I’ve been meaning to submit this story for a long time. However, whenever I feel the urge to testify regarding my former life as a born-again evangelical fundamentalist christian, I head to my blog and throw a little piece of my former self onto my Hot-For-Jesus Former Fundie site. After a year and a half of blogging with both a satirical and serious angle about my Jesus days, I realize over and over again that no matter how much I write, I have barely put a dent in my story. However, the testimony/story-telling helps me deprogram as my christian past continually loses its power over me.

Currently empathetic atheist with a appreciation for human wisdom whether pagan, christian, or buddhist (et. al), I grew up in a born-again household. We attended many, many churches, but were most comfortable among the Evangelical Free and Baptists. I’ll never forget the spurt of going up over the Canadian border every Sunday to attend a Mennonite Church. (wonderful ppl, btw)

I went forward and was baptized while in late elementary. I started singing for Jesus about that time and eventually became a camp counselor at a Baptist Bible camp, leading children to Christ. I faced doubts and strengthened my faith while at an Evangelical Lutheran college.

After college, I quickly left behind my english teaching career to pursue music and theatre in the Big Cities. But there was a catch. I filtered every artistic endeavour through my belief system. More than once I turned down artistic opportunites because the message conflicted with my theology. I wrote and performed Jesus music because I truly believed that my talent/curse was meant to be used to praise him. Never one for witnessing to total strangers or even friends, I found my music gave me a way to tell of Christ’s love and salvation without having to interact one on one. I was semi-shy offstage, but loved being onstage. I was determined to use my gifts for the glory of God and thankful that he had given me a platform on which to praise him.

Then about 7 years ago, a veil lifted. I got in a car accident that woke me up to my priorities about Life. I left my faith behind almost immediately. There was no in-between stage for me, and I pity, and am in awe, of christians who spend years and years agonizing over the “should I stay or should I go” question. I got out and have no regrets.

I know how believers respond to my leaving the faith. Who hasn’t heard the “you were tested and failed miserably” or “you were never a true believer to begin with” or “once saved, always saved?” The list goes on and on and on.

I blog about Jesus to help myself deprogram. I also encourage all de-converted to not be afraid to actively seek professional help or find a healthy support system of nonbelievers. I know what it’s like to lose the sense of community that belonging to christianity, a church, a family provides. I know what it’s like to experience vertigo while taking the leap from faith to solid ground.

I went from constantly censoring and double guessing every creative instinct to allowing myself to say pretty much anything I want. The blog also gives me an opportunity to practice imperfect writing. So yes, to some my attention to the sexual attractiveness of Jesus is pure blasphemy. I would like to say that being hot for Jesus is merely a schtick. After all, every good entertainer knows you gotta have a gimmick. But, honestly, though I’m quite familiar with the theology that questions Jesus’ historical hotness, I also want to publicly embrace with humor and honesty the fact that without a sexy god like Jesus, christianity would have been SOL.

I could yack for many more paragraphs about “hottie Jesus eye candy and indepth analysis of life before, during and after JC and company,” but suffice it to say, everyone has a story to tell, and I’m glad to see so many people have the courage to talk about their lack of faith, and what it was like to break up with Jesus. Thank you to the de-conversion site for creating a safe space for some of us to once again tell our story, chin up, loud and Proud.

Here’s to hoping that we not only remember to be compassionate, but to remember to laugh out loud at our former selves.

- Xtine
(www.hotforjesusformerfundie.blogspot.com)

07/02/09  [A draft written in some haste, so bear with me if it's not polished.]

Why is the death of a pet so hard on us animal lovers?

Today, in my home, we are facing the death of my daughter’s much beloved, 8-year-old calico cat Chip. She was my daughter’s 8^th birthday present. Of course she’s much too young to die. We expected many more years with her sweet, purry, nature. Now this beautiful creature will pass from our lives before sunset. For whatever reason her kidneys have failed, and there is nothing that can be done. It quite took us by surprise. We have a photo of her walking about in the yard less than a week ago and she seemed OK then.

The pretty calico above is Chip

Today Chip is here. She’s so lethargic. We’ll take her to be put down once the summer school day is over and everyone is home. Right now we are so quiet. At various times we sit down and pet the little sweetheart and tell her how sorry we are for this, and tell her how much she is loved and always has been. We think how shocked we feel that one who so recently was wrestling with her fellow cat could now be so obviously ill and dying.

How and why does all this hurt so?

I think it’s in part because good pets are always decent and good. Oh sure, they have their quirks. They may chew on things, and knock things over, and not always come when you call.

But when you’ve had a lousy day, they’re there. You can just pet them and talk at them, and they just let you. Maybe they nuzzle you, or purr, or lay in your lap or at your feet. They don’t care if you had a bad day, or if your ugly, or anything. They accept you. They ask only food, shelter, and a little attention and kindness.

Like few things in this world, you can count on a good pet like few other things in the world.

That’s part of the pain of losing I guess. You’ve always known you could pet, cuddle, and enjoy this loving creature. And now he or she is gone.

Never to see that beautiful, mostly white, calico coat. Never to hear her loud purrs. Never again to touch her sort fur. Never to have her nuzzle a face or hand. Never to look into those big, yellow/green eyes.

And it’s one more thing that reminds you that nothing on earth lasts forever. When your beloved pet goes, you miss them so and at the same time there’s an awareness that everything else will go too. You can’t count on wrapping yourself in your job, or friends, or family, or house, or sports club, or anything; because by and by bits of pieces of it will all pass away.

Losing that precious little beastie hurts because you’ve lost something lovely and lovable, and you can’t help but know that everything else is impermanent too.

That explains a lot of religion. A desire for something permanent that you can rely on, no matter what happens in this life. It’s part of why religions have always been, and always will be, part of human life. We’re all justifiably insecure. We want an anchor.

Wish there really was one.

Meanwhile, we are going to mourn and miss Chip. Poor, little, loveable sweetheart.

- LeoPardus

I have been reading articles here for awhile now, intending to share my own de-conversion story eventually. I must say, I’ve been impressed with the tone of this site. It seems like a great place for thoughtful interaction.

For someone who is just now publicly “coming out” from a religious background as hopelessly fundamental and conservative as mine, it’s encouraging to find a faithless friend or two who can relate to my own experience. I hope that by sharing my own story, I can be of some encouragement to you as well, wherever you happen to be in your life.

Here we go…

The Missionary Kid

My story begins in the tropical jungle of north-central Brazil, where I was born and where I spent the majority of my childhood growing up as a missionary kid. My dad was a high school teacher, and my family lived on the campus of a boarding school that served to educate kids whose parents were off spreading the Christian Gospel. Some of these parents were Bible translators living with Indian tribes, others were support staff stationed in different cities in Brazil. Our little school was where they sent their kids to get an education. It was only a small school—during my time there, the student body probably averaged around 40 or so students every year, from first grade all the way through high school.

