Deconstruction Zone

To come to that realization, like we were telling on each other. It’s only out of Christian love that I’m going to tell you this, Sister Karla. Well, and you know, I let the pastors know about this. This was just brutal.

Yeah.

Hey, everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Things are good, man. Things are good. We’re out here just deconstructing the world. We’re, we’re. We’re. Yeah, we’re. We’re actually going to learn a lot about what, what deconstruction means in a modern context, in a religious context. And that is because that we, we have a really cool guest on the show. Dan, do you want to introduce our guest?

Absolutely. Today we have with us Rev Karla Kamstra. She goes by @RevKarla on TikTok. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here with us, Rev. Karla.

Karla, it is such an honor to be here with you. I’m so excited. Thank you.

Well, we’re very glad to have you. And part of this is precipitated by the recent publication—I think I saw an unboxing video the other day of yours—of your new book entitled Deconstructing: Leaving Church, Finding Faith. So how did it feel to open up that box of, of copies of your new book?

It’s. It was. It’s surreal. As I said in the video, I let it sit for five days. I can’t open that. I can’t open that. I finally opened it and yeah, it’s pretty. It’s pretty surreal. And then I don’t know if you know, but you’re on the—

You’re on the cover. I was surprised by that. I watched the video and you turned it around and you showed the blurbs on the back and mentioned some people and then you turned it back around and then said my name as you were pointing to a blurb on the, on the cover which. Wow, that was. That was quite an. A position of honor to have on the book. I was a little surprised by that.

But wait, a blurb, Dan, you’re. You’re a blurbing master.

He is. He is. They. They chose that and I’m glad they did. Well, they chose that.

If that helps out the book, then, then I’m happy to have. To have been able to hold that position.

So I didn’t yeah, you know, we got the, we got the advanced readers copy and, and that doesn’t thankfully, you know what, I get enough of Dan so I don’t need Dan’s quote on the front of mine.

I’ll be happy to send it to you. That way you can have it. Put it on the wall.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And we get the, we get the paperbacks too, like probably a year before anybody else will get a paperback. So.

Yeah, that’s right.

So that’s nice.

We’re very special.

Yeah.

But let’s talk. Let’s, let’s since, since the book has now been brought up, let’s, let’s dive in.

Oh and actually, actually I just realized I completely forgot to more thoroughly introduce you. I want to get right to the book, but I completely forgot to explain to, to our listeners and our one viewer who you are. For those of you who don’t know, @RevKarla, you should go follow her on social media. She’s a former Southern Baptist now deconstructing—and she likes to keep that in the active voice, this is an uncompleted action—Christian. She is an interfaith and interspiritual minister who is ordained through the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City. So credentials out of the way. That is what, what makes it possible for you to write this book. And we are looking forward to hearing more about deconstructing and what it means. But I interrupted you, Dan. So, so.

Well, I, yeah, I mean I think a lot of those, a lot of that introduction actually speaks to what we’re going to get to as we discuss things with you, Karla, because it does feel like there’s a lot packed into that. Let’s start with just the, you know, the title of the book is Deconstructing, subtitled Leaving Church and Finding Faith. And I think there’s been a, I think there can be a lot of confusion about what? About just the idea of what deconstructing is. A lot of people are very afraid of that concept and a lot of people are very confused by it. So maybe let’s start with just what do you mean when you’re talking about deconstructing?

Well, once again, thank you. I do want to say how important the work is that the two of you are doing. But because of that work, I think it helped, it informed me when I was deconstructing in the early days and thought I was going crazy intuitively knowing that there was something beyond the walls of my religious indoctrination and looking for data. Looking for something that wasn’t just about this literal understanding and then finding it and losing that literal Santa Claus God. Then how do you unknow that? You can’t. You can’t unsee it. You can’t unknow it. And finding myself physically on the floor because it shredded away so almost violently from me, if you will, because raised as a Southern Baptist, you are indoctrinated into that very, very early. So for me, deconstructing was really not only releasing those beliefs, it was losing who I was.

And so that can be a really scary thing when you are—you are standing there and willing to look and say, “Who am I if I’m not who the church says I am?” And what do I believe if I’m not what the church says I should believe in order to be a good Christian? Because to be a good Christian means the same as being a good person. You know, you didn’t separate the two because who you were in the church was who you were out in the world. So that deconstruction—go ahead.

