sent in by Angie

I was born and raised in the Church of Christ. My father was a preacher from the time I was 8. He says he went to preaching school to prove the bible false but come to find out he really went to get the approval of his father. He would have surely found discrepancies if he had look hard enough. By the time I turned 11 my father was having inappropriate relations with me. Talk about living with a hypocrite, but still I followed the mindless Christian path. To cope with what I was going through I pushed it all far away. 2 years ago I started having a break down and finally came out with my 22 year old secret of incest. My father at this time had lost his ‘church’ due to his own crazy teachings and actions.

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sent in by Chris

Ever since I can remember, I went to church. Unlike many of you, luckily I was not subjected to harsh Fundamentalism thinking, though strong religious thinking runs deep in my family.

I first started attending church at a Nazarene church, but the only thing I remember about that is attending with my best friend and his father. I only went to have fun with my friend.

The second and last church (on any regular basis) I attended was a General Baptist church, in which my wife and mother still attend. If there was any joke of a church, this has to be one. Attendance has dwindled to probably no more than 20 people a service, except for religious holidays. They’ve been through at least 3 pastors in the past 3 or so years. And one of them thought it would be better to buy a $2000 sound system than to feed the needy, which he ended up doing without the church board’s approval. Wow… some Christianly duty.

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Perhaps it's my age, or perhaps it's just my taste in music, but I've enjoyed the music of "Sting" for years now. I've followed him in his career with the Police and later as a soloist. I liked him better as a soloist. I own copies of nearly all his albums, so I suppose I am a pathetic fan and not able to think critically when it comes to the singing star. I mean, I've even acquired his jazz album for crying out loud. I even liked him when he debuted as an actor in "DUNE." (I love Frank Herbert's stuff)

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'tis the season to be jolly....


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Dear Ex-Christians,

My Name is Clint Clark and I’ve developed a small website that may be an interesting link addition to your site. I call it “Religion Detoxification.” One of its features is “The Logical Ten Commandments.” It also has some history on the development of Settlement Religion along with some important points about Oral Tradition.

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sent in by Jason

I was born agnostic, as are all children, but both of my parents are Christian. My mom started me in church when I was five. She wanted to do what she felt was best for me; but she's never been able to see the religion from an honest, fresh, and impartial perspective. By the age of seven, I developed a keen interest in dinosaurs. I wondered whether the creation of man or the existence of dinosaurs came first. I learned in school and from my outside reading that dinosaurs were around for millions of years. Adam and Eve, on the other hand, were created in the first week six thousand years ago. I couldn't think of a way to resolve this discrepancy. I asked my mom, but she didn't know either. Instead, she advised me to ask my Sunday School teacher. Her answer was, "We don't know there were dinosaurs." I immediately realized the religion had problems if it resorted to such claims in order to explain scientific discrepancies; but as time went on, I simply attributed further contradictions with science as "explainable in some way" while holding on to the book of "absolute truth."

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sent in by Kevin

When I had finally come up with sufficient courage to leave fundamentalism in order to take up secular work as a therapist, I had to come up with something to tell the congregations and individuals who supported me financially. I didn’t want to face an onslaught of letters from people trying to “re-convert” me, so I opted to simply say that my children were having some difficulties in life that could be best addressed if my family and I did not return to the mission field. While this was not false, it did shrink from telling the WHOLE truth about why I would not be going back to the field.

I mailed the letter to all of my “friends and supporters” and then waited.

And waited . . . .

And waited . . . .

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originally posted 12/25/02





I found myself in church last Sunday, being supportive of a young family member who was performing some music.

While there, I heard this story. I suppose many of you have heard or read the same story, or some variation of it during the month of December. Well here is what was said:

The Christian Origin of the Candy Cane

A candymaker in Indiana wanted to make a candy that would be a witness, so he made the Christmas Candy Cane. He incorporated several symbols from the birth, ministry, and death of Jesus Christ.

He began with a stick of pure white, hard candy. White to symbolize the Virgin Birth and the sinless nature of Jesus, and hard to symbolize the Solid Rock, the foundation of the Church, and firmness of the promises of God.

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originally posted 10/24/02

Okay, let's talk.

As a Christian I believed in GOD, in Jesus, in the Holy Spirit, in Angels and Demons, in prophesy, in coming judgment, in heaven and in hell. I believed in creation, in a 6000 year old earth, in Adam and Eve, in Noah and his ark, Elijah and Elisha. I believed I was chosen by God for eternal life, in supernatural healings, in words of knowledge, in speaking in tongues, in predestination, in freewill, in the Bible, and so many other things that this list could go on and on and on.

