A Response To Kaela Kaiser & Across My Heart Ministries
Confronting false binaries, understanding cultural bubbles, and being responsible with suffering
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When writing online about complex and sensitive subjects, one will inevitably see their words be taken out of context. Like most writers, I don’t respond to every single criticism, especially disingenuous ones. Over the past year, I have responded to quite a few good-faith critiques and found those conversations to be helpful, even if we disagreed in the end.
Several readers have sent me a blogpost written by Kaela Kaiser with Across My Heart Ministries, a Michigan-based evangelical group working with young women. A piece I wrote in March on deconstruction is quoted and, disappointingly, was misused to promote some unhealthy and misleading claims. Before continuing here, you can see my original piece and Kaela’s below:
I reached out a few times seeking a dialogue and only received a reply as I was wrapping this response up. Kaela’s blogpost exhibits much of what is wrong with the conversations on deconstruction happening inside of reformed white American evangelicalism right now, so I’ve decided to go ahead and post this. Before beginning, I want to clarify two things.
First, I don’t believe Kaela or this organization is being malicious. I do think there’s quite a bit of honest ignorance here. We’ll get to that, but I want to say on the front end that I don’t believe Kaela or her colleagues are bad people.
Second, I do not speak for every single Christian who is struggling right now. As you’ll see throughout this response, the deconstruction phenomenon is just that: a phenomenon. No one person can explain where it is heading or where its exact borders begin and end. I imagine that even some people who are deconstructing will find disagreement with some of what I write here.
Please keep those two things in the back of your mind. Now, I want to break down four buckets of issues in…
