Observe, if you will, this handsome specimen: the chiseled features, those cheekbones, that sly come-hither stare. Add to this a sexy French accent and I won’t be surprised if your Tinder finger is twitching.
But before you swipe right on this silver fox, be warned! First, he hasn’t been much of a conversationalist since dying in 2004. But even if you’re not looking for a live wire, you may want to think twice, because this man’s name is Jacques Derrida, the philosopher most closely associated with ‘deconstruction’.
That’s a word you’ve likely heard bouncing around the Christian-verse, at the very least. Derrida’s ideas on ‘deconstruction’ began with words, noticing the ways language is always in flux.1 Words shift their meaning from language to language, from culture to culture, from era to era, from subgroup to subgroup, even from person to person. They so often mean more than we intend. You can’t even define words without using other words, whose meanings themselves fluctuate and point to still other words.
Derrida’s ideas were soon applied to other fields: to literature, to history, to science, and yes, to religion and theology – all of which rely so heavily upon words, in all their instability. So Derrida himself would probably be amused by our fluid use of the word he coined, ‘deconstruction’.
Deconstructing ‘Deconstruction’?
I suspect, for some, it’s little more than a buzz word. They can use it to sound cool, while sipping a half-caff soy latte and talking to their friend across the table about how they’ve been ‘deconstructing’, without really thinking too hard about what they mean by it.
For others, it’s one of the dirtiest words you can utter. Not long ago, Skillet lead singer, John Cooper, famously stated it was time to ‘declare war against’ deconstructionism in Christianity, labelling it a ‘false religion’. Alyssa Childers, the more easy-listening yin to Cooper’s yang, takes a less bellicose approach, but certainly has her own bone to pick with deconstruction. Childers, Cooper and other evangelicals seem to view ‘deconstruction’ as a synonym for their least-favourite people: ‘progressive’ Christians, purveyors of easy virtue and fast-and-loose theology.
Look, I get it. I’ve left social media groups of self-labelled ‘progressive Christians’, who struck me as smug, elitist pricks. So I can understand why evangelicals decry this deconstruction phenomenon as a movement of bitter, persnickety iconoclasts, happy to douse the entire establishment of Christian faith in petrol and burn it to the ground with everyone inside, and to sow the surrounding soil with salt so nothing grows for a hundred years. In the minds of these evangelicals, ‘deconstruction’ equals ‘destruction’.
Yet the majority of deconstructing Christians I know, whether ‘progressive’ or otherwise, aren’t interested in this kind of scorched-earth, Agent Orange approach. For them, ‘deconstruction’ is something far more surgical and far more positive. They don’t want to wantonly destroy. They want to dissect and analyse. They want to evaluate, seriously and soberly, the structures of the contemporary western evangelical Christianity into which we were born or recruited.
Indestructible Structures?
And so they put those structures under the microscope: the way we read the Bible, the way we worship, the way we live out our faith, our views of death and ‘the afterlife’, our treatment of the poor, our treatment of diverse communities, our treatment of women, our treatment of the natural world, our abrasive relationship with science, our very cozy relationship with the nation state, with big business, with the wealthy, our alliances with morally ambiguous and morally bankrupt individuals and groups, and why those alliances situate us so comfortably next to white supremacists and conspiracy theorists – among other things. Many of those structures look poorly built, ramshackle and rickety. They even look dangerous, like they could – and have – hurt people.
Interestingly, Childers and others agree some of these aspects of evangelicalism need to be challenged. But they insist that’s not ‘deconstruction’. Why not? Because such evaluation is good and done by honest Christians, and ‘deconstruction’ is bad and done by deceived ‘progressives’. At least, that’s the best sense I can make of their arguments.
Are they scared of deconstruction? Maybe, if they interpret the word in the wholly negative way they seem to do. If they perceive it as a slippery slope to hell, made slick by the seductive oils of false teaching, maybe they feel they need to be afraid, that we all need to be afraid.
Is deconstruction as dangerous as they suggest? I suppose that remains to be seen. They can point to high-profile conversions from faith into atheism or agnosticism (think Bart Campolo, or Joshua Harris, or Mike Herrera) that make waves in the media. And surely there are others without famous names who make the same transition. Of course, Christianity isn’t a cult, and it isn’t a prison; people can make the choice to leave any time they want. That said, the Christian deconstruction movement (whatever that is) needs to own these results. It needs to grapple seriously with them, to turn a mirror upon itself and take a hard look at what it sees. What are its limits? Is it guilty of opening a Pandora’s box it can’t shut? But contemporary evangelicalism needs a mirror of its own when it comes to these exits from faith: how much do its own ways of operating drive people out?
Indeed, I wonder if those evangelicals who cry out against ‘deconstruction’, when staring into such a mirror, are happy with what they see? Is the edifice of evangelical Christianity, in its current western form, so far above reproach, so synonymous with truth, that all it needs is some minor tinkering and retooling here and there? Or are there enough question marks, enough bad habits, enough dubious practices, enough blind spots, enough patches and shortcuts and hacks and rotting beams and decaying joists, that something more major is necessary? And if that’s the case, then could deconstruction be God’s work?
I don’t think anyone should be too certain it’s not.
Notes
- De la grammatologie (Of Grammatology), 1967
Image Credits
Feature Image: https://www.quarrymagazine.com/2023/04/11/rubble-left-behind-by-war-could-help-rebuild-key-infrastructure/
Jacques Derrida: Ulf Anderson/Getty Images: https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/licensed-image?q=tbn:ANd9GcSv5eZHtZVgQAbsQe2oWU07Xd8p_OfkoU6PXZeWbuONaycNr09kap27k6tCngonFrXxtUZzhsDfbi9qu1M
image sources
- Jacques Derrida Portrait Session: Prospect Magazine
- Concrete Rubble: Quarry Magazine
Adam Lee Benner
A teacher and writer born and raised in New Jersey’s Philadelphia suburbs, Adam writes about his former life in American Christian nationalism and the Evangelical right – and (hopefully) better ways to be Christian. He lived for several years with his wife and best friend, Renée, as missionaries in Asia before relocating to her hometown of Melbourne, Australia with their two sons.
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