Deconstruction Isn’t Deconversion: Margaret Bronson on What the Church Gets Wrong

What does it actually mean to “deconstruct” your faith—and why are so many people doing it?

In this episode of Faithful Politics, Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram sit down with Margaret Rose Bronson, founder of Deconstruction Doulas, a support network helping people navigate religious trauma and high-control church environments. Drawing from her own experience inside patriarchal and authoritarian church systems, Margaret explains the difference between deconstruction and deconversion, and why that distinction matters.

The conversation explores how certain theological frameworks can lead to control, shame, and harm—particularly for women—and how these systems often operate beneath the surface of otherwise “normal” church communities. Margaret also breaks down the role of a “deconstruction doula,” someone who walks alongside individuals as they process their beliefs, ask hard questions, and rebuild their understanding of faith on their own terms.

They also discuss the real-world cost of deconstruction, including shunning, loss of community, and long-term emotional impact on individuals and families. This episode provides a grounded, firsthand look at how religious systems can both shape and distort faith—and what it takes to reclaim it.

Deconstruction Doulas: https://www.deconstructiondoulas.com
The Rise of Christian Nationalism (CNN): https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/the-whole-story-with-anderson-cooper/episodes/10f01a2c-b8ef-11f0-99d9-ebc70f76e43c

Guest Bio:
Margaret Rose Bronson is the founder of Deconstruction Doulas, a support network helping people navigate faith deconstruction and recover from religious trauma. A survivor of high-control church environments, she now works with individuals rebuilding their beliefs, identity, and sense of autonomy after leaving harmful systems.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:16

No, I think I think I think that's a human response. We're just like, that can't be real. That's so insane and inappropriate.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

But obviously it probably opened up avenues to more extreme forms of abusing.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Absolutely. Um, and I mean you have John Piper on the record saying that women should, you know, undergo being hit by their husbands and like just let that happen and pray about it. And that's always the solution is to pray about it.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's going on, Josh? Hey, what's going on, Will? And today we have joining with us Margaret Rose Bronson, who's the founder of Deconstruction Doolas, a support network that helps people navigate the process of leaving high control religious environments. And she was also featured on the recent documentary about Christian nationalism on CNN. As a survivor of Doug Wilson's Christchurch community in Moscow, Idaho, she draws from her experience inside church settings to help other individuals who may have gone through similar experiences. And we're just so glad to have Margaret with us today. Welcome to Faithful Politics.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

You're welcome. I I should say I don't know a whole lot of Margarets. My wife is named Margaret. And the fact that your name is Margaret automatically makes you pretty, pretty cool in my book. Do you go by Margaret or do people call you like Peggy or anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 1:42

For the most part, I go by Margaret. Fun story. I've been shunned so many times that there's different names that I used to have that I don't have anymore, and it feels weird to have them again because they belong to like those relationships. So I pretty much go by Margaret. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

That's awesome. That's really cool. And and uh so so you you you're the founder of Deconstruction Doolas. And I want to just learn a little bit more about that because the name is fascinating for one. And as a person who has actually used the doula and midwife to give birth to our second son in this house, by the way, it seems like a weird pairing.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

So what is deconstruction doula's so deconstruction, I think, is a really scary word to a lot of people, but I feel like it's just being a faithful Berean. It's just studying the scriptures, making like taking ownership of your faith and your theology, and not just accepting what's being told and handed to you, but instead like taking ownership and I think acting as a priest and genuinely like navigating your relationship with God yourself and figuring out like what do I think about all of this stuff? And so, you know, if you get really into gastronomy or whatever, they have deconstructed like anything. You could have like a deconstructed sandwich and it's all the different parts like separated out. And then you get to play with it, right? You get to be like, well, actually, my bite is better if I have less bread to meat and cheese ratio, or if I add in these different ingredients, or if I take this thing that I don't really like avocado, so I'm gonna take that out, or whatever it is. And you get to play with it until you have the bite that you want that that feels right to you. And so I think a lot of times I think there's been a lot of fear-mongering about deconstruction within the church, but I don't think it's anything that that Christian, faithful Christians should be afraid of. That's number one. I think because it gets lumped in with deconversion, that's not, I mean, it can result in deconversion, but that doesn't necessarily have to be.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

They are not the same thing. And then the second doulas. So a doula is different than an obstetrician or a midwife in that they're not making decisions for you. They're asking you, what is it, like what are your concerns about your birth? What are the things that you really want to avoid? You know your body well. What are the things that you know going into this you're gonna need support with? Or, you know, and then protecting those things and making sure that as much as possible, those desires are protected. And so the Jula will stand kind of between the birthing patient and the obstetrician and say, no, she really didn't want a C-section. So let's see if we can, you know, wait a little longer or whatever it is. So you're advocating for the patient. You're also coming with education and knowledge. Like, I know that when you say this, you know, I've got this back pain, I can need that low back, and that's gonna help alleviate some of those contractions. I know that having little packets of honey on hand can help with blood sugar issues. I know that walking, like let's get you up, let's keep you moving, like these things, you bring your education and not force anything on, but make sure that the patient is educated and knows what their options are, what their rights are. And so really you're just a doula comes alongside and makes sure that the woman who is birthing is given autonomy, respect, dignity, and cared well for, and that her like desires are honored. And that is what we do at Deconstruction Doolas in the context of deconstruction, but also healing from religious trauma, because most of the people that we work with have uh we tend to work with people with severe religious trauma. And one of the things is that there's a lot of anxiety for people with religious trauma to hurry up and feel better and get over it. And the role of a deconstruction doula is to be like, you get to take as much time as you need. There's like God's not anxious. And, you know, reframing things like we talk about how, you know, God is the adult in the relationship and he holds on to you. And so you don't have to anxiously terrified hold on to him because he's big enough to handle the questions and the pain and the grief. He knows what happened. He's not confused about what's happening. If you're not rebelling, he knows you're not rebelling. You don't have to put that stuff on you, even if other people are. And so we try to like create a safe little bubble, give people space and time, and just honor their choices. If their choices are to deconvert, we honor that and we support that. We give them access to education and resources so that they can rebuild a safe connection with God, Christianity, the church, the Bible. But we don't force that on them at all. It's very much empowering their autonomy. So, yeah, that's kind of a snapshot.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