But I’ve gotta say, it was a pretty sweet place to grow up! Year-round tropical weather, jungle for camping and exploring as far as you could walk, and the murky Amazon River for fishing and swimming. If it sounds like a little boy’s paradise, that’s because it was. I learned from a very young age to love the sport of soccer (Brazilians like to say that “God plays soccer”). I had the chance to visit primitive Indian tribes. I managed to acquire a conversational level of Portuguese, even though we were somewhat isolated from Brazilian influence and culture. For example, to reach the city of Manaus, where we got our supplies, we had to travel by boat to a nearby village that had road access and then take a bus or taxi into the main city.

We did have interaction with the Brazilians around us, but it wasn’t quite the same as growing up completely immersed in their culture. One form of contact was a Sunday morning outreach ministry with a small community downriver. And we would often invite local soccer teams to come play soccer and volleyball games with us. But there was something so irreconcilably foreign about us. English was our default language. To be honest, we were our own little missionary community, a mostly-American boarding school that looked very much like a colony in a strange land.

My religious upbringing was very conservative, to put it nicely. Lots of people can say the same thing, I know. I don’t need to go into all the details. Let’s just say that at 25, I still have some trouble relating to the opposite sex because of the crazy legalistic restrictions that carefully crafted a pretty little Christian bubble around me as I grew up.

My background also added a certain amount of cultural confusion to the whole fundamentalism schtick. Like I said, our school was significantly isolated, enough to make me realize (much later in life) that I really couldn’t call myself a true Brazilian, even though I was born in Manaus and therefore possess full citizenship, voter and taxpayer cards, and military registration papers. I remember when I was eighteen, going into a building with a bunch of teenaged Brazilian guys I didn’t know, in order to get myself dismissed from mandatory military service. I was nervous, scared, and very uncertain. I was the only guy with white skin. I was the only one who got laughed at by the whole crowd when the uniformed officer called out my name and completely butchered it beyond recognition. Because he was Brazilian and couldn’t pronounce my American name.

I really wasn’t Brazilian. But what about American? I was only partly American, due to the almost complete ignorance regarding American culture that I grew up in. Two passports, one person, no country… So what was I?

Just a missionary kid, I guess, whose real culture was a uniquely structured boarding school sub-culture.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Growing up, all of this was okay with me. I had a loving family and plenty of fun stuff to do. We never lacked anything we needed. I was happy, and I grew up feeling somewhat privileged to experience the things I did. I have nothing negative at all to say about my parents, who nurtured me well and raised me up with plenty of love. I want to specifically point this out, because I know other ex-religious types who come from dysfunctional family backgrounds and were motivated to leave the faith for that reason. My experience wasn’t like that. My deconversion had nothing to do with any kind of abuse.

And while I’m at it, let me also point out that I’m not aiming to undermine any particular person at all, and I’m definitely not intending to direct any sort of bitter anger toward the wonderful little missionary school I grew up at. I used to be bitter. I’m not that way anymore—now, I’m just more willing to be vocal about my (un)beliefs. If people are offended, so be it, but I’m very much open to fair and respectful discussions.

Getting back on subject, my deconversion—which didn’t have anything to do with any sort of abuse—did have a lot to do with my experience as a missionary kid, which is why I took the time to write something about it.

The God Experience

I don’t know how many missionary kids struggle with self-identity. I’ve talked to some who certainly did. I know others who really don’t seem to have any problems adjusting at all. Good for them. I remember crying behind closed doors as I read a book called Third Culture Kids. I mostly kept my struggles to myself, but they were always very real. A cautious introvert, I usually chose to suffer by myself.

I eventually realized that I wasn’t much of a Brazilian because of the situation I grew up in. I wanted to be one; I wanted to have an identity, and the only identity I wanted was the Brazilian one—mainly because I simply could not relate to my American peers once I came to the States for Bible school.

And I really didn’t try that hard to relate, because by the time I had graduated from high school in Brazil, I was entirely convinced that the fundamental religion I’d been taught was the one and only Truth. It was part of my identity. I was a Christian. I was a Christian missionary kid, for the love of God! Far away from Brazil (which at the time still felt like my true home), I refused to call snowy, frozen Wisconsin anything but my temporary Bible school adventure. I fully intended to return to Brazil as a missionary.

But my ideas about God and life were too extreme even for most of the Christian friends I made in the States after high school, as I quickly discovered. My collection of unrealistic beliefs, combined with the social confusion I was feeling due to my radically different cultural background, incited some debilitating struggles.

The God experience, which up until my first year of college had been nothing more than casual acquiescence to doctrinal statements, now became a legalistic drive in a desperate effort to justify the things I knew to be true and carve out a place of acceptance for myself. I couldn’t relate to the culture I lived in. I was far away from the little sub-culture I was comfortable in. So I looked for God more sincerely than I ever had before. And I tried to do it all by myself.

For awhile I thought I had found him. I thought my daily devotions and prayers were what fueled the spiritual life. But things never seemed to line up in my head. I was aware of a tension early on, a strained feeling of exasperation as I racked up the brownie points with God. I was doing everything I had been taught to do in order to find God, and I could never seem to get as far with God as other people around me.

To be honest, I was a hopeless legalist. My religion was one of doctrinal statements and petty debates about theological foundations. My God was a powerless God. Technically, as is the case with so many fundamentalists, my god was not God but the Bible.

But once again, I’m getting ahead of myself. If I wasn’t finding God, I thought, then maybe I didn’t understand my doctrine correctly. And the result of weighing that one thought was pretty much the initiation of a long, despairing search for doctrinal cohesion that ended in apostasy.

And as I moved on through Bible school, eventually transferring from Wisconsin to a college in Chicago, I became more and more disillusioned with God—simply because the personal, all-powerful, loving God of theology was actually none of these things for me in my own life. My experience of God was nonexistent, and I was finally beginning to realize how incredibly problematic this was for my entire belief system. My God left me empty and hopeless. I could not find a reasonable place to stop my theological investigation, a place from which I could build a good solid doctrinal foundation—every doctrine debunked led directly to another one that had to be questioned. God never stepped in to help me out, so what was I supposed to do? It’s not like I didn’t pray for help.

My incessantly inquisitive mind kept right on inquiring, and it carried me straight into the darkest time of my entire life. And as I came up with question after question, the fear of condemnation always kept me from mentioning the thoughts that burned inside of me.

