sent in by Ian I've been hanging around here lurking for a few days and thought it was about time to introduce myself. Although I¡¦m English, I now live and work in beautiful Sweden (why is a long story which I might go into another time). I guess my story follows a familiar pattern which many here will recognise. I was born into a secular Jewish household 47 years ago in London. I did all the normal things a Jewish boy did but I must admit that it was more because my parents made me do it rather than wanting to or even believing in the mumbo jumbo. By the time I was 15 I was a strong atheist and remained so for the next 15 years (during which period I met and fell in love the woman I was to marry and am proud to say that we are still going strong 25 years later). It was not long passed my 30th birthday on a snowy January night in Aberdeen when I had an experience (it doesn't matter what it was; at least not at the moment) which I felt at the time I could only interpret in a Ch...

sent in by Jenessa It's hard for me these days......after all the crazy stories I've been believing for years.....being atheist is like calling my mom, and entire family, a liar, and that's difficult to do. They're unique. They aren't just Christian. They have countless stories of supernatural happenings to back up their beliefs. All of which I grew up believing to be true. It became my reality. Now, I know they're not true, which is hard to comprehend. Why would anyone make these things up? Or are they that messed up that they actually believe these things truly happened? It's horrible. To this day, even knowing in myself that it's a bunch of bull, I can't sleep without a night light. My mom as a teenager dabbled in the world of spirit writing, which she believes has followed her around from house to house, state to state for many years now. While in the house she grew up in she spent many of her days taking care of her brothers and sisters, as my ...

sent in by Kendall this seems more than anything like an AA meeting, but anyway... I was born into a christian home: fundamentalist mother (calvinist and dutch), a slightly milder father (methodist). and mom did speak, and there was faith. and she did speak again, and there were acts of faith. and she did speak again... and didst become angered when I couldn't figure out how to worship god in new and exciting ways. basically, my early childhood consisted of a) preschool (thank god it wasn't christian) and b) church- where I learned that satan was bad, but god wanted us to love everyone, and wasn't satan one of them? I got in trouble for asking the sunday school teacher that, fairly early on. that was pretty much it for me: I attempted to convert my neighbors when I was young (and really set one of them off). that was about the time I started believing in evolution: I became an unofficial scientologist at that time (I was about ten). christianity was just starting to bec...

sent in by SilentLoner Where to start? I’m not sure where to begin, but I’ll do my best. I officially became catholic around the age of 3 months when I was baptized at my hell-fearing grandma’s request. My parents had never been very religious, my mom coming from a non practicing Muslim family and my dad a deconverted catholic but obsessively caught up in an Indian guru cult he joined in the 70’s. Even though I was born in the US, my family moved to Central America, where I grew up and have spent most of my life.I lived in a very catholic country, never meeting anyone of a different faith until my preteen years (one Jewish, one Buddhist). We only attended church occasionally, or whenever my grandma asked us to. I enjoyed going at first, only because near the end of the sermon, the priest would ask all the children in the church to come up to the front altar where he was. All the kids would run up, and he would have us raise our arms while he said a prayer for us. (Looking back on it no...

sent in by David Luck I was a born and bred Catholic, however 12 years ago I walked away, and have never felt more happy or comfortable with my decision. As a young person I'd pretty much done it all Churchwise, Altar Boy, Catholic School, Religion Prizes, Youth Group Leader etc. The Catholic faith while expousing many virtues was steeped in contradictions and bigotry. In the end I was repelled by it. I have since been leading a comfortable secular life. I have married into a Chinese family and have many friends from a variety of backgrounds. Humanity is a beautiful thing and it doesn't need relgion to screw it up. Just recently I've started a great new job with a small firm. There is a christian senior principal who uses morning tea to put forth his own views on creation etc. I have had to bury myself in many a good book during such discussions. Recently he had a peacock feather and was using the eye of the feather to demonstrate how such intricacies could not have evol...

sent in by Alison Randall I enjoyed church really for one reason: when I took home the information they gave me, I would get a great and horrified reaction from my parents. They wanted to be Christians; they really did. They were very young and strangers in a new town. My Mom left her Quaker family, my dad's was Methodist, but he never really went to church. My dad was a music teacher and got a position as choir director. I think this got my brother and I places in the private school in this independent evangelical church we went to. I ended up practically living in this place. Yesterday I had a long conversation with my mother. She really regrets what "that church did to you." She told me that, along with my brother and I, the two children of their best friends will never darken the door of a church again. She relayed a story of one of my horrifying church school-lessons. Apparently, my teacher taught us that, since we were all made of clay, Jesus left some in th...

sent in by LeeD Well first of all I would like to say hello. I have been visiting this site for many months just reading and listening to others. While I do not agree with everything that is written here it is certainly a good forum for ideas and a good place to meet with others who have been through Christianity. It all started for me when my mother use to take my younger brother and myself to church when we were kids. Church at that time was quite boring. Full of old people and crappy old hymns, what a waste of a perfectly good Sunday monring! A few years later, when I was around 11 - 13 years old received my first propper bible (The New Life Good News Bible) It was full of pictures and helpful reference stuff. As I began to read about Jesus in the gospels, my young heart and mind was gripped. I fell in love God and knew that I wanted to take church and Christianity a little more seriously. Church seemed to take on a new meaning. I enjoyed the ceremoinal of the ritual. The ...