That's really cool. And so the whole idea, just to make sure I understand it and to kind of reiterate for our audience, is that you're kind of you're you're not help helping people have birth, you're helping them get through deconstruction. Yeah. Right. So essentially you're you're taking the imagery of a doula, what they do, and how they help someone, and you're applying it to the process of deconstruction and helping people kind of get to where they need to go or they feel, you know, their conscience is taking them, kind of thing. Right. Is that kind of basically? Did I have that right? Did I get that right? That's awesome. I mean, I just love it. And I would love to like thinking about deconstruction, because I I I know that it is a scary term for a lot of people. And basically, people well, I say people, there are a certain group of people, many of whom I know, that's hear deconstruction and think deconversion. Yeah. That's basically it. There is no other option. And through and to be honest, through a lot of my I understand why people feel that way. Because cool because in my experience, now this is my experience, so it's anecdotal. It's not, right, it's not really what's happening. But it seems like there are a lot of people that deconstruct and just deconvert, or at least deconvert from anything recognizable to the people that you know they were with or the groups they were with. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, Red. I'm just trying to bring that out. And I would love to, I mean, hear your thoughts on that deconstruction more generally, if you want to get those. Or like dig into that deconversion, deconstruction difference. But I would love for you to paint us the picture of the patriarchal church environment that you deconstructed from. Because I think one of the things that people hear, they hear deconstruction and they and it's a boogeyman term for a lot of people. And they're afraid, and they're afraid for their kids or grandkids, whatever it might be. And I I think sometimes they don't realize, especially if they grew up in a somewhat normal home, right? I mean, I like that's what I would say me. I grew up in a home where my mom and dad they taught me, yeah, the man is the head of the household, okay? But the way I saw that lived out was not abusive. I never thought my mom didn't have an equal say. I never thought my mom was less than really. And it's like, and yet though, that was definitely something I was taught, you know, growing up. And and I would say there is a kind of a I wouldn't go as misogynistic. I think that's a pretty intense term in terms of woman hatred. But I would say, I don't know if there's a a term of just like lessening the worth or lessening the worth of the opinion, or lessening the worth of the overall right worth. Yeah. I did, if I'm honest, I did kind of receive that, right? Even though it wasn't played out in a in the ways that I'm assuming it was in your life, right? With the actual actions and and the things that you were taught and the ways and the and and and not being made in the image of God in the same way. Like I was never taught anything like that, right? So I would love for you to kind of help people who are hearing deconstruction or whatever, and they're like, oh, that's ridiculous. It's so silly. They're just because I'm kind of thinking of people I know that would hear that and like, ah, it's absurd. Well, not necessarily. Excuse me, not necessarily. And I'd love to hear in that patriarchal, intensely patriarchal church, what what was that like as a girl growing up in that? What were you taught? And and you know, paint the picture that shows us why you needed a deconstruct from this.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

I think the thing that what might surprise people is how normal it felt going through it. Like, you know, I didn't realize I was in a cult or experiencing anything unhealthy. But yeah, the experience was hearing from the pulpit that women aren't made in the image of God, but that they're made in the image of men who are made in the image of God. That women literally exist to support the work of their husbands and have none of their own original like desires, creativity, drive, or whatever. All of it flows from the man's calling. You know, you're supposed to get married young, have children. We weren't allowed to work outside the home, go to college, you know, are the courtship process we weren't allowed to date. We we courted. That was highly controlled. Essentially, our fathers were choosing our spouses for us. And once you become a mother, there's, or once you become a wife, you must become a mother. And, you know, you don't get to control when you have children, like not even abstinence or, you know, natural family planning. You're supposed to just allow God to give you as many children as He does. I watched many women walk through like 12 miscarriages in like two to three years. Their bodies couldn't sustain life. They could get pregnant, but they could just, they couldn't sustain life. And so there was never exceptions made. That's, I think, I think that's like where I started being like, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. Like I understand there's two people, there's lots of decisions to be made. I totally get that like you'd want to like have a way of, you know, that made sense to me. Like having delegating, like she's gonna focus on like the inward family stuff, and he's gonna focus on like the going out and getting resources and bringing them back stuff. That makes sense to me. But the fact that they didn't make exceptions when people were severely like just becoming traumatized by their own fertility and inability to maintain life, and then told that, like, you know, it's your job to be a mother, but clearly that's not happening, and that, you know, the sovereignty of God is supreme and paramount, and everything is blamed on his sovereignty. And so, like, what is it, what what's wrong with you that God doesn't see you as a fit mother? You know, what sin or what behaviors, or like what is it? And so there's just a suspicion on these women. And it might not be like said out loud, but they just don't have a category for a woman who is married but doesn't have children that just doesn't fit in their system. And so it's just different things like that where there was just a coldness and an inability to see the people sitting right in front of them and how the system didn't work. I had a couple in my church where he was very ill and she was able-bodied. And, you know, he's supposed to be the breadwinner, but he couldn't keep a job. And so she had to work. And the shame that that couple had for that, the questioning, the constant pushback, the, you know, the people who would be like, well, you know, you really should, and then, you know, provide some sort of advice unsolicited for how they should live their life when it wasn't possible. And it was just this kind of like everyone gets to speak into your life and tell you you're doing things wrong, you're not doing it right enough, and we're holding everyone to these standards and shaming them and like creating a hierarchy and a caste system based on how closely you can fit into all of these arbitrary boxes. So I don't have a problem with the premises if they fit like to a certain point. I don't have a problem with the premises if they work for your family. It's saying that this is how every couple has to act and that there's never any recourse, you know. And then those things are enforced by, in in my context, were enforced by the elder body on families. So they could church discipline a wife for not being sexually available enough to her husband. They could, you know, if she wasn't cooking.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