A Nihilistic Angst

My experience with depression started about the time I finished my studies at the Wisconsin Bible school. I lived in an apartment with some friends for a year, trying to make sense of what in the world was happening with my life. I had kept an infrequent journal in high school, but now I started writing a lot. Whenever I was depressed, I wrote. I basically wrote to stay alive. The only times I didn’t write were 1) the rare times I was really happy, and 2) the times when the simple task of writing required more motivation than my depressed mind could muster. Usually, writing was a very practical method of staying on top of things emotionally, because I could say whatever I wanted and keep it all to myself. Because I was able to write, I was able to talk myself out of all my suicidal thoughts and maintain the minimal amount of passion for life.

Because of my tendency towards legalism, I had gradually developed some pretty severe feelings of guilt, inconsistency, and failure because I simply could not live up to what I knew was right. I was evil. I was a sinner. I was supposed to be perfect, but I wasn’t. In time, I realized that these feelings were direct results of my religion, but not before discovering what it really meant to be depressed.

There’s nothing quite like it. I rode the roller coaster for awhile. Up and down. Climbing to spiritual highs, where I thought I was in close communion with God; sliding down to demonic depths that rocked my fragile faith and spun me into doubt and despair. I went back and forth between striving to believe in God and viciously hating him. I interpreted my struggle with depression through the fractured, darkened vision of a religion that led me to believe I was under demonic attack.

One memory from my time in Wisconsin stands out sharply in my mind. I was in my apartment, trying to deal with another bout of depression that had been bothering me all day and keeping me from getting anything done at all. As it grew worse, I became convinced that a very evil presence was with me in the room. I felt that something very evil was happening. I remember lying on my back on my roommate’s bed, staring at the ceiling, writhing around as the yellow lamp light seemed to fill the room, blurring my vision. I thought the ceiling was getting farther and farther away from me. And I knew right then that a demon was there, right next to me.

I don’t remember how it ended. I think the evil effect gradually died down and I eventually went to bed. But I felt this evil on a couple more occasions as well. Even as I moved on in life and transferred to the school in Chicago, I was still clinging to the idea that my depression was only a spiritual battle, and that I would conquer it one day. Right before I moved to Chicago, I experienced another session with despair. Here I was, getting ready to start at the school that would eventually award me my baccalaureate, and I was wondering if I should just kill myself instead. A fine situation for a Christian to be in!

As I continued my education, my investigation of Christian doctrine also continued. I was constantly reading extra-curricular material and writing down ideas, thoughts, and personal rants. The amount of disagreement I found among theologians and philosophers was quickly weighing down my mind (which doesn’t understand philosophy very well anyways), and causing me to ask very practical questions about the meaning of life and the ability of my Christian fundamental religion to really answer any of my questions satisfactorily. This is why I became disillusioned with God—I was sickened by all the petty debates and strained theo-philosophical arguments, which generally offered nothing to a mind starving for anything truly practical.

And all this time, God never spoke to me or helped me, even when I asked. Soon I started treating him like I treated most everybody else—I just stopped asking for help.

I could go on endlessly by listing questions that I was asking and not getting any answers for, but that’s not really necessary here. The most basic failures of my religion from my point of view were that 1) it simply could not offer purpose-giving answers to life’s questions, and 2) it often bluntly refused to even try to give those answers. I examined cessationism, I examined inerrancy, I researched eschatology. Everything I’d been taught was quickly scrapped. Doctrine after doctrine died a hopeless death, and I became a heretic in hiding.

As I entered my last year of Bible school, I was finally stabilizing both emotionally and intellectually. The intensity of my depression was waning and slowly transforming into a sort of nihilistic angst, prompted by my increasingly liberal theological decisions and the tiny, conservative Christian bubble in which those decisions were doomed to be housed, at least until I finished my degree program. Over time, I had realized that my struggles with doubt and despair were very much connected to both my cultural background and my fundamentalist upbringing. Before I even graduated, I knew I was no longer a Christian, and could never return to the faith.

Because all I wanted was something practical to help me live a normal life that everyone else seemed to be living. All I needed was the freedom to enjoy what normal people enjoyed. All I craved was release from the years of tension and hypocrisy that had followed me across thousands of miles of jungle, ocean, and snow-covered, frozen Midwestern landscapes.

And that’s my basic story. It’s been an interesting ride so far. I still have to deal with depression, but it’s nothing like the old familiar darkness. And the desperate writing that fueled my passion for life turned into a creative hobby that will stay with me until the day I die a happy death, free from the God who actually led me to consider suicide.

Now that I’ve rejected Christ, the joy that Christians always talked about experiencing is finally mine.

Faith failed me, but now I am saved by works.

Ancient manuscripts confused me and misled me, so now I write my own Scriptures.

And since turning my back on God, I’ve been amazed by how much new hope and meaning I’ve been able to find. My life without God is, without a doubt, the best life I’ve ever had.

Thanks for reading! Your thoughts are anticipated and appreciated.

- Brandt (guest contributor)
The Jesting Fool

The pictures I drew of my home, when I was a child, showed the typical square house and triangle roof with a thick strip of green across the bottom of the page and a similar strip of blue at the top. After all, grass is green and found under our feet, and the sky is blue and found high above our heads.

I asked no questions about whether what I drew matched what could be seen if I were to walk outside; I simply drew what everyone knew to be true.

A little older, I sat with my crayons in the back of the family station wagon and looked out the window toward the horizon. The clear, blue sky was not simply above me, but came all the way down to meet the golden, yellow fields we drove past. I drew a picture of a house, in the middle of a blank piece of paper. Then I used up half of my blue and my green crayons as I coloured ground and sky until they met each other behind the house.

I didn’t ask why I saw no blue close around me if the sky truly met the ground; I just drew what I thought I saw.

I joined Air Cadets while in high school, and I got to fly above the clouds. I looked at the patchwork pattern of fields below me, and the curious shapes of the tops of nearby clouds. I was in utter awe.

I never asked why the blue of the sky was still at a distance, even though I was above the clouds. I never thought about why there was no blue between myself and the clouds, or myself and the ground. I knew the sky was blue, and never thought about it, even while flying in the sky.

As an adult, it became my job to teach others what I knew. Students never ask the questions I expect, so I always feel the need to over-prepare. One day, I prepared myself to teach that the sky was blue, and began to think of all the questions and challenges I might face. The sky is blue, of course. You can go outside and see for yourself, except when the sky is overcast with clouds, or when the sun is setting. The sky is not blue at night, of course, and when you go up into the sky the blue is still above you or ahead of you instead of all around you.

As my thoughts chased themselves around my head, I realized that I did not know as much as I thought I had. I began to try to research questions such as “Why is the sky blue?” or “How high is the sky?” or even, “Is the sky blue?” The research was harder and more time-consuming than I’d imagined. I worked far into the night, each question leading to another question instead of the simple answers that satisfied me as a child.

