The Pilgrim House

Salvation was the single most important dogma that encapsulated that religious upbringing, fed by various indisputable streams of doctrine such as the virgin birth, the inerrancy of Scripture, a physical resurrection, and the imminent return of Jesus after the rapture in precisely the order spelled out in the Left Behind book series. All those constructs attempted to make clear one inarguable and...

Look at any evangelical teenager in the 1990s and you’ll see a woven or elastic bracelet hanging from their wrist with the letters WWJD prominently displayed. For teens like me during what we would have declared to be the golden age of Christianity, it was more than a platitude for those committed to soul winning. It was virtue signaling, a marker to the world that you were one of the ones who und...

If you grew up or came of age in conservative Christianity, you’ve heard those expressions, and you might have even uttered them. It’s a language affectionately known in America as “Christianese,” and now that you’re deconstructing and your faith journey has brought you to a place of distrust and disgust with American-brand Christianity, you find yourself repelled by such sentiments. It signals a...

We must accept our own negotiation of the Bible and faith because, in doing so, we allow all parties involved in biblical interpretation and the work of following Jesus to be their fullest selves. It is okay to disagree with the Bible. It is okay to not believe. When we afford ourselves and others the permission to accept the inadequacy of our own religious perspective, the text can be what the te...

The future of Christianity must look past a God who cares almost exclusively about the morals of the self, demonstrated in an overblown fury over the lack of morals in our neighbor. And it must move beyond the bland self-deprecation that limits creativity, imagination, and ingenuity in the public sphere in favor of a false humility.

The God-who-is-nice presides over a Christian culture that decries social upheaval of any kind. It recognizes that there are traditions that must be kept intact for the social order to thrive. These are traditions that are often rooted deeply in racism or sexism, such as normative gender roles like the stay-at-home Mom or “boys will be boys.” It’s a God that is the mascot for communities that are...

Evangelical Christianity in the United States has been enamored by a God of white respectability since before the nation’s founding: a God that looks, acts, and speaks like a good white man. It’s cliched to discuss images of God as an elderly gentleman with a flowing white beard casting lightning bolts against evil from atop a gold-lined cloud, and that image no longer captures the imagination of...

What happens when we mistake our inner voice – our conscience – for God? At the best we may recognize that doing good to other people is better than doing wrong. But how is that good and wrong defined? Who sets its parameters? That can lead to the worst parts of our inner dialogue, wherein we believe that the inclinations we feel are good and virtuous even when they propel us toward horrific acts.

Deconstruction from evangelicalism and conservative Christianity has trended for more than a decade in among millennials in the United States. It’s rooted in the disconnect our generation has felt between the Jesus we believe is love and peace, and the often fundamentalist leanings of our upbringing that seem now to espouse dogmatic partisanship and hate. Christena Cleveland writes, “Imagination i...