What is church, what what does that mean? They could church discipline. So like wife is like, hey, I'm I don't want to, I, you know, I'm is it I'm not in the mood, or is it it could be she has seven children in eight years and she's just like, you know, not thinking about that right now.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

And of course, of course, you know, like so.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

What did church discipline look like?

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Like what what did that mean?

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Best case scenario, it's you come in and you get a talking to from your some men that you go to church with, which is like really inappropriate and uncomfortable and shaming and like stealing dignity, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

You're like, hey, you're not available to your husband, you need to be available.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Why is that a conversation between six men? It's so weird.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

And then this woman. Yeah, that's kind of strange.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

And your husband's the one like dragging you there. It's weird. And then, you know, so you might get talking down, you know, from the elders. You might be removed from access to the Lord's Supper. And in really extreme cases, you might be assigned to undergo spousal spankings for correction, just like a child. T lovings. Wait, wait, say that again? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

So our audience made sure that you heard they heard that correctly.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Your elders may prescribe your husband to spank you as if you were a child to reprimand you and correct you because you owe constant availability to your husband because that is the only thing that keeps him from you know, going to other women.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

How do they keep that spanking from turning into something more abusive? That's abusive in and of itself, by the way. Right. I'm not trying to say not. We're saying how did it turn into I don't know. Obviously, it's inappropriate, I think, at any moment to ever spank an adult, but I'm saying I mean it's crazy. It's actually. I don't know. I and maybe I feel so weird, I laughed.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

No, I think I think I think that's a human response. We're just like that can't be real. That's so insane and inappropriate.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

But obviously, it probably opened up avenues to some more extreme forms of abuse, I'm assuming.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Absolutely. And I mean, you have John Piper on the record saying that women should, you know, undergo being hit by their husbands and like we'll just let that happen and pray about it. And that's always the solution is to pray about it. And there's just not protection or support given. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

You know, I'm I gotta ask, like, how does one find themselves in an environment where like that's your church? And, you know, and and I'm asking very, very authentically because my my wife, my wife's from Indiana, I'm from California. When we got married, we've never lived in a place where we've had family. So our connection has always been the church. We're gonna find a great church, you know, create a community, blah, blah, blah. Like, is that is that kind of what happened with you, or is there like a different story?

