Some Thoughts On “Deconstruction” And “Progressive”
This blog began life as part of a chapter of a book I was in the process of writing, but a friend who was one of my proofreaders said (to my surprise) that he’d not come across those words. Since I was slightly in two minds about whether to include it anyway, common sense seemed to be to remove it (the alternative being to further expand upon it, which would be both space-consuming and potentially distracting, since it was only ever intended as an aside in the first place).
Let me begin by saying that I’m not a fan of the words, “deconstruction” and “progressive,” because they carry a lot of baggage. People can mean very different things when they use them—and that’s true whether they’re “for” or “against”—so we must take care in using them without qualification. The extent to which they are healthy or problematic will very much be driven by that classic phrase, “It all depends on what we mean by . . .” Hence, it’s advisable to be sure that we’re talking about the same thing ahead of any conversation.
Assuming that you, the reader, have some experience of those words, you’ll know that they’re in a category of ideas and subjects that divide the evangelical room. Let’s start with those for whom they are wholly negative.
The epistemology of Modernity (“the way people think”) relies on sureness and certainty; evangelicalism has grown up in this way of thinking. Hence, to question certain ideas that people have become accustomed to (even if they have quite recent origins in twentieth-century evangelicalism) can feel uncomfortable—something to resist. The notion of “deconstructing” certain taken-for-granted beliefs and practices and thinking “progressively” about them is easily written off with something along the lines of buying into the “spirit of the age”—denying “biblical truth”—and hence, something that good evangelicals should fight against. Evangelical concerns are all the more heightened today, when evangelicalism in the West is shrinking in numbers and influence, and feeling the pressure. It’s easy against that backdrop to look outside of ourselves to identify an enemy and a cause.
To the extent we encounter Christians who feel that way, we need to be sensitive to the fact they may well be worried that removing even a couple of bricks from the foundations of their previously taken-for-granted thinking on things might bring down the whole building. It’s these kinds of worries that lead to a fear of “the slippery slope” and cause some to feel the need to “draw lines in the sand” and enforce them with ever-increasing stridency. “If we give way on this one,” (whatever “this one” is) “then what will be coming down the ‘pike next?” is an understandable concern. Fear of undermining the foundations is understandable—especially if we have a nagging fear that some of those foundations might be shown to be built on sand rather than the rock we had assumed. But if the reality is indeed sand, then we really can’t ignore that and just keep calling sand rock. However sincere we are, let’s be sure we’re choosing the right hills to die on for the sake of evangelical heritage.
Many Christians have a genuine concern that not everything within classic conservative evangelicalism—whether we’re defining that theologically, culturally, or both—is “making sense” to them in the way that it used to. Partly this reflects the fact that we are experiencing an overlap of worldviews—the worldview of Modernity that has shaped and formed the thinking of the Western world in the past few hundred years and the emerging worldview of Postmodernity that has been increasingly in the ascendency since the latter part of the twentieth century. A key point to be grasped, however, is that both of those worldviews have strengths and weaknesses; neither is inherently “Christian”—both should be exposed to critique with eyes wide open. Not least because, when it comes to reading and interpreting the Bible, neither of these contemporary worldviews remotely corresponds to the Ancient world worldview of the era within which the Bible came about. It’s easy, especially for conservatives who have grown up immersed in Modernity, to think that their worldview is simply the timeless biblical worldview. Easy, but wrong. The same must be said of the Postmodern worldview, of course.
Deconstruction can be a healthy thing, and for many, it’s become a necessary thing, but to have a positive outcome, it should always go hand-in-glove with reconstruction. The purpose and goal should be to rebuild something better with the best of the original materials, plus those that are flawed or faulty being replaced with more suitable new parts (think of a mechanic rebuilding a motor engine that has stopped firing on all cylinders). Deconstruction should not be synonymous with destruction. Otherwise, it is, indeed, unhealthy.
To think “progressively” should also have positive goals in mind. It should not by definition involve abandoning any of the classic beliefs of the early creeds that have served to define authentic Christian faith for two millennia. There is no reason why those creeds should present any obstacle to asking appropriate questions about a properly Christian response to the questions of our age; in particular, the extent to which some traditional readings of the Bible may have been culturally conditioned more than divinely originated. The text may be inspired, but that doesn’t mean all of the church’s interpretive readings have been (church history itself already tells us that on all manner of subjects—slavery being a classic example and so, too, the role and place of women in the church). By no means does all of today’s Christian thinking reflect an unbroken line of continuity from the first century to now, as has often been assumed (or at least, let’s hope not). We have always been rethinking things to some extent, especially in culturally conditioned aspects of beliefs and practices, and it is surely healthy that it should continue. It’s the spirit of the Reformation.
The quest for better answers through deconstruction often starts with a valid concern over one main question of something that “isn’t making sense” anymore (such as perhaps, penal substitution, being against women in leadership, or eternal conscious torment in hell). It’s rarely just something incidental, such as whether Adam had a belly button. Rather, it’s likely to be something that has been presumed to be “what the Bible clearly teaches” coming under pressure because it’s incongruous with people’s present-day thinking and their lived experience. It is not unreasonable to ask whether a belief or practice can be correct when it no longer feels credible—to ask whether we really have been reading the Bible well on that subject. It’s not questioning the authority of Scripture itself to question the authority of a particular way that Scripture has been interpreted. It’s not unreasonable to question the extent to which cultural assumptions may have been unwittingly repackaged as biblical teachings.
I am not talking about the classic beliefs outlined in the early creeds—but I am saying that only they should be granted non-negotiable, not-open-for-discussion, status. I say that because those beliefs define what it means to be an orthodox Christian, and hence they set the boundaries within which properly Christian debate is taking place (debate can still happen, of course, but once those boundaries are removed it is outside of that sphere).
To ask good questions and engage in good conversations, openly and honestly, is surely healthy; closing them down is surely not.
So, to be progressive will not always be describing a good thing. But then neither is its opposite: to be regressive. To be progressive is surely positive insofar as it speaks of being pioneers for the kingdom—it’s being contented settlers that is more obviously something negative. Generally in life, progress is perceived to be a good thing and it’s how we improve our world. To believe in the inevitability of progress and its accompanying benefits is foundational to the Enlightenment worldview that underlies Modernity—though that optimism has been massively discredited by horrific experiences in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries (such as two World Wars, the holocaust, and innumerable other examples of man’s inhumanity to man around the globe). Postmodernity is itself in no small measure a corrective reaction against Modernity’s obvious flaws. But neither Modernity nor Postmodernity are inherently biblical worldviews or Christian worldviews; neither is our friend or our enemy in any unqualified sense. It’s important to grasp that.
Interestingly, evangelicalism itself was a progressive movement at its outset and has been again at certain junctures in its history, as it has sought to reinvent itself. To question certain things that are asserted as the “traditional” or “historic” view cannot therefore, in itself, be inherently wrong. If it is, then we need to regress Christianity to pre-Reformation times: apologize to the Pope, and restructure the global church accordingly. The question can never be whether we’re progressive, but why we’re progressive. What we’re being progressive about, and how we’re going about it—to what end and to what goal.
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For more on the history of evangelicalism and its significant evolutions in the few hundred years of its existence, see the work of leading historians and commentators such as David Bebbington, Mark Noll, and George Marsden. Be sure to be aware of the distinctions between UK evangelicalism and US evangelicalism.