I’m sorry, I was just going to say you talked a little—you said the word literal several times in reference to your former belief system. Talk about just what literalism meant in that context and just so we have a background of what you were raised up in.

If the Bible says it, I believe it. Can I make it—I mean, it is that. If the Bible said—and I’m not only a Southern Baptist, I’m born, raised in Kentucky, Southern Indiana. So that little twang is legit. It’s there. It comes out quite often. But yeah, if the Bible says it, I believe it very much. The King James Bible was really what you used. You didn’t deviate from that. There was this impending doom that the world was going to—the Rapture was going to happen. We were all going to be spiritually saved. This temporary visit that we’re here because we’re all part of the chosen that’s going to—to be able to—to be relieved from this suffering. All of that was part of my indoctrination.

Did you experience the kind of anxiety that I hear from a lot of other people, particularly when they’re young, but even into their adulthood, that frequently results from these ideas about how the world’s going to end and about your standing before this God? The God of—of a lot of Southern Baptist traditions does not have the softest reputation. So do you—can you identify with those folks who—who talk about rapture anxiety and other kinds of anxieties related to their behavior?

Absolutely. And—and the dismissing of that fear as well. I remember I was about six, seven, or eight when I first learned about the Rapture and we were going to go to heaven, we would be walking these streets of gold, but then terrified that I would miss it, or also terrified of death, understanding that there was a finality here as well. So that was all that awareness kind of happened in that same kind of timeframe. But being mocked, that fear being like, “See, I told you she was too young to learn this,” because I’m crying. And then I’ve got to learn how to suppress those emotions. So we are taught very early on that emotions should be contained and minimized. Fear should not be shown that we trust in the Lord, we trust our church leaders by default. They are God’s chosen on earth. So we submit to their authority and we don’t question.

So you learn to really have a complicated relationship—relationship with your emotions and a really complicated relationship with authority because you can clearly see some of the hypocrisy that happens in plain sight most of the time. But knowing that you cannot question it, you learn to start to lose your voice in these really highly controlled religious patriarchal structures. And that is truly what is the Southern Baptist Convention.

I think in your book you mentioned that you were accused in a very negative way of having a—was the phrase questioning spirit? Is that—was that something along those lines?

Take your pick. Spirit of offense. I was told a lot that I had a spirit of offense because when I did—I think in the book I talk about those spiritual breadcrumbs when people ask, “When did you deconstruct?” I can go back to being nine and not being able to reconcile the fact that I—I really did enjoy watching the fire and brimstone preachers. There’s a lot of—there’s a lot of animation that goes along with that. But hearing I can be whoever I want and can be, but I can’t be that. I can’t be what I admire and I’m captivated by at the pulpit and not being able to reconcile that.

Then I went to Presbyterian and people will say, oh, you were church shopping. I was not. I was seeking. And when I was there, I did the work. I was an ordained elder, I was an administrator. I always had keys to the church because I was always there. I was always working. I did equate my salvation and my goodness with the work inside the church. I believed that. I believed there was. Even though I was questioning and pushing back, I still believed that my worth was associated with the work I did for the church. So that spirit of offense would come when I’d be like, okay, wait, I’m going to question that. I’m going to push back on that. And I would start to. I would start to push back on what they were trying to force us into some type of submission or hypocrisy that, like I said, that was out in plain sight. For instance, one person may be condemned, a family may be condemned because their teenage daughter was pregnant. Meanwhile, the pastor’s kid just got pregnant and we’re going to hold a baby shower for that.

I’ve got a problem with that.

Yeah.

So. But I would have. I would be the one that had the spirit of offense for calling that out.

It sounds like there was. There was a. It was a high context social group where everyone was expected to signal to each other that they were. They would live up to the standards in the mores. We talk on the show frequently about costly signaling, which is just this feature of evolved human sociality that we signal to others that we can be trusted. And when that is used to reify and enforce very strict boundaries, it can take over somebody’s life. It sounds like within your experience, that was. Your whole life was basically about performing all of the costly signaling that you were expected to, but at the same time tolerating the violations of that performance from those who were socially higher up the ladder than you.

