Theological Trends Column
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The TikTok camera angle is close on the face. Rev Karla stands at her kitchen counter. She breathes out slowly and rubs her hand over the round gray placemat in front of her. On the screen above her head, in white letters, appear the words “A side of myself I rarely show.” Billie Eilish and Khalid croon as she places a large purple crystal on the edge of the mat. “But the time is now for us to be authentic.” She continues placing items — a large bunch of dried sage, a candle almost certainly scented, and an old-fashioned key. The script above her chic gray hair continues: “Yes I too awoke at 3 am that morning (2:53 am to be exact) & I knew….When I left church I was lovingly guided by a shaman, a humanist, a former Christian & dream practitioner.” She dons a pagan-looking necklace to the words, “Now I honor my ancestral heritage & dive into the Universal Divine Consciousness that honors the Divine Feminine.” Lastly, she places a small silver dog that looks sort of like a knife holder and rubs a smooth rock between her palms while the final message appears: “It’s no wonder the patriarchy fears us and seeks to constantly destroy us. Women of birth or identity….Pause and know this power is calling us. Be still & know It’s being revealed — Patience.”1
One of the most fashionable religious trends of the last twenty years — deconstructing from the Christian faith — though it seems almost heretical to suggest, appears to me to have reached its summit and is sliding into intellectual and cultural decline. The dechurched have become so sizable a population, and Christianity has so little cultural cache, that those who make their living leading the flock out of the church are left roving over social media, picking off the few remaining doubters. Rev Karla of TikTok fame (737,000+ followers on TikTok) is an excellent representation of late-stage deconstruction. Journeying down the now well-traversed theological path out of the church and into predictable self-actualization, Karla Kamstra is neither novel nor fresh. And yet her content is so familiar as to be comforting. She says what everyone already believes.
Beware the Rebrand. On December 14, 2024, Kamstra posted a montage of herself spanning many years with her family in her garden. “Remember 2024” captions the TikTok, along with the comment “Rev Karla your content is changing!” Kamstra twirls around to the words “No beloved. I’m simply returning home to who I always was.”2 The drop in followers reflects a common social media trouble — the rebrand. Over five years Kamstra built her brand as an interfaith minister guiding her cyber flock out of organized religion and into whatever spiritual world they prefer. Her demeanor is still warm and her smile bright, but now she is prepping. On November 27, 2024, she posted herself in front of her computer with text that reads: “It’s thanksgiving eve & instead of cooking I’m learning how many BTUs it takes to heat a room with terra cotta pots and tea light candles because no one is coming to save us & I don’t want anyone to panic. I want them to be prepared. No, I’m not an alarmist. I’m a realist. Fascism has come to America.”3
Mistress of the algorithm, Kamstra’s content is relentlessly political. With a drumbeat of warnings about the threat of Project 2025 and Christian Nationalism, she blames America’s cultural ills on heteronormativity and the patriarchy. In a TikTok about the assassination of United Healthcare’s CEO in New York City, she explains that “When we tell people how to express their frustration and outrage, we are reaching for the privilege that’s afforded to us under that patriarchal structure so we can say to them ‘you’re not doing it right.’ We believe that we have the right to gatekeep how people are going to show up. We believe that we are the holder of heteronormative standards, and you must abide by those standards. No, we can’t do that anymore.” The “unaliving” of Brian Thompson “provided a conduit for the outrage that people feel towards United Healthcare because their voices have been silenced for so long.”4
I can’t imagine that posterity will view the concept of “content production” as a net good for the human family. Writers, artists, and musicians flog themselves to satisfy an insatiable audience. In a recent post, Kamstra lamented over how unrelenting the algorithm is on TikTok and how it has shaped what she produces.5 One wonders how much of her deconstruction has been driven by likes and follows and how much is driven by her thoughts. I’m not sure that’s something any of us can know. But for those ungrounded by a living faith, the flood of social media is surely hard to resist.