Finally, I walked outside and looked up. There wasn’t a speck of blue to be seen. There was only darkness, generously sprinkled with dots of light. I gazed at the stars, and thought of each as a sun, some with their own planets in orbit. I imagined I could see straight out and see other planets, solar systems, and galaxies.

It suddenly struck me that there was nothing standing between myself and infinity.

For the first time in my life, I began to wonder if there was any such thing as a sky.

~ Quester

I was raised Catholic though my parents were hardly devout. Looking back, I sometimes wonder why they brought us to church at all. I can only assume it was out of some kind of unspoken obligation to their parents. I received my first communion, was an altar boy and felt a certain degree of closeness toward God. At the very least I never questioned that He was real, even though I frequently got into trouble for acting out in Sunday school. My family attended church dutifully, if not faithfully, until I was confirmed in sixth grade, at which point we stopped going altogether.

I tell you this so you’ll know, I didn’t de-convert because of overbearing parents who left a bad impression of my religion. Even though I was initially “forced” into the church, when I started going back at the age of seventeen, it was entirely my decision. An easy one at that. Fear of Hell drove me into the pews. That’s the one thing Catholics (and later, I would realize, all Christians) are really good at—putting the fear of eternal damnation into you, just in case God’s love wasn’t enough. But once I came back, I was in all the way. I went to confession, received communion and prayed my Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s every single night. I met with my priest on several occasions. He was a good and saintly man, and he comforted and encouraged me in my faith while at the same time challenging me to go deeper.

I will always view that summer before college as the time when my faith was at its strongest, its most unshakeable. I read the Catechism. I stopped cursing. I received communion every week (sometimes several times) and went to confession as often as possible. As the ultimate act of devotion for a seventeen-year-old boy, I even gave up masturbation once I read it was a “mortal sin.” I had zero doubt I was on the right path and I couldn’t believe there were people in this world who didn’t believe in God.

Despite going to an incredibly liberal college in an incredibly liberal city, my faith remained strong, though I did begin to compromise on certain “social issues”. I drank, I cursed, I had gay friends. The masturbation thing went out the window after six months, as eventually did the no sex before marriage thing. By the time I graduated, you could probably have labeled me as just a general “theist.” Though I still identified myself as Catholic and continued to attend mass every Sunday, my general outlook on religion was that it didn’t matter which god you had faith in, so long as you had faith in something.

Then I met a girl. Her dad was an Evangelical preacher. Curious, I went to his church and was blown away by the service. The preaching. The music. The people. When Catholic Mass is all you’ve ever known, going to a church where the songs are fast, where the sermon is engaging, and where the people look genuinely happy to be there, is like a breath of fresh air. Of course, mixed in with all that came a whiff of sourness, since, according to my new girlfriend’s father, Jesus was the only way to God. The only way to Heaven. All other ways, by default, led to Hell. Throw in a couple of comments about the evils of homosexuality and I suddenly wondered if all that music and clapping were just pretty dressings on something otherwise ugly.

And yet, something in the way my future father-in-law preached a personal relationship with Jesus rang true to my soul. In the Catholic Church of my youth, God and Jesus were impersonal figures, entities you approached with solemnity via a priest or a pre-written prayer. The idea of going to God with boldness, with songs of praise, with a prayer you made up on the spot seemed somehow more… real. More true. I still couldn’t stomach the idea that so many people would be going to Hell simply because they’d picked the “wrong god”. But I was willing to table that feeling for the moment in order to figure out if Jesus really was “the Way, the Truth and the Life.” A few months later, I came up for my first altar call and asked Jesus into my heart.

I tell you this so you’ll know, I didn’t de-convert because the conviction of God made me run and hide in my own sin. When I became an Evangelical Christian, it was a conscious decision, something I did despite the parts that felt wrong. I recall having a conversation with a highly spiritual friend around this time who said I was becoming close-minded in my attitude toward religion. Even now, I tend to disagree. For the first time in my life my mind was opening to the possibility that maybe God really did only have one straight and narrow path. My friend said she refused to believe that any God would send people to Hell. To which I responded, “If God is an eternal and sovereign being, don’t you think He is who He is irrespective of what you think? Irrespective of whether or not you like it? Irrespective of whether or not it makes sense?”

I started reading the Bible for the first time in my life and the first thing I noticed was how wrong the Catholics had gotten it. Things like the divinity of Mary, the origin of the papacy, their theories concerning end times… none of it, as near as I could tell, was biblically based. The realizations were encouraging. Now that I was doing the work I could actually see results. At church I sang with feeling. I listened to sermons with rapt attention. When I prayed, I prayed with all my might. I spent a good deal of time online in Christian forums, asking questions and exploring my faith. A month before my wedding, I proved my commitment to Jesus by being baptized, and I looked forward to the day when the Holy Spirit Itself would baptize me, causing me to speak in tongues. I still had a hard time getting over the whole “Jesus or Hell” dogma, but I simply put faith in God and trusted that He would reveal the wisdom I needed when the time was right.

I tell you this so you’ll know, I didn’t de-convert because I refused to seek God where He was. As irony would have it, it was the very act of seeking a deeper knowledge of Him that eventually led me away from the faith. As I read my Bible, I would make notes about things that struck me, things that spoke to me, and things that confused me. Especially things that confused me. A pious man of God gave his daughters to an angry mob to be raped? God encouraged Hebrew warriors to slaughter every man, woman and child, but keep the virgins for themselves? David had how many wives? How many whores? How many egregious sins? And yet he was a man after God’s own heart?

But the most damaging passage of all came from the Gospel of Luke, where the writer gives the genealogy of Jesus all the way back to Adam. To Adam! The first man. It didn’t take a math whiz to realize there weren’t enough generations between Jesus and Adam to account for all of human history. I’d always assumed the Bible never really mentioned anything about the origins of humankind beyond the account in Genesis. I figured, if anything, it was just a bunch of vague fables and symbolic allegories that you could never really prove or refute. Yet here they were, providing us with a definitive timeline that even a seventh grade Western Civ student could identify as false.

I asked several “seasoned Christians” about the passage and they gave me some answers that weren’t really answers: “there’s a gap between Genesis 1 and 2… a day to the Lord is as a thousand years… we don’t know how long Adam and Eve were in the garden.” And when I asked what I considered to be natural follow-up questions, they responded the way one might deal with a petulant child. They’d tell me with a huff that I just needed to have faith, or that questions of origins “had no bearing on salvation.” Which struck me as the worst kind of cop out. After all, if even one verse in the inerrant Word of God could be called into question, how could you trust any of it?

This happened a lot over the next few years. Especially with pastors and people who fancied themselves biblical scholars. If something confused me, I could get in perhaps three questions (four if they were really patient) before they’d throw up their hands, assume I was being willfully difficult and end the discussion by telling me to pray on it, or by recommending a book by a Christian author… which usually did no better a job of answering my question than they had.