SPEAKER_02 19:00

Yeah, I'm gonna give two answers because I kind of found myself in it twice. And so the first time, it's the 90s, kind of like the initial swell of the homeschool movement. My parents start homeschooling us. And honestly, I my brother has different feelings about it. I I personally was really served well. I'm neurodivergent. I like to study what I want to study, I want to study it as deeply as I want to study it. I don't want to do busy work, you know, it just worked well for my brain. And my parents were really good home educators as far as like academics and all of that went. But once you start homeschooling, you know, you're you're taking a step away from the majority culture, right? And it can be lonely. And so you're seeking out other families who are doing similar things. So your kids have other kids to play with and you know, you have people to talk to about these, you know, unique struggles and joys that come with homeschooling. And so a lot of people went in search of churches that had homeschoolers. And also one of the things that's interesting about this moment of church history, church culture is that the Christian school movement had been really, really going strong since the civil rights movement at that point. And a lot of churches' identities were their school. And if you didn't send your kids to the church's school, like there was abuse in that way. Like you could be pushed out of the church, you could be like just ostracized. And so there was a lot of people leaving churches because they weren't putting their kids in these Christian schools and they were getting honestly like spiritually abused as a result of it. And so there was this movement to find like-minded individuals. And that was prime targets for people who wanted to operate kind of in these corners and shadows to kind of set up their own little empires. And there were hundreds of little tiny cults. They just look like churches. It's just, you know, a little white building with a steeple on top and pews inside, and they have a Bible and they say things that sound really good and they sing the same songs, but then there's this, there's this other layer, and there's this culture, and you don't realize it until you're already in it, and all of your friends are these people, and you have a lot to lose. And also the icky, like the you know, the women who were being abused, they weren't telling people, you know, there wasn't that kind of culture. So you aren't necessarily aware of how everyone else is handling it because we're all supposed to constantly have this mask of joy and gratitude and acceptance and sweetness, and you know, performing the behavior and the attitudes that they wanted us to. And there wasn't room for grief. There wasn't room for fear or questioning or doubts. And so Everything got really like normalized. And I think a lot of people dissociate and kind of go to sleep and just keep putting the next foot in front of each other. And you don't realize that you're actually like in your own mind, you are cutting off your own options, right? Like, well, I'm not going to say that. Of course I can't say that. Of course I can't do that. And you're like narrowing and narrowing and narrowing until your awareness of yourself disappears entirely. And all you're doing is looking at the people around you and kind of like recalibrating based on people's behavior and moods in the most recent sermon. And there's always like new ideas that would spring up that would be another layer of legalism. And everyone would jump on it to be like, oh yes, I am that willing to show God that I love him and I'm going to follow him. Of course I'll sacrifice that. Of course I'll be wise in that way. Of course, you know, we'll do family worship every night. That makes sense. That's a great idea. We'll like, we'll do family worship every night and catechize our children. There's nothing wrong with that. And I have no problem with that on the surface. But when that becomes, you know, you've got 10 children at seven o'clock at night and they have to sit perfectly still and perfectly quietly for an hour and a half every night after dad comes home from work and he's tired and he's stressed and they're stressing him out because they're wiggling and fidgeting and whispering to each other. And then it's spanking and then it's spanking and it's spanking. And then family worship just becomes this carousel of spanking children and everyone goes to bed crying. I have a problem with that. I have a problem with people feeling like they are married to an extra biblical, ridiculous standard that like could be a good idea if you, if it worked for you. But like it becomes oppression when you don't have a choice. And when you are measuring, when you believe that that God's love and acceptance of you and your family's eternal security is dependent on you carrying out these man-made rules. I mean, it's literally the stuff that Jesus came to address in the three years of his ministry here on earth was the extra-biblical legal legalism of the Pharisees. And we have a whopper of it today, again.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Yeah, we absolutely do. And you know, it's like I was thinking as you're talking the the elites, religious elites in our culture. I guess you could say, I don't know if again I guess you could say right now in this moment, Christian, like uh certain sex of Christian nationalism and things like that. They their their worst nightmare, I think, is the actual Jesus of the gospels because he's so different than the view that they have. And when it's you know, when it's the Apostle Paul, like you can go to the Apostle Paul, you can go to this thing, and it's and you're you're you're using them and using them in certain ways, because certainly Paul can sound pretty harsh at certain points, and all of that needs to be understood contextually.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

And and I don't think they'd do well, obviously they don't do a very good job of that. I don't think I know a Christian nationalist that really truly believes that that knows the Bible well. In terms of its context. I'm not saying understands the English words of the Bible. I'm saying that understands the Bible well in its context. Right. It just militates against all of those, all of their deeply held principles that they have, like many of them. And I see this. I see this, I see this a lot. And Jesus is he is kind of the antidote, I think, to all this idolatry. I don't think actually, I'm pretty freaking confident of that. He really understanding who Jesus is is the antidote to probably even a lot of deconstruction because they're deconstructing from things that were never what Jesus had put into place. And so it totally, it totally all of this, all of this makes sense. And I I would love to push a little bit more into how you've seen this beyond. So, right, you you're you're just talking about how you went into you experienced it kind of twice, a childhood, and then you and your husband went into a church, and then you began. So I don't want to go into that. I'm very obviously ignorant on your story and want you to share it. But what happened? So you go into a church, you're pastoring there. What what's that like? How did that what happened there that made you realize this was beyond just maybe a couple, you know, edge cases?

