Dealing with a Loss of Faith – Part 2

An earlier article reviewed the comments of Liz Snell, a worker at the L’Abri Fellowship in Vancouver, British Columbia, concerning the experience of family and friends who fall away from the Christian faith. A panel at the Southern Evangelical Seminary’s recent National Apologetics Conference discussed the trend of Christian celebrities in the music industry denying or moving away from the Evangelical faith in which they had presented their work. The panel included Alisa Childers, an Evangelical who struggled with progressive Christianity before returning to the faith, and who is now an author and speaker, John Cooper, lead singer and song-writer for the rock band Skillet, and Dave Stovall, a long-time Christian songwriter who deconstructed his faith, later returned to orthodoxy, and toured with the bands Waverly and Audio Adrenaline.

Cooper said his experience of people leaving the faith was not with celebrities, but with friends and even pastors he has known for decades, who now think he “is some sort of ‘Biblical extremist.’” He finds that he is now “living what you taught me,” but “it’s you that’s changed.”

Childers said she was “deconstructed by a progressive pastor who identified himself as a ‘hopeful agnostic.’”  As a result of this, she found herself “spiraling into a dark night of the soul.” She said that Southern Evangelical Seminary helped in her reconstruction of faith, and she now wants to help others with work in apologetics.

Stovall found that God seemed absent in his life, and therefore concluded that he was not a believer. He and his friends began “discipling each other away from the faith that we grew up in.” He said that the end result of this was that he became a “progressive universalist.” The arrival of his first child, however, made him ask “are there any answers out there.” After two years of inquiring of God and searching, God led him “straight back to the historical Jesus.”

Childers was asked about the pastor who led her away from orthodox Christianity. She said that although “a hopeful agnostic,” he nevertheless “was pastoring an Evangelical, nondenominational church.” The church “had a pretty solid belief statement.” He confided his unbelief in “smaller group settings,” including one Childers attended.

Cooper was asked what people mean by “deconstruction.” He that that it is a postmodern term and “basically what you’re dealing with is a lot of chaos.” It can involve giving new meaning to words and terms that Christians often use. Sometimes it can involve a claim to have found a far different authentic Christianity that excludes traditional sexual morality or other basic elements of orthodox theology. Childers added that the authentic Christianity that is often found in not determined by the Bible, but by contemporary thought. It is an “approach to truth that would be relativistic.” Truth claims about the nature of God, the end of the world, etc., cannot be entertained as based on objective reality, but are assumed to be only power plays. She said that the question of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, “did God really say,” is now cast as “did God really mean?”

Stovall was asked about the meaning of “progressive Christianity.” He said it is basically re-interpreting the Bible to make it fit contemporary culture. His own experience was that he had difficulty justifying doctrines given by his church as clear and strong Biblical doctrines in terms of what he actually found in the Bible. When such a discovery is made, perhaps under the scrutiny of progressive teachers, people can be led to a new interpretation of the Bible in which people will “line up more with culture than you do with the Bible.”

Childers observed that in deconstruction, all beliefs are put on par; in the last analysis there are no “core beliefs.” Such a contested doctrine as belief in predestination is put on par with the resurrection of Jesus. Sometimes, however, there may be a problem with a person coming from a background which was too dogmatic about doctrines which have a dubious basis in Scripture.

She went on to mention celebrities who have left the faith. These include Joshua Harris, author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Marty Sampson of Hillsong who has posted concerning his wavering faith, and Jonathan Steingard of Hawk Nelson, who left the faith entirely, announcing his atheism and who has a platform to facilitate the deconstruction of others. Steingard’s story is an example of something now seen in a number of cases. Not only do people renounce their faith, but they become evangelists for deconversion. This involves testimonies of people’s deconstruction, a “community of faith” of deconstructed people, leaders in these communities who are effectively “priests and prophets and pastors,” conferences and therapy sites.

Cooper said that progressive Christianity, like progressive politics, “does not look for what came before it, it does not look for wisdom handed down.” It emphasizes the superior wisdom of the present. It has a “ruthless critical spirit” of the wisdom of the past.

Stovall was asked if people in the Christian music industry are especially inclined to deconstruction. He observed that in touring, which consumes much of the lives of Christian singers, one is cut off from daily contact with Christian communities. One has to present oneself to the churches one visits on tour as a strong Christian with a strong testimony, while yet wrestling with problems and doubt. He said that in supporting his faith, “having a safe person, whose was also knowledgeable, to help guide me, has been the key.” Similarly, the fact that so many people do not live in the community of their birth, or remain for much of their life in a settled Christian fellowship, is an important reason for their vulnerability to deconstruction.

