Author: Cindy
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After the Storm: Understanding Religious Trauma
This post introduces a series on religious trauma and spiritual abuse, emphasizing their profound and lasting impacts on survivors. The author shares personal challenges in discussing these topics while highlighting the normalization of spiritual abuse in faith communities. It aims to provide support and encourage acknowledgment of individual experiences for healing. Read more
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Reclaiming the Table: Belonging, Inclusion, and the Season of Healing
In my last post, I encouraged my readers to remember that Jesus never asked us to fight a culture war. Today, I believe it’s just as important to remember that although our faith spaces often build walls to keep people out, Jesus never did. For those of us who are deconstructing, we know the pain… Read more
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Jesus Never Asked You to Fight a Culture War
How Faith Became a Weapon and Why It’s Time to Lay It Down Tonight, a local church is hosting an event titled “Pick Up The Mic (city name): Courage for the Culture Wars,” organized by a group affiliated with the Seven Mountain Mandate movement. Emerging in the 1970s, the Seven Mountain Mandate has evolved into Read more
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Stop Calling Yourself an Ally and Just Do the Work
As long as humanity has roamed the earth, hate has existed in various forms. While some may prefer to ignore the sins of our past, the roots of bigotry in a nation founded on stolen land and the forced labor of enslaved people may never fully be eliminated. Today, bigotry appears in countless ways, sometimes Read more
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When They Rewrite the Past
I was trembling inside as I walked into the church for my grandma’s funeral. With traumatic memories of church and family swirling through my mind, my children and I made our way into the sanctuary and found our seats. I was going to sit down, but I felt duty-bound to shake off my fear and Read more
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What Does it Look Like to Follow Jesus After Leaving the Institutional Church?
Christian leaders today treat deconstruction like the plague, warning their followers of the dangers of deconstructing, implying or even directly stating that people who deconstruct never knew Jesus or are turning their backs on Him on a direct train to eternal damnation. Yet, for many of us, deconstruction isn’t about rejecting Jesus or our faith. Read more
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Sila Lott’s Harmful Advice for Finding a Husband (That is Definitely Not in the Bible)
Misusing Scripture A friend recently shared an article titled “How the Wives of the Bible Met their Husbands” by Sila Lott. The article is full of harmful advice, stemming from a fundamental misunderstanding of the biblical stories and the cultures from which they originated. Additionally, it relied on proof-texting to assign meanings to the stories Read more
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Is Deconstruction a Sin or a Step Toward Stronger Faith?
If you‘ve spent much time listening to Christian pastors and apologists, the concept of deconstruction might seem quite unsettling. They often portray deconstruction as a perilous journey, where one foot treads the secular world while the other hovers dangerously close to the fires of hell. Some go as far as to claim that those who Read more
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Craving Connection During Deconstruction
For the first four decades of my life, church was my world. It provided human connection and made me feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself. Church was where my children developed friendships with peers and connections with adults who claimed to love them. I truly believed that the church was Read more
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Healing Takes Time
If you are in a desperate place and feel alone, please reach out to someone for help. I have included resources at the bottom of this page. No matter how dark it looks right now, it will get better, and the world needs you. “Now this is what the Lord says — the one who created you, Jacob, Read more