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Yeah. So again, grew up in like radical conservatives, patriarchal in like the 90s and early 2000s. And then in 2010, I got married and my husband was a Southern Baptist pastor. And so at first, the SBC was, I mean, I had freedom and autonomy that I'd never had before. There was room to disagree. This was, you know, in my experience back when there was room to disagree within the SBC. And so at first it was great. And I deconstructed quite a bit from my childhood religious abuse to like a more SBC sort of place. And our school, our church was like 15 minutes from a seminary. And so most of the people at our church were seminary students. So that meant they didn't have family nearby. And they were the kind of people who are like, I'm fully bought in, my entire life is ministry. And so it was kind of a pressure cooker. And this church was extremely vulnerable to what happened next, which was John Piper starts platforming Douglas Wilson and Mark Driscoll and all these other like more extreme authoritarian voices, those start moving in. You start seeing the culture of like places like the gospel coalition changing. You know, back in the day, you would have debates happen on the gospel coalition. You'd have one person write an article on this side of a social justice issue or a theological issue, and then someone say, okay, and here's another. And both would be like well supported from the Bible and like a fair, you know, interpretation of the biblical text. And you, the reader, were empowered to read both and come to your own conclusions, whether they were one or the other or something kind of like in the middle or something else. That has changed. The culture changed and it started being this is the way, this is the only way. And if you don't adhere to these new, almost like a new statement of faith, where it was not just like the creed where it's like, okay, yeah, we believe in the birth, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ, literal, like all these things. Now it's like, oh, and also, you know, we believe things like women shouldn't lead men, and that's like very subjective, but like we're always kind of like pushing it further and further, right? Like we're always trying to like prove how seriously we take this thing that women should be in submission to men. And so I started seeing that change. And then I think the big, the big catalyst for me was the eternal subordination of the sun conversation. So this actually comes out of Doug Wilson and it moved into broader evangelicalism. And it is essentially the belief that Jesus is ontologically, so in his essence for all time and always, submitted to God the Father, which is a Trinitarian heresy, because that would entail there being multiple wills within the Godhead. And you can't have that. But the reason that they go into this Trinitarian heresy is because they say that God is an image of the male and Jesus is an image of the female. And so ontologically, even within the Godhead themselves, the feminine is in subordination to the masculine. And that took over the SBC, at least my part, the reformed, the young wrestlers reformed part of the Southern Baptist Convention, like it took over by storm. And it completely changed the culture of my church. And I started seeing my little church that where we had been talking about installing deaconesses. We had been talking about, you know, healthier marriage practices and parenting practices. And it it started, it it was like a about face back into fundamentalism and legalism. And the next layer of that was when I pushed back. I was no longer seen as just like someone who's, you know, just a Christian working through their things and who gets to have an opinion. It was silencing, it was censure, it was shaming, it was accusations, it was suspicion and like removing me from places where, you know, I could have access to influencing opinions and stuff like that. So then the control and authoritarianism really started taking over as downstream from the theology. So I started realizing that the theology was actually what was driving the behavior. And so that's like really what fueled the deconstruction. And I don't, I don't know that everyone has to like study theology to be free from the spiritual abuse. But for those of us who did study theology and who did swallow all of these ideas and premises, I do think it is on us to take a second look, to look at the fruit of those theologies and say, well, if the fruit is bad, maybe there's a bug somewhere upstream in the theology. Not the whole thing, maybe, but we need to figure out what's going on because I mean, the Bible tells us that, you know, we will be known by our fruit. And right now, our fruit is that 16 million women have left the church in the last 10 years. Why? If you go to the Gospel Coalition of Desiring God and you search deconstruction, you'll see dozens of articles saying that the pe the reason people deconstruct is because they don't want to follow God anymore. They want to sin. They, you know, it's like very accusing and not at all honoring what I have experienced with the hundreds of people that I've worked with to be the true reason that people deconstruct, which is that something happened that was very bad and harmful, either to them or someone they loved. And it caused them to ask questions upstream from that and figure out what went wrong. And that's that's what it is. And that shouldn't cost you every relationship, your place in the church, your dignity, your voice. Like you should still be seen as a believer. I mean, how many all of our great heroes of the faith had dark nights of the soul? You read their diaries and it's like they were deconstructing, I mean, they didn't need the term back then because they were just allowed to do it. But now we've made it so that's that we're not, we're not allowed to do that. But you can't actually grow in your faith until you do that. And so you end up with a lot of infantile Christians who can't do much with their faith because it hasn't been tested, it hasn't been tried.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

You know, I'm I'm glad you brought up, you know, people have deconstructed well before there was any, there was sort of like the concept of deconstruction, right? And well, that there's two of my favorite comedians, Mike Berbiglia and Pete Holmes, who, if you're familiar with their comedy, sometimes they'll they'll say stuff you're like, they deconstruct it, clearly. Because some of the things that they're talking about, oh you got some religion, you know, up knocking around in my head up here, you know, and and I I would also guess that more people would probably deconstruct if there wasn't a cost. Because anytime I think that you are walking away from some foundational elements of a belief system, the people that still believe that will look at you askance and be like, something's wrong with that person. So I'd I'd love for you to just tell us like what did deconstructing cost you in your family?