Childers added that in the absence of Christian community, those one travels with “sometimes are good influences, and sometimes they’re not.” She mentioned that everyone in Cooper’s band are strong Christians. Cooper added that some Christian musicians do not have a church that they go to. He said that Skillet has remained faithful at least in significant measure “because we belong to a local church.” Cooper also noted that if a Christian musician attacks orthodox Christianity in public, that musician still has a career, “they will not get rid of you” if you continue to make money.

Childers observed that the “Evangelical elites” tend to facilitate deconstruction by arguing that it is not necessarily a bad thing. She said that by contrast, in travelling around the country, “every person in the pews knows deconstruction is bad.” But with respect to this clear understanding, “the thought leaders seem to be extremely confused, and want to nuance it into oblivion.”

In answer to the question of what signs of deconstruction Christians might identify in their children, Cooper said that he didn’t “know anyone who deconstructed who followed … a culturally unpopular path.” He said that a young person who is struggling with some idea which is incompatible with orthodox Christianity should ask themselves, is this idea “going to make you more popular to the world.” He said that the apostasy that we are now seeing “always follows along the culture trends.”

Childers said that a theme that runs through all deconstruction stories is “sexual freedom.” She referred to the false teachers of II Peter chapter 2, seducing people by the passions of their desires. Similarly, she cited the general revelation referred to in Romans chapter 1, which people suppress in unrighteousness. Even if a deconstructing individual does not move to sexual immorality in his or her own life, they still, in every case she knows, hold a strong belief that Biblical sexual morality is wrong. She said that “sex is what’s underneath every deconstruction story that I’ve listened to.” 

Stovall was asked what helped him return to orthodox Christianity. He said that one reason was that he “was uncomfortable with not knowing anything.” He was discipled back into the faith by a pastor who accepted him in his church because he found Stovall to be teachable. The pastor drew him into a small group and in gentle, rational discussion, reviewed with him the formation of the canon of Scripture, archaeological evidence supporting the Bible, etc. This re-established his trust in Scripture.

It was observed that Stovall was both discipled into unbelief and discipled back into belief. Stovall agreed that being “organically” part of a church is important.

How do the panelists deal with pushback against their defense of Christianity in the face of deconstruction, even from people who are professing Christians? Cooper said that “things really started to shift” about 2013 with the “extreme activism of the Left.” This caused him to question what it meant to live a Christian life. In the world of the twentieth century, it was easy to be a Christian in America, and it was clear what a Christian life meant. From the 2010s on, there is a conflicting vision of the Christian life as essentially life in conformity with the Left’s ideas of social justice. In this situation, “you have to stand up for the truth of Christ in a way I think we didn’t have to ten or fifteen years ago.” He said that “even if people get mad, it’s absolutely worth it if it costs you your job, even if it’s going to cost you applause from the world, it doesn’t matter.”

In response to a question about how Christians can prepare to “face the challenges” of deconstruction, Stovall said testimony about what God has done for you personally is important, that “we can’t get over the fact that he has saved us, and that he cares for the people around us.” Childers said that even if there is “a lot of pushback … you’re not going to die.” Yet in the sense of being subjected to harsh criticism, “this is the Bonhoeffer/Corrie ten Boom moment … when you really find out what’s in there.” She observed as well that deconstruction is destructive; it does not give a positive vision for life. She said that she hopes and prays that many deconstructionists will see this and “come back to the Lord.” She observed as well that Christians are, as Paul said,  “the fragrance of Christ, among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.” To the latter, it is the aroma of death, to the former, the aroma of life (II Cor. 2:14-17). Having the knowledge of Christ ready to share, both in its content and in its defense (apologetics), is important in both glorifying God and advancing his kingdom. But to those who hate God as he has revealed himself in Scripture, the gospel is “going to smell really bad.”

Cooper said that “chaos cannot continue to go forever.” He believes that society will eventually reach a place where “the fragrance of order, the fragrance of the Logos, the fragrance of the logic of God, that there is a plan that makes sense, there is a design that makes sense, this is the flow of the Kingdom of God, and you cannot continue to buck against the flow of the Kingdom of God.” He said he has “a very positive view of what God is going to do in the earth, and I believe it’s going to fall back on the order, the logos of Christ.” He said that Christians should “not back down, ever.”