Deconstruction often means losing loved ones and becoming estranged from parents.
We’re just finishing up our deconstruction series on the podcast, talking to four different people about different aspects of deconstruction. In several of our stories, a common theme was losing one’s parents–I talked about it with Sarah McCammon about the Exvangelicals, and Ryan George and Cait West both have fraught relationships with their parents–even their moms who stuck by their dads.
We went into detail about this estrangement with Sarah McCammon, who launched our deconstruction series. Sadly, many people going through deconstruction find themselves in a difficult situation where they lose their relationship with their parents.
I wanted to dive a bit more deeply into this topic, because it has become a common theme for many of my followers that once their beliefs begin to shift, tension can enter the relationship with their parents and extended family. Often, this means that the relationship doesn’t survive. This can leave both parents and their adult children confused and sad about what has happened between them.
So why do those who deconstruct often lose their parents? And can anything be done about it?
Deconstruction can feel like a threat to our children’s souls
I truly believe that, in many cases, estrangement between a parent and their exvangelical child can be, strangely enough, driven by a sense of love.
If we believe that a person’s salvation is connected through specific beliefs and lifestyles that we’ve tried to impart to our children, we will only feel like our family is safe within that strict system.
So if we see our children diverge from what feels safe to us, it’s only natural that we may fear for their salvation and their souls. If they’re unable to pull our kids back into that world, many parents may then choose to distance themselves out of fear of enabling sin, somehow, or even out of a sense of self-preservation to protect their own salvation.
Deconstruction Can Also feel Like A Threat To Identity
Identity tends to be a huge issue in evangelicalism. So many of us grew up being told that our identity must be found in Christ – which is good! But the culture then took that idea and stretched it by telling many of us that when our identity is in Christ, our lives must also look a very specific way.
For many people, that looked like embracing purity culture, complementarianism and the authoritarian structure that placed church leaders and parents (particularly fathers) at the top of the power structure, while kids and women were taught that it was their Godly duty to submit and respect their God-given authority figures.
When adult children begin to deconstruct these ideas, it’s often seen as a threat to the overarching identity of what it means to be a Christian in that world. It can also be a threat to the identity of the family unit.
Imagine that you are a patriarchal father who is raising his daughter to be a submissive person in the stay-at-home daughter movement. But then your daughter begins to question the beliefs that she was raised with, and ultimately rejects her father’s patriarchal worldview.
That daughter is well within her rights to figure out her own way in the world and pursue the beliefs that are compelling to her. However, she isn’t just finding a new belief system; she has also effectively crushed her father’s identity of himself as the spiritual leader of the home and changed her family’s identity as one solid spiritual unit.
That is going to feel threatening and lead to a lot of changes in those familial relationships–as we saw with Cait West, and her beautiful memoir Rift.
Parents Can Often Struggle To Understand Where Their Kids Are Coming From
This brings us to the gap between where adult children may find themselves in their deconstruction journey and the parents who are struggling to understand their kids.
Some parents may meet their deconstructing child with compassionate curiosity. They may not be able to understand why their child’s beliefs have changed or even what they believe. But they are taking the time to continue to invest in their kids because, even if they struggle to understand, they recognize that these new beliefs are important to their children.
Other parents may get lost in their hurt over their threatened identity, and they choose instead to distance themselves from their child. Or, in some cases, to end the relationship entirely.
In our interview, Sarah mentioned one thing that encourages her is when she hears from parents who want nothing more than to understand what their grown children are going through:
“It’s really encouraging to me when I hear from parents, who are at least willing to acknowledge I think my kids went through something I didn’t realize they were going through… I hope that those conversations will continue. I hope people will read this book [The Exvangelicals] with an open heart and understand that I think most people want their parents to love them. I mean it’s such a basic human need. And it’s so difficult when you feel like they don’t love you for who you are and like there are conditions on that.”
And that brings me to the next point…
Kids of all ages just want to know that their parents love and accept them
As Sarah said, the need for human love and affection is universal. There’s no magical age we can grow to where we do not need to know that our parents do love us. But unfortunately, for too many families, when an adult child begins to shift in their beliefs and worldviews, it becomes too much for their parents to handle and those relationships can crumble.
