People often arrive at deconstruction looking for a definition and discover they are also looking for permission: permission to ask a question without rushing to an answer, to name harm without reducing an entire life to harm, and to change without deciding immediately what the change will be called. This guide offers language for that process while leaving the direction of it in your hands.
What does deconstructing Christianity mean?
Christian deconstruction is the primary lens of this guide. It focuses specifically on beliefs, authority structures, and practices inherited within Christianity. Faith deconstruction and religious deconstruction are broader terms for a similar pattern of honest examination across faith traditions.
To deconstruct is to examine rather than automatically accept or automatically reject. It can involve asking where a belief came from, how it has been interpreted, who benefits from it, how it affects real lives, and whether it still aligns with conscience, experience, love, or justice.
People use the language differently, so these are helpful working distinctions rather than rigid categories:
- Faith deconstruction
- A broader term for examining beliefs, spiritual practices, and sources of authority inherited through a faith tradition.
- Religious deconstruction
- Another broad term that can include religious institutions, systems, culture, and belonging—not only personal belief.
- Christian deconstruction
- The specific focus here, grounded in Ashley's lived experience. It may examine scripture, doctrine, leadership, community, or practice without assuming that every part will be discarded.
These terms overlap, but they are not interchangeable without distinction. This page stays centered on Christian deconstruction, where Ashley's own story and credibility are rooted, while acknowledging that people from other traditions may experience a structurally similar process. None of the phrases is a clinical label: the process can be intellectual, emotional, spiritual, relational, and embodied—often more than one at once.
Why do people deconstruct their faith?
People may begin deconstructing when inherited teachings no longer align with lived experience, conscience, identity, evidence, or their understanding of love and justice. For some, religious harm is part of the story; for others, the process begins with questions, change, or a need for greater integrity.
There is no single event a person must experience before their questions count. Deconstruction may begin slowly—with a teaching that no longer makes sense—or suddenly, after a rupture in trust. Three tensions are especially central to Ashley's work:
Institutional control beneath unconditional language
Seeing the gap between the language of unconditional love and the lived reality of conditions, obedience, and hierarchy—sometimes while still inside the institution.
Being told identity disqualifies belonging
Experiencing love, spiritual investment, blessing, or protection as conditional because of sexuality, gender, identity, or another part of oneself.
The material and spiritual false binary
Being taught that caring about money, stability, the body, or an actual human life is somehow less spiritual—and discovering that forced split was never the point.
“I remember telling someone I trusted — someone discipling me — that I’d fallen in love with a woman. Her response has stayed with me for over a decade: that God would still love me, but I would no longer be blessed. That I was no longer under God’s protection. That there was no longer a point investing in me spiritually if I was going to be “disobedient” in this one area. I was nineteen. I believed her, because a conditional God was the only God I’d ever been introduced to.”
This moment is one reason the focus here is Christian deconstruction rather than a generalized account of every faith tradition. It shows how questions can begin in the gap between unconditional love as an ideal and conditional belonging as a lived reality.
The In-Between: the false binary is the wound
The In-Between names the conviction that the false binary itself is the wound — not either side of it. Most people are taught they must choose: stay devout or leave entirely, be spiritual or be practical, be gay or be godly, be certain or be lost. The In-Between is the belief that this forced choosing is the injury, and that healing means learning to live undivided in the tension, rather than collapsing into either extreme.
“The conviction that the false binary is the wound — not either side of it.”
Primarily, The In-Between is a framework and teaching lens—the intellectual and spiritual core of Ashley's writing and teaching. It is also the name of her free community, where people can practice living this out together.
It is not a compromise position or “meeting in the middle.” A person can hold real convictions inside the tension: Ashley does not believe sexuality separates someone from God, and she does not believe love should ever be transactional. The In-Between is about refusing false binaries, not refusing to have convictions.
What can faith deconstruction feel like?
Faith deconstruction can involve grief—including grief for the life imagined or relationships expected to last—alongside relief, disorientation, anger, loneliness, and guilt for still caring about ordinary needs such as stability, money, or the body. More than one feeling can be true at once.
A belief system can hold more than ideas. It can hold family history, holidays, music, friendship, vocation, language, and a picture of who you are. Examining it may therefore feel less like changing an opinion and more like renegotiating an entire world.
Emotionally
- Grief can include things that never fully happened
- Relief, disorientation, and anger may coexist
- The body may carry feelings before words arrive
Relationally
- Family or friendships may feel newly complicated
- A person may feel they belong nowhere
- That shame can exist even without active rejection
“It’s okay to grieve something that didn’t happen. You can grieve the story your mind thought was going to unfold. Sometimes the moment I get quiet with myself, the tears just come — like my body has been waiting for me to feel it.”
The shame of feeling like you do not belong anywhere deserves to be named directly, even when no one is actively rejecting you. These are possibilities, not stages: relief does not erase grief, missing a community does not decide whether returning is right, and keeping a practice does not invalidate the questions that changed it.
