In Deconversions, Paul Harrison takes readers on a four-decade faith journey through evangelical Christianity, showing the cycles of construction and deconstruction that allowed his beliefs to change and grow. Spurred on in early childhood by the death of his father, Paul began to wonder if there was a God and an afterlife, which led him to become a born again Christian as a teen. There he was introduced to a world of certainty, zeal, tongue speaking, faith healers, creationism, and belief in the return of Jesus in the near future. Losing faith after high school and becoming an agnostic, Paul was influenced by popular skeptics. After a series of seemingly supernatural encounters, he rededicated his life to Jesus and entered a world where hearing God's voice, receiving prophetic words, and sign-seeking for guidance were normative. Later he explored postmodern and emerging Christianity, mysticism, and the New Monasticism. Paul settled on atheism just as the New Atheist movement hit its stride, but the more he bolstered his atheism, the more belief in God grew in proportion. Like many who deconvert from their faith, Paul felt severe displacement, disillusionment and loss of purpose-left torn between two worlds, neither of which made sense, wondering if he would ever find a coherent sense of self and direction again.

Paul references ex-cult and ex-fundamentalist writers, revealing how he learned to live with this tension, and invites readers to explore the uniqueness of their own spiritual journeys and what it means to them.