Sent in by S. P. This is going to be the short version of my story. I'll write a longer one once I've had more time to analyze exactly what being a former Christian means to me - it's still fairly new. I was "born and Bible-bred" as they say. I was taught that all people are inherently evil, and that without the ten commandments and God, I was destined to hell. I remember "accepting Jesus" in my grandmother's bedroom when I was three years old. I got a weirder mix of Christianity and anti-worldliness than many. My childhood was defined by having faith; we weren't allowed to lock our doors, see a doctor, or do anything to protect ourselves. We were supposed to just trust God to meet all of our needs. I now see what irresponsibility this trained in me as a child, and as a young adult I'm struggling to overcome this. On the outside, that sounds great - freedom from personal responsibility for your actions! But it was coupled with overwhe...

Sent in by Mike Schultheiss Gather around, everyone. I've a story to tell, one I've been burning to tell for the past few years. You see, like the lot of you I used to be a Christian: for fifteen and a half long years. I accepted-Jesus-Christ-as-my-personal-lord-and-savior when I was about four and a half (yes, I know, it was a VERY grown-up decision for little Mike Schultheiss--actually it was Michael in those days--to make after the presentation in his Sunday School class, complete with posters of a gentle, bearded Jesus with European features) until I was almost twenty. Yes, I've told this story before, to many people and sometimes online, but never have I laid it out like this. And now, I think it's time. You see, I've been an atheist for over three years now and I really need to get it off my chest. So that part of my motivation's personal, I'll admit. Christianity scarred and psychologically abused me in more ways than I can begin to convey and it'...

Sent in by Martha I was raised Christian in a moderate (actually, fairly liberal) church by two very loving parents. At no point was anything forced down my throat; I accepted the teachings willingly and with enthusiasm. I remained very strong in the faith all the way through high school until I joined the military, where I moved far away from my family and my church. I tried to remain faithful for several years, but it didn't take long for me to start having issues. I started feeling like God had left me, so I assumed that this was one of the tests of faith that he puts us through to make us stronger. So I prayed and prayed and prayed, but things didn't seem to get better. So I started to wonder if I had done something wrong that had made him withdraw his presence, so I carefully searched my life to find out what it was, and I prayed for forgiveness, but I still had no luck. Finally, I just gave up, because nothing I did made any difference. I didn't understand it at...

Sent in by Red Foot Okie I’ve been visiting this site for a few years now, mostly to read the de-conversions, make occasional comments, and be thankful that my own road to skepticism was not nearly as rocky a path as many of you had to walk. The short version is that religion was never a huge issue in my immediate family. In fact, it usually only crossed my mind when someone else brought it up first. Put bluntly, education, experience, and living life have led me to become a happy atheist. The longer version follows: My family is, technically, Methodist, when they are religious at all. When I was about 5 we moved to a small Texas town and the public school system there was really bad, so I was enrolled in a small Catholic private school. I was warned that Catholics were different from Methodists, and not to be taken in by their ornate churches and archaic rituals. To be honest, I have only good things to say about that school. They didn’t try to coerce me into going to confession,...

Sent in by John I grew up with two sisters and a single mother. My mother had very strong Christian beliefs. She wasn't evangelical, but did force them onto the family. We were quite fortunate in that in many respect we had a privileged upbringing, with money for a nice house, school fees, sports opportunities etc etc. In other respects the three of us had to endure the consequences of my mother's strong beliefs and desire that we should share those beliefs, and have our lives run as she thought God intended. We attended church and Sunday school bible classes regularly, and didn't go to the local church because it wasn't what Mum liked, but went to another much more traditional church. Most of her friends were from that Church and she was active in organising various church events. We were encouraged to have friends from the church, we were allowed school friends around, but Mum was very selective, and if they didn’t meet her standards they didn't come back. We w...

Sent in by Kristine I was raised as various forms of protestant Christian — mostly Methodist and Presbyterian — all evangelical. My parents weren't really into the church thing, but they always tried to promote Christian and traditional values — the typical Christian/conservative thing. I was taught that Jesus loved me and that I should pray. The family did drag me to church enough times and talk about Christianity enough that I did get the whole Christian experience and I did believe. But, there were always things that bothered me about it. I was taught that Christians were the only ones that could go to heaven. But, what about the good people who weren't Christian? It didn't seem right for them to be excluded. Also, I didn't like the concept that all sins were equal in the eyes of god. A white lie or thinking bad things about god was equal to murder and rape. Perhaps it was because of these things that I always had a problem fully embracing the faith. Or maybe it was...

Sent in by Arthur I was forced to go to a catholic grammar school where we attended mass every weekday morning and also attended as a class on Sundays. Teachers were all nuns who weren’t very well educated and it was obvious that most didn’t choose the job because they liked children. We spent lots of time learning about all the sins we shouldn’t commit and the penalties we would face for committing them if we died before we were able to confess them to a priest. As I remember, we could go to hell for purposely missing mass on Sunday or a holy day. And eating meat on Friday was also a sin that could send you to hell. In the ‘60s the pope decided it was OK to eat meat on Friday after hundreds of years of prohibition. I’ll bet that really pissed off all those people who went to hell for doing it. Of course, it was also possible to murder someone and go to heaven if you were sorry for your sin and made a ‘good’ confession. I particularly remember a couple things the nuns told us kids. O...