Yeah, exactly. You said it so much better than I said. No, that’s a very, very good point. Good way to say it. And those were the kinds of. That was the kind of teachings I was seeking. Like, there has to be names for what I’m experiencing. There has to be somebody out there having the same kind of experience. And I think that that’s where social media has been so good for so many of us who are deconstructing, because you realize you no longer have to do it in solitude. And I think obviously the data show that people have been deconstructing and leaving church for a while. But social media gives us a place to unite and compare and heal together until. Which is a good thing for us, not necessarily for the church who’s trying to contain that narrative in a different way.

Now you talked about the entangling of the person and the Christian. And I imagine folks who are raised within particular religious traditions. I, I was not. I was. Well, I was, I was part of a, a fundamentalist Baptist commune when I was first born. But by the time I was six, I think we had left and I was raised kind of without knowing anything about religion. And I don’t remember anything from the time before. But for folks whose entire worldviews are built upon a foundation of Southern Baptist traditions or other traditions like that, I, I think the person is being developed on a foundation like that. And if deconstructing, if we take that metaphor seriously, that you are taking apart this edifice that has been built, the person comes down with that edifice. Is that something that I, I imagine that for folks who are going through deconstruction, that is one, an enormous hurdle to perceive and to want to get over.

And two, something that must be a very complex and long term process. I know you talk quite a bit about this in the book. Could you, could you address this notion that you’re pulling down an edifice that is also your own psyche and your own worldview?

I literally could listen to both of you all day long. I’m not, I’m not kidding. I mean, I’m getting emotional listening to you be able to take that story and put it in, validate it, which is what you, which is what you just did. And I’m actually surprised by how I started this podcast by being so vulnerable that, that I shared with you a very intimate moment about my deconstructing. Because at the time I was studying world religions at Arizona State University because I was studying at a Bible college when I first deconstructed, started the deconstructing journey.

And that’s, like, an interesting place for deconstruction.

But it’s like again, my indoctrination was such that I’m like, all right, well, it makes sense that I should probably go to Bible college, so let’s go there. I’m like, wait a minute, we’re just doing the same thing I’ve been doing in Bible study for, since I was a child. So I ended up at Arizona State University’s World Religions and then it was like the second class and I’m going, this is. I knew this. But as that started to fall away, yes, my, I felt my person. And when I said I literally hit it, I came down with it. I was literally physically on the ground because you realize it and then you realize I’m looking at me and who am I? Because it felt so. I felt so betrayed. I felt so lied to when it didn’t have to be this complicated. It didn’t have to be this cruel. It didn’t have to be this manipulative. What is the problem with creating a system that allows a wider table, an expansive table of humanity?

What I hadn’t realized at the time, I hadn’t recognized the parts of religion that needed to control the faithful. I hadn’t gotten to that part yet in my deconstructing. All I was working with at that time was what I believed and how it had controlled me all those years. And so just to get through that part of it took, took a long time.

I’m guessing that. Oh, I’m so sorry.

No, please, go ahead.

I was just going to say that I’m guessing that a lot of our listeners are in various stages of a similar process. And I’d love for you to talk a little bit about those early years when you first started the genuine questioning. Not just like asking, you know, sort of calling out pastors on hypocrisy or whatever, but also the sort of. The more genuine, like, deeper search. It’s when. When these beliefs are so much a part of our identity, when they’re so much a part of who we are. Asking really honest questions is terrifying, or at least it was for me when I was doing it. Talk about your experience of that and your experience of like, like, like, did you question who, who you were? Or like, what. What did you have to go through to. To get to these points?

So I think I, in the book, I talk about King Henry VIII, which at that time, that I didn’t make the connection of what that had to do with my deconstructing. I think I. I don’t know if I was able to actually share in the book how much I was obsessed with that part of history.

Yeah, you talk, you talked in the book about having, like, posters of all of the lineages of the kings and everything.

Yes, I attended seminars. Luckily, I’m close to Indiana University. I attended seminars to go just learn as much as I could. And then I got to that part where he created a church just to divorce. And I knew the story, but I hadn’t. I hadn’t connected it to what it meant to me. Like, because you hear, you would hear people say, religion is man made. Religion is man made. All of a sudden it had relevance to me on what it meant on my. For my humanity, my spirituality. I still hold on to a spiritual journey now after I’ve as I’m continued to deconstruct, I had not made that connection of how much of who I was was connected to my value based on the approval of church authority.