Hell Hath No Fury. Kamstra hasn’t confined herself to TikTok and YouTube. Besides her book, Deconstructing: Leaving Church, Finding Faith (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2024), she offers free content on her website. She would like to help you “Heal your religious trauma,” “Deconstruct from toxic theology that no longer serves your highest good,” and “Discover the spiritual-but-not-religious path.”6 When you enter your email, you receive a free PDF titled, “You’re Not Going to Hell: 3 Things to Assure You That Questioning Your Faith Is Not a Sin.”7 Using an abbreviated version of her own story in which she complains of having “constantly tried to be the ‘good Christian,’” she assures the seeker that it’s perfectly reasonable not to listen to “church leaders” who are only trying to reinforce a “patriarchal power structure.”8
According to Kamstra, questioning your faith is “empowering.” All the greatest characters in the Bible, like Moses and Job, did it. Moreover, it is time to be free from fear. “Fear-based theology,” she writes, “is a religious approach that emphasizes divine punishment and eternal consequences to control and influence believers’ behavior and beliefs.” Both the “concept of eternal damnation” and “the selling of indulgences” have been “leveraged to not only regulate moral behavior but also to secure power and financial gain.” The way out is to “break free from Limiting Beliefs.” Without naming any particular beliefs from which the content consumer should break free, she vaguely derides belief in general. “At various crossroads in our spiritual journeys,” she explains, “we find ourselves tightly gripped by the chains of dogma. This stringent adherence can feel stifling, much like trying to squeeze the vast expanse of the ocean into a tiny glass jar. It’s a difficult realization: that sometimes, the very beliefs we grew up cherishing become the walls confining us.”9
Kamstra is a graduate of the online interfaith seminary, One Spirit, where, they say, “we respect and honor the differences of the many paths as we celebrate and value our sameness — we know all spiritual traditions share universal teachings, which bring us together as ONE in harmony” (emphasis in original). The guiding principle is “freedom in the heavens or grounding in the earth.” Graduates from the program are eligible to receive ordination as interfaith and “interspiritual” ministers.10
Rejecting the existence of hell as an essential doctrine is the first and most basic step for deconstructing the Christian faith. Without the possibility of being eternally separated from God, there is no particular urgency for discovering what He is like or who He is in Himself. Indeed, God does not substantially factor into much of Kamstra’s content. The person on a journey out of the church is seeking not so much to find the timeless, unchanging truths that hold the cosmos together as to find herself and what she prefers. “Whatever works for you” is a more interesting consideration for Kamstra than “Who is God and how do I relate to Him?”
However, the soothing message that one need not fear because there is nothing to be afraid of is diabolical. For the beginning of all true searching is fear — fear of coming into contact with a holy God (Exodus 3:5, 34:30) and coming undone (Isaiah 6:5). And then, as the creature tries to endure the awe of God’s presence, fear over what He would like to be called and what He might do (Exodus 3:14; Isaiah 45:6). In fact, fear is the beginning of the deepest wisdom available to the content consumer (Proverbs 1:7). Without fear, knowledge of the truth never lightens the darkness. And without light, the cold expanse of the universe, an emptiness without walls or heat or companionship, won’t be at all comfortable.
The Anglican Way. The crowning jewel of Kamstra’s content is her newly released book about how to leave Christianity. Forbearing to delve too far into the details of her own lived experiences, she nevertheless offers her life as a kind of “deconstructing journey”11 down which the reader may travel. Each chapter ends with practical advice about how to “demolish, repair, and restore.” For Kamstra does not desire the reader to end up with nothing. No, each person must carefully construct a faith and a community for his or her own self, however difficult and alienating it may feel along the way
To my shame as an Anglican, Kamstra’s journey out of the church included three prominent figures in Anglican Church History — one good (Lewis), one bad (Spong), and one good who became corrupted (Henry VIII). Henry VIII became Kamstra’s unlikely obsession in the early days of her deconstruction. She read about him, made diagrams, and attended lectures on British history.12 She came to the astonishing realization that “the Church of England was created for one simple reason. Lust.”13 According to Kamstra, the English Reformation proves that the “church is not God-breathed. It is man-made for man’s power. God is an afterthought.”14
The second prominent Anglican who moved Kamstra along on her path of deconstruction was C. S. Lewis. Kamstra insists that “no bona fide, card-carrying evangelical would be caught with one of his books in their homes.”15 Reading him made her feel “heretical,”16 but each book she consumed, including Mere Christianity (1952), made her feel “a little untangling occurring deep inside” like “the loosening of knots to a theology that had held me hostage for most of my life.”17
Finally, Kamstra discovered the works of Bishop John Shelby Spong, a notoriously heretical bishop in the Episcopal Church through the 80s and 90s. Spong’s most famous book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), deeply impressed Kamstra. Spong “gave permission to reexamine a relationship with Jesus that wasn’t contingent upon Him dying for my sins.”18
I will be the first to acknowledge that popular-level knowledge about King Henry VIII never includes the theological riches of the English Reformation, like The Book of Common Prayer or the King James Bible. The Anglican Divines are a niche specialty. And I suppose it must be humanly possible that Kamstra’s experience of evangelicalism was narrow enough not to include Christians who enjoyed Lewis. Perhaps no evangelicals in Indiana in the 70s and 80s had read The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956) or Mere Christianity. By the 90s, though, it would be impossible to throw a stone into a sanctuary full of evangelicals and hit one who would say reading Mere Christianity constituted an act of heresy. Similarly, Spong’s works have been roundly debunked by faithful and articulate voices.19 Kamstra’s ignorance of basic Christian terminology, like that the church is “God-breathed” — does she mean the Scriptures? (2 Timothy 3:16) — and not born of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4), should make the reader suspicious about her grasp of her subject.