I hear so many stories of younger people who desperately wanted to keep a relationship with their parents, but they found that it was really difficult because their parents were the ones who were rejecting them.
So what is the answer to this issue? I think it has to start with love and empathy with a willingness to take the time to truly understand where people are coming from.
There is a huge misconception that ex-vangelicals are a group of people who are steeped in anger and want to burn everything to the ground. And when we start out believing that about our own children, it’s easy to let ourselves fear them and fear for them, and eventually that fear is going to feed the distance between parent and child.
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It is important to know that the people who are deconstructing and who are coming out of the evangelical movement are not this angry army, who wants to burn everything down. They’re hurting, and they just want health. And they want wholeness, and they want that acknowledged.
And I think that’s a fair thing to ask even if you don’t land on the same place religiously.
What do you think? Have you lost a family member because your beliefs have changed? Or has someone in your family walked away? Let’s talk in the comments!
The Deconstruction Series
- 8 Things to Know about Deconstruction and Ex-Vangelicals
- PODCAST: The Ex-vangelicals feat. Sarah McCammon
- PODCAST: Rift feat. Cait West--and how courtship got so out of hand
- PODCAST: Hurt and Healed by the Church feat. Ryan George
- PODCAST: Spot the Propaganda and Logical Fallacies feat. Scott Coley
- When Deconstruction Means Losing Family
Some parents are pressured to severe ties with their deconstructing children by their pastor or by other representatives of their church. I have seen that happen.
The parents are told they must choose between their child and God, or to take a firm standpoint for “what is right”.
I know of parents whose youngster did not want to come to church any longer, and the pastor told: “Well’ then he should not live in your home any longer either. Tell him to move out.” And the youngster really was told to move out!
I wish this was just a rumor but it isn’t.
I’ve not lost family specifically due to deconstructing (friendships, yes, but not family), but I have essentially lost relationships with family once I started my journey of becoming healthier. I put up boundaries for my mental, emotional, and physical health. That did not go over well.
Similarly I think many people in their deconstruction journeys also learn to set healthy boundaries, and the family members that have much less healthy patterns just cannot handle that. It’s like their loved one is moving into unknown territory and that scares the wits out of them. They also cannot see how boundaries can be done in/with love, and they can’t see that setting boundaries can also be a way to show honor to your parents, wanting them to become more Christ-like with an invitation to join them in that healthier space.
It was a huge hurdle for me to realize that I didn’t have to exclusively obey my parents in order to “honor” them. I could actually honor them by living a more Christ-like life.
Losing family was really hard. I didn’t share much of my deconstruction journey with my folks. Because when I gently/clearly/ firmly set doable boundaries, the unhealthy patterns in Parent One became more overt. “No” was a word I wasn’t allowed to have for myself–not peacefully, anyway. Parent Two enabled the unhealthy behavior by trying to protect Parent One from the pain of facing issues that Parent One had largely contributed to.
I don’t feel like Parent One ever really accepted me, even as a kid–I didn’t make them feel secure enough.
I feel really sad about that. I wish so badly that we could be close. But for now, the safest thing for me is to maintain space. Because then we’re not actively hurting each other. But my word, holidays without my family feel very empty.
With deconstruction, I wouldn’t call myself an exvangelical. But at this point, I wouldn’t call myself much of anything except a Christian and “saved.” Labels make me uncomfortable. They’re useful for differentiating theologies and ideologies. But it gets messy when labels get applied to people.
Right now, we attend a Charismatic church where our family is blessed. I come from a very Baptist background, so I think at first they didn’t know quite what to do with me. And I don’t always know what to do with things like speaking in tongues and deliverance ministry. But we all love Jesus, we love each other, we’re building community, and I’m grateful.
It has been a challenge over here for sure. How do I describe the relationship I have with my mom? It’s shallow. We can have small talk, but that’s about it. But there’s the added issue of the Dobson-style discipline I was subjected to growing up, and resulting trauma, in addition to spiritual abuse and religious trauma. So…. yeah. And I can’t talk to my mom about any of this. I don’t expect to ever have my mom apologize for her part. She did it “God’s way,” so there’s nothing for her to apologize for because she did nothing wrong. So we keep our relationship on a surface level.