But I could then go back and look back and see how often that’s all I was seeking. That’s what I was seeking. I thought that if I had their approval and I worked harder, that somehow I could silence this voice that was inside of me that said, you know, this ain’t right. It was there. It was there all along. I think it’s there for a lot of people that in order to be accepted, because it’s your community, a lot of times it’s your family, it’s your identity. So you try to keep that at bay in order to stay compliant and stay in approval, to stay in good graces. So then as I went along and I heard myself continue to ask these questions, I knew or I heard this, this, this inner voice saying, not all, not everyone else can be wrong. Not this, this doesn’t make sense.

There’s some. It’s not mathing for me. But I also knew that the only way I was going to be able to do that was to do it covertly. So I’m telling you, and I think I, I know I tell this in the book about John Shelby Spong coming. I literally thought when I went out of that church, could not believe I was going to see him. First of all, I’m still immersed in the Pentecostal Apostolic Church. At that point, I really thought I would go out of that church. And I’m like, I’m going to get run over by a bus. I just heard this, this man speak and I’m going to get run over by a bus.

I didn’t even talk about other than my family thought I was crazy when I was diving into Karen Armstrong. They were my lifelines. They were my lifelines. I don’t know why after, especially as a boomer. Because I’m a boomer. And so I’m deep, I’m steeped in that patriarchy, obedience. We prayed in public school. We, we had. Pastors would come and pick us up for VBS in May. We.

Then you might. You might have to say what VBS stands for.

Oh, sorry, Vacation Bible School. Yeah, you’re right. Sorry. Vacation Bible School. You know, they got to pick us up from public school to, to do that. It was very much a part of my evangelicalism, was very much a part of my public school tradition. Patriarchy was very much what I knew. I thought as a woman, I was less than. But at that point, being able to understand that I was pushing up against something that I didn’t understand, it terrified me. And there were many times where I thought, I’m just going to go back. This is too hard out here. It’s too lonely. And I thought, I’ll just go back. I’ll go sit in the back row and I won’t say a word. I’ll just be a good Christian.

Because you’re not just. You’re not just pushing back against an idea. You’re pushing back against your society, against your. The culture. You’re pushing back against all these people that you love and who have loved you. And you’re pushing like. You don’t get. You don’t get to just question, like, one part of it, because if you question any part of it, you’re. You kind of have to question. You kind of. You’re pushing back against the whole thing.

You just said it. You do. That’s why the deconstructing. When you asked about Dan, you said about the edifice. It’s absolutely. It just starts to. You start to peel back the layers and. And you start to make the connections, and you’re left with the true self. If you continue to do the work. And who is this person if it’s no longer being defined by religion, it’s healing from those patriarchal indoctrinations, and it’s seeking a new meaning and connection, a new understanding, and it’s not afraid to go into the unknown and out of your comfort zones to explore and connect and learn. And then you realize you’re not just deconstructing, you’re decolonizing and you’re learning how much of your indoctrination was steeped in privilege and set you up for the framework of moral and spiritual superiority that you didn’t even realize that you were.

That you were exuding to the world. And that’s humbling. Yeah, I mean, that’s. That’s really humbling. I think that’s why it’s so important when we say we’re actively deconstructing because those are things that I’ll constantly be looking at to make sure that those where those biases or prejudices are hiding. I’m willing to, to continue to release and let go of.

One of the things that you talk about in the book that struck me because I think a lot of people when they’re on the inside looking at the potential of maybe asking some of these questions and stepping out of the structure of, of their religion of birth or whatever, it can be really scary, it can be terrifying and they don’t know if there’s going to be a safe landing for them. And one of the things that you talked about was that while it was sort of chaos when you left, there was also peace. Is there something quiet? Yeah. Talk a little bit about, about that. Was that surprising for you to find, to find that peace when you, when you were able to let go of some of the, some of the strictures that you were raised with?

Yes. The first part that really surprised me was that when I left church I thought I was just leaving my church. And then to continue down that, to understand, holy cow, I’m not just leaving my church, I am leaving church. That was a process that took, I’m going to say, probably around a year in itself. But then to also understand that I have the ability to control now what I’m going to consume, I guess is the right word. I can’t think of what else it would be to be free and not be afraid to explore how other people experience the divine. And one thing I will say that during that time that it’s very important that I use that word because I didn’t want to say God.

