(un)certain: A Collective Memoir of Deconstructing Faith - Olivia Jackson

REVIEWER: John Griffiths 

BOOK: (un)certain: A Collective Memoir of Deconstructing Faith

(SCM, 2023) 256pp, paperback, RRP £19.99

This is a hard read. Olivia Jackson has, by her own account, experienced an unravelling of a faith which once seemed certain to her. She calls this deconstruction. And as a way to work though this, she conducted 140 interviews with Christians who had experienced a similar deconstruction. She also says she wrote it because similar studies had been run only in the USA and it was important to get a UK perspective. Many had left their churches, some had stayed. Some had lost faith in God, any God. Others had discovered more nuanced ways to believe.

At times, the book felt relentless. For some, the experience of deconstructing wasn’t something they wanted and for which they have not yet found a resolution. Chapter by chapter, each with a different theme, Jackson covers the reasons why people have had crises in their faith and often stopped attending church, and the book dispels any notion the reader might have had that there is a single route to loss of faith, or even that certain evangelical churches are the villains of the piece. Or that this is an issue confined to sexual abuse victims or LGBTQ Christians. The reasons are many. What is shocking are the levels of what could be termed spiritual abuse – leavers being bullied into leaving their churches and what was said about them after they left. Many reported being shunned.

The study is grouped into different themes which cover whether women are permitted leadership roles, sexuality, problems with styles of worship, a purity culture which sets high moral standards but sets them differently for young men and women: there is a long list. At times, the presence of US interviewees can feel distracting but what the study shows is that this experience is much more than the extremes we associate with American excess!

I would use the book as a way to ask hard questions about how we treat those in our churches who are struggling, and whether we maintain contact after they have left. If our churches are to be safe places, we have to look after the leavers and not just the fresh faces entering our doors. An important read. 

Reviewer: John Griffiths is a preacher and a lay reader in the Church of England that is currently somewhere on a narrowboat cruising around the canals.