A Deconstruction Chronicle: Katie Grosskopf

My faith reignited with rage.

As a 29 year old first year attorney, I was given a case that forced me to look the Southern Baptist Convention ("SBC") L was raised in straight in the eye, and what I found both ignited my faith and shoved me out into the wilderness. Deconstruction for me began with a burst of life and light in the darkness and it didn't let up.

I became a Christian at five-ish years old and can, even now, recognize a deep, sincere faith in my childhood self. Many of the deconstruction stories you hear start with horrible abuses, but that is not part of my story except to the extent that it is part of any woman's story when she is raised in a deeply patriarchal, purity culture world.

Purity culture and its particular brand of prosperity gospel drove me away from the faith in my early twenties. Not into deconstruction - just away. I was doing all the right things - serving, leading, praying, seeking - and no one noticed me. The part of purity culture that promises this glowing future of marriage and children and romance wholly failed me and it crushed me. My faith had transitioned from a deep and sincere child's faith to believing the false promises that formed evangelical youth group teachings so strongly in the early 2000s. So I wandered away. I didn't reject the faith. I just...stopped actively pursuing it. I went after other things.

I graduated college and moved to D.C., seeking political power and engagement. It was fun. It was distracting. It was utterly soul-crushing. I moved back to Texas to prepare for law school. I got good and angry at a terrible Easter Sunday megachurch service that I attended with my family, but that's the extent of my engagement with faith at that time. I went to law school and tried - so so hard - to attend an allegedly great church where no one ever spoke to me and I sat and cried alone. I graduated law school in this faith malaise. And then I got that case.

The details of the case aren't important for the story and I can't really give them to you anyway.

There was abuse in an SBC institution. There were powerful men. There was weaponized structural, institutional protection from accountability. And, most of all, there was a wounded woman.' And suddenly, I was enraged.

This was wrong. This was a horrific abuse of the Gospel. And, in the midst of that rage, my faith snapped back to life.

I can't really explain it. I was furious and I knew it was correct to be angry at this. And suddenly I felt my faith rise back up like a physical thing in my chest. God used the case to get my attention. See what is happening to my children? And I did see. Could see clearly for the first time in years. Could see ways the SBC could change. Could move. I felt I could change it from within. But then I saw another truth. I am a woman. In the SBC, no matter my gifts or vision, I would never have a voice. Would never be allowed to lead. Would never be allowed to change things. Would never even be in the room to try. All that staying would do is continue to crush me.

So I left. Stepped out into the wilderness. But I held onto that ember burning in my chest. I was done with the SBC. I had barely begun with God.

I started untangling the pieces of my faith. Which of the bricks in my foundation were crumbling?

Which needed to be violently uprooted? It was a messy process. I felt angry and unmoored. My anger had spread beyond the abuses in the SBC. It wasn't all perfectly righteous. Some of it was just mad.

I wrestled with God. I tried on new theologies. I tossed some out. I kept a few. I kept coming back to the creeds as something I could hold onto. Something solid I could test and, eventually, hold to. I wrestled with the role of women. This was at the core of my deconstruction: what role could I, as a woman with a strong sense of faith, discernment, and leadership, ever have in the church? I wrestled with my pride and sense of my own faith. I wrestled with whether I needed a church. For a few years, I did not feel the pull to return to church, but eventually I did.

The Final Option

The one thing that most people get wrong about deconstruction is the amount of faith involved in the process. Sure. Some people simply pull down the walls and walk away. I would argue that that is not actually deconstruction. That is more akin to what I did in my twenties - wander off, disillusioned but not actively engaging with faith - or it is just straight rejection of the faith. The deconstruction I experienced and have seen in so many people is a time characterized by deep faith and agonizing decisions. It is a deeply personal and painful experience. But it is part of a journey of faith. If you aren't engaging with faith, I don't see how you're deconstructing.

"Engaging" is a broad word choice for a reason. Embracing, sifting through, whittling down, questioning, scouring, considering. These are all forms of engagement. The point is the lack of indifference to faith. The end of a deconstruction journey may be leaving the faith, but the journey there engages with faith. The end is not the deconstruction.

The image of the Christian wrestling with his faith - working out his salvation - is one I have known all my life in the Church. Every Christian wrestles at some level with doctrine and truth and even false teachings we have been fed. The thing about what we are now calling deconstruction, though, is that the outcome is not guaranteed. When you pull apart every stone of your faith, sometimes they don't go back together at all. And that scares people. Wrestling with this or that doctrine within the confines of a religious structure you have already accepted feels like a safe struggle. Wrestling with the very concept of God does not feel safe at all.