FiguringItOut I've talked a bit on this site about how it was difficult to leave Christianity. I did it this year, after it seemed not to provide answers to real life questions and closed me off to people and relationships and friends who didn't believe or think the way I did as a Christian. The immediate feeling was relief -- this freedom from having to tell people how they should live; freedom from people telling me how I should live my life; freedom to build relationships based on friendship, common interests and intellectual connection. I also found that there is a moral basis to life -- to respecting others, to caring about people w/o Christianity. Surprise! I learned to respect other people's beliefs and religions. The flip side was that I felt lost without God -- and I had tied the belief in God to Christianity so closely, it didn't seem like I could get back to believing in God w/o going back to Christianity -- and I sure didn't want to do that! But yes, I ...

sent in by Ben Nilsson (Please make a few allowances for coherency/comprehension, as this was written over an hour an a half period of time, doing other things as well, from midnight to 1:30 am. Also, the order is roughly chronological, in case that's not entirely evident. Thank you.) My religiosity, I suppose, started with my birth. Of course, my parents claimed some religion previously, but never took it seriously. It was revived somewhat with me, the third child of five. I was born somewhat premature, and soon therafter, I developed an infection that required an extended stay at the hospital. I recuperated well enough, and was allowed to go home in good health. During my infant-through-toddler stage, I'd had anther problem: I'd sleep so deeply that I'd stop breathing occassionally, requiring my mother/father to massage me back to respiration. I had, I was told, become blue a total of four different times thoughout my infancy. I can only imagine what this di...

sent in by Mary I'm not sure where to begin, or where to end...but here goes. I have been a church-goer for most of my life, and I guess I always just believed in Jesus. I was raised mostly as a Presbyterian (not too hard to take), but as a young, married, adult I became involved in a non-denominational (mostly Baptist) church where first I was made to feel bad because I was married to a "non-christian", and then well...I just didn't measure up to all those holy people. Something about my "umbrella "having a big hole in it because my husband was not christian, but I was ok because I was in the church and I guess the preacher kept me protected. Anyway I did the whole, read the bible, go to bible study, take my kids to sunday school, indoctrinate them that they were sinners and going to hell if they didn't accept Jesus. After my husband decided he didn't want to be married anymore (I think my religiosity had something to do with this), I moved bac...

sent in by Darkenmoon My parents divorced and I moved with my mom to be hear her family in Illinois. I was 5. I don't remember it effecting me really... it wasn't like my father was around anyhow. After we moved back here, I began going to church, the church my mom grew up in and her side of the family still went to. I believe it was more the pressure from my grandmother and my aunts that encouraged my mom to send me to church. I'm not sure she would have done it on her own since she hadn't before taken me. The church was a church where the local politicians went to see and be seen and to have very little asked of them. That's in a sense almost as bad as a fundy church I think... just in a different way. Anyhow, I did the whole be involved thing (not being a politician.) I was in choir, youth group, etc. As I got older I helped in the Sunday School classes and then taught in them. For many reasons I got squeezed out of doing these things though. That kind...

sent in by Khash I grew up in the Southern Baptist church. I didn't question it - it was life, reality, truth. How do you question truth? Well I didn't. I've always known I was gay but it wasn't a problem until I was an adolescent. I fell in love with my youth pastor. I might be many things but dumb isn't one of them. I knew this was "wrong" but it felt right. I didn't expect him to return my passion, but nor did I think what I felt was wrong. I read the Bible cover to cover trying to find some way to heal myself - hey, God wrote it, there must be some hint in there somewhere... Then I met a girl.... not exactly hollywood's idea - gay boy meets girl. But it worked. She knew the Bible better than I did. And she was smarter than me. And when I came out to her, she said "Oh for Pete's sake, just give it up! You wanna fuck men, then fuck men! You worship this god who insisted that his son be tortured to death and then obsess a...

sent in by Psychobunny56 I apologize in advance for the length of this story, but you can’t allow me to write without a defined length limit and expect something short. Any good deconversion story starts with the reasons the person sought religion in the first place. For many people that reason is simple: they were born into a religious family. Mine, unfortunately, is not that straightforward. The most religious people in my extended family are baptized and go to church only on Christmas and Easter; I was not among that group, but needless to say, there was very little religious influence on me as a child. Some people would argue that I was lucky not to have that pressure on me; I believe my gross ignorance of religious matters was a major factor in my eventual acceptance of literal, fundamentalist, born-again Christianity. How ignorant was I? I did not even hear the name Jesus until I was four years old; I actually had to ask my mother who this person Jesus was in the son...