Sent in by Roland 'Never wishing to throw the baby out with the bathwater', I have yet to do so and won't -ever. I am part iconoclast and part theist, ExChristian to be sure, -not that it was my original intention nor have I chosen to be, -but the 'icon of Christianity' that I came to know should not have been created in the first place. I am not particularly sorry for breaking that which should never have been made in the first place (hence 'iconoclast'). I did not start 'the lie', -I only learned of it and am more than willing to post what I have learned as a result... both about the lie and, more importantly the truth (as I know and/or understand it). My 'theism' stems from (my) love... being loved and loving... (extremely difficult and private to articulate and/or explain...) of life, nature, learning, etc., etc., etc... the list is practically endless... suffice it to say that without 'love' one can not live rightly, nor under...

Sent in by Brian Back in 2004 I left the Christian Faith after I found out that in reality there is no such thing as a personal and loving God who guides and directs our paths. However, according to these Right Winged Extremist Nuts, it's my fault that my faith did not work. I have grown to hate Christianity with a purple passion, and here is an example of why I have grown to hate Christianity here in the past four years. This is a constant reminder of why I have no desire to return to the cult known as the Christian faith. Just today when I went out to eat breakfast with my parents (Who are ultra conservative Christians) my father asked my mom and I to bow our heads, and say the blessing before we eat. I had stopped this practice four years ago after I left Christianity, of course. Now days when I am around my family I usually just sit there real quietly and let them pray over their food like they always do. Apparently my father did not realize that I had stopped praying over...

From Annastasia Hello everyone! I'm Annastasia, 32, and I'm having a really hard time right now. I have been raised a Christian my whole life. I never knew anything else. I've been taught that all other people who did not accept Christ were going to hell regardless of belief in a higher power or a God of a different name. I never thought I was going to have a future because every year was the "Last Days" and the "end times" were here. The fact that I went to church like a good Christian girl did not make all of my questions go away. I was and still am the problem child in my family. I am the one who has continuously questioned the validity of Christianity and the one that Satan is controlling. I am now, according to them, corrupting my own children. I have been searching and studying every aspect and opinion for the truth in religion and I cannot find it. Faith aside, it's just simply not there. Just recently it occurred to me that I really DO NOT be...

Sent in by Andrew The story of my faith starts out like every story here. Born and Raised in the Roman Catholic Church From Birth. Dragged To church, but eventually "became a believer". Was "Confirmed" in the church and currently a senior in a Catholic High School. You get the picture. In elementary school, I was what you would call "a retard". This was before I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. I stabbed myself with pencils and safety scissors. I cried nearly everyday for some stupid reason. Most of all, I wanted to die because I was tired of being made fun of. The thing was that was when my belief in Christianity was at my strongest at that time. I always participated in church, had strong beliefs in the Bible and Ten Commandments. I also had strong respect for anyone who was a priest. Once I entered high school, though, that was all about to change. During my early high school years (freshman/sophomore), my views of the Roman Catholic Church c...

Sent in by Jessica As most stories go, I had been raised in a Christian household. No we weren't the stable Christian family, and we didn't attend Church every week, but we were believers, said our prayers, read our Bibles... Well, that's a lie. I didn't actually read the Bible myself until my teens. I even tried once to read it from cover to cover (Oh dear... what a dire and feeble attempt I made... three pages in, I gave up.) I gave my life to Jesus quite young, around the age of nine or ten, blindly, and I can't recall why or how it came about exactly, but I put it down to living with Christians and witnessing people doing the act. Monkey see monkey do, right? I was a 'hardcore' Christian over the past few years, on the flipside of a messy divorce between my parents, and I was fully immersed in the message of the Bible. I did this partly to support my blubbering mother, who clung to her religion like she had nothing else to live for. We attended ALPHA cou...

The Trying Years Sent in by Jerry The Trying Years Where to begin? Even as young as 5, I have never taken to Christianity. I was an outstanding academic pupil at the earliest age. That also got me into trouble with my religious mother. You see an inquisitive mind wants to know things that a zealous black American Pentecostal mother from rural Arkansas doesn't want it knowing. I started reading fantasy books and comics as young as kindergarten. I loved reading stories and was fascinated by the most elementary knowledge from other cultures. I devoured National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, etc... It was only when I entered early elementary classes that my mother noticed I took more to comics, fantasy books, sci fi, mysteries, and mythology than I did to the Bible. She would actually come into my room and snatch my Norse mythology tales from my hands to replace it with a Sunday School book. I found Bible stories boring and the Bible silly. It just didn't appeal, interest, or make s...