I believed in these things and thought anyone who did not believe in them was a fool. I pitied them. When I met others who believed in other religions or no religion I was mystified as to how they could not see the truth of my CHRISTIANITY. In my mind, Christianity was so unique and so superior to all other religions that demon possession, or GOD having blinded their eyes was the only explanation as to why others could not see clearly on the issue.



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Now of all the things that you would bye for your children to play with, would this be among them?

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sent in by Marvin

Hi my name is Marvin and I'm an exMennonite. For those who don't know what Mennonites are I'll give a brief description. Mennonites are very fundamentalist Christians who go way beyond the mainstream in their beliefs. For example they believe that television, radios, and other forms of entertainment is wrong. They dress differently than the rest of the world especially the women (almost the same as Amish). They have their own schools and try to avoid contact with the rest of the world as much as they can. I grew up in an environment where I had almost no contact with anyone outside of the Mennonites. With no TV or radio it meant that the influences in my life were almost completely controlled by my parents and the churches school.

I've always been the type of person to question everything though and there were a lot of things that didn't make sense to me. I bought into the Mennonite thing to a degree and joined the church when I was sixteen. I married a someone in the church when I was nineteen.

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sent in by Todd

I would have to say that I never really feel like I totally bought into the bible, when I was growing up. I was brought up in a Xtian church, but it wasn't a really strict fundamentalist church by any means. My mother made did make me go to church as much as possible and attended bible school and church camps over the summer, but I only really had fun for the socialization aspect and not the stories of jesus being told.

I have memories of questioning things at a rather young age. My mother had taken me to the minister a few times during my youth, when I had fears of "what if there wasn't a heaven when we die?" and similar thoughts. I would just be told over and over about how god loves me and how I would go to heaven. So, I never had a very strong faith growing up, which made it easy for me to leave it behind when I went to college.

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Special thanks are extended to Lee Thompson-Herbert for the creation of the Jesus Blah Blah image used on this site. I wasn't aware she was the creator and she has graciously allowed us to continue using it. (It happens to be a favorite of mine)

She did ask that we include a link to her other art work, which I am glad to provide HERE.

Thanks again Lee!

sent in by Loren Charles Estes,III

Where to begin? This is the shortest as well as the longest story of my life. I was raised as a Christian. I was also raised in a very emotionally mixed up family with a lot of anger thrown in for good measure. It wasn't all bad, I had brothers and a sister. I'm the oldest of 6 kids. I had a father and mother that did the best that they could, though I would say they were not really prepared to have the family they had. I considered myself to be the one who would be most likely to be the Christian we had all hoped we would be. You know working with those less able to look after themselves. Nothing wrong with that really except that it really got in the way of me growing up to be me. I mean I had my life mapped out by everyone who had charge over me and no one thought about my thoughts on the subject at all. Well that didn't sit well with me and by the time I had been though 3 major religious shifts I was 17 and had had enough. But I still had all the fear that was burned into my mind to deal with. That my friends would take many years to figure out. I mean once you leave the Christian nest of your own accord you will get no help. So I spent 1/2 my life doing things that I thought would help me grow to be the person I am today.

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sent in by Sam

After years of watching my mother drink herself into a stupor every night, something even more dysfunctional came to be. Upon learning of her pregnancy, she reconciled with and married an ex-boyfriend, who happened to be a church of christ preacher. So, after years of unsupervised delinquency, I was suddenly smashed in the face with all of these ridiculous rules and regulations brought about by her new husband (religion).

Of course, I rebelled. And what better way than to fully immerse oneself in witchcraft! Regardless of my heartfelt angst, I was always a pacifist. So, the ways of Wicca appealed to me, and even in retrospect I feel it was a very positive experience for me at that time.

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sent in by exhihhuli

Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount to build the houses of our faith on the solid rock of his teachings (Mt 7:24-27). Too bad that the religion based on his teachings is a house built on sand. However strong you make the internal structure of your faith, there is no external rock that it is anchored to. So when the flood of rational thinking hits it, it will fail.

My parents became born again Christians when I was 5. They started in Pentecostal and Lutheran circles, but soon ended in charismatic and Word of Faith (you know, the name-it-and-claim-it bunch, e.g. Hagin, Copeland, Oral Roberts) connections, though there were no such churches in the area we lived. As the only child I grew up with the faith, starting to speak in tongues at 7 and getting baptized at 14.

