reforming faith - mars’ hill interview

I had the honor of being interviewed by Makena Wardle, editor in chief of the Trinity Western University student newspaper, Mars’ Hill. You can read the article here, or below. Thank you Makena and the Mars’ Hill team for having this conversation! 

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Reforming Faith in the Modern Age: An Interview with Shelby Bennett

Faith exploration, deconstruction, evolving faith: these are all terms used by people who have decided to take a deeper look into the Christian framework, and evaluate the foundation of what they believe. This journey, however, looks different for every person who takes it, each embarking on it for different reasons.

Regardless, this process is often misunderstood: it gets mislabeled with the colloquial Christian term “backsliding,” or equated with “falling away from the faith.” However, often those who are undergoing a re-evaluation of their Christian beliefs are not merely calling it quits. In fact, many of these people who are deconstructing––or whichever term they have decided to use––are some of the most intentional with their spiritually. Reconsidering the beliefs one has held for one’s whole life involves introspection, investigation, and what can feel like a never ending amount of inner work.

One of these people is Trinity Western University (TWU) alum Shelby Bennett. In July of 2020, Bennett posted the piece “Ending Up Free: maybe losing my faith and maybe finding more” on her self-titled blog. After an eloquent and heart-tugging retelling of her doubt and wrestling over the past years, Bennett explained the state of her faith as this: 

“I haven’t landed the plane. I’m not ‘in’ or ‘out,’ and that is intentional. In a culture that is obsessed with knowing, with believing, and with being right, I am waiting, challenging, and allowing myself to always take the next step, whatever direction it leads.” 

A year later, Bennett posted the follow-up piece titled “Finding Rest: a year of wrestling, healing, and letting go,” in which we hear what she has discovered over the past year of exploring her changing faith. Bennett does not use the term deconstruction to define her journey, but rather says that she is “exploring new ways to experience spirituality, physicality, intellectualism, and everything else.”

I sat down with Bennett for a thoughtful conversation where she shared more about this process, her time at TWU, and how she came to find “that grieving the Jesus I knew and rediscovering myself were profoundly and beautifully tied.” 

Mars’ Hill: Can you tell us a bit about yourself? Did you grow up in the church?

Shelby Bennett: I definitely grew up in a very evangelical, fundamentalist church. And of course, growing up, I didn't see it as anything that was extreme or unusual. It didn't feel cultish at all, and I still don't see it that way. It was a wonderful childhood; a wonderful upbringing with people who were really loving, and a community that supported each other. The dream of people bringing each other casseroles when you need it. And I was also homeschooled and did a lot of leadership and apologetics and worldview training, especially through high school. So I was very rigorous about my faith all throughout growing up, with regular Bible reading and church attendance, and then ended up doing a couple years of missions work in China before going to TWU. My goal was to be a missionary, and then I decided to get a degree after that.

MH: What was your experience like at TWU?

SB: I loved TWU and my whole experience. I loved the community. I lived on campus for four years and just was involved in pretty much everything you could possibly be involved in. Anyone who was at TWU with me will probably remember me for starting the prayer ministry, and being an RA and a CF, and really trying to build into community. I think we all grew a lot. There were definitely times that we disagreed with things that were happening in our administration, but overall, it was a wonderful time of life. When it comes down to everyday life, I wouldn't have chosen to be anywhere else.

MH: What did you study during your undergrad?

SB: Linguistics with a minor in Biblical studies was my undergrad. So that was through CanIL and my goal was to be a Bible translator. And then I ended up going into the MA of Biblical Studies kind of as a last-minute decision.

MH: For those who have not yet read your blog posts, can you share a bit about what led to you deciding to explore new aspects of your spirituality?

SB: There are so many moving parts and different factors involved. I think starting to see the real patriarchy and gender elements that were at play in the Bible led me to see the Bible through a different lens. Then, as someone who grew up absolutely foundationally built on the Bible, the fact that that foundation shook at all started to shake everything. Even in my master's, which the emphasis was biblical studies but through the lens of gender studies, I started to see how, even if the Bible is the Word of God, that doesn't also change the fact that is written 100 percent by men, or that there were people who chose which books were going to be in and which books were going to be out. 

MH:Is there like a term or a phrase that you would use to describe the journey that you are on?

SB: I do kind of avoid the word deconstruction, because there's so much associated with it. But, in a lot of ways, it is an accurate analogy for slowly piecing apart everything that you've built in your life. My mom likes to call it my reformation, so that's also a great word, and I think is much more positive. When you think about even the Reformation with Martin Luther, that totally was the deconstruction process of their time. But I've just called it my faith journey, for the most part. At the beginning, it definitely felt like doubting and questioning and struggling, but it doesn't feel that way anymore. I wouldn't say that I'm struggling or questioning, I feel like I'm more just living life.

MH: What led you to decide to share your story on your blog?

SB: It really started for me in earnest in the summer of 2019, and about a year later was when I first wrote something about it. At that point, I was still in Canada, and I was a year into my master’s, and I think I kind of felt like I owed it to people. 

I needed to explain, as much as I could, why this was happening because there's so much misunderstanding out there. I knew that if people caught wind through the grapevine rumours that “Shelby's not Christian anymore,” or “Shelby is losing her faith,” or something like that, then there would be so much misunderstanding. There are all these people out there who are attributing causes of deconstruction that are inaccurate, like that people just want to sin, or that they didn't have a strong enough faith. And I didn't want anyone to write me off. I felt like I needed to explain. I have been very public for a long time. I have had a blog for ten years, right? So I was either gonna disappear or be pretty straightforward about it. 

