From Deconstruction to Re-creating
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I don’t really like the word deconstruction or deconstructing faith. I have no problem with critiquing white supremacy and heteropatriarchy in Christianity, I rather like it. But I do have a problem with the way that white folks have taken a concept that was supposed to liberate us from white heteropatriarchy, and… wait for it… firmly anchored it into white heteropatriarchy. The hubris of whiteness is that it believes that it can be both the problem and the solution.
If it wasn’t so harmful, it would be amusing to repeatedly see white folks “discover” that racism and patriarchy are part of Christianity and then 4 seconds later position themselves as experts on the topic.
The problem with the vast majority of these voices is that
They are not really about liberation, they are about orbiting whiteness in a slightly different way
They are not interested in ending white supremacy, they are interested in being perceived as one of the good whites
They do not have the humility to realize that Black and Indigenous folks have been bringing critique to the white church for a looooooong time.
They have not let their discipleship (to use a churchy word) be re-formed by BIWOC, Queer folks of Color, Disabled POC, poor folks, and folks that live at the intersection of mullitple marginalized identities.
And no matter what, they can not imagine a world where white voices are not the center.
In the end they have created a second white supremacist patriarchal world called deconstructing. One that is still built on white heteropatriarchal norms, gatekeeping views of theology and knowledge, and tokenized BIWOC who add validity to the “woke” white guy or “trying hard” white woman.
The word deconstruction has never felt like it truly captured the journey for Women and folks of color.
That’s why I have been drawn to the word liberation, because it reminds me that the work is about freedom, healing, and imagining new ways forward. White deconstruction gets stuck in what we are NOT, instead of what we are becoming. That’s why I think terms like ex-vangelical and deconstruction can be limiting, the focus remains on the problem. *
Our journey is not the same as the journey that white people need to take. For many of us it is about coming back to traditional, cultural, and ancestral practices that we were taught to abandon because they weren’t Christian. For us, it is learning histories we’ve forgotten or never had the chance to hear. For us, it is learning to share our stories outside of the white gaze, outside of the framework of testimony. There is a sacred way we hold each others stories and there is healing in them. For us, is it about reclaiming connection to our ancestors. For us, it is about granting ourselves real freedom, and not settling for a slightly tweaked version of where we came from.
Last night, during our first gathering for the Decolonize with Badass Indigenous Grandmas cohort, Lenore Three Stars said something that grabbed my imagination. Lenore is Oglala Lakota, and she was speaking on theology of the land and decolonizing her faith. “So my experience has always been with Creator incarnated as a brown tribal relative into a physical world. Decolonizing my theology didn't mean that I was replacing or destroying the gospel, but bringing forward the truth about Creator Jesus that had been distorted in a Euro western context. If deconstruction connotes destruction, that wasn't what I was doing. I was recreating so that I could love Jesus incarnated in my own culture.”
The word recreating grabbed me. Of course we want to shed the white supremacist heteropatriarchal container of Western Christianity. But our ultimate goal is to re-create- imagine, dream, and co-create a new way forward. To build the world that we actually want to live in. One of my core values in creating Liberated Together cohorts is to stir the imagination of WoC that there is another way forward. It is not just about healing from the trauma we have experienced, but about co-creating the spaces and places that we actually want to be.
At the heart of a liberative approach to deconstruction is moving towards recreating, birthing, liberating, reclaiming, and co-creating a relationship with Creator. When whiteness sets the course from liberation, it can not free itself from whiteness, nor does it want to. In the same way that I, as a non-disabled person, can not lead the way to liberation from ableism. It’s my job to listen to disabled folks, particularly disabled WOC and disabled queer folks. I can’t lead to the way to creating a world free from ableism, when I’m barely grasping how ableism shapes me and the world. But I can listen, and follow, and hear the dreams of disability justice leaders and let their dreams shape my dreams.
How could it change the way we experience this tumultuous season, if we shift our view from what we are tearing down, to what we are shedding so that we can really live and breath. Recreate, co-create, and collectively heal and liberate. We shed so that we can make room for our individual and collective liberative dreams to weave a new way forward.
I know that many of us are still healing and recovering from profound trauma and violence from communities we called home. I am not trying to rush our process. But I want to make sure that the work we are doing will lead to healing, not retraumatization. Circling whiteness will not free or heal us. Trying to save whiteness won’t free us either. Don’t get stuck or distracted by white centered pathways to freedom. Have the courage to believe that we can co-create new ways forward.
* I support folks using whatever terms are serving them in the process. I’m not policing the use of the terms, but reflecting on what I see as some of their limitations.