You described my relationship with my parents, especially my dad. He used Gothard teachings to control my sister, brother, and me; and do things “God’s way”. Now things with him and my mom are mostly surface. My husband and I have chosen to limit our time spent with them. It is painful, but I believe that is best for my family to do what we are doing.
Unfortunately my dad gave us some “advice” that ended up hurting us financially. He also has never apologized for being spiritually and emotionally abusive in my late teens and early twenties. He still loves trying to control our decisions.
I’ve been on a journey to deconstruct what I’ve been taught my whole life and find the heart of God for me and for all women. I’ve chosen not to speak to my parents at all about it because of fear.
My father is authoritarian, he’s a pastor, he knows what he knows and is set on that. My mother believes and follows strictly all that he believes. I was raised as the only daughter to do the same. Even when I married, I followed them. To my detriment and the detriment of my family.
Further, my dad is held as an authority and with great respect in the circle of churches. He is known and respected worldwide.
To step away from any part of his beliefs is tantamount to rejecting faith entirely. To try to have any conversation about harm I’ve endured from the teachings and their application would be to cast dispersion on his name and testimony, and be seen as bringing accusation “against a man of God.”
So I’m left silenced still in many ways because if I were to speak publicly on my own social media or write about my story or share outside my safe, small circle, there would 100% be backlash.
I remain caught between honoring my parents, keeping no account of wrongs and trying to heal the deep, deep hurts of my soul. Trying to make sense of the hurts alongside the wonderful parts of my relationship with them.
The hard part is that my personal relationship with God is tenuous now. It was so long tied into my father’s beliefs and I haven’t fully untwisted that all in my heart and mind. I haven’t untwisted who God is and how He views me from who my dad is and how he reacts and thinks.
Oh, Rebekah, I’m so sorry. I just want to say that your hurt is also allowed to be validated and honored. You don’t need to keep it under wraps. If the only way you can have a relationship with people is to hide how they hurt you and hide what you’re thinking, then that isn’t a real relationship, and that’s so sad.
“Trying to make sense of the hurts alongside the wonderful parts of my relationship with them.”
My story is different from yours, but this sentence resonates so deeply with me.
Rebecca – your comments remind me of Jinger Dugger’s book “Becoming Free Indeed” which I listened to on Audible. If you don’t know her story, maybe have a look into it because she does a good job of explaining the process she went through and what she had to learn about “truth” vs what she had been taught. You say “untwisted” and it reminded me of her description of the process as “untangling” which was useful word to me too.
Rebekah, your comment is so heartbreaking. It’s clear, reading it, how much this situation is hurting you and how much you are wrestling with the complexities involved. Your heart is so sensitive to wanting to do what is right.
I just wanted to say that it’s entirely possible that you are closer to God than you have ever been at the moment – even if it doesn’t feel that way. Questioning the way things are is never frowned on in scripture. It’s considered wise. (Like the Bereans).
I also want to point out one more thing in the love passage in Corinthians that you’ve alluded to. You’ve said that you are trying not to keep a record of wrongs. But the passage also says that love rejoices in the truth. There is a great tension between those two thoughts. You are in a situation where you have not been able to tell the truth – so there is no way to right the wrongs. And your soul hurts. You are trying to do one without being able to do the other.
There is so much to say here – we are commanded not to take vengeance, but that is not the same thing as developing amnesia to forgive – without a discussion about why forgiveness is required, where the situation warrants it.
This is far too brief. But please don’t confuse yourself with someone falling away, when you are really one of Jesus’ hurting sheep and he has the heart of a committed, deeply concerned, loving shepherd towards you. ♥️
I have not lost family due to deconstruction, per se, but because I began to get healthier and set boundaries, insisting on healthier interactions with others who were toxic. That has cost relationships with most of my children as I had to get myself away from the relationship with their dad, and that has hurt greatly. And in the months since, I have deconstructed almost everything I have believed, because it only brought me destruction. If my children ever speak to me again, I’m not sure how all this is going to go over! 😀
I’m so sorry, Lisa.
Hugs if you want ’em.
Oh, Lisa, that must be so hard! I’m so sorry.