction. It's for people in the fire and those with scars.

God After Deconstruction is an adventure for lovers in tumultuous times!

Buy this book.

Six-Word Endorsements for God After Deconstruction

"When everything goes, only God remains."
-- Simon Cross, chair of the Progressive Christianity Network (Britain)

"Helpful companion on your deconstruction journey."
-- EDJ,  author of Deconstructing Religious Sexual Trauma: A Memoir

"A faith beyond deconstruction is possible."
-- Kathy Escobar, author of Faith Shift and Practicing

"A relational way to think about purpose."
-- Jonathan J. Foster, author of indigo: the color of grief

"This is a really great book."
-- Keith Giles, author of the 7-part "Jesus Un" book series"

A God-centric approach to deconstruction."
-- David Hayward, aka NakedPastor

"A compassionate primer on our deconstruction."
-- Angela Herrington, author of Deconstructing Your Faith Without Losing Yourself

"A thoughtful third way - highly recommended."
-- Olivia Jackson, author of (Un)Certain

"Life-giving for doubters, deconstructors, wonderers."
-- Mark Karris, author of The Diabolical Trinity

"Powerful, essential, required reading for everyone."
-- Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Madang Podcast and author of Invisible

"Adventure guide to life after deconstruction."
-- Brian D. McLaren, author of Do I Stay Christian?

"I've always believed in this God!"
-- Mason Mennenga, A People's Theology podcast

"A deconstruction journey worth taking!"
-- Sherri Pallas, author of We Have Ruined God

"An exvangelical deconstruction guide to God."
-- Jim Palmer, author of Inner Anarchy

"A haven for the hard questions."
-- Elizabeth Petters, the Deconstructing Mamas podcast

"Faces the hard questions without blinking."
-- Janet Kellogg Ray, The God of Monkey Science

"The God you need right now!"
-- Gary Alan Taylor, the Sophia Society

"Everyone deconstructing should read this book."
-- Tim Whitaker, creator of The New Evangelicals

"The God of Love always triumphs!"
-- John Williamson, The Deconstructionists Podcast

• Language: English
• Publisher: SacraSage Press
• Release date: Mar 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9781958670286

Thomas Jay Oord

Thomas Jay Oord, Ph.D., is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies. Oord directs the Center for Open and Relational Theology and the Open and Relational Theology doctoral program at Northwind Theological Seminary. He is an award-winning author and has written or edited over thirty books. A gifted speaker, Oord lectures at universities, conferences, churches, and institutions. Website: thomasjayoord.com

Book preview

Acknowledgements

We’re grateful to so many people!

We thank those who joined the God After Deconstruction online class as this book was launched. And we’re grateful to the thought leaders who joined us for the class conversations. We thank the members of and listeners to Homebrewed Christianity and ORTShorts podcasts for their support. We appreciate the institutions and communities who hosted us for God After Deconstruction live events. We thank John Buchanon for his financial support for this project.

We thank Chris Hanson and friends who did a test run of this book and many others who offered comments after reading early drafts. We are grateful to David Trotter for helping with book, course, and presentation graphics. We thank Nicole Sturk for the book’s cover and interior design. We thank Rebecca Adams for her expert editing. We’re thankful for podcasters who invited us to talk about the book and its ideas. And we’re grateful to those who endorsed our book.

We’re grateful to the Center for Open and Relational Theology for its support. We thank the doctoral students in open and relational theology at Northwind Theological Seminary. In direct and indirect ways, they have helped us.

We’re grateful to numerous authors, podcasters, pastors, artists, scholars, and everyday people who have written about deconstruction. As the pages of this book attest, we drew from this wide-ranging work. We’re also thankful for the countless people who sent us deconstruction testimonials or took part in the surveys we did. These resources were so valuable to us!

Finally, we thank our families for their patience, support, and encouragement!

Tom and Tripp

Chapter 1

Causes of Deconstruction

Gary was born with ambiguous genitals.

A small-town doctor deliberated with his parents before assigning a gender. They chose to raise him as a boy, and his parents planned to talk with Gary about their decision when he hit puberty. It seemed appropriate for teenage Gary to make his own decision then.