We’re All Gods Now. The most heartbreaking part of Kamstra’s account of her loss of faith is the degree to which she never had it:
From the beginning of our religious indoctrination, especially in evangelical Christianity…falling in love with Jesus is intentional. As children, we’re encouraged to take those little pieces with the funny-feeling backs and place them on the felt board. From there, we mimic Jesus riding triumphantly on a donkey, or sitting beside a person with leprosy, or laughing with children, or dipping oodles of fish from a basket barely large enough to hold a loaf of bread, or…It’s endless. We then are told how Jesus is our father in heaven, always watching over us, always listening to our prayers, always protecting us from Satan. And remember, kids, “Jesus loved you so much that He died for you.”20
It should go without saying that Jesus is not “our father in heaven.” The Father is the Father, and the Son, Jesus, now sits at His right hand interceding for the church (Romans 8:34). He will one day come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead (John 14:3; Acts 10:42). Jesus is the Savior of the world, including the Savior of children, whom He admonished the disciples not to hinder, but that they should come to Him (Matthew 19:14). Even more, love is the heart of the gospel (John 13:34–35). It is not a matter of “our religious indoctrination.” On the contrary, the love of God is poured into the hearts of all believers through the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Tragically, Kamstra never heard the good news of the gospel. Instead, the religion of her childhood prepared her and her followers to spend “a lifetime existing in servitude to a religious system that convinces them they’re nothing without it.”21
The question of Jesus troubled Kamstra as long as she was in the church and long after she left it. Her bitterness about being invited into her church’s in-house ministry formation program, where she was used as a volunteer in essential programs and never given any real authority, became tangled up in her sense of call. As she left the church, she had to figure out what she believed. Ultimately, she found she couldn’t do without Jesus, though not as she had previously considered Him — the Savior of the world.
Rather, she explains, she “rescued Jesus from religious patriarchy and returned Him to my life story because He makes my spiritual journey more meaningful.”22 She still accepts the divinity of Jesus “because He said what is in Him is also in me. Who He was is also who I am. That means we are all Divine.”23 All the deconstructor needs to do is “embrace the parts of His story that are for the world and release the ones that oppress it.”24 Kamstra suggests how the reader might view Jesus in a way that makes sense for her. He might be useful as a personal Savior or a model for suffering, but one shouldn’t discount some traditionally heretical views of Jesus.25 Jesus could become a spiritual guide who leads one to embrace the Divine Feminine.26
Kamstra devotes a whole chapter to the Divine Feminine. Whoever you are, you can have the “energy” of the Divine Feminine or Masculine “ebb and flow” through your “lived experiences.” “Whether you identify as male, female, gender fluid, nonbinary, queer, trans, or any amazing color of the vibrant human rainbow,” she explains, “the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine swirl deep inside us, inviting us to show up as the complex, emotional, and empathetic humans that we are. Denying the presence of the Divine Masculine or the Divine Feminine within us creates an imbalance where frustration, bitterness, fits of outrage, or extreme bouts of depression arrive — and we don’t know why.”27
TikTok Can’t Save You. When I was a child, those who left the church often did so apologetically, drawing no attention to the fact. They might make an excuse or joke and change the subject when asked what happened. The fact that people leave is nothing new. The edges of every congregation are porous — people come and go depending on their level of belief, their sense of grievance, their desperation. What is new is the sense of bravery, that losing one’s faith is a noble act, worthy of praise and imitation.
The deconstructor is essentially an old-time apostate with a very modern social media following. The peculiarity of having a platform is insidious because the content producer can play the victim and the priest, the role that Christ inhabits, in a spiritually inverted frame.
Kamstra believes herself irreparably wounded by the church. For example, when she was a child, two elders came to her house to ask her if she was ready to be baptized. The encounter was awkward, and it seems that Kamstra felt bullied.28 Later, when she was on staff at a church, she was yelled at when she inadvertently interrupted a meeting. The offending person never apologized.29 Finally, even though she felt called to be a pastor, it became clear to her that her church would never accept that call. These and other small incidents comprise what Kamstra calls her “trauma.”
As the narrative progresses, however, the reader gets glimpses into the functionality of the various congregations of which Kamstra was a part. She became pregnant out of wedlock and was not shunned. On the contrary, when she was in a great deal of pain after giving birth, all the women of the church turned out to pray for her.30 As an adult, she was invited to participate in her church’s in-house training program.31 It seemed she was part of a vibrant community that trusted her.32
No, unless she is hiding something, it seems that Kamstra fell prey to the Internet age. Not well catechized at the local level, lacking a deep training in the Scriptures, entrusted with more responsibility and authority than she was capable of wielding, by nature — as many women are — a people pleaser, when it became socially acceptable to ask many questions without being interested in any of the answers, Kamstra “deconstructed.” It all came at a time when, on TikTok, she could amass a following of people who felt similarly disaffected, who wanted to soothe their troubled consciences.
