Former pastor Joshua Harris, who publicly left the Christian faith in 2019, said he might have overreacted when he deconstructed. Harris, author of the controversial 1997 bestselling book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” recently posted that President Trump might be “leading me back to Jesus.”
On the Feb. 18 episode of the “Holy Post” podcast, co-host Skye Jethani asked Harris, 51, where he’s at now in his faith journey. The author, who grew up in the evangelical fundamentalist movement and had “voted Republican my whole life,” described experiencing a wakeup call about the nuances of faith and other important topics.
RELATED: ‘Is Trump Leading Me Back to Jesus?’—Why Joshua Harris Is Thinking About Jesus Again
Joshua Harris and the ‘Zeal’ of Deconstructing
Before explaining his current mindset, Joshua Harris said his departure from Christianity in 2019 was probably linked to the “upheaval” occurring in his personal life. Around that time, the purity-culture author announced he was getting divorced from his wife of 19 years. When his life no longer matched up with conservative-Christian expectations, Harris said, it felt easier for him to just walk away from the faith.
In addition, Harris said he had sensed from childhood that “faith was very intertwined with a certain political viewpoint.” As a result, when Donald Trump “completely hijacked the Republican Party,” Harris said, he wondered if he was wrong about his politics as well as his religion. “It felt like this moment of major hypocrisy” and isolation, he explained.
But after deconstructing, Harris said he “carried my fundamentalist black-and-white thinking with me onto a new team.” With the same “zeal” he had once used to write and preach, the former church leader was driven to examine who the good and bad guys were in his new “exvangelical deconstruction community.”
Just as Harris had been “manipulated by the algorithms” as a Christian, he said, he also was manipulated by them as a non-Christian.
RELATED: UPDATE: After ‘Valid Criticism,’ Josh Harris Takes Down His Deconstruction Course
Former pastor Joshua Harris, who publicly left the Christian faith in 2019, said he might have overreacted when he deconstructedClick to Post