Mind you, I was never the kind of person who needed every confusing thing spelled out in order to believe. I understood that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” In a lot of cases, I found the questions to be kind of exciting. For instance, who were these “sons of God” who could supposedly impregnate human women? What did the prophecies really say about the timing of the Rapture? Why did Satan rebel against God in the first place? After all, no matter how much pride you have, nobody picks a fight unless they’re pretty sure they can win. Speculating on questions like these actually fueled my spiritual curiosity and encouraged me to dig deeper.

Still, it did bother me that the Bible disagreed externally with science and history. Evolution aside, the Old Testament writers certainly seemed to be saying the earth was flat and the sun arced around it. And wasn’t it worrisome that no contemporary writers even mentioned Jesus or any of the miracles that put Judea into such an uproar? How does raising Lazarus from the dead not catch the attention of at least one historian? For that matter, how did it not catch the attention of the other three gospel writers? Turns out, what bothered me most was how the Bible disagreed internally with itself. Explain it away however you want, the four Gospels do give differing accounts of the crucifixion. Follow the footnotes whenever Jesus fulfills a prophesy and you realize that, quite often, the prophetic verse had nothing to do in context with whatever Jesus did to fulfill it.

Those questions which “had no bearing on salvation” eventually gave way to questions that did. Because salvation, according to the brand of Christianity I was following, depended entirely on believing in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. But it’s hard to believe when the book you base your faith on seems like nothing more than a bunch of well-intentioned fairy tales… or worse, a pack of outright lies. Taken out of context, even the Adam and Eve story is little more than some Greek myth entitled, “How the Snake Lost its Legs.” Taken out of context, the story of Jonah sounds no less a kid’s fable than “Pinocchio.” If someone from another religion were to pass along a similar tale from their own holy book, we’d laugh that smug little Christian laugh and marvel at how blinded from the Truth they were.

The more I read the Bible, the more it pointed me toward one scary conclusion: my entire faith had been founded on bullshit. I tried desperately not to believe it. I tried to believe that these deeper nagging questions, the ones I didn’t dare ask out loud, were simply the work of the devil sowing seeds of doubt.

I tell you this so you’ll know, I didn’t de-convert because I didn’t know the Word of God. I knew it. Certainly not as well as others who can (and do) quote Scripture at will. But I knew enough to recognize it was severely damaging my ability to believe. I gradually turned all spiritual attention toward prayer and first-person experience.

A lot of Christians will tell you “God isn’t a feeling.” You can’t depend on your human senses to reveal eternal Truth. Mind you, these are often the same people who fall on the floor, speak in tongues and claim their prayers have been answered simply because it “felt right.” But that’s beside the point. When God’s own instruction manual is pushing you farther and farther from the faith, all you can rely on is God Himself to bring you back. Call it a “feeling.” Call it an “experience.” Call it a “revelation.” All I knew was I needed something. Anything.

While I tended to look with annoyance and suspicion upon people who spoke in tongues and who worshiped Jesus with vocal abandon, the truth is I envied them. They really did believe they were experiencing something. I wanted a taste of that. I wanted it so badly. And so I prayed. I begged God to reveal Himself to me the way he had to them. The best I can say is I occasionally felt a pleasant kind of buzzing during times of prayer, a mild euphoria during worship. But these weren’t any different than the things I can feel while hiking to a vista, singing along at a rock concert or watching “Field of Dreams”.

My prayer mantra became a quote from the book of Mark: “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” A man says this prayer after Jesus tells him he can heal his daughter, “if only he believes.” This had always struck me as an amazingly honest prayer. What’s the point, after all, in lying to the Creator of the universe who knows your innermost thoughts anyway? If I was having trouble believing, surely God already knew that. And if there was any prayer that He would answer, certainly that would be it. And so I prayed over and over again, “I believe in you as much as my human self is able, Lord Jesus. But please God, you have to help me the rest of the way because I don’t think I can do it anymore.”

I tell you this so you’ll know, I didn’t de-convert because I never tried to have a personal relationship with Jesus. I cannot convey how much I wanted exactly that. It always amazed me how my fellow Christians could have such an abundant prayer life, such a close friendship with God. I don’t know if they were hearing back from Him in a way that I was not, but for me, the one-way pseudo-dialog had finally became too heartbreaking to continue.

Praying wasn’t working. The Bible wasn’t working. Talking to other Christians had proved fruitless years ago because they kept shoving increasingly useless books in my face and telling me to “just have more faith.” I know they meant well, but none of them could realize I’d reached a point where I had nothing to base my faith on. If I couldn’t base it on the Bible and I couldn’t base it on personal experience, was I to base my faith on faith? But how was I to know I was basing my faith on the right faith? Through faith? None of them could see the circular logic in that. Does one believe in something because they have faith? Or do they believe in it because it’s the Truth? And how do they know it’s the Truth? Faith?

Besides discussion forums on the internet, the only person I could talk to about these matters was my wife. Because, quite frankly, she was the only Christian I knew who wouldn’t play mental gymnastics with theology. If something didn’t make sense, she would come right out and admit, “Yeah, I don’t get that either.” It felt good to actually discuss these things, knowing I wouldn’t get a huffy “just pray on it” after asking one question too many. At the same time, I envied her the way I envied all Christians who were able to believe without question… or to believe in the face of questions.

I don’t think even I realized how close to the edge of unbelief I was. I can remember praying for several atheist friends one day and begging God to fill them with the Holy Spirit so they’d believe. I’d stopped asking Him to bless me with the gift of tongues long ago. After almost eight years, it felt like that prayer had been answered with a definitive “no.” Instead, I prayed, “Lord, I will never not believe in You. So please, bless my friends with that gift so that they might believe in You too.” I honestly believed that no matter how many questions I had, my faith was at least strong enough to survive all out atheism. The reality of God simply seemed more logical than the alternative.

Two months later, I followed a link to the following de-conversion story and everything unraveled. My only experience with atheists to that point involved people for whom religion had always been a patently crazy idea. But here was the story of somebody like me. His upbringing had been far more fundamentalist than mine, but the turmoil he experienced realizing he was losing his faith was identical. Tears sprung to my eyes and my entire body went numb as realization washed over me. “This is my story.” It put into words all the intangible fears and questions that had plagued my Christian faith since I first asked Jesus into my heart. After that, it was only a matter of time.

Fear of Hell was the only thing that kept me hanging on. Funny thing is, even when my faith was at its strongest, Hell never made sense to me. Christians would always say that Hell had to exist because “our God is just God and He can’t allow sin into His presence.” But sending somebody to Hell (or even “allowing them to choose Hell” as some Christians like to spin it) would be akin to a parent letting their three-year-old run away from home… then beating the shit out of them nonstop for the rest of their life and calling it “justice”. It simply doesn’t make sense, especially for a God who’s supposed to love us as a father loves his children. After all, what are we in the grand scheme of eternity but little kids who don’t know any better? But, as I’d said to my friend years before, God is who He is irrespective of what we think or whether or not it makes sense. And if it turned out that He was, in fact, willing to torture me for all eternity simply because I’d picked the wrong answer, well, didn’t I owe it to myself to give faith one more chance?

