In 2001 film lovers first watched as a man passed a knight and his two squires while greeting them cordially. As he walked ever into the distance it became apparent that he was stark naked and yet walked head up and with purpose. When asked what he was doing, he replied, “Trudging. You know, to trudge; the slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who has nothing left in his life except the impulse to simply soldier on.” This interaction was my introduction to Paul Bettany playing the iconic role of Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale—I was 12 and it was hilarious…because boys and nudity. It’s 23 years later and that scene still cracks me up, but it also inspires me to think about the very next lines in which he monologues about suffering a kind of involuntary vow of poverty as a result of his vice of gambling.
It reminds me of what it was like to walk away from the church and eventually evangelicalism. By the time Donald Trump came to office and the great exodus of Christians who were deeply uncomfortable with the Cyrus position took place, I had already been an Exvangelical for 2 or 3 years. In fact, I had stopped going to church altogether. Since around the end of 2014 I had a complicated relationship with organised Christianity. It’s important to note that terms like deconstruction and Exvangelical were unknown to me at the time—I wasn’t hopping on a band wagon with all of my theological baggage headed to any particular place. I was trudging.
Like Bettany’s character I had an addiction to throwing in my lot with the wrong crowd and ending up out on my tod with nothing but my name. I was two years into living in a new country after running away from a significant financial and moral failure and while I didn’t doubt God’s goodness or His faithfulness—I doubted my place in His great work. These years were an ecclesiastical crap shoot of wondering where we were going to church this month, what was going to come out of the speakers mouth that was going to offend our sensibilities and so on and so forth. I began journaling my experiences and thoughts during that time and it helped me to process what all was going through my mind.
What I found from my own experience and from speaking to others, is that there is no formula for deconstructing your deepest held beliefs. We have seen all kinds of people deconstruct, from those we didn’t think were saved in the first place to seasoned, published Christian authorities. For my part, I was raised in the evangelical industrial complex. My family were in ministry for the majority of that time in senior positions of authority; Pastor, Youth Pastor, Music Pastor, Music Director, Camp Director. As much responsibility as I could handle was encouraged from a young age—I was raised to lead the next generation of believers. I was encouraged to go to Bible College and earn a degree and I would have too, but the money ran out and with it all motivational will to finish what had been started. I got married in all of that and the spiritual capital that had sustained my journey was starting to run low. I was in a new place where the leaders were spoiled for choice and didn’t think I was leadership material. But I wasn’t just running low on spiritual capital, I was running low on capital capital. I ran out of money to finish my bachelors with a science and a maths class outstanding. I was working as a dishwasher and busboy in an organic café. My wife was babysitting and cleaning houses—oh we were grafting, but $600 student accommodation and episodes of debilitating depression managed by my wife, Dunkin Donuts, a Gym membership and Geese (don’t ask) resulted in being asked to leave student accommodation to make room for future students. As it happened $600 was middle of the road but just under that and guests were walking into your bedroom as they entered your house. $600 rented you the top floor of the oldest house still standing in Pennsylvania with wave like floors and over $600 we didn’t even dream.
We finally moved out a week past our original eviction notice into the loft of a generous family in our church who answered our desperate call for some place to rent. It was there, in what we now affectionately call The Hansen Mansion that we decided to sell everything and move to my wife’s homeland of Northern Ireland.
During all of this I hadn’t thought that there was anything amiss with my faith. Afterall I came from a solid foundation! We were fortunate enough to know some beautiful people in that time who challenged our faith and marriage and that helped us limp along inside the system for a good while even after we moved to Armagh. I was on fire for discipleship at the time and thought and preached that all that was wrong with the body was that it wasn’t making disciples—boy was I wrong. Not about discipleship or it’s need to take place, but that it was all that was wrong. We moved to Northern Ireland thinking we would slide right into the Christian culture here and attend my wife’s original place of worship—which we did for about a month before our sensibilities began to be stirred. It was apparent at the time that the majority of adults were only interested in saving face and (as aforementioned) there was not and continues to be a lack of a theological will to make disciples.
We entered a time of searching for a year and a half for a place we could call a church home. We found one in a new plant right in the heart of our city. They were exciting times when the Spirit was speaking and moving and saving and disciples were being made in the mostly formless mould that all new plants take. But, as we started to take a more rigid form, the plant started to stagnate. We had started to answer questions our nondenominational tradition had historically asked and, in retrospect, answering those questions without asking if they were good questions or not led us to protect what we had built against people who believed in Jesus different than we did. I was among those who answered these questions matter of factly and hurt my brothers and sisters by my lack of love. When eventually I came to understand what was happening I excused myself from what surely would have resulted in me climbing the leadership ladder in that church and becoming even more complicit in what was happening. It was a crushing blow. I had never failed so spectacularly in my Christian life as having to leave that plant. For me, deconstruction began as a deep repentance for all I thought I knew about God and His body. If I was angry and disappointed it was with myself.
I took my failure very personally but also corporately. This failure was emblematic, to me, of the fruit of the theology that I believed which, to my knowledge, was only what was taught to me by the church and by my biblical education. There was something to be learned, but what I didn’t know. This caused me to dig around the fruitless theological fig tree in the garden of my mind. I brutally cut it back, but the stump remained. I put manure all around it and the next couple of years there was only limb growth but eventually my tree came back into flower and produced figs, but not before I walked out as naked as I had come in.
The Paul Bettany experience of having taken some involuntary vow of poverty as a result of our personal vices is an intriguing idea. When we are honest about the metaphysical causes that result in the physical effects we are now experiencing then we have no choice but to deconstruct what we are experiencing back to what we believe. Deconstruction is not the end. If we are in no better place today then we were in the place we loath to think about then deconstruction hasn’t done us any good. If we have only changed the people we speak out vitriol against then we are no better than the people we hate. If deconstruction has not opened our hearts to welcome everyone into fellowship with Jesus then we need to further deconstruct from where we have landed.
I have watched myself and others. If we in our new theology still unify in enmity then we are still one with the Evangelicals and the Christian Nationalists with which we would rather not be associated. If we in our new theology alienate those who are not like us then we have not left fundamentalist Christianity. We cannot fight darkness with further darkness but if we would fight the darkness we must be in the light of unity in love, faith and hope in Christ. I say this as your very own Paul Bettany standing before you naked in Christ. I will probably put clothes on again and have to take them off again because I put too much value in them and treated someone unbecoming of one who has received the mercy of Christ.
Trudging keeps me vulnerable and honest. It reminds me that we are not bodies with souls but souls with bodies. It reminds me not to treat anyone according to the flesh and when I do, it reminds me of the natural consequences.
“If we in our new theology still unify in enmity then we are still one with the [groups with] which we would rather not be associated. If we in our new theology alienate those who are not like us then we have not left fundamentalist Christianity. We cannot fight darkness with further darkness but if we would fight the darkness we must be in the light of unity in love, faith and hope in Christ.”
Hmm. I can see there is truth in your statement but I also think your statement falls a bit short because it doesn’t seem to recognise the commandments about expelling certain people from the congregation. Viz: 1 Cor 5:11-13 and Matthew 18:17.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.
This is a really great post, and the whole reason I clicked on it first was the Bettany image and the title. 😂 I first saw that movie in my 20's and as a life-long female and yet I, too, found it hilarious.
You wouldn't consider taking The Walk Course would you? I wonder if the Friday afternoon (Eastern time) cohort might be feasible for you time-zone wise.