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Jen Hatmaker once taught the Bible. Now she’s selling deconstruction. Denny Burk, an evangelical scholar, calls it spiritual poison and urges believers to see the danger behind her shifting gospel.
Burk, a well-known evangelical professor, is sounding the alarm about influencer and author Jen Hatmaker, saying her brand of faith disregards biblical truth and promotes deconstruction to her audiences. Hatmaker was once a bestselling evangelical author and sought-after speaker whose books and live events shaped the faith journeys of millions of Christian women.
Be informed, not misled.
Hatmaker's fall began in 2016, when she publicly affirmed same-sex marriage and voiced support for other LGBTQ causes. She went on to embrace other progressive ideas, and today says she rejects much if not most of what she was taught as a child, adding, “I’m still a big fan of Jesus, but I guess I don’t like many of his folks.”
In a weekend interview with The New York Times, Hatmaker said she no longer attends church.
The Times had this to say:
What happens when you reach middle age and the very things that sustained you, that gave you structure and identity — that made you you — are gone?
Jen Hatmaker went through a drastic midlife crisis like that. Twice. Hatmaker, who is 51, had built a career as a Christian women’s influencer, best-selling author, and TV personality — all along modeling a lighthearted, relatable yet enviable family lifestyle for evangelical women. Then, about a decade ago, she went through a public shift away from some of her most conservative stances on things like gay marriage. That shift alienated a big part of her fan base and turned her from popular to pariah in the evangelical community. It also forced her to find a new audience and a new relationship with her faith — and develop some seriously thick skin.
Then, in 2020, Hatmaker discovered that her husband of 26 years was cheating on her. They divorced soon after that, and for a second time, she had to pick up the broken pieces of her past life and start over in a myriad of ways: as a professional, as a public figure, and as an independent person. Her upcoming book, “Awake: A Memoir,” which will be published on Sept. 23, marks the first time she has gone into detail publicly about that painful, heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful, process.
So, it's about selling her new book?
Of course.
But let's take a closer look at what Crosswalk published:
Denny Burk, professor of biblical studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the author of What Is the Meaning of Sex?, says Hatmaker’s public fall from the orthodox Christian faith has, tragically, influenced others.
“If Jen Hatmaker had quietly walked away from her faith, we probably wouldn’t be talking about her,” Burk said in a World Radio commentary. “But she didn’t do that. She still wants the attention of Christian women, and she would very much like to continue to peddle her wares to whomever will buy them. Only this time, she’s not selling discipleship. She’s selling deconstruction, a spiritual poison pill concealed in the rhetoric of therapy, freedom, and self-actualization.”
Burk added that “for only $69 dollars, Jen Hatmaker will show you exactly how to abandon Christ and His word” -- a reference to an online “Deconstruction + Reconstruction” course on Hatmaker’s website that explains: “Asking questions and going through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction is not something to be seen with shame or negativity.” The course even comes with a “Bible deconstruction worksheet.”
Michael Faust, in his Crosswalk article, quotes Burk: “She is telling people that they can be a ‘big fan of Jesus’ while looking down their noses at the body of Christ -- the church. She has turned the Biblical admonition on its head. First John 4:20 proclaims: ‘If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen."
Hatmaker’s deconstruction, Burk said, “is as complete and thorough an apostasy as I have ever seen.”
In the New York Times interview, Hatmaker criticized the abstinence movement of the 90s and early 2000s, saying purity culture and the True Love Waits campaign led to “a whole generation of young people absolutely freaked out around sex.”
She stopped attending church during the 2020 pandemic, as in-person gatherings shut down, and amid a painful divorce following her husband’s infidelity.
“By the time church started meeting again, and I went back to my own church that I had helped found, I could not shoulder everybody’s shock and pain and pity. I couldn’t handle it. So I stayed home, and I haven’t gone back,” she told the newspaper. “That’s not to say that I won’t ever. I don’t really know. But the organized-religion part of faith is not serving me right now.”
Hatmaker said her “faith is still what anchors me, what leads me, what compels me, what sustains me.”
“I had always deeply succeeded in the two institutions that kept me credible: church and marriage,” Hatmaker said. “Having lost one and disconnected myself from the other, I’ve discovered a faith that exists beautifully outside of all of that.”
Burk, though, says Hatmaker’s faith is not the faith of Christianity, but one of her own invention.
“Discerning followers of Christ will see through the ruse,” Burk said. “Tragically, many others won’t.”
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.