This trend represents, I believe, both a failure and a consolation. The anemic catechesis of three generations of Christians is coming home for the holidays. A culture that no longer values Christianity will not reward anyone for going to church. It’s too bad that Kamstra, as a child, wasn’t given the opportunity to meet Jesus for herself but lived in the flannel board world that assumed that if children knew the answer to every question was “Jesus,” they would persist into adulthood with faith. It’s too bad that many “in-house” ministries did not strengthen faith. Instead, many of them across denominations became the seedbed of apostasy. And finally, it’s to our shame that authoritarianism, in many cases, was mistaken for good pastoring. When pastoring and preaching are properly exercised, the cases of women and unsuited men clamoring for position and authority are greatly minimized.
And yet, though perhaps it seems a meager consolation, Christians should expect to be slandered by those who once broke bread and sang praise choruses in the name of Jesus. When Jesus announced that He was the bread that came down from heaven that gives life to the world, all the crowds scattered, and He was left with the Twelve, and one of them would betray him (John 6:70). There is no reason to be discouraged that someone with a vast TikTok following bravely teaches others to leave the Kingdom of God. No, the best course is the usual one — pray for Karla Kamstra to meet Jesus and fall in love with Him. —Anne Kennedy
Anne Kennedy, MDiv, is the author of Nailed It: 365 Readings for Angry or Worn-Out People, rev. ed. (Square Halo Books, 2020). She blogs about current events and theological trends on her Substack, Demotivations with Anne.
NOTES
- Karla Kamstra (@revkarla), “@🎭🪷Goddess Mia🪷 @north_omaha_cat_lady @carol_solitarymagic #revkarla #hekate lovely — Billie Eilish & Khalid, Greenwood,” video, November 15, 2024, https://www.tiktok.com/@revkarla/video/7437518763139894570.
- Karla Kamstra (@revkarla), “I wear many hats. Spouse. Grandma. Mother. Animal welfare advocate. (Founder of a spay/neuter clinic) Gardener. Minister. Teacher. Human rights advocate. Social media demanded a level of commitment that isnt sustainable. Do not worry, Beloved. I’ll still be here but also in other spaces talking about other things that pull on my heart strings.,” video, December 14, 2024, https://www.tiktok.com/@revkarla/video/7448341935833599278.
- Karla Kamstra (@revkarla), “Yea #staytuned my content is about to change ##revkarla #happythanksgiving angel by the wings — solartunne, Greenwood,” video, November 27, 2024, https://www.tiktok.com/@revkarla/video/7442083371745971502.
- Karla Kamstra (@revkarla), “video credit @ Cara another interesting uhc video @Kay #CapCut #revkarla #unitedhealthcare original sound – Rev Karla Greenwood,” video, December 15, 2024, https://www.tiktok.com/@revkarla/video/7445011465075068206.
- Karla Kamstra, “Replying to @owlbgood #revkarla, original sound — Rev Karla,” Video, December 13, 2024, https://www.tiktok.com/@revkarla/video/7447985692367457582.
- Karla Kamstra, “Welcome Home,” accessed December 26, 2024, https://revkarla.com/.
- Karla Kamstra, “You’re Not Going to Hell: 3 Things to Assure You That Questioning Your Faith Is Not a Sin,” revkarla.com, accessed December 16, 2024, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c0x0KJFsBnNa7laTHAaVPDkR9EtxNZaG/view?_kx=0GLMCHXYCbqdjd1J3xcDH3lCoZ76Taa0Wp50tIU6Fbg.VcjrnZ.
- Karla Kamstra, “You’re Not Going to Hell.”
- Karla Kamstra, “You’re Not Going to Hell.”
- One Spirit Seminary, One Spirit Learning Alliance, accessed December 26, 2024, https://www.1spirit.org/one-spirit-seminary.
- Karla Kamstra, Deconstructing: Leaving Church, Finding Faith (New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2024), xvi.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 29–32.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 32.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 33.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 35.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 34.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 35.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 40.
- For an overview of Spong’s influence over and relationship with the church, see Jeff Walton’s article at the time of Spong’s death in 2021: “Bishop John Shelby Spong (1931–2021),” Juicy Ecumenism, September 14, 2021, https://juicyecumenism.com/2021/09/14/john-shelby-spong/.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 159–60.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 160.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 166.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 166.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 166.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 172.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 173.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 117.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 26–28.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 103–105.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 132–37.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 149–52.
- Kamstra, Deconstructing, 141.
