Beyond Deconstruction is “an expert’s guide to rehabbing religion in life-giving ways,” Beau Underwood avows in his book review for A Public Witness. It “reads like a love letter for intelligent and passionate people not to give up on faith, but to reimagine it for themselves.” Writing for Word & Way, Robert Cornwall says of author James McGrath, “He envisions this reconstruction process as a do-it-yourself project” for folks “to rebuild their faith into something more expansive.”
“The term ‘deconstruction’ has recently become something of a buzzword,” Jonathan Foye explains in the Uniting Church of Australia’s Insights. “It refers to people questioning, and even unlearning, the faith they grew up with,” which they do in order to “find, and own, their beliefs for themselves.” Trouble is, Underwood explains, “Deconstruction leaves you with a pile of rubble.” But McGrath, in “this pensive guide”—that’s Publishers Weekly’s description—tells how Christians “can refashion their faith,” can shape “a more flexible, individualized faith.”
“[H]aving a person like James McGrath accompany them”—those left floundering—”will be a great blessing,” Cornwall is sure. Chair of New Testament Language and Literature at Indiana’s Butler University, McGrath, a Patheos network blogger, is an award-winning scholar and educator.
Beyond Deconstruction: Building a More Expansive Faith
By James McGrath
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2026