By recent ex-convert ~ I thought this would be an important time in my life to write my departure from Christianity and god. I’m 35 years old and I can say that I was in the church for 33 years maybe it was 33 and ½. Just kidding, if anyone gets the jesus reference? But seriously, I got saved when I was four with my mom asking me if I wanted to accept jesus into my heart followed up closely with do you want to be baptized by the holy spirit. I was four, of course I would accept, I mean the woman who had raised me along with my dad was asking me if I believed in their god before I really understood what I was believing in. It was in the same year consequently that my mom told me during Christmas while attending some holiday function with a Santa visiting that my mom conveyed that Santa was not real thus distinguishing the difference between reality and fiction in my world. The one thing my parents had a hard time handling with me, is that I was naturally inquisitive abou...

by Carl S. ~ T hree very powerful words fraught with meaning. These words have spawned countless novels, traditions, and moral debates. There are descriptions for those who are disloyal : traitors, double-crossing, betrayers, rats, stool pigeons, whistle-blowers, etc. Loyalty itself is held up as being honorable, as in patriotic, honorable, a game player, trustworthy, and true to powers that be. Loyalty and disloyalty are interpreted in black and white terms. Is it really that simple? John Patrick, a Presbyterian minister, gave a quiz to his congregation. The quiz had three questions on it. Number one referenced the biblical command as the word of God, to, “put to death both man and woman, child and infant,” and asked if this was the same Lord they worshiped. The second question asked if “it is conceivable that the same Lord could again issue the same command in our time?” Number three was, “If you yourself believed you were so commanded by your Lord, could you and would you ob...

By Freeatlast ~ H ey flannel board Jesus I loved you once so debonair in your pastel hues I snuck into the Sunday school room To see you To move you on the board myself I liked the ascension the best So suave as you drifted up the flannel board, up into heaven beyond the edge Cool move flannel board Jesus! Your flannel board followers watched you go, as amazed as I Out the basement window, the sky was blue Blue as the flannel board the teacher used to line the grooves of little brains sitting still to get the juice and cookies Our redeemer, our savior Was coming back for us I watched the basement window Perhaps today! I couldn’t wait to see you flannel board Jesus Floating down as you had floated up To take me to heaven too I should have left you on that board In that moldy room It was easier that way Bloodless But I let you come off and go with me Bone and muscle, macho Jesus I believed! And...

By Glebealyth ~ T his has been a long time coming – when re-reading previous attempts, I felt they sounded self-absorbed and self-pitying; but first, a disclaimer: When one has an Ex-Pastor brandishing both a stick and a carrot, it is difficult to refuse. This is the result of the stick. The Ex-Pastor promises me he is working on the result of the carrot. The content of this extimony follows a vaguely chronological sequence, though some parts have been telescoped together, out of order, for brevity and clarity. I was lucky, being born into a reasonably affluent family with a father who, though educated by Jesuits , was a non-believer, and a mother who was a “Hatch, Match and Dispatch” Anglican. We were involved with church only to the extent that we were a musical family – mother an ex-professional singer and my brother and I being good boy trebles – and sang in the choirs of churches local to where we lived. I say “churches”, because there were many. The career of a ra...

Flame of the mist ~ C hains surrounded me, I could not get free, The pressure was great, and the pain was blind. But they couldn't keep me in the box, I was curious and longed for freedom, Grasping the hand of the neglected one within, I broke my chains and climbed the wall. Free at last, free at last! The air is pure, and I can finally see, The broken and neglected child clasps my hand, We laugh and cry, running in the meadow and patching the wounds. Wonder and freedom are soaring in the sky, Eyes blue searching and laughing, Wings on my feet and stars in my head, I know I live, Still bloody and wounded, both beautiful and ugly, I connect. The flower is opening, What wonder, what beauty, what tragedy and strength! The tiger, the orca, the fish and the dove accompany me to the light, My heart soars into the stars. The path I take is my own, It waivers and shimmers at the edge of reality, Horizons exte...