You can argue that it takes faith to step out and deconstruct your faith. Faith that the outcome will be better than the current reality. That's not universal, though. For many, stepping out to deconstruct their faith is a desperate act. It isn't a measured choice to seek something better, it's the final option to survive. There are so many lies, false doctrines, and false gods propped up in American Christianity that are presented to us, frequently with the best of intentions, and do whole worlds of damage. That is the water many if not most American Christians are swimming in, and it will hit a breaking point. That's not even getting into the intentional abuse and damage done to so many by wolves in shepherd's clothing. That kind of deconstruction coupled with deep physical and emotional wounding is brutal. And what other choice do they have? Live with abuse and silence? Quietly die?

We cannot sit in our comfortable pews and throw side-eyes and stones at people walking through deconstruction because they make us uncomfortable. You were never promised that the urgent searching and healing of others' souls would be comfortable to see. You were never promised that searching your own soul would be comfortable, either. That's what makes us the most uncomfortable, by the way, feeling that some piece of our reality and faith is somehow threatened by the deconstruction of others. Feeling, even in a tiny way, that something with our

Rebuilding

It has been six years since I began to deconstruct. I have returned to the Church. Not to the SBC, but to institutionalized Christianity. I landed on the Nicene, Anglican side of things. I am in seminary. I am currently discerning whether | will take Holy Orders in my new denomination. I am serving and learning.

I don't think I would be here in this way without the community I found on Twitter and other slightly unhinged social media communities that popped up along the way (Clubhouse anyone?

That was a fun moment.). I got to let out my anger. I learned from the stories of others. I owe a debt to the few kind pastors who waded in alongside us and just listened and offered kindness and compassion. I found how mild my story actually was, yet I felt no hierarchy in the community based on the horrors in our stories. We were all hurting and searching and learning.

I have found that my faith on this side of deconstruction is humbler and gentler. It is not boastful or proud. It is elastic. It is a faith in a God who can handle my questions, can handle my rejection and return. A God who is not angry that I pushed the limits and tested (and still test) what I believed. A God that rejoiced when I finally recognized him waiting patiently for my return.

A God who heals.

I have found a deep resonance with the story of the prodigal son, or rather the parable of the two sons, on this side of deconstruction. I see as much of myself in the older brother as the younger? At the beginning of my deconstruction journey, I felt more like the younger son, the prodigal, coming back. My years of apathy and malaise were more akin to the rebellion of the younger son. When my faith snapped back to life in the midst of that awful case, that was my return with great rejoicing. The actual deconstruction journey was, for me, not rebellion at all. It was the process of someone who thought they were the loyal older brother learning for the first time that their faith was arrogant and brittle. Learning to be gentle and humble like the father.

Learning to run and greet the returning with open arms and feasting.

A Lifetime of Faith

I want to finish out with a word for the people on the outside, helplessly watching as someone they love goes through a process they cannot seem to help them with or fully understand.

Your hope is not wasted. I learned in college from observing a very old, very faithful woman that a lifetime of faith takes a whole lifetime. You do not wake fully formed out of nowhere. It is a journey, full of peaks, valleys, and plateaus.

Your loved one is going through a deconstruction moment. It may last years. You may never see the outcome. You may never find out what conclusions they come to. Do not give up your hope to see them return to or rebuild some form of faith and do not discount whatever faith they begin to build along the way, even if you disagree with points of it. Their lifetime of faith is taking a different path than yours has. That's ok.

You can only see one moment of their journey with faith right now. So can they. It might feel like there is no hope at all in what you're witnessing, but I would offer that there is infinitely more hope in someone actively searching and wrestling than in apathy. They may wrestle for the rest of their life. It may only last a season.

Pray for them. Do not let your fear dictate how you relate to the deconstructing person in your life. Give your fears to God and love that person in all of their messy iterations. God is big enough for your fears. He is not angry at you or your loved one for questioning. He can handle being questioned.

I also invite you to consider your own faith and what God is trying to do with your own heart in the midst of their wrestling. What do you need to unpack to be ready to receive them with open arms should they come back to faith or church? How can you better love them now? How can you become more like the father of the two sons and less like the older brother? What is God calling you to deconstruct? Who is God calling you to become? Your lifetime of faith is yet ongoing, too.

1st footnote: There was a positive resolution for the woman in this case. That’s all I can really tell you. It wasn’t nearly enough, but she did get some resolution and closure.

2nd footnote: Luke 15:11-32: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+15%3A11-32&version=CSB

You can follow Katie Grosskopf here: Substack, Instagram & Threads, and Twitter.

---

I hope you were as moved by Katie’s story as I was. This one had me crying in my public library. If you would like to share your story, you can contact me at ournomadicsouls@gmail.com.

All my heart, Meg.