By Andy Hale
For many people, deconstruction is not the end of faith—it is the beginning of asking more honest questions. But what comes after certainty collapses? How do we rediscover trust, community and even the language of faith after experiencing spiritual harm? This week on the CBF Podcast Conversation, Andy Hale sits down with author and scholar Dr. Tiffany Yecke Brooks to discuss her new book, To Rebehold the Stars: Reimagining Faith and Formation After Deconstruction. Together, they explore what it means to move beyond merely naming religious trauma and into the slow, hopeful work of spiritual reformation.
Drawing on literature, theology and years of listening to people rebuilding their lives after faith crises, Tiffany offers a vision of formation that doesn’t demand quick answers or easy certainty. Instead, she invites readers to rediscover God through curiosity, beauty, silence, embodied practices and communities committed to honesty and repair. Their conversation wrestles with difficult questions about religious language, belonging after betrayal and why faith often returns first as a posture before it becomes a set of beliefs.
Whether you’ve experienced deconstruction yourself, love someone who has, or simply long for a faith spacious enough to hold both doubt and hope, this conversation offers wisdom, compassion and encouragement. Tiffany reminds us that healing doesn’t require returning to who we once were. Instead, like emerging from a long night and lifting our eyes to the sky, faith can become the courageous act of learning to rebehold the stars.
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Andy Hale is the creator and host of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Podcast. Hale is the Associate Executive Coordinator of CBF North Carolina. He’s also served as CBF’s Church Start Specialist, the founding pastor of Mosaic Church of Clayton, and the senior pastor of University Baptist Church of Baton Rouge. Follow on Twitter @haleandy.