My Mother’s Death Triggered the Bulk of My Deconstruction Journey

My mother’s death triggered the bulk of my deconstruction.

It was a long time ago now. 12-13 years. I was attending a Pentecostal church while she was sick and dying. I changed churches to attend a grace-based church just 4 months before she died, and the Pastor (Santo Calarco) and I deconstructed hell together months after she died.

As a seed falls to the ground and dies, it produces many seeds…

I lost so many friends. Basically all the friends at my previous (Pentecostal) church—though I was not “kicked out” and have still visited there occasionally, without prohibition. But there was a wave of de-friending on Facebook. And a wave of adding new friends (strangers like my future husband). A wave of being accused of heresy, insanity, back-sliding etc. I also lost two or three really significant relationships in addition to my mother dying. I experienced a lot of grief and loneliness.

I started to become increasingly queer-affirming around the same time because I had two queer Uncles (two of my mother’s brothers) and began pulling apart purity culture / sexual ethics as well. I wasn’t having sex at the time. I was in my late 20s and had consistently abstained for over a decade of adulthood. But I started to explore, knowing that God wouldn’t love me any less, and I wouldn’t go to hell (because my concept of hell was that only people who reject Jesus’ grace temporarily need some “God’s-love-never-gives-up-on-you”-torture), and I would be forgiven. Graced.

Fortunately (depending on how you look at it, I guess) I met my husband and got married at age 32, continuing to abstain—not from all sexual activity, but from PIV sex.

Since there is no major divide between Republicans and Democrats in Australia (we have different political parties and Aussie political parties are not as tangled in religion) my “heresy” / “deconstruction” was not perceived with the same level of vitriol I have heard about here in the States, by family members and the friends who remained in my life. But moving to the States with my American husband, has introduced me to a whole new breed of deconstruction. Political deconstruction. Racism, sexism, ableism and homophobia deconstruction (these simply aren’t as “major” in Australia because it’s a more secular and socialist society, though stuck in a capitalist backdrop, none-the-less).

So my deconstruction journey continues and I can look back and see that it started long before my mother’s death, on a much smaller scale.

What does your Evangelical Deconstruction Journey look like?