I was really, really angry. And I wanted to expose the harm that church had caused. And I had this, had this one thing that I wanted to do was close every single church in Indiana to show they were frauds. And like that really pointed to how many wounds there were from not only the deception but what harm it had caused me, but also being able to extract that from not just religion, but my own wounds from my lived experience. So there was a lot of work that had to be done. And that’s where I think people get tripped up when it comes to deconstructing. It’s because the education part and the re-education part is so important, but also the healing is important because it’s.

And I’m not speaking universally to everyone’s experience when they deconstruct. But for many of us who came from those high-control experiences, we were harmed. There were coercive tactics that were used to keep us in compliance. Spiritual gaslighting is very much a thing. Spiritual bypassing is very much a thing. Anything that you can do to explain that.

What’s this bypassing talk?

So the gaslighting was a big one. I talk about that in the book when I share the experience of how everything was reframed. So if you’re coming with a concern, a pain, an earthly concern, they would say that would get turned in and minimized into: there’s nothing more important than acknowledging the pain of Jesus and the suffering of church leaders and why it’s important that whatever we’re going through here, we keep our eyes on heaven. So then you’re bypassing the emotional and human need of people to say that there’s nothing more important than making it to heaven and the salvation. So what do we have to do to make sure that we keep our eyes on the ultimate prize and keep our eyes on Jesus? And in

the process, letting, like ignoring your own feelings and neglecting your own, your own sense of worth. Is that what we’re getting at?

Exactly. So you can see that those are tactics that can lead to some type of abuse. And I think people don’t understand that when they first start to deconstruct because their pain has been so invalidated for so long; it’s been minimized, they’ve been devalued, they’ve often been dehumanized. And so being able to give them a voice and understand that your pain is valid and what happened to you is more than likely some type of manipulative tactic that’s caused you harm. And then if you take that and look at how you may have been harmed in your personal life outside of your church experience, because oftentimes the revictimization of people is very common. People who are easily manipulated in church are more than likely manipulated at home. And I don’t have that data in front of me, but I’ll get it if you need it.

But it really spoke to me because I was also victimized by a family member. So you start to. And once again, the church teaches you to be silent. So how easy it is to victimize people who are underneath that type of structure. So then all of a sudden the floodgates are released, and you are able to experience that pain. It’s a lot.

Well, and even you talked about betrayal early on. There are scholars now who are talking about the trauma of betrayal, that the act of becoming aware of that betrayal itself is a traumatic experience that wounds people. That kind of adds to some of the burden of deconstruction. But you mentioned that people are victims at home as well. I have seen within my own community that frequently the hierarchy in that structure not only facilitates that kind of stuff, but also protects the perpetrators of that kind of stuff. And in your situation, did you find that the structure also was there to ensure that there wasn’t accountability for the folks who were, I’m assuming, higher up the social ladder than you who were causing that abuse?

You know, I don’t know if I can. If it’s actually part of my indoctrination that prevents me from saying some of the things that I hear on social media. Because oftentimes they’ll say that abusers are attracted to leadership inside the church because they know they can find victims and they know they can be protected. That’s a really hard truth. It’s hard for me to say. It’s hard for me to hear. And I don’t know what part of me—I should probably go check that out in my deconstructing journey. But when you can’t ignore the data, which

They were led into temptation.

Yeah.

To see they’re the victim.

Not exactly. To see the congregation swarm around them on the stage to pray for them. Meanwhile, the victim sits over here with just their families holding space because they’re still trying to fit into this system, even though they’ve been harmed.

They.

That that indoctrination is so strong, they want to stay with their community. This is happening today in 2024. We have so much more to do when it comes to how you help people who are deconstructing. But what do you do about that? I mean, it’s still such a broken system. And I’m not talking about the church universal. But you know, this is happening in enough situations that there are many denominations that are protecting the abusers and are budgeting for it like it’s expected that this is going to happen. And then they know how to spin the stories to continue to protect the abuser, which causes much more harm to the victims than is necessary.

I think just recently I saw on social media videos of a pastor somewhere who admitted, admitted to having had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a minor, but then just got up and performed repentance, which then made them seem like a hero to the congregation. And so the, the system is very much structured to protect itself from accountability. I, I imagine reading through, for instance, Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne, that that a lot of that was intimately familiar to you, that you. That felt like something you had personally experienced.