By Carl S ~ A s I child I read Aesop's fables . Returning to them again, I find their wisdom and observations about human nature to be still fresh. For some time now I've thought about biblical parables which are also well known. Let us consider those parables strictly in their own words, and if they hold up as well as Aesop's fables as practical moral lessons. English: "The Ant and the Grasshopper", from Aesop's Fables (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In the fable of the grasshopper and the ants, the moral of the story is not to spend all one's time in pleasure, but to be practical as well, working and providing for the future hard times that will come if you don't. On the other hand, we have the parable of the prodigal son with an opposite message: spend your inheritance wastefully, and when you've used it all up, come back to your father and be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams. (Meanwhile, your good and faithful brother is ignored.) A B...

By Marlene Winell ~ R eclaimers, you are the pioneers. Reclaimers discard their confining religions and free their minds from the cages made in churches. I support you, I help you, but most of all, I salute you. Because it is clear to me after many years of bearing witness to the soul-wrenching work that you do, when I have seen and heard tears and sobs and anger and fear, that you are the ones among us in our world that are birthing yourselves. Most of it is quietly achieved, because you are so ahead of the times that there are not enough words to describe what you are accomplishing. You yourself do not really know. To understand what you are achieving, let’s try to grasp the context. We live in a world that is only partially scientific, only partially rational. Zealous believers are still performing exorcisms. Faith healing is commonplace, along with other “signs and wonders.” People believe in the “power of prayer” or that an entity called God will change the laws of n...

By Anne R Keye ~ O ne day for some unknown reason I just started to TRANSLATE what was being said. The church leader needed to make up the numbers and was in full force selling jesus. As I listened it just started to get more and more absurd. This is my "Translation" of a conversation made to a new ambitious young recruit that changed my life forever. CHURCHMAN: Hi, I would like to tell you about jesus, YOUNG RECRUIT: Excellent, let's get started! CM: Well, jesus is amazing, he is 2000 years old. jesus did all sorts of unbelievable feats and he's going to return very soon on a white horse. YR: Wow, thats incredible, he sounds like an amazing man. CM: No, he's not a man, he's god. He is the one true god but he is also his son and so they created the trinity to make it all clear. We have god the father, the holy ghost and his son jesus who is himself but not himself but who is his dad but not at the level of god his dad who is the one true god who...

By Valrie Tarico ~ A recent Pew study found that white American Evangelical Christians think they experience more discrimination than Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Atheists or Jews. Really?! Christianity is the majority religion in the U.S. and many kinds of legally ensconced religious privilege are on the rise including the right to woo converts in public grade schools, speculate in real estate tax-free, repair religious facilities with public dollars, or opt out of civil rights laws and civic responsibilities that otherwise apply to all. By contrast atheists are less electable than even philanderers, weed smokers or gays; Hispanics and Muslims are being told to leave; Jews get accused of everything from secret economic cabals to destroying America’s military; and unarmed Black youth continue to die at the hands of vigilantes. Given the reality of other people’s lives, a widespread Evangelical perception of their group as mass victims reveals a lack of empathy that should g...

By Carl S. ~ S ome people see commentaries as "rants." My generation had a different interpretation of that word. We used the word as a type of verbal rage. But even before then, there was a period when "angry" and "mad" were synonymous, when the angry person was thought to have gone mad while ranting. Recently, an experience brought back that particular interpretation: A couple of weeks ago, I got quite worked up about the subject of Christians lying to children. The "igniter" was the story of Noah and the ark and how it is a complete lie. I used the words "shitty' and "shit" to describe by examples how ridiculous and immoral the Flood story is. I pointed out the fact that, if it were true, evidence would be found for it all over the earth, that geological evidence proves it never happened. I was really very angry that this fable is perpetuated as truth. But more so, that children are taught that it was a moral good fo...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~ Evangelist T.T. Martin's books against the theory of evolution  are sold at an outdoor stand in Dayton, Tennessee, 1925,  scene of the Scopes trial. R ecently it has occurred to me that it makes perfect sense for Christian fundamentalists to oppose the teaching of evolution. After all, properly understood, evolution provides many arguments against belief in a god, or at least the Biblical claim that man was intended to have dominion over the animals. A comment by the biologist J.B.S. Haldane on god’s inordinate fondness for beetles , in “What is Life,” immediately springs to mind: “The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, for the simple reason that there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals.” If we assume that beetles, through mutation a...