sent in by anonymous It all started as being a teenager growing up in a Hindu family. I was always taught to believe in God and I was always taught to pray to God as a hindu. I was finding high school rough. I was finding hard to blend in socialy. I was working hard in sports, wasn't getting recognized. My social environment was definitely not good. I continually got frusterated with God because it was so frustrating. One day, I came to meet an attractive girl who worked at a restaurant, who I hadn't seen in eight months. It felt like she was a terrific person. She was really nice and I found it much easier talking to her than my peers. Pretty soon things got ugly. For some reason, I don't know why, I started to get the idea that maybe God brought this girl into my life, and when I lost contact with her for a while, again I was upset at God. Combining the fact that Hinduism just wasn't working for me, I felt like I wasn't reaching God because of my frust...

sent in by Hugh I was born and raised Xian, and after years of questioning the logic, the dogma and what I felt in my heart, I realized this was all bullshit. I read the bible, which was created by a bunch of ass backward rag heads trying to explain the world in which they live. Through death, slaughter and self severing means they learned to control the masses (which every religion does) and they succeeded. And as a recovered addict/alcoholic…I have experienced hell. They all told me god would heal me from this affliction if I would just give my heart to him. I have seen people in the greatest of despair praying to their god and carrying the bible and quoting this empty shallow bullshit only leading them into more turmoil. In the end they either succumbed to death by their addiction or blew their fucking brains out. Through the river of time man has tried to explain what happens after death and what god wants us to do. Because of our own insecurities we have cause more death an...

sent in by Hutch I've been visiting this website since September of 2004 and have been enjoying it ever since. It was in that September that I decided to read the KJV Bible all the way through, front to back, every word. Not long after I started reading the Bible I discovered this website. I was already not a xtian when I started reading the Bible. A lot of my friends were asking me why I visited this website since they thought I was never a xtian. They didn't know me when I lived in California. I'm now 42 and have lived in Seattle for 10 years. I was born to a "non-practicing" Catholic family. I attended church ocasionally for about 16 years. Some of my extended family members attended church regularly. My grandmother is still a devout Catholic and my mother went back to the faith when I dropped xtianity all together at 17. When I was about 8 or 9 some cousins and friends started going to a Baptist Sunday school and I went along. The first counple were...

sent in by Hades Greetings all, I don't know if I posted my "testimony" here but here goes. I was born agnostic Hindu in Bombay and we migrated to Singapore in 1995. Here in 2001 I joined the Hope of God church as a charismatic christian. However very quickly points of friction arose. Being a science student and having always been brought up under the impression that all religions are equal, I found it very hard to digest the "I am right and you are wrong!" attitude the church had. I also was an evolutionary biology student in the university and that again created a lot of friction. Added to the fact that I didn't like "christian" (read: Fundy) music and was always willing to question inconsistencies in the bible, I decided that this was not the place for me. Leaving was hard because these people were very nice to me. The churchmembers were a friendly bunch and I didn't like to tell them that I had decided that they are full of shit as far...

sent in by CurtDude [This was posted on the old forum as a response to someone else's post. I thought it was time to add my two cents to this forum, so here it is slightly expanded.] It was May 1984, and the Sunday morning service was just about ready to begin at the Baptist church in the Pacific NW where I had attended all of my life. I had been a John Denver-clone 70s Jesus Freak...I believed in the Gentle Shepherd and loving the world. Totally involved in being fired up for God. As the 80s and The Reagan Years rolled on, I was finding myself more at odds with my youthful idealism. I was also a young homosexual man who was realizing that there was only one choice for me as a follower of Jesus: a lifetime of celibacy while all of my friends got married. At the same time, my studies at university were giving me exposure to other people, other beliefs: I had begun to exercise my mind, my rational capacity. "Geez, there were other religions out there, along with n...

sent in by Dave My problem is that my entire family and my wife's family are steeped in christianity and my wife is becoming more and more immersed every day. She and my three children are really involved with the church which is very active. I've been going to church fairly frequently to appease her, but I resent it more each time. We're in the middle of the bible belt and it would devastate my wife to tell her my beliefs or lack of them because she's sure that all that stuff is true, and I could sure use some advice on how to handle this situation. I'm sure someone out there has experienced this situation and maybe could help. I sure hope so. It's driving me crazy. State: NC Country: USA Became a Christian: 12 Ceased being a Christian: 40's Why I joined: fear Why I left: I started looking outside the box

sent in by Sarah I have been on a journey leaving Christianity for the last two years. It started when we joined a controlling charasmatic church four years ago. Before that we attended a Lutheran church that was pretty normal for the most part. I think if I would have stayed in the Lutheran church, I would still be a Christian today because for the most part Lutherans are pretty liberal and laid-back. But despite being in the Lutheran Church, things were not normal and peaceful in our lives:(my husband and I) we alway felt like we had to do MORE, get closer to God MORE, pray MORE, read our bibles MORE and then maybe then we would attain some character transformation or inner peace, but the real result, more guilt and more anxiety and fear..(And the whole guilt-ridden Christian culture that promotes waiting till marriage to have sex!!! I could go on for an hour about how damaging that is, but I won't. Most of you know already and the topic is rather strange to talk abou...