Some of these books are hard to read. Yeah, just like. Well, that hit me in the gut.

And one of the things that is central to. I don’t think she. Well, no, I think she’s pretty explicit about it. And you talk quite a bit about the patriarchy in your book. Can you talk about the role of the patriarchy in facilitating this and, and how. And how it gets entangled with the deconstruction process?

Yeah, I get, I get attacked a lot for talking about it as well. But I do, you know, I think waking up to that is. Was. Was really. Was really challenging to understand as someone growing up in the 60s, what patriarchy had taught me and how it taught me to, to lose my voice and to confirm my lack of self-worth, that that was the feeling I should have, that I’m only affirmed through male approval. That certainly had impacts on me in my life. And then when you enmesh that into religion, you can see how much that harms women and any historical, historically marginalized person. Because you have a system that’s intended to perpetuate an institution that’s protecting primarily the white Christian cisgender heterosexual man, and anybody else inside that structure who doesn’t fit that framework is either participating in it because of their proximity to that power and they like that privilege.

So they’re willing to throw water on the rest of the proverbial structure. If it’s a pyramid, throw water down on the rest of the people in order to protect that power. So that system not only teaches you to submit to that white man, it teaches you to betray those who are harmed by it. It teaches you to see them as someone that you cannot trust. And it really was a hard lesson for me to see how much church, in my experience, church women really don’t like each other. This was a, like to come to that realization like we were telling on each other. It’s only out of Christian love that I’m going to tell you this, Sister Karla. Well, and you know, I told the pastors about this. This was just brutal. Yeah, brutal. Mean girl stuff.

Saying that was blessed by church authority because it kept everybody in line. So it teaches you to just look to the heavens and on the way there, look to the church leaders. And when you’re, when you first are faced with that, you then have to make some decisions like are you willing, really willing to look at how much you’ve been impacted by it, but also how much you have benefited from it? Because it is both sides and that is where a lot of people get tripped up.

But the one person who I have—besides the MAGA person, of course you’re blocking them left and right—but the person I’ve had to block more often on my accounts on social media is the white Christian woman who thinks she’s deconstructing until she gets to a place where she does not realize she’s still holding on to a patriarchal privilege and is weaponizing it towards those with whom she’s in community. And that just does not go well. And it often becomes a very toxic situation for them; they see that… let’s just say it becomes really, really heated. Yeah, we’ll leave it at that.

Yeah, well, it is, and it’s so interesting to watch as people who aren’t even the ones benefiting, who get the perceived benefits of patriarchy, perpetuating the patriarchal structure and perpetuating the problems of patriarchy even though they are not the men who are the theoretical benefactors—or not benefactors, recipients of the privileges. It is so when women work hard to perpetuate it, it can be very surprising and very shocking to see.

Very, very much so. And like I said, it’s almost easier to block them than to call them—like, “Oh, here we go again. This is not going to end well, but we’re going to try.” So here we go.

So there’s an awful lot of emotional labor that goes into this, not just to deconstruct on your own behalf, but to help others. You’ve mentioned community a few times. And this is something within the cognitive science of religion that we think is something that religion does unusually well—it generates community, with an awful lot of structural flaws and things like that. But I don’t think you can create community without some of those. And something that I’ve experienced on social media, particularly talking about deconstruction with other folks, is that social media a lot of times provides the community that is suddenly yanked out from underneath folks who are going through this process. And I read your book and it felt like a very kind of intimate pastoral hand-holding through this process. But it also seemed like an effort to try to extend the boundaries of the social media community that you’ve become a part of so that people can find it through other channels.

Could you talk a little bit about how you see the role of community within deconstruction?

I love how we get here so often when I’m speaking about deconstructing because I think this is like the natural progression. For so long it has been about just the act of deconstructing, and people now are ready to come together, and the social media community can only do so much. There’s going to need to be pies and casseroles made when the funeral happens. You know that, like you said, they have that mastered and it serves a purpose. You’re seeing that now, especially in North Carolina and the places where tragedy has struck, that there is a need for it. And I will be the first to admit that. I’m going to—not to ever say I’m eloquent with my speech, but this is where I get a little clunky, so bear with me. And I would love for you to come into this conversation as well because I do believe it’s a conversation that now needs to be elevated to a higher level of awareness and consciousness.

