Former Christian Joshua Harris Offers ‘Deconstruction’ Course for Believers Rethinking Their Faith

By admin On Aug 13, 2021

Author and former pastor Joshua Harris, who renounced his faith in 2019, has launched a course on “deconstructing” your faith.

Harris, best known as the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, announced in 2019 that he was renouncing his faith and separating from his wife. He also served as pastor of the megachurch Covenant Life Church from 2004-2015.

The 5-week course titled “Reframe Your Story” offers users “a step-by-step process to reframe and reimagine your human journey.”

The course was reportedly made with Christians questioning the cultural practices of their church, people grappling with the fallout of leaving their faith, and people wanting to integrate their past with their present selves in mind.

According to Premier Christian News, the “Reframe Your Story” program offers live sessions with Harris, during which he guides users through a 5-step process of reframing and reimagining their “human journey.”

“My goal isn’t to convince you or anyone else to change your beliefs – but change is inevitable. And if you’re rethinking and questioning ideas and religious rules you were raised in, I think this course could help you,” Harris states on the course website.

“I’ve learned how important it is to know you’re not alone and to take the time to unpack the good and the bad of old ways of thinking as you seek to move forward,” he continued. “The journey to being the truest version of yourself is the most important one we make as humans. I’d love to have you join me and others as we learn together.”

While the course costs $275, Harris asserted that he would give it away for free to anyone “harmed” by his previous books.

Harris was criticized for selling the course due to his past condemnations of churches asking for money.

Renowned theologian and church historian Carl Trueman argued that Harris is using the course to promote himself, much like he did in the past as a Christian author.

“Ironically, for all his much-trumpeted ‘deconstruction’ of his own Christianity, Harris seems incapable of escaping the dynamics of the culture that made him famous,” Trueman wrote in a blog post. “He remains the megachurch evangelical celebrity of his earlier self. He merely does so now in a secular, rather than religious, therapeutic idiom, and without the cadre of evangelical enablers who made him popular.”

“You can take the boy out of American celebrity evangelicalism, but you cannot take the American celebrity evangelicalism out of the boy,” he added. “Messianic self-confidence comes as standard. And the preacher is still both the salesman and the product being sold.”

Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer. He is also the co-hosts of the For Your Soul podcast, which seeks to equip the church with biblical truth and sound doctrine. Visit his blog Blessed Are The Forgiven.

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