I waited until everyone in the house had gone to sleep, then got down on my knees and pleaded with God to pull me back from the brink. I begged him to be the Abba, Daddy, Father He claimed to be in the Bible. Because no father who loves his children would let them walk into a pit of fire. No matter how rotten my son had acted, no matter how rebellious, no matter how much of a pain in the ass he’d been even moments before, I would drop everything to save him. I would tackle him if necessary, wrap him in a bear hug and say, “I don’t care how much you hate me. I love you too much to let you do this.” It seems only reasonable to expect my eternal Father—who supposedly loves me more than anyone else in the whole universe—to do the same.

Christians will say I was testing God by demanding a sign. “Do you ask your own parents to prove they love you?” they ask rhetorically. No I don’t, but I have no doubt that they do, because they’ve shown me my entire life. I don’t want a sign from my Dad. I want a friggin’ hug! A real conversation. I want Him to tell me He loves me… and not via a “letter” He wrote and xeroxed to all His other “kids” before we were born.

Kneeling on the floor that night I squeezed my hands together and prayed: “I love you, Lord. I want to believe in you more than anything. I want to believe you love me too. Please, please help me. You say that a father will not give his son a rock when he asks for a piece of bread. Please don’t give me silence when all I need is comfort.”

The only response was my own voice reflecting off the walls.

A few months later, I read the popular Christian fiction book THE SHACK. In one scene, the lead character watches his dead daughter playing in a field of flowers in Heaven. Standing there next to him, God assures the man that they’ll be together again someday. It’s such a simple yet beautiful scene, and I suddenly found tears rolling down my face as the realization hit: it’s never going to happen. If something horrible happens to me or my family, there will be no comfort in Heaven, no joyous reunion in the clouds, no loving Father to wipe the tears from our eyes. It was at that moment I knew, without a doubt, I was no longer a Christian. No longer a believer. At least not in a God who cared one way or the other about me. It was, perhaps, the most hollow feeling of my entire life.

I tell you this so you’ll know, I didn’t de-convert because I wanted to. Losing faith broke my heart in ways I never thought possible. God had been such a constant throughout my life. He’d been a source of strength, comfort and hope. Knowing that all we see was just the prelude to something bigger and better encouraged and motivated me. I didn’t want to believe that this is all there was. I wanted to believe that once I was with my Father in Heaven, everything would be wonderful, amazing, perfect. But as I’d always known, as I’d always feared, God is who He is (or isn’t) irrespective of what I want.

Breaking the news to my wife wasn’t easy. But after the initial shock and kneejerk assumption that this would ruin our marriage and the lives of our children, she has been amazingly understanding, if not entirely empathetic. Not that I blame her. More than anything she feels genuinely sorry for me, for what I’ve lost. At the same time, I know she worries for my soul. I know because I used to worry the same way about friends and family who weren’t saved. Believing that your loved ones will be burned and tortured for all eternity, or even just believing you’ll never see them again after this life passes… it’s a gut-wrenching burden.

That’s why I don’t mind that she prays for me every day. Prays for me to come to my senses. Prays that God would reveal whatever it is I think I need in order to believe again. I’ve agreed to continue going to church and supporting our children’s Christian upbringing. At least for the time being. Our congregation doesn’t preach the kind of fire and brimstone you get at other churches. They don’t stand outside funeral homes chanting “God Hates Fags.” They’re refreshingly global with their missionary work, putting money into missions that do tangible good, as opposed to simply “spreading the message.” So I’m willing to play along at least until the kids are old enough to understand my decision and handle its emotional implications. Just like with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, I have no interest in robbing them of their belief in magic and imaginary friends before they’re ready.

I tell you this so you’ll know, despite no longer believing in God, I understand how important belief is in people’s lives. I’m not on a crusade to convert others out of the faith. Nor, on the other hand, will I stand idly by while faith-based initiatives running counter to my ideals get pushed through Congress. My morals, my responsibilities, my sense of right and wrong no longer arise out of fear of divine retribution, but out of my own desire to make this world a better place. As Richard Dawkins once said: “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” The same goes for Hell. As a Christian, I never had to fear the consequences of not being Muslim or not being Hindu, because I knew those beliefs to be false. Now I simply apply that mentality to the Hell of all religions, including the one I followed for thirty years.

Despite overcoming that mental hurdle, I know the road ahead won’t be easy. My de-conversion didn’t happen in a vacuum. I have a wife, children, family and friends. People I love very much. People who are going to worry themselves sick for as long as I walk “outside the light.” It’s not a matter of judgment or anger for them. They love and sincerely want the best for me, but it’s impossible not to feel a sense of dread when you believe someone so close to you will burn for all eternity. I will never fault them for that. If I thought it would do any good, I would pray comfort on their souls.

I tell you this so you’ll know, I didn’t de-convert because I had no good models of Christian living. Quite the contrary, despite the occasional personality conflict, the Christians I have known—Catholics and Evangelicals alike—were decent, intelligent, patently not crazy people. In their daily lives, they embodied the very model of Christ-like behavior that everyone else should emulate. They gave me a bed to sleep in when I had no money. They invited me to dinner when I was far from home. More often than not, they were friendly and compassionate, even to people they knew to be sinners. Their passion for God was infectious rather than off-putting. If anything, they are the reason I stuck with it as long as I did. But a story’s truth cannot exist on the strength of its storytellers alone. And as much as I hate breaking the hearts of the people I love, I simply cannot bring myself to believe their fairy tale, however well-intentioned, any longer.

- Brian (guest contributor)

[This post has been sitting in my files for a while. Finally pulled it out and "finished" it. Writing never really seems finished, does it?]

Noting that my journey out of Christianity is different from most (in fact, unique in my experience so far*), I took some time to try to recall the steps I took over the years. I list them here in no particular order (though they are roughly chronological). *For any who don’t know, my path was, very briefly: “saved” at 19; evy/fundy for many years; converted to Eastern Orthodoxy for about 3 years; left the faith entirely.

- I sought to base my morality, politics, and behaviors in more than just, “the Bible or my church says so”.  After all, if something is right, it ought to be right for everyone, Bible or no Bible. I mean isn’t that what’s really meant by, “the absolute truth of God”?

Funny thing is that I did this right from the beginning of my Christian life. So maybe I was just doomed from the outset eh?