But as you know, the data still show people are leaving church. And it’s more challenging to find the data that shows what’s happening inside these mostly modern, evangelical American-type Christian churches that are part of the megachurch, the modern church, the rock bands, the pastors in jeans that very much still has what I call a toxic theology behind it, because it does. It brands itself as modern, but it’s still holding on to a lot of that. A lot of them have a Southern Baptist history. So I think a lot of people are just shifting over. So you’re seeing a lot of pain inside and pressure on the smaller churches, the smaller denominational churches, which is where a lot of your progressive thought is and a lot of the local needs are—the neighborhood churches. Unless something changes, I do believe they’ll disperse, disappear, and I don’t want to see that happen.

But I do believe that there is a transformation that, that religion is under, some kind of transforming. I think this tension that we’re seeing now within what’s happening with Christian nationalism is like this, this awakening or arising, if you will, of just this awareness that patriarchy really stinks and it’s hurt a lot of us and that it’s not sustainable and this church model isn’t either. And believe me when I say this, somebody’s going to say to you, not all churches and not all Christians, and I don’t mean it like this, but this is just the easiest way to talk about it. People, especially your Gen Z, Alpha, millennial generations are not going to tolerate a massive building sitting on a massive land plot that’s only available a couple hours a week. It makes no sense to those generations. I hope that we are starting, we are at the cusp of seeing churches inviting a more secular community conversation that looks at the needs of the whole.

Now, again, admitting that the church will be there in crisis. It knows how to do community, but community is changing and it no longer can just be. I become a member of your church to get these. What does my humanness invite me into? And the fact that I think you see in the younger generations a more responsibility for the human connection, the human need, and wanting to see how that so does. Is it being invited into a conversation that says, what is the secular need? What is the human need with a spiritual component? That’s where I think we’re going in the meantime, social media community, I think will lead to some local kind of. They tried these cell groups for a while. I think that’s what you’ll start to see. That won’t have a denominational affiliation.

It’ll spin out of the something that’s going, that’s happening with social media. I’ve even thought about. All right, let’s hear, let’s try some points. Here’s, here’s some suggestions if you’re going to try to start some type of gathering and here’s what I think would. I would like to see some churches. I don’t want to see any church go under. There was a time when I did, I’ll admit it but I just saw, you know, one of our, one of our mutuals. He probably is your mutual too Dan, on social media coming up that they’re, they’re going to have a $500,000 shortfall by April because they’re doing all this good stuff. They’re, they’re, they’re helping people experiencing homelessness. They’re helping people get the food that they need and the vaccines that they need and helping kids with backpacks and providing breakfast for the needy on but, but the church isn’t sustainable. There’s not new blood coming in to, to fund those. So what’s going to happen? I’m sorry, that’s a. You can tell I’m thinking a lot about it. I told you it got clunky and that meant you gave the mic to a minister and she took it.

So I’m wondering like, you know, what I hear you describing. You’re using the word church to talk a lot about a new, a sort of a new looking community. I wonder if church is even the right word for it. I wonder if it doesn’t need to be something entirely new.

I love it. Or the word means something different. And that’s one of the things I talk about too a lot. In deconstructing. We tend to assume that these words are only available if you are religious. But being spiritual means that you can have holiness in your life. You can live a sacred life. You can seek divine wisdom or understanding in different, in ways that are meaningful to you. You can have a sacred practice. You can be spiritual without religion. And does that mean that church evolves and transforms into something else is not just about the Christian experience. It becomes something else because that’s what’s happening as people are deconstructing. I don’t know but I think those conversations seem to be happening more and more and I love it.

I want to see it happen well, but I think in the next decade you’re going to see that.

Well, a question that I get quite frequently in all these conversations going on about deconstructing is reconstruction. And, and from a lot of different angles as well. For instance, someone who is antagonistic toward me calls himself the reconstructionist, which it’s really just another way to frame apologetics. But a question I get is, hey, I’m deconstructing, but I don’t want to lose this because I do find value in the spiritual experiences in the community and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about what to do after you have. Well, you talk about deconstruction as something that’s ongoing, but is there a role for reconstruction? Maybe not in the direction of Christianity, but how do you get back the parts of that edifice that you think have value?

