de-conversion

The Christ-Centered Marriage

As I cruised the atheosphere this morning, I came across Possummomma’s 400th post (congratulations, Pmomma!). It includes a segment in which she discusses the effects of her acceptance of atheism on her marriage:

I know your husband is an agnostic-Catholic. How is that working in your home? Was he unhappy about your change in beliefs? If my girl friend came home and said she’d stopped believing in God, I don’t know if I would be happy with it.

Pdaddy took it well. We’d both voiced criticisms and doubts…I was just the first of the two of us to put time into researching those doubts. And, it didn’t change the basis for our relationship. I know some theist couples base their relationship on serving god or putting God first, but we were never like that. And, our children and friendship (between p-daddy and I) has always been the foundation of our marriage so atheism wasn’t a deal breaker.

That passage took me back nearly 30 years, to the time when the deacon and I were engaged and envisioning a lifetime together as faithful servants of God. In our conversations, we always affirmed that God/Jesus had to be our first love. He would be the hub of our marriage…

Continue Reading 39 comments May 3, 2008

Lunch With A Liberal Christian

I had the pleasure of sharing a leisurely lunch recently with a Christian friend whom I had not seen in a couple of months. The lengthy interval between our meetings was a radical change from the time, not very long ago, when we saw each other twice a week: at Wednesday evening choir rehearsals and Sunday morning worship services. The responsibility for this lack of contact does not lie solely with me: Joanne quit the church about six weeks before I quit the choir.

As we exchanged emails and phone calls over the past several months, it became clear that both of us have been thinking about similar issues. The first, which I discussed in a recent post, was burnout. Church musicians, many of whom are volunteers, typically sacrifice a lot of time and energy to keep up their involvement with their musical groups. It’s not unusual for them to burnout. No doubt, our pastors felt blindsided when Joanne and I announced, within six weeks of each other and with absolutely no collusion, that we needed to step out of the church and/or choir. This may explain, partially, the pastors’ less-than-supportive response when my resignation letter arrived less than two months after Joanne’s.

The second set of issues best falls under the heading of beliefs. Regular readers here know that I settled most, if not all, of these issues when I embraced atheism last summer. Joanne’s journey has not been, thus far, this clear-cut. Nevertheless, she has come quite a long way in her personal growth…

Continue Reading 43 comments April 18, 2008

Would You Please Reschedule Your Crisis?

Four months ago, just a few weeks before I came out to my husband about my atheism, I decided to quit the church choir. I did not mind the weekly rehearsals. In fact, I like the choir members and enjoyed getting together with them every week. I also didn’t mind playing the piano for them on Sunday mornings. I quit for two other reasons.

First, while I was willing to commit to attending weekly rehearsals and Sunday services, I was not willing to add any extra religious gigs to my agenda. For example, several church leaders spent several weeks in the fall playing with the idea of getting the church musicians involved in some sort of evangelistic outreach in the church’s neighborhood. Sorry guys, count me out of that one. I was not disappointed when it didn’t happen. Another one was an invitation to travel to a church in Maryland - on a Saturday night - to sing two songs at a “Concert of Prayer.” Right. You want me to drive an hour there, hang around in a prayer meeting (those really get the juices flowing) for one or two hours, then spend another hour driving home - because you need me to play the piano for about eight minutes. Needless to say, I didn’t make it to that one…

Continue Reading 38 comments March 13, 2008

What’s So Bad About Religion?

I’ve been debating with myself for several days about whether I should write this post. Since some others bloggers have dealt with this question quite effectively recently, I haven’t felt that I would have anything useful to add to the conversation. I changed my mind when I read Brian’s recent heart wrenching post. For the religious folks who wonder why nonbelievers care at all about religion and why we can’t we just respect believers’ beliefs and leave them alone, I offer the following thoughts.

The first problem that I have with religious beliefs is that, as Greta Christina pointed out recently, acting on the basis of false beliefs can lead to ill-conceived, even harmful, behavior and decisions. Take, for example, cases of snake handlers who die from snakebites, or Jehovah’s Witnesses who die for want of blood transfusions - both of which have occurred in the USA within the past several months. One may argue that such beliefs are misunderstandings of scriptural injunctions, but to so argue merely cedes my point. Yes, I agree, such beliefs are misunderstandings, but those misunderstandings are founded upon what believers have read in scriptures and they are founded upon traditions that have been passed down to successive generations for millennia. Quite simply, the misunderstood scriptures would not be taken so seriously, and the errant teachings that have been transmitted through the ages would not exist, were it not for the religious contexts that gave birth to them and continue to nourish them…

Continue Reading 66 comments February 17, 2008

Christian Education or Indoctrination?

The focus of my last post, I weep for the children who are victimized by their spiritual leaders, was about various ways that churches manipulate, and sometimes even abuse, children. The second of my two examples, the Nigerian Witch Hunts, was a clearcut case in which thousands of children are being horrifically abused by not only their pastors, but also their parents, who themselves have been browbeaten into believing that their children are witches.

The first example I cited, the one to which I devoted the bulk of that post, was the story of the confirmation service of a seven-year old girl into an evangelical Christian church. As I observed the ceremony, a comment by the officiating pastor made me ponder the moral implications of what the girl may have been taught in preparation for the ceremony, which includes the following “promise”:

Having asked God for forgiveness, I will trust him to keep me good. Because Jesus is my Savior from sin, I will be his loving and obedient child and will try to help others to follow him. I promise not to use intoxicating drink, harmful drugs or tobacco. I promise to pray, to read my Bible and, by His help, to lead a life that is clean in thought, word and deed…

Continue Reading 22 comments January 2, 2008

I weep for the children who are victimized by their spiritual leaders

Earlier this month, one of the elements of the church service I attended was the confirmation of Chloe, a seven-year-old girl, as a junior member of the congregation. This is the first of two confirmations that my denomination typically holds: the first for youngsters, the second for adolescents no younger than fourteen.

The guest pastor who was conducting the ceremony noted that, prior to the service, the girl’s mother had asked, several times, “Are you sure that you’ve repented of your sins and asked Jesus to forgive you?” The child answered affirmatively, and her mother and the pastor were satisfied that she was indeed ready to be confirmed.

As the pastor recounted that story, I had to suppress a shudder. I could not help thinking, “The child is seven years old! What sins could she possibly have committed that would require repentance and divine forgiveness?” I also realized, to my horror, that in order to have learned something about the doctrines of repentance, forgiveness and salvation, Chloe may also have learned something about the corollary doctrines of human depravity and hell…

Continue Reading 40 comments December 27, 2007