SPEAKER_02 35:04

I've gone through three shunnings. And so what that means is that one day I have belonging, you know, people that love me, that care about me, that are gonna be there on birthdays, and I'm gonna be there at their birthdays. You know, we're gonna celebrate the birth of each other's children, probably support each other through it, make some meals for each other, watch each other's kids. Like, I mean, I have a chronically ill and disabled husband. So I I had people in, you know, OR waiting rooms with me and other people watching my children and other people making meals for me. I had a whole community, you know, I had a whole life. And then the next day it's just gone and you never hear from them again. And there's no ability, it's like the Irish goodbye, right? Like there may have there was a conversation with leadership. It didn't go well, it was traumatic. But all those other relationships, like as the person who's being shunned, you are put in a position where you're like, I miss them so much. I want to like maintain these relationships. But if I reach out to them and talk to them, what just happened to me is going to happen to them. And this is so brutal and so painful and has financial repercussions. It has physical health repercussions, mental health repercussions. My children have been in years of therapy as a result of them going through shunnings as children and believing that one day they can go from feeling like an entire church body loves them and Jesus loves them to they've been rejected and God doesn't love them anymore and people don't love them. Like the church literally lies about who Jesus is and how Jesus sees people when it does this. It is a false testimony. It is, it's, it's horrific. We're literally not just failing to do the good that we're supposed to do as the church when we do these things. We are actually actively like inoculating people to the gospel and making it impossible for them to believe that Jesus is good or that there's a free gift of salvation and that it's for you and that you're worthy and loved by God and safe to come to Jesus. Right. And so you're in this position where you're like, for me, like my nervous system needs connection with these people. We're we're we're we're, you know, we are falling off a cliff. They're always like, you know, you don't want to like fall off the cliff. It's like you pushed us off the cliff and we're falling and we want to grab back on for safety. But if we do, you're gonna fall with us. And so it's this horrific grief that you live with for years, where you see people see your stories, but they never comment, they never say anything. It's this very like weird ghost-like haunting relationship that's just grief and there's nothing to do with it. Like, what do you do? And then generally time goes on, and now you're just a bad person, and that's just your label. And there's so much slander and accusation that you live with and you live under, and you start to believe it about yourself. I talked to a survivor yesterday who got out of her cult 16 years ago, and she said that, you know, it took over a decade for her to even begin to think that maybe she didn't deserve what happened to her. And so she just lived as if what she deserved was to have no one like her, no one be in her life, no one check in on her. Because here's the thing the way the church is supposed to operate is that people are allowed to make mistakes, big mistakes, right? And still have belonging and have people pursue them and and love them in the middle of that. It's really interesting. One of the things from my childhood was a lot of mockery of evangelicalism as being too soft and open and accepting. And like they hated the song Jesus Loves the Little Children of the World because they were like, that's not true. We're lying to people and giving them false hope that Jesus loves them because, you know, Jesus only loves the elect and everyone else is vessels of wrath. The song Just As I Am, just like it just goes on and on and on about how you can come to Jesus just as you are. You don't have to fix yourself first. You can come just as you are, and all the details will work themselves out because there's grace, right? That's what the song is about. They hate that song. They hate that song. They removed it from the hymnals, they mocked it mercilessly because they don't believe in just as I am. They believe you need to fix yourself, you need to do all of these things to be approved by God. And that is not the gospel. That is a false gospel.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Yes, it is a false gospel, and I really appreciate you pointing that out. I appreciate you using your story to highlight that and trying to understand what the gospel actually is, right? We you know, you've figured out what it isn't and and and and then moving towards what it is, and and that's all of our right, this this for the Christian, for the one who's trying to follow Jesus, like our our life is constantly, I think, to be pushed and propelled forward by a desire to figure out more depths of the gospel, the grace of God, the the his mercy towards us as sinners. And you know, I I just it's so sad how much these I don't know, these these truths that should be free, right, that should give freedom, they should give liberty, they bring they bring bondage, and they bring enslavement mentally to a view because you know, when when the chains are in your head, right, you can't get away from them. No matter what you do, right? They're just with you. And I'm not suggesting that, you know, I'm not trying to make some comparison between physical slavery and mental. What I'm trying to say is that when what happens inside, it you carry with that carry you with that everywhere you go. So even this this precious person, right, that got shunned and the survivor in for 10 years thought that they were bad. Because but even though that that moment had long gone, right, out of that community, and yet the the chains of that of that experience continue. And it's it's tragic. It's tragic. How how did you get to a place internally where you convinced yourself that those things weren't true? Okay, because obviously there are certain things that you're like, I this is the you know, this is the straw that broke the camel's back, I'm out of here, I can't do this anymore, but that doesn't mean your mental right framework has shifted. It hasn't. It takes a lot, a lot for that to happen. So what walk us through that process for somebody sitting here listening, like that sounds awesome. Freedom sounds great, but I don't think it's possible for me. You don't understand what I went through, I don't even know where to begin. What what how how your story? Where would you bring from your story that could help them process through that moment?