- I got sick of the shallowness.  Those damn praise choruses [“Jesus I luuuuv yew. Jesus I neeeeed yew. Jesus I luuuuv yew. Yes I doooo.”] are just drivel. So is the “Jesus, my buddy” flatulence. There’s just gotta be more to a faith than lousy songs and Forest Gump level theology.  This garbage was/is growing by leaps and bounds throughout Protestant churches, and was even making headway in some Catholic parishes.

- I got it through my head that young-earth creationism was WRONG. I.e. that evolution did happen, that the fossils were really old, that the flood of Noah was not global, that dinosaurs and humans never lived together, that the speed of light is in fact a constant, and so on. (I can’t tell you how humiliating it is to admit that I was idiotic enough to ever believe that crap.)

- I finally got a clear view of how utterly evil (dare I say, “utterly depraved”) Calvinism is and how prevalent it had gotten in the evy/fundy wing of the faith.

- I started to study church history in earnest. This is as opposed to reading Protestant (and ONLY Protestant) writers, teachers, pastors, etc for church history.

It is still astounding to me how utterly ignorant Protestants (and even a lot of Catholics) are of church history. And I’m not talking about pew potatoes here. I mean seminary professors. Try asking one to describe the origins of the Coptic church, or the history of the Filioque clause, or the development of monasticism and the effects of the East/West dichotomy thereupon, or for that matter just ask them what happened between 300-1500 AD. A palm-sized notepad and stubby pencil will be quite sufficient to write down everything they get right.

- Somewhat later -after some time in the EOC- I realized how WRONG monasticism is.  It is in direct opposition to what Jesus commanded believers to do.

- I finally realized that everyone was just making up their ideas about God – their moral stances, their doctrine, etc. – as they went along. There weren’t really any “God-ordained” absolutes.

- I finally realized that no one was doing what the Bible said they were supposed to be doing in any consistent way.

- I finally realized that God never showed up or responded in any way. That if you want to believe in God, you have to imagine that he is responding to your prayers, and you have to come up with elaborate, contradictory, double-think to explain when and why he does or doesn’t respond. That if you want to believe God is active in the world, and you want to “see” evidence of it, you have to play a game I call “Where’s Goddo?”  [Derived from the game “Where’s Waldo?”, in which you try to find a cartoon character named Waldo somewhere in a large, very busy drawing.]

- I finally realized/acknowledged that the lack of distinctiveness between Christians and non-Christians in terms of lifestyle, behavior, priorities, where their money goes, morality, etc. was a powerful indicator that there was no supernatural Holy Spirit operating in them. I found that this applied not just to pew potatoes but to nearly everyone. Including the great and holy examples that were held up for us. E.g., superevangelists, missionaries, monks, bishops, “prayer warriors”.

- I started to see the contradictions in the Bible for what they really are: contradictions.

- I found out that non-Christians ARE able to lead happy, decent, productive lives, and to love their kids, and be good neighbors, and to behave like good folk.

- I started piecing together a lot of bits and pieces of how Christianity was pieced together from bits and pieces of other religions (e.g.,  the ancient Greek and Egyptian myths).

- I definitely confirmed that the Orthodox, like the Catholics, were indeed worshipping Mary and had elevated her to “honorary fourth member of the Trinity”.

[Try saying this to an Orthodox or Catholic and you’ll get a quick denial. It’s a lot like the auto-responses you get for pointing out bible contradictions to most evangelicals.]

- LeoPardus

Part 4 of My journey into and, later, out of Christianity

Suddenly, after months of resistance, after exhaustion, after going to church six days a week, after listening to three hour sermons every night and skipping school when I was too tired to get up in the morning, suddenly I wanted to be what they were. I wanted to have what they had. Suddenly I understood what I was missing.

–

I close my bedroom door, sit on my bed, pull my knees up to my chest, and shut my eyes. In my mind, I picture a teenage girl standing at a makeshift altar at the front of a small basement arranged like a church.

Her lips move in silent prayer as tears stream down her face. Tom Shaffer, a visiting evangelist from Texas, lays hands on her, his ostrich-skin cowboy boots spread hip-width apart, firmly planted on the concrete floor, his pudgy fingers pressing down into her hair. His words are so loud, he doesn’t need a microphone in this small sanctuary. He hardly needs one when he preaches in the VFW or Oddfellow’s hall, either.

“Repeat this prayer after me,” Tom says. “Heavenly Father, I want to receive this power that Jesus spoke of. I ask you now to baptize me in the Holy Ghost.” The girl repeats, timidly at first, but getting louder with each sentence. “I say by faith that I receive Him now in all His fullness, and as the believers did on the day of Pentecost, I will speak in tongues as the Spirit gives me utterance.”

The people in the congregation pray with Tom. Those close to the girl place their hands on her shoulders. Those further away reach out toward the girl, as if sending waves of blessings to her through their outstretched hands. The air is thick with the murmur of prayers, as every person in the room concentrates on the girl and her desire to grow closer to God.

The girl starts sobbing now, her words are jumbled, she is ready to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Tom releases her head from his grip, and with a quick flip of the wrist, pops her on the forehead with the heel of his right hand. “In the NAME of Jesus, recEIVE ye the HOly Ghost!” he shouts. The girl shudders, her knees buckle, and she starts to fall. A man standing behind her catches her and gently lowers her to the ground; a woman standing to her side straightens the skirt around the girl’s legs. The girl is praying loudly now, but her words are not English. She has been baptized in the Holy Ghost and has received the gift of tongues. Oblivious to the people around her and the rest of the service, she is in communion with God, speaking in words only He can understand.

The congregation sighs in relief. “Praise the Lord!” several people shout at once. “Amen!” echoes across the small room. A few women jingle tambourines and dance in the aisle between the rows of metal folding chairs as Tommy and Chris start playing their guitars. “Glory to God!” “Hallelujah!”

In my bedroom, I imagine that the girl is me. I desperately want to be baptized in the Holy Ghost. No-one knows if I speak in tongues yet or not—not my mother, not Katie or Jimmy, not Tom—and I am embarrassed to admit that I can’t. As badly as I want it, I know I will never get hands laid on me in church. There’s no way I would be able to get up from my back-row seat and walk all the way up the aisle to the altar to be anointed. My feet would freeze to the floor; I would forget how to walk. I shudder just thinking about it in the privacy of my own bedroom.

I open my eyes and reach for the Bible on the floor beside my bed. I flip it open to the second chapter of Acts and begin reading at verse 1.

1 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

I know the Lord wants to bless me with the gifts of His Spirit. I know that I love Jesus with all of my heart. I know that I am ready. I breathe deeply, opened my mouth, and whisper “I love you Jesus. I want to receive your power in my life. I open my heart to you. Please fill me with the Holy Ghost.” I wait.

That night, nothing happened, but I didn’t give up.