So, and I said this in my video yesterday, they say that when you can reach back to a painful time and touch gently the experience and the memories, there are memories back there that are good. Then you know you’ve reached a level of healing that can help guide you and inform your future. And I hope that as people deconstruct, they’re able to do that. They’re able to reconcile with the parts of their spiritual journey that were entrenched in their religious indoctrination that were good. Some people, though, that’s not going to happen. There’s real abuse and trauma, and it may not ever happen. And that doesn’t mean that there’s anything about their journey now that’s going to be less than. But in the book, I put that under the framework of, like, demolish, repair and restore, because, you know, we talk about that place where you start to peel away the layers of the narratives that were possibly put on you, on who you were, what you were to believe what your worth was, and then you start to repair those things because you realize, wow, there’s actual pain here.

And I didn’t realize, like, what these structures had done to me and what the people inside those structures had done to me. And what am I going to do now to repair myself? And then the restoration is reconstruction. And what does that look like for you? And that is such an important part of it, because it’s not about what you believe at the end of this experience. It’s who you become, and that will then inform how you reconnect with community. So if you’ve done this work, then it means that you have reclaimed the power over your spiritual journey. Somewhere along the line, many of us, we lost it. We gave it over to organized religion. Who then was going to tell us what we believe, how to worship, how to be the good Christian, how to get to heaven. And then we kind of went on autopilot, when in reality we should have been doing some of the journey on our own.

And I think that’s like kind of like the Buddhist principle of what it means to internalize some of that and hold on to our spirituality in that way. Only then can we then return to some kind of community. Because now we’re not looking for a savior necessarily, or a guru or a church leader. We’re looking for connection and inspiration and wisdom. And we will also know, we’ll cue in to some red flags if something isn’t exactly what it appears to be and we understand what it is that we need. So for me, it’s not about what you believe, but it also isn’t necessarily about community. For me, I’m unchurched. I don’t have a spiritual community. But I’m also like the most massive introvert that there was. And it could be part because of that church experience, because I was at church seven days a week, that, you know, I know better than to never say never.

But at this point, I don’t see that changing. I’m very content with where I am, even though I still get invitations to come pastor churches. I’m like, have you seen my social media? Are you sure you’re asking the right person here? But that is more important. And people always worry, like, am I doing deconstructing right? Am I doing reconstructing right? Well, if you’re asking that question, you need to go back and deconstruct more, because approval isn’t what you’re seeking. It’s inner peace, it’s inner knowing. It’s really being comfortable with who you are and understanding that this work is ongoing because especially those of us who carry any kind of trauma, that’s stuff that you’re going to carry with you for the rest of your life. So when those triggers rise up, are we going to let it debilitate us? Are we going to try to dive back in and see that as an invitation to go deeper, to go to a next level?

And what do you need in that moment? So I’m not going to ask you what you believe about the resurrection. I’m not going to ask you if you took communion. I’m not going to ask you who you’re in community with. I want to know that you are living your authenticity, that you’re not afraid of it anymore. And at that point, you know that reconstructing is occurring because for many of us, in order to seek approval, it had to be more about following the authority and seeking that approval. And as long as we’ve deconstructed from that, reconstructing is beginning. And then you can begin to dive into that mystery. That’s where I think mysticism comes in. But that’s for another.

That’s volume two, huh? Yeah.

Right. Yes.

Right. Yes. Well, that, I, I think that’s a wonderful place to, to end this. Thank you so much, Karla, for joining us. The book is Deconstructing: Leaving Church, Finding Faith. It is as you’re listening to this out now, so go and grab a copy. And thank you, Karla, so much for joining us.

I, I have so enjoyed this. This has been an honor. I really, I really mean that. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you for being here. It’s been an honor for us as well. Thank you so much for letting us read this book and walk through it with you. And thank you so much for joining us today.

Yeah. Go follow Karla on social media Rev Karla. Yes, with a K. That’s right. If you would like to become a part of helping to make this show go and in doing so, get early access to an ad-free version of every show and potentially get the after party with me and Dan, go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and join up there, become part of that community, which is actually a really cool, thriving community. Also, if you would like to contact us, you can reach us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com and we’ll talk to you again next week.

Bye, everybody.