SPEAKER_02 43:00

Yeah, so for me, I f I genuinely feel like I had a relationship with two gods my whole life. I had the God that I spoke to in my bed at night, and I had a real relationship with that God. And what I experienced there was starkly different than what I often heard preached. And the God that would be like if you were to do a character study on the personality and the way they felt, they'd be almost complete opposites of each other. You know, one very controlling and harsh and cold, and there's no room for grace, completely graceless. Like, yeah, this could be actually killing you. You could actually not have the will to live. And God doesn't care. You still got to do what you got to do. There's no conversation, which is like also how the parents were told to treat their children, right? Was like obedience is immediate, complete, without excuse, without delay. You can't say, actually, I'm already doing something else you told me to do. I can't do that yet. And so you end up getting spanked for things that like were impossible. You couldn't. There was no ability to obey, right? Things like that. And so there's this very harsh thing that's happening. But I just, in me, I the question that came up for me was, but is he good? Like, is God good? It wasn't for me whether or not he was real. Not that that's not a valid question. It's just not what I was focused on. Like, what are we doing? I I had dedicated, even before I married a pastor, I wanted to be in missions. I wanted to go to Sudan. I wanted to help empower women in, you know, equally oppressed places. I just didn't see the oppression that was happening to me at the time, right? And so I what I wanted was to share God's love. And I was like, what am I doing? If God is not good, if this, and you know, the whole thing was always, well, you're too, you're too foolish to understand how God is good. You just are too human. And if you could see it from God's perspective, you would see how this abuse and this oppression and this control was actually a good thing. My experience of God from my bedroom was completely invalid. You what you experience with God is not a valid counterpoint to any of the theologies. You have to be able to start from scripture. Well, not everyone has the education to interpret scripture and to be able to like stand on their own two feet against a seminary and and say, I actually think you know God is more gracious and more loving than this, right? So my question was, but is he good? And the way the Bible talked about the goodness of God was that it was like immediately good news. Like when someone would hear it, like the scales would fall from their eyes, right? That it was like objectively good and freeing and liberating. And that wasn't what I was experiencing. So I was like, either we're getting something wrong entirely, or this is all a lie. And if it's all a lie, or if God's not good, then I don't want any part of it. And so I mean this is really scary, but like where I got to was that I was like, I actually think I'm ready to walk away if I can't find the goodness of God. And so what I started doing was going through the Bible. I relearned hermeneutics, which is like the way the interpretive lens that you use to interpret the Bible. I had been given an incredibly westernized, American-focused view of the Bible that essentially culminated in like you got the whole story of the Bible. And then the what I was handed was this idea that now American Christians are the remnant. They are Israel, they are the chosen ones. And, you know, this America is the city on the hill, the New Jerusalem. And we're supposed to actually not convert individuals, but convert other nations to be Christian nations, this like return to Christendom stuff. That's the lens that I was handed to interpret the Bible through. And so I just I needed to change the lens. And when I did, what I found was actually like shockingly centering to the oppressed and the marginalized, and calling, you know, uh confronting those in power and those who are oppressing others and incredibly gracious and also fluid, like the way that it operates and moves in one generation of, you know, the Israelites in the wilderness, the laws in one generation, we see them change in some ways between two generations in the Old Testament law. And that's like where they actually wrote down exactly what you were supposed to do. And even there we see it change. And then, you know, the way like the New Testament is like another, like a new thing, same thing, but new thing. And there should be the flexibility for us to do that. And also, I was raised in a culture that deeply loved, respected, and studied the Reformation, which is itself a deconstruction movement and was itself a, okay, I think we need to bring this into today. We need to bring this into the needs of our community today. One of the stories that was always talked about was this idea that, like before the Reformation, when infants would die, parents would experience horrible religious trauma, believing that because their child was unbaptized, they were in hell. And that was something that the, you know, various reformers were like, that's not okay. It's not okay to have people believe that about God because it's not true. We need to correct that. So to your point of it just kind of like coming with you, one of the things that we talk about in our doula work a lot is that your cult leader doesn't have to be with you. And by cult leader, I just mean someone who weaponized the Bible against you. Okay, someone who was not a good faith actor. Pastors are always gonna get something wrong. That's not my issue. I don't care about that. That's that's just gonna happen. And as long as they're open to pushback, that's why we should be open to challenge and pushback. That's great. That's amazing. That's part of growing and being human. But when someone is intentionally using the Bible to silence or control or dictate, that's a problem. And so that's what I mean by a cult leader. And so they don't have to be with you. But if you go to your Bible and you have been indoctrinated with a false gospel and like a co-opted hermeneutic or way of interpreting the Bible, you don't need the cult leader with you preaching at you. He lives inside your head. And every time you read those words, you remember the sermons, you remember the framework, and it's coming with you. And so it doesn't matter if you've been out of your cult for 10 years, if you go back to that Bible, you're still reading the indoctrination. You're not actually getting access to the gospel, to the truth, to the goodness and grace of Jesus. It's still actually not accessible to you. And so one of the things that I tell people is like, you can stop. I mean, those of us who are raised in authoritarian spaces, generally we're supposed to have daily devotions every day, right? And if you don't, it's like that's a sin thing in your life. If you start to struggle, it's probably because you're not doing enough devotions, right? Like there's just a lot of emphasis on daily devotion. That's kind of how you measure if you're actually a Christian, is if you actually read your Bible every day. And one of the things that I say that I think makes a lot of Christians scared and frustrated with me is like, please stop reading your Bible. Please give yourself space. Do not go back to that text until you have a tour guide who can help you navigate it with fresh eyes and who knows the indoctrination that you were put under and can, with education and grace, cut those chains as they like work through those different passages or ideas in the Bible. Because it's, you know, another word picture that I like to use is there's this well, right? Whether it's the church or the Bible or Christians that you can go to to receive the goodness and grace of God. Like when I go to the Bible, I am communing with God. When I go to other Christians, I'm communing with God. Well, that well can get poisoned. And it can be that people are faithfully going to that well. They're going to church every Sunday. They're reading their Bible every day. They are doing what they're supposed to do. But the well has been poisoned. And so their faithfulness is actually like making them sick because they're drinking poison. And so we need to stop drinking poison and then medically do what is necessary to remove those toxins from the body before we start putting pressure on people to do anything. Like before we have conversations about, well, what do you actually think about this? And are you going to become a member at a different church? And can you sign on the, you know, the dotted line for this statement of faith? That's like actually insane to put that on someone who has been religiously traumatized and who isn't even actually met Jesus. And so, you know, there's just, I think, a lot of anxiety in the church today. People need to be members of a church right now. I'm going to church every Sunday, right now, right now. And there's no space and there's no time, and it's just anxiety on like a corporate level. And the cost is individual souls and a lot of them. And so a lot of, you know, what I would encourage people to do is to not be afraid to listen to their body and take as many steps backs as they need to to stop having those like I'm drinking poison reactions happening in their body because their body's telling them the truth. If you're vomiting every time you open your Bible, if you're like shaking and dissociating every time you walk into a church building, stop doing those things until we figure out why, you know? And to the people who are so anxious about people deconverting, the thing that I more than anything else want them to understand is that in my experience doing this work for like six years now, when people have support and continued belonging while they're deconstructing, they don't deconvert. People deconvert because the truth, the church proves to them that Jesus isn't real. Like that is like what they're experiencing. This is all BS. The claims that Jesus is love. I mean, the church is the physical representation of Christ on earth, right? It is to the watching world what they can see and believe about Jesus. And if we are lying about who he is, then how can we blame people who have not seen, who have not heard?