MH: You recently tweeted about how the idea of deconstruction misrepresents your experience, and that all you have been seeking “is truth and Jesus.” Can you elaborate on this?

SB: I kind of have a whole article that arose at the end of that Twitter thread, I think that was about wanting people to really genuinely believe me that my number one priority was always Jesus. I had such a real relationship with him and l loved him more than anything in my life. There are many things I'm not still actively trying to figure out, but one that I do still want to pursue is, “Who is Jesus?” He was someone, and he was a very powerful someone: these teachings are unlike anything we see anywhere else. Whoever he was, was clearly compelling enough to the people around him that it became this movement. I read the Sermon on the Mount or different teachings, and it still gets me in my heart and my gut. 

A lot of the answers I was given just didn't really make sense.When you read the Gospels and just Jesus teachings, and you try to read it––as much as possible––without the lens of all the things we've been given, it's just not the same. I started to feel like Jesus was also being misunderstood by the way we've interpreted things for 2000 years, and that his gospel and his Kingdom of God did not necessarily mean what we had made them mean. Even the fact that when he talks about hell, or he talks about Gehenna, I don't think he is talking about the same thing we are talking about. Maybe his picture was actually a lot more beautiful. Maybe he was pursuing something else. 

I mean, I remember when I went to counseling for all of this faith change for the first time, and I really felt pretty good about it––like, I had a pretty good handle on everything. But when she brought up Jesus, that's when I lost it. I was like, “I'm so afraid of losing this person.” 

MH: You wrote on your blog that “grieving the Jesus I knew and rediscovering myself were profoundly and beautifully tied.” Can you tell us more of what this means to you? 

SB: Through a TWU lens, everyone knew me as the prayer person: I led prayer trainings, and I taught so many groups of students how to listen to God's voice. One of the things that I taught all of them was to have these little squares of paper, and I always had one in my pocket or in my backpack or something. Throughout the day if I felt like God was saying something to me, then I'd write it down. Sometimes nothing really came of it, and other times really crazy things came of it. Like I mean, I still have those stories. Like I don't really know what to do with that.

What I realized in a lot of ways, it did feel like the line kind of went silent all of a sudden, when I stopped making the effort. But then in a lot of other ways, the voice that I had listened to the most deeply was still there. I think the most obvious way to put it is that my journals didn't change. I realized, when I stopped doing that, I was still just as equally deep and thoughtful, and that a lot of the guidance I'd thought was from God was actually my own wisdom that was still valuable and still there. It's not like I suddenly had no idea what to do with myself or anything. Just reading some of the teachings of Jesus where there are these themes all throughout the Bible that you can draw on and the different ways of having Christ in you is one of the main messages of the New Testament.

I love Star Wars, and the image of the Force is actually one of the most helpful ways that I've found to still hold on to some kind of concept of God. In some ways, it is separate and outside of you, but another way, it's everything that's most deep to all of us and something that is ever present. It shares a lot of the characteristics of God.

MH: How has this process affected your community and relationships? Do you have advice on navigating these relationships during this process?

SB: For the first year, I didn't really tell anyone, because I was very afraid of leading people down the same path. At that point, I really didn't feel like I knew where it was going, and so I didn't want to bring anyone with me. It was so painful. Essentially, it felt like Jesus had died to me, and that he was still alive for other people. And I was like, I don't want to kill him for them.  And then it kind of came to the point where I couldn't just pretend that I still thought and believed all these things, and my closest friends could tell. But I found that, for the most part, the people who loved me still love me. I know people have had some really horrible experiences with family too. Luckily, in my story, my friends have been wonderful. For the most part, what I was afraid of actually did happen: most of them have also kind of begun this process of rethinking and piecing apart their faith. But none of them are mad at me about it. Like this is something that, you know, they feel like they are also being intellectually honest and doing an important actual journey that they needed to do. 

My advice if people are afraid of sharing is that you need to trust people to take responsibility for their own faith––they can make their own decisions, too. If people are working on trying to break the news to their friends and family that they are having questions and doubts, I would say be gentle and give people a chance to slowly soak in what you're saying. Especially if they maybe still believe that this means you're going to hell, that's a pretty big deal. Just give people the benefit of the doubt and let them ask questions. I think we get so afraid of people's response that we start off defensive and abrasive, but I've tried very hard to not be that way. In our very polarized world, if we can be people who aren't trying to attack, and just be honest and acknowledge that people are going to have a hard time with it, we can help by being a non-violent presence.

MH: Do you have any resources or any more advice for people who are going through a similar process?

SB: For me, it was Rachel Held Evans. I loved her approach, because she just felt so non-violent. She clearly still loved Christianity, and was actively critiquing it; Searching For Sunday was like the first thing that made me feel totally seen and understood. Barbara Brown Taylor is another incredible one: she wrote Holy Envy. She is a Christian Anglican priest and professor of religion, and yet is writing about seeing God in many religions, which is pretty big. It's the same attitude of just looking for beauty, still treasuring Christianity as a Christian, and yet also being able to affirm other religions.

There's actually a really cool website called SoYoureDeconstructing.com. It's full of resources. The first one might be like a video or an article, and then it moves all the way down to full online courses you can take online. It separates it all out by issues, so there is Hell, and gender or sexuality, or women in the Bible––it’s really great.