Does deconstruction always mean leaving Christianity?
No. Deconstruction is a process of examination, not a predetermined conclusion. Some people remain Christian with changed beliefs, some reconstruct a different spiritual life, some leave Christianity, and others stay in an unresolved or evolving middle.
One person may still use Christian language but relate to it in a new way. Another may keep ritual while releasing doctrine. Someone else may leave religion entirely. A person can also remain unsure for a long time without that uncertainty being a failure. Staying, rebuilding, walking away, and living without a final label are presented here with equal weight and equal respect; none is treated as the smarter or more evolved ending.
Stay
Continue identifying as Christian with changed beliefs or practices.
Rebuild
Build a different relationship to spirituality, community, or the sacred.
Walk away
Step away from Christianity or religion without needing to reject every part of the past.
Live in The In-Between
Use no final label while beliefs, language, and belonging continue to evolve.
Some people choose the self-description “deconstructed Christian.” Ashley does not use that label for herself; she describes her own position as living in The In-Between. The phrase can describe a process or be chosen as a personal identity, but it should not be assigned to someone or replace one fixed identity with another.
Can religious harm be part of faith deconstruction?
Yes, religious harm can be part of deconstruction for some people, but it is not the only reason people question faith and it should not be assumed in every story. Harm may come from teachings, exclusion, coercion, spiritual authority, unsafe leadership, or pressure to abandon important parts of oneself.
Naming harm can clarify why certain beliefs or environments no longer feel safe. It can also be difficult when the same tradition carried beauty, relationship, or meaning. Both realities can be true without canceling each other out.
A guide, community, or workbook can support reflection, but none can diagnose or treat trauma. If distress is affecting your safety or daily life, consider seeking a qualified professional whose care respects your identity, agency, and spiritual boundaries.
What may come next after faith deconstruction?
There is no universal timeline or correct next step after faith deconstruction. A helpful next move may be to slow down, name what feels true, set boundaries, explore reflective practices, find safer community, or seek qualified professional support when distress or trauma is present.
Release the deadline
You do not have to resolve your theology, identity, relationships, and future at the same time. Let the next honest question be enough.
Name what is true now
Write down what you know, what you no longer believe, what you miss, and what remains uncertain. Temporary language is still useful language.
Create boundaries that protect attention
Decide which conversations feel constructive, which environments feel safe, and what you are not available to defend or explain.
Choose reflection without forcing an outcome
Journaling, reading, rest, ritual, movement, or conversation can help you listen for your own values rather than reproduce someone else's answer.
Find support that respects your agency
Look for friends, community, facilitators, or qualified professionals who can stay present without deciding the destination for you.
Ashley's essay “Deconstruction and Beyond: A Story of Loss and Rebirth” offers a more personal reflection on what rebuilding can look like when it is allowed to be honest and unfinished.
Questions people ask about deconstructing Christianity
Short answers to common questions, with room for each person's experience to remain more complex than a definition.
What is faith deconstruction?
The process of honestly examining inherited beliefs to find out what still feels true. It’s not a rejection of faith — it’s an act of taking your own beliefs seriously enough to actually look at them.
What does deconstructing Christianity mean?
It means examining Christian beliefs, teachings, practices, and systems to understand what still feels honest and life-giving, what needs to change, and what may need to be released. The process does not require one predetermined conclusion.
Is faith deconstruction the same as leaving Christianity?
No. Leaving Christianity can be one outcome, but it is not the definition of deconstruction. Some people remain Christian with changed beliefs, some rebuild a different spiritual life, and some step away from religion.
Can someone deconstruct and still identify as Christian?
Yes. Some people continue to identify as Christian while changing how they understand scripture, authority, community, God, or spiritual practice. Others choose different language, and neither outcome is required.
Can religious harm be part of faith deconstruction?
Yes, for some people. Harmful teachings, exclusion, coercion, or unsafe leadership may prompt deeper examination, but not every person deconstructs because of harm or identifies their experience as trauma.
How long does faith deconstruction take?
There is no standard timeline. Deconstruction may be a focused season or an ongoing way of relating to belief. Its pace can change as a person's relationships, identity, safety, and understanding change.
What can come after faith deconstruction?
What comes next may include rest, clearer boundaries, new language, changed community, renewed spiritual practice, no religious practice, or a long period of uncertainty. The next step can be chosen without forcing a final label.
What is The In-Between?
The In-Between is the belief that the false choice — stay or leave, devout or free, certain or lost — is itself the wound. Healing isn’t picking a side. It’s learning to live undivided in the tension.
About the author
Ashley Leon
Ashley is a writer, workshop facilitator, and certified holistic mind-body coach working at the intersection of faith deconstruction, queer spirituality, and emotional healing. Her work is affirming, non-doctrinal, and coaching-based—not therapy.
More about Ashley