SPEAKER_00 55:06

You know, I'm I I appreciate everything that that you just said because I remember when we talked to uh cult expert, Stephen Hassan, you know, about his experience being in a cult. And you know, it wasn't until he was hospitalized and removed from kind of the Moonies that he eventually kind of was able to think for himself. And so I I think that that that is so spot on. But you know, as we as we kind of wind down, one of the things I imagine keep women from wanting to speak out, to be bold, is because there, you know, there may just be a lack of confidence that what they do is going to have any impact whatsoever on them, their families, or whatever. So I I'd love for for you just to you know spend a few minutes. Just give us some success stories, either that you know of personally from Deconstruction Doulas or you know, just acquaintances and and other folks that have gone through similar walks. I'm I think that'd be really helpful for our audience.

SPEAKER_02 56:03

Yeah. I have two answers to that that I think are equally important. One is that on the other side of deconstruction, what I see across the board, regardless of what labels someone adopts. And really, I think from most of what I observe, the difference in label, like whether someone is like, okay, I'm I, you know, I've changed some of my theology, but I'm still a Christian, or if they deconvert or somewhere in the middle there, is actually essentially how much hope they have based on what they see from the church. It's basically like how much can they continue to believe in the goodness of God despite the way the church is behaving. But regardless of you know where they land, what they did was they agreed with Jesus and followed Jesus out of the church. Like that's like I think that's really important to say is that these individuals are faced with a situation where some harm happened and they actually agreed with Jesus and left. And so again, I think I think God sees the heart, and I personally believe that there's grace and that if people are confused because the church is doing a terrible job at its literal one job, um I I think I think God sees the heart. So so that's thing number one. But thing number two is like regardless of where people land, what they experience is their humanity, right? They can actually hear their own thoughts, their own feelings. They actually have a self to interact with, they have a self to interact with the spiritual and the divine with, and healthier relationships. You know, you might not, in our context, a lot of times you don't have local community because the local church isn't doing its job. But what you find is people who love you even when you make mistakes, and even when you're scared, and who have a lot, a lot of resilience to handle the complexities and the difficulties of life. And you have there's freedom and joy. But I also think it's really important for under for people to understand that until the church gets its act together, the experience of someone who's deconstructing will always be difficult. And for someone who's on the other side of that will always be difficult because you know, all of us were excited and hopeful about the story that love wins and that in the end good wins, right? And there's a depression that comes from that. And until the church gives people a reason to hope that that story is true, it's always gonna be painful. And it's always like, you know, for me who I do believe, but every day I'm like, am I crazy? Because it seems like actually the church is about this other thing that isn't hopeful, isn't giving me hope at all. And so I really believe that we are, again, burdening individuals for faults of systems. And like, there's just there is, there is a hopelessness and a depression that you're always fighting because there's this system that is so powerful and has the potential to be so good and is so disappointing and harmful and burdening you constantly, constantly accusing you. You're not even in the room and they're talking about how bad you are. You know, you're not even in the room and they're writing articles and accusing you of all kinds of things. And that actually is one of the names of Satan, is the accuser to be constantly accusing someone and calling them bad, to be lording the law over them is actually what Satan does. That's that is spiritual oppression. That is actually attacks of the enemy. And so it's, I don't want it to be like, oh yeah, and then you ride off into the sunset and everything's amazing because it's it's not like that. And I think that's also what the Desiring God and the Gospel Coalition articles claim is like, oh yeah, they're just out there living their lives and like forgetting God and just, you know, doing whatever they want. No, like they're they're actually wrestling every day with this, with this reality. And it is on us, the church, those who do have hope and do believe, to accurately be the body of Christ and represent who he is so that they can see and hear and have hope.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:03

I mean, I think that's really well said. And I was thinking, you know, the church, when it goes well, when it's done right, there's nothing like it for healing, for restoring, for helping people, for I've seen it, I've been a part of it, both on the receiving end and the giving, and it's very there's nothing like it. Also, when it's done badly, there's nothing like it in terms of its damage that it does to people. And it is one of those things, it's really hard to be neutral in it if it's done well, it's done, you know, it makes a big difference either way. Done well or not, and because it's just a very powerful force and a very powerful thing, that community of the church. Thank you, Margaret, for coming on and spending time with us. How can people connect to you and your organization?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:55

Yeah, we're deconstructiondoulas.com or on social media. Our handles are deconstruction doolas. And yeah, you can interact with all of our stuff there.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:07

That's great. Well, again, Margaret, thank you so much for being one here, spending some time with us. It's been a really sobering but important conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:15

I really appreciate you guys having me on here.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:18

Absolutely. And to our viewers and um and listeners, guys, thanks for joining us. Make sure you're liking, subscribing. Again, if you listen this long, you already have. So share with this. Share share this with someone uh who needs it. And until next time, guys, keep your conversations not right or left, but huh?