Erin Hicks Moon is host of the Faith Adjacent podcast and author of the popular “The Swipe Up” newsletter. She’s made a life out of helping folks deconstruct and reconstruct their faith from the knots of the past to create a new life with Jesus. Now she’s putting it all out there in book form with I’ve Got Questions: The Spiritual Practice of Having It Out with God, publishing in February (Baker Books).
What started you on the journey of deconstruction and reconstruction of your faith?
I saw a lot of cognitive dissonance between what the Scripture was saying that Jesus wanted out of believers, and what was happening in the church and the world. That led me down a path of questions about why we don’t do what Jesus wanted. Also, a university minister said I couldn’t study systematic theology with the boys, that I needed to find a woman to teach me. I encountered an attitude about women in the church that didn’t match how Jesus interacted with women.
It seems like this deconstruction and reconstruction is a modern trend. Is that true?
This has been going on from Jesus’s time and before. God changed Jacob’s name and the name of the people to Israel, the people who wrestle with God. Our spiritual inheritance is to wrestle. There was a specific white, American evangelical deconstruction during the first Trump campaign. After the Access Hollywood tape, we asked if this is who we’re really going with for president. When 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for him, that kicked off a big wave of deconstruction. And we’re still seeing the effects of it now. With this election, there has been a lot of justifying (over backing Trump again) and we’re going to feel the reverberations for decades.
What sorts of questions are people asking you?
I’m asked, how do I become a Christian who pays attention to what’s happening? How do I own my own faith? And there are a million questions that go with that — women in leadership, affirming beliefs, the Bible as Truth. But it all feels so overwhelming and people decide they will figure it out later. But you get to a point when “later” is now. And once the gate is unlocked, you don’t want to go back in.
What can you say to believers who are deconstructing and reconstructing?
People think there is an urgency, that they’d better have it figured out before they die or Jesus comes back. But I want to say that you have time, you aren’t in a rush, there is no gate closing. Yes, it’s scary and you’re right to take it seriously. But there is joy on the other side. Don’t not start because you think you don’t have time. It’s easy to put our brains on autopilot, but God’s chest is big enough for us to beat on. Every time you look at Scripture, you’ll uncover something new. This is the work of our lives.