–

I don’t even remember how I changed, but at the beginning of 1976, I was a smart-ass, rebellious teenager and at the end I was a goody two-shoes Christian. At the beginning of the year I wanted to go roller skating with my girlfriends from school, at the end I only wanted to hang out with Jimmy and Katie, or with adults who were more fanatical than I was. At the beginning of the year, I wanted to skip ahead and take calculus and physics. At the end of the year, I quit biology to take music theory and what I wanted more than anything was to be able to speak in tongues.

Looking back, the periods of change in my life are foggy. It’s hard to remember how I morphed from nominal Christian to fanatic and, later, how I changed from true believer to agnostic to atheist. I look through my old journals from time to time, trying to unlock the clues. Lately I’ve been talking to old Christian friends on facebook, trying to awaken dormant memories. I haven’t remembered as much about my changes as I want to, but I have remembered my good friends and the good times that I had when I was a Christian. For a while, under the influence of the writings of the “new” atheists and the media attention given to ridiculous caricatures of Christians like Fred Phelps and James Dobson, I had forgotten everything positive about my past experiences.

I am just as certain today that God does not exist as I was that Jesus was the Lord of All when I was in my teens and twenties. Today, however, my own certainty does not carry with it the need to convince or convert others. Nor does it carry with it a mandate to save the world. Although I never would have chosen to stop believing, I am happy with the place where I find myself today. I can accept that people, seeing the same evidence, do not all come to the same conclusions. I can enjoy the company of my Christian friends again, even though I have no desire or intention to “return to the fold.”

Previous Installments:

• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Born Again
• Part III: Was I saved or brainwashed?

So last week I was talking with my daughter. The conversation just kind of meandered in a way that my de-conversion came out fairly easily and naturally. She seemed to take it pretty well at the time (brought up some friends who were atheists). She was upset though, as I found out a couple days later when my wife asked me about it. Apparently daughter did some crying later.

My middle son also knows because he was in ear shot when mom and daughter were talking. He apparently just said that he liked church and his friends, and there better not be any talk of not continuing to go to church. (Of course I have no problem with this, as I’ve said around here before.)

Oldest son (in military) does not know still, and as always I’m in no hurry to tell anyone, his sibs may be the ones to tell him; who knows?

My wife did have some concern that I would now make it my project to de-convert the family. [Apparently evangelism is only OK for Christians.] To say that she does not at all comprehend where I’m at would be a severe understatement.

Anyway, it’s out now. The kids seem to be taking a ‘wait and see’ approach. Basically, if Dad is still just Dad, I guess they’ll judge everything to be OK. Not sure if they will try asking any questions directly. But at least there was no big hullaballoo.

It can be easy to feel superior to theists who blindly follow around like docile then alternately hostile sheep, parroting whatever nonsense is fed to them by their minister or media of choice. They can seem stupid, however they are smart enough in some respects to be unnerving and to keep most of us supposedly intelligent freethinking atheists hiding in our closets. Although any mob is dangerous, and sheep are no exception.

What are the causes of sheep mentality? Does it only happen to dumb people? These are questions I am curious about especially after reading an excerpt from Matt Taibbi’s new book, The Great Derangement. I’ve never heard of Taibbi before, but he has his own Wikipedia page. He works for Rolling Stone, oh, and it seems that he is a regular contributor to Real Time with Bill Maher.

So my friend linked me to freethoughtpedia to an excerpt of this book. It’s kind of long, but I found this to be an exceptionally compelling must-read.

Taibbi infiltrates a christian zionist church in Texas. He’s an atheist but he goes undercover to an “Encounter Weekend” to get a look “inside the evangelical mind-set that gave this country eight years of George Bush”.

I found it to be very insightful, frightening and downright hilarious reading. I would highly recommend it. If you’re going to read it and want the full experience, click here. Otherwise if you need more tempting, here are a few really compelling quotes from the excerpt:

There is a transformational quality in these external demonstrations of faith and belief. The more you shout out praising the Lord, singing along to those awful acoustic tunes, telling people how blessed you feel and so on, the more a sort of mechanical Christian skin starts to grow all over your real self. …

…those outward ministrations assume a kind of sincerity in themselves. And at the same time, that “inner you” begins to get tired of the whole spectacle and sometimes forgets to protest….

At any given moment, which one is the real you?

You may think you know the answer, but by my third day I began to notice how effortlessly my soft-spoken Matt-mannequin was going through his robotic motions of praise, and I was shocked. For a brief, fleeting moment I could see how under different circumstances it would be easy enough to bury your “sinful” self far under the skin of your outer Christian and to just travel through life this way. So long as you go through all the motions, no one will care who you really are underneath. And besides, so long as you are going through all the motions, never breaking the facade, who are you really?

…By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to “be rational” or “set aside your religion” about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you’ve made a journey like this — once you’ve gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It’s not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that’s the issue. It’s that once you’ve gotten to this place, you’ve left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you’re thinking with muscles, not neurons.

By the end of that weekend, Phil Fortenberry could have told us that John Kerry was a demon with clawed feet, and not one person would have so much as blinked. Because none of that politics stuff matters anyway, once you’ve gotten this far. All that matters is being full of the Lord and empty of demons. And since everything that is not of God is demonic, asking these people to be objective about anything else is just absurd. There is no “anything else.” All alternative points of view are nonstarters. There is this “our thing,” a sort of Cosa Nostra of the soul, and then there are the fires of Hell. And that’s all.

I originally posted this article in September 2008 on HDC. So it’s been over 8 months, and what Taibbi wrote has really stuck with me. What would it be like to “belong”? To not have to think and reason? That’s what resonates the most, I guess. I don’t really have any answers. It’s just a thought in the back of my mind sometimes, especially when I hear the news or deal with christians.

Maybe I’ve been an atheist for so long that I just can’t get back in that mindset. I’m not complaining about that, of course. It’s just an observation. Anyway, I thought I’d share this with you.

- Neece

theBEattitude recently posted a post on his blog entitled “Losing my religion.  Why I recently walked away from Christianity.“  For the past few days the post has been one of WordPress’ top posts.  According to the author on his Twitter account, he’s had over 50,000 hits in a two day period.  The post has generated over 900 comments as of this writing.

Our humble blog has seen over 1,000,000 hits in our first 2 years of existence and almost 30,000 hits in the past week alone.  We’ve had almost 25,000 comments since our inception.  Other similar sites such as Debunking Christianity and ExChristianDotNet continue to also be very popular sites.

Due to this phenomenon, we are in the process of relaunching our community site to be more of a social networking site where we can in essence build a community of apostates, de-converts, ex-Christians, or whatever label you wish to wear.

Here’s to this new trend!  Why do you think  this is becoming such a popular decision?

- The de-Convert