As he grew, Gary acted like most little boys. He loved baseball, especially Mike Trout and the Los Angeles Angels. The Four Square church the family attended was central to their lives. He attended Sunday School, was part of Boy Scouts, and sang in the junior choir. He was normal.

When genetic testing revealed Gary had neither XX nor XY chromosomes, his parents were surprised. They didn’t know a human could have something other than one of two chromosomal patterns. But they held onto the hope that Gary would eventually embrace the gender they’d chosen for him at birth.

When Gary reached his teenage years, the talk his parents had planned to have didn’t materialize. They worried telling the truth about his genital ambiguity would upset Gary, and they thought he might not trust them if he knew the truth. Family, friends, and church people all accepted him as male, after all. In this case, ignorance might be bliss.

They were wrong. As puberty hit and Gary matured, he felt more and more like a woman. He began displaying and acting in stereotypically feminine ways. It just feels right, Gary said when his parents asked.

Gary realized his genitals differed from other boys. And a test of his hormone levels showed them similar to female levels. As an inquisitive teen, Gary scoured the internet for the latest science on gender and sexuality. He came to identify as intersex.

A turning point occurred one summer at Lake Hope church camp. Gary felt convicted to share his story and feelings with a youth leader. But what he thought was said in confidence got passed along to church leaders.

Their response was swift. Genesis 1 says God made us male and female, one leader said. It doesn’t matter what you feel or what the doctors say. God made you a boy!

Others advised Gary to fight against the thoughts Satan put in his head. Some pointed to secular culture as an evil influence; others blamed the teaching of evolution; some claimed he had been influenced by vain philosophy and other religions.

Gary did not expect such fierce rejection. He’d hoped for support and empathy, or at least a chance to explain. He assumed Christian friends would help him explore what God’s love looks like in his situation.

Youth group events became uncomfortable for him. Friends prayed fervently for Gary’s restoration. They laid hands on him and asked the Holy Spirit to heal his confusion.

At one event, a girl kissed Gary playfully. He smiled. His reaction prompted her to think he’d been healed: I guess you’re a boy, after all!

Gary felt rejected and condemned.

Midway through his last year of high school, Gary made a decision. He would become Jeannie. He’d do it before graduating to become his true self before college. This could be his on-ramp to real life.

Jeannie opted for surgery to make her genitals look more female. She dressed like a woman, took on feminine mannerisms, and presented herself to the world as a woman. She’ll never forget the first time she walked into a Ladies restroom. Exploring her intersex identity was exciting. She cherished childhood as a boy, but now she could embrace her femininity too.

Jeannie’s parents mostly supported this transition. But rebuke came rapidly from extended family and the church.

You’re following the world instead of the Bible, one pastor said. Pray the gay away in the name of Jesus!

God gave you a penis, said a friend. Why go against nature?

So now you’re woke? mocked an uncle. I guess you’re smarter than God, huh!? I knew you were a pussy!

By the time Jeannie enrolled for college, she was over church. In the years that followed, she stopped calling herself a Christian. She still believed in God and sometimes felt spiritual. But she didn’t talk with friends from church, and family connections frayed.

Jeannie looks back at those days with mixed feelings. I’ll never forget the confusion and pain, she says. It’s hard enough for average teenagers to discover themselves. Adding gender and genital issues amplified the angst.

Jeannie also feels loss. Once-cherished friends and faith community disappeared. Her feelings for family aren’t as warm as they once were. The old identity has not just changed but been erased. Those days are the hardest I’ve ever faced, she says.

But Jeannie also feels liberated. And enlightened. She considers those who caused her pain small thinkers. I have no desire to renew friendship with those fundamentalists, she says. They care more about keeping rules and guarding boundaries than loving people.

I’m in a better place now, Jeannie says. But there were good things about the church. I miss feeling at peace with God like I did back then.

In her journey, people seemed to think Jeannie had abandoned the church. But to Jeannie, it was more like the church had abandoned her.

