I’d like to talk about something that’s genuinely concerning me.
I’ve been seeing some generous takes on this here internet about how happy people are for Joshua Harris, the once evangelical poster child of purity culture/fundamentalist relationships, for getting free of evangelicalism and having the courage to publicly announce his apostasy.
Now, don’t get me wrong—I love seeing the world of evangelicalism lose a member of its theocratic, totalitarian regime just as much as the next person. And I respect the fact that some of you have chosen to offer this person well-wishes after he wrote a book and promoted a culture that caused you immense harm.
This post is not a skewering of your decision to find some semblance of forgiveness.
It’s a skewering of someone who I think is rebranding and will continue to try and control a conversation that he has no business controlling.
(P.S. For those of you who are lucky enough to have no idea who Joshua Harris is, this Wikipedia article on I Kissed Dating Goodbye gives somewhat of an overview.)
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In 1997, with the publication of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris was handed one of the most powerful platforms any man in western evangelicalism can be given, complete with metaphorical crown and cape. In that moment, he was not only riding off privilege that the evangelical church automatically bestows upon men, the privilege that says only men can be pastors and, in marriage, pronounces every man “the spiritual head of his wife.” He had, somehow, managed to gain all that and even more—a place amongst the elite of the elite, his voice ordained one of unfettered, theological reason.
For the next 22 years, the ears of evangelical Christianity belonged to him and a select few men of his ilk, and those ears were numerous and powerful in their numbers.
This guy has been a highly influential ministry celebrity. And like all of those guys, he has been poisonous as fuck.
Fast forward 22 years, to the past couple of weeks—when Harris began hinting at his deconstruction. In a recent interview with Sojourners, he pontificates:
“I think that one of the mistakes of people like me who have come out [of] a very conservative, legalistic environment is [they can] just adopt a new legalism in a completely different way, and be very dismissive and critical of people who are still in that way of thinking.”
He also speaks about starting a podcast:
“And I just I really have this desire to honor different stories. …There are going to be people that want to continue to embrace different aspects of purity culture, and they should have the freedom to have that option.”
What strikes me about all of this is that Harris is still telling people what the right way to do things is—still pastoring, in a sense, albeit towards an entirely different target audience. He’s telling us what our “mistakes” are in deconstruction, how those of us who adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards the teachings of purity culture are merely adopting “a new legalism.”
There is still a governance in his perspective, still an assertion that his experience is the most valid. If he’s going to leave evangelicalism, he is going to be the best at it. He’s going to do it in the most pure, correct way. He will write the book on it, and we will all buy that book. We will bring it into our homes and teach our children how to live their non-fundamentalist lives from it.
That’s what Joshua Harris is used to. He’s used to being an authority. He’s gotten a lot of criticism, but surely not enough to realize that he is not the most vital voice in the room—that his perspective is not the most important, nor the most interesting.
See this thread from Elizabeth Esther for a firsthand account of Harris’ compulsive self-centerization.
I say all this knowing that we are talking about a person who was taken advantage of by the evangelical church at a very young age. The zeal that was bred into him was used for its explicit purposes, and in many ways, Harris was a victim and a perpetrator. He was both at the same time.
That doesn’t mean that he gets to brand himself as the new face of deconstruction. That doesn’t mean that he gets to have a guiding voice in this conversation. That doesn’t mean that he gets to tell people how to deconstruct, continuing to position himself as a thought leader in the most personal aspects of how people live their lives.
I’m tepidly glad that he’s begun to say “I’m sorry”, and that he’s offered an Instagram apology for his non-affirming practices/statements towards the LGBTQ+ community. But let’s be honest—he hasn’t said nearly enough—least of all, about his role in the Sovereign Grace Ministries child sex abuse scandal.
As many have said before me, he’s done the literal bare minimum. And us accepting the bare minimum from him/carrying him on our shoulders is feeding into the privilege that the church, and the world, has always given him.
It’s ok to be happy that he’s begun to acknowledge and apologize for the harm he’s caused.
But it’s not ok to keep giving him a microphone. In my opinion, he shouldn’t get one ever again—no matter how many myriad horrors he apologizes for.
It’s time to start hearing from people who are not him. And please, for the love of Barbara, let those voices be truly intersectional.
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Here’s my ultimate point. I don’t care that Joshua Harris isn’t a Christian anymore for two major reasons:
(1) There is a WHOLE WORLD of toxic thinking that this guy has to deconstruct—the least of it being that his ideas aren’t the most brilliant and he should probably lay off the book writing/public speaking forever.
(2) I am WAY MORE INTERESTED in reading stories about why LGBTQ+ people and/or people of color and/or women left the church. I want to hear about what sparked those deconstructions, learn the roads they went down, get a glimpse into the lives they were able to build for themselves.
And I want to hear those stories on their own forums. I don’t want to be accessing them through the lens of a Joshua Harris podcast. I want to see the media put Joshua Harris down and pick those people up.
I’m just not interested in why a man who clearly can’t stop relishing in privilege left evangelicalism, all while holding on to the most dangerous thing the movement gave him: his own dominance.
I spent 7 years in the evangelical church revolving my life and needs and perspective around the whims of men like Joshua Harris.
I’m ready to start focusing on how the rest of us survived.