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Here are some quotes about hell from famous christians. What think ye?

AUGUSTINE
(Christian author and leader from the 4th century)
They who shall enter into [the] joy [of the Lord] shall know what is going on outside in the outer darkness. . .The saints'. . . knowledge, which shall be great, shall keep them acquainted. . .with the eternal sufferings of the lost.

TERTULLIAN
(revered Christian leader from 200 A.D.)
What a spectacle. . .when the world. . .and its many products, shall be consumed in one great flame! How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? What my derision? Which sight gives me joy? As I see. . .illustrious monarchs. . . groaning in the lowest darkness, Philosophers. . .as fire consumes them! Poets trembling before the judgment-seat of. . .Christ! I shall hear the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; view play-actors. . .in the dissolving flame; behold wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows. . .What inquisitor or priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favor of seeing and exulting in such things as these? Yet even now we in a measure have them by faith in the picturings of imagination.

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Master of the web,

Check out this photo I took of an outrageous billboard in surburban Atlanta, Ga. Talk about intimidation, can you believe this crap!?

Maybe you can post it on the letters/testimonies section so everyone can get a look at it and sound off.

Thanx

DM

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sent in by Sallie

I went to a small Nazarene church when I was little, and it had things for the kids to do, so I became very involved in the Caravans and Quizzing programs. In Caravans, you learned verses and such and earned patches -- kind of like Bible boy and girl scouts. Quizzing we studied books of the bible and went to competitions where we were tested on our knowledge and got trophies and ribbons and such state-wide!

Then I went to middle school and befriended a Mormon girl, who gave me a Book of Mormon, and then they started telling me how her religion was evil and so on and so forth, and I started wondering about which church was right. I went to several churches over the years and participated in several youth groups, but I eventually converted to Mormonism when I was seventeen, and quickly quit believing after hearing a bunch of the fucked-up doctrine. I also came out as bisexual, and had to sit through Mormon therapy that told me that I was no better than a child molester because of that. Asshole.


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sent in by Deamond

(First, a warning; this story doesn't get interesting until well after I became an Atheist.)

Perhaps it was a mistake for a catholic school to bring children on an excursion to a museum, because such places, unlike schools, encourage you to THINK.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to question everything. I would never do anything I was told unless they explained to me why I should. I knew, from an early age, I would never be a very good soldier.

I once believed in God, and back then, I also believed in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, Witches, Vampires, Bugs Bunny, you name it. I think I believed in Santa longer than God, actually. I think Courtney Love said it best; "I don't really miss God, but I sure do miss Santa Clause!"

After I became aware of the contradictions between Religion and Science, I began thinking about it. During that time, I didn't know the word "Agnostic", but that's what I was.

I was also aware of other religions, and became aware of the similarities between them. In Australia, there are about 500 different aboriginal tribes, each with their own language and culture. They too have their own genesis stories.

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I've just looked at your bible quiz. Pretty interesting. As a bible student I'd certainly come across many of those inconsistencies before, but as we both know, the "faith" answer can be used to justify every nutty concept.

That leads me to a few problems I have had with the whole concept of "faith" for a while. The Bible implies that Christians are rewarded for their faith, which it defines in Hebrews 11 as the "evidence of things not seen". Elsewhere it talks about our faith being "more precious than gold that perishes".

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Dave,

Thanks for your open and honest testimony. It was helpful and I found some similarities (and some differences) with my own religious background. I am now in a "holding pattern" regarding Christian belief and practice, being in my mid-thirties with a young family and a busy job taking most of my time and headspace. However I have not given up on the idea of trying to come up with a world-view that makes more sense to me. Oh, I have dispatched with organised religious practice some time ago after spending 12 years in a cult (Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God). The de-programming continues...

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sent in by John E. Denison

I have spent a life time looking for the answer to mankinds most profound questions. I first had experience with church as a child. I would go by myself to evening protestant services at the Army Post Chapel in Bamberg Germany.

A very bizarre thing happened one night when a man I never saw before wouldn't let me and my friend in because we weren't with our parents. That ended 3 years of my faithfull attendance.

We moved to Ft. Ord Ca.(Monterey Bay area) when I was 13 that is where I grew up. I had already begun my search for answers to mankinds burning questions of why are we here, how did we get here, and how are we supposed to conduct ourselves etc? During my adolesence I pretty much professed atheism. This was the 60's. I drifted towards left wing beliefs I joined several well known radical groups thinking they had the answers, I was wrong.

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