This Book

Gary/Jeannie’s intersex story is unique. Every story is. But it shares similarities with the stories of countless others who are making, or have made, profound changes. An avalanche within faith is occurring: people are transitioning from old ways to radically new ones.

A growing number are now coming to see themselves differently from how their family and faith communities did. And how they once saw themselves. To be true to their experiences, they’ve transitioned from unhelpful ways of thinking and seek new ones. A host of people are rethinking God, faith, church, and life.

They’re deconstructing.

This book invites you to an alternative view of God after deconstruction. We will offer radically different—but we think radically helpful—ideas. We invite you to ponder God, science, sexuality, the Bible, community, gender, politics, knowledge, and more in healthier ways than you’ve been taught.

The ideas we offer may strike you as revolutionary. You may feel uncomfortable. But we think they make better sense than what most people have been traditionally told. And these ideas fit our lives better. We hope you try them on.

As the authors, we (Tom and Tripp) have our own deconstruction stories. We spent our youth in faith communities, and being Christian was our identity. Congregations and various Christian practices profoundly shaped our development. We read Christian books, listened to Christian music, went to Christian conferences, dated Christian girls, and were leaders in our churches.

Our lives revolved around what seemed obvious: God exists, Christianity must be true, and the Christian life is best. People who doubted any of these were just uninformed, idiots, or deceived. We were evangelists for the Truth! But this certainty was not to last.

Tom’s Deconstruction

Tom’s deconstruction began near the end of his university studies. He took a course requiring him to read atheists, agnostics, and sages from other faith traditions. This engagement led Tom to realize he didn’t have indubitable grounds to think Christianity was right. Or that God exists.

For Tom, deconstruction meant actually losing belief in God (not everyone does). It was not clearing a few weeds to allow the garden to grow. It was more radical: the garden was gone. Tom didn’t think he was walking away from God, because he no longer thought a deity existed from whom he could walk.

So Tom became an atheist… or at least an agnostic; he no longer believed.

Tom’s eventual return to belief was grounded primarily in two ideas. First, he wanted to believe life has ultimate meaning. But without a ground of meaning most people call God, he couldn’t imagine life as ultimately meaningful. Belief in God seemed essential.

Second, Tom had deep intuitions about love. He thought people ought to be loving and, in some sense, love represents the answer to our most important questions. So he came to believe—but not be certain—that a universal Lover and Source of meaning existed whom most people call God.

Tom went through another deconstruction in graduate school, related to the writings of philosopher Jacques Derrida and the phenomenon of postmodernism. He realized that words and language of any type—logical statements, scriptures, creeds, and ­confessions—didn’t provide a sure and certain foundation for knowledge. The meaning of words depends on their contexts, and contexts change.

Tom emerged from this deconstruction when he realized experience was more fundamental than words. While he couldn’t be certain about his experiences, they had to be taken seriously. It made sense, in fact, to him that God might be a necessary factor in whatever we find loving, true, and beautiful. The work of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead helped in this reorientation, as did the postmodern writings of David Ray Griffin.¹

Tripp’s Deconstruction

Tripp’s deconstruction began when he arrived as a Baptist preacher’s kid at a Baptist University. To Tripp’s surprise, his experience of being a Baptist in the South was quite different from that of many of his fellow students. Apparently, it was customary for Baptists to argue about the possibility for women to be clergy, debate the veracity of evolution, and insist that God the Father poured his wrath out on Jesus for our behalf… well, at least the lucky ones, elected apart from their own will, before the foundations of the earth.

The dominant vision of God he encountered at university was far from his own experience. And it was seemingly distant from Jesus’ life of love in the Gospels. The distance generated a kind of theological vertigo for Tripp. How were so many of his peers confident, certain, and committed to a picture of God that wasn’t even as nice as Jesus?

Tripp discovered that being called a heretic and dismissed as unbiblical or a raging liberal was something he could learn to tolerate. He discovered other Christian thinkers in university classes, people like Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Tillich, Gustavo Gutierrez, and Walter Rauschenbusch. These theologians challenged and