Sent in by Mike I'm 21 years old and was brought up in a Christian home. My mom, dad, sister, grandma's, aunts, uncles, EVERYONE I LOVE... are all Christian. YET, it still isn’t enough to influence me to believe. I have always been very truthful with myself and was told to be a leader when I was a young child. I would ask myself even at an early age, "How does one become a leader when you must follow the bible? Isn't that a contradiction?" I made my own decisions growing up, I never smoked weed; I never drank; I didn’t follow the crowd like everyone else. I didn’t do these things because I believed in god. Rather, I believed in doing what I felt was right in my heart and brain. I find it funny how most of the people who are Christians are ones who where the followers all along -- they smoked the weed, they drank, they "sinned," and now they believe in Jesus. Why? Because to me it’s nothing but a quick fix, an easy solution to their problems, an supposed...

Sent in by Brooke So my dad's wife is unfortunately one of those Christians who adamantly deny every shred of evidence against Christianity or any favorable information about other religions. She would likely ignore the fact that Paganism doesn't involve demons and witchcraft, and that Satanists don't actually believe in Satan (let alone worship him)... because it would completely contradict her entire worldview. She would instead take pains to explain why YOU are wrong, citing the negative spiritual feelings she gets from those religions and how God "told her" during prayer that they were evil and demonic. She actually thinks that my seizures were caused by demons, and even appears to believe that the only reason why my medication is working is because I'm mentally making it work and therefore driving the demons out of my brain with the medicine's placebo effect. She didn't actually say that, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's the explanati...

Sent in by Carol My upbringing occurred in the 1950's and sixties and I was schooled in the mainstream religion of the Catholic Church. My mother was an extremely abusive person. However, the nuns often said that if a person was a Catholic who participated in communion and confession, who went to Church on Sundays and did not eat meat on Fridays, they would be saved. However the nuns also insinuated that my father, who was one of the best people on the planet, would not be able to enter heaven, as he was an agnostic. Even at the age of seven this made no sense to me. I could not accept that my father would be left in limbo or purgatory because he looked at the world from a more scientific point of view than the Catholics that I knew. By the time that I was in my teens, my life had become very problematic. A great deal of what happened to me involved my mother's methods of discipline. It has taken me decades to realize that just because the things she did to me were labeled ...

Sent in by Jackie A couple of days ago, in the middle of the thread about integrity of the Christian community, somebody posted an interesting question that I couldn't wait to jump all over. He asked "Atheists... do you have a purpose?" I must have hit cancel instead of publish because my comment never went on the thread. So, I figured it would make a better discussion topic instead. My response to this question goes something like this: By purpose, if you mean divine, then of course not, because we don't believe in the divine. If you mean responsibility, then yes. We don't need motivation to do the right thing. We don't have to have a carrot dangling in front of us. (And by carrot, you could interpret that to be heaven, spiritual gifts, blah, blah...) Sometimes I get quite an ego and like to think that I have more ethics and morals in my little atheist pinky finger than most Christians do. I don't have an ulterior motive to be friends with someone. ...

Sent in by Justin It’s been a long, strange and incredible journey for me over the past year or so on the spiritual path. I guess it started when I began working on the fellowshipping.org website. I wanted to make it easier for Christians to connect with each other, but I also wanted to get the message of the gospel out to as many people as I could. I still believed in Hell at the time, and I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone going there (not just friends and family, but anyone). Around that time, I started a blog and in one of my blog entries I challenged myself to pray for 2 hours a day for a week. I accepted the challenge. During all of that praying, the topic of Hell kept coming up and one morning I woke up with a feeling that I should do some research on the topic. I googled Hell and a bunch of links jumped out at me claiming that Hell was not real or didn’t exist. I thought that was too good to be true, until I actually started reading some of the websites. I ended up r...

DOVER-FOXCROFT - A Roman Catholic priest committed suicide after he was informed that he would be suspended pending an investigation of his alleged sexual abuse of a minor 29 years ago, the Diocese of Portland said Friday. The body of the Rev. James Robichaud, 56, was found Friday morning in the rectory of Our Lady of the Snows in Dover-Foxcroft. He learned of the allegation the day before. Robichaud died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, said Sgt. Gary West of the Dover-Foxcroft police. He said an employee at the rectory found the body in a second-floor bathroom, and it was believed that the shooting took place Thursday evening. No suicide note was found, West said. The abuse allegation came to the diocese from the Oblates, a religious order of men with whom Robichaud was serving in Massachusetts prior to his return to Maine in 2000. The abuse was alleged to have occurred around the time Robichaud, an Augusta native, was ordained in 1979 and assigned to St. Jean-Baptist...

Sent in by Emily I'm living in a country where Catholicism is rampant. Atheism is considered evil here, for the religious people here are so deluded by their faith. I almost became one of them until one particular night made me question everything. I was depressed; all of my personal problems were killing me. I was praying all the time to make them disappear. Nothing worked. I talked to my friend who is studying to be a priest about it. He said that I should go back to the Catholic Church (I denounced my Catholic faith back then). I was moved by his words at that time. But at the same time, it hit me: I thought, "If God loves me, He should make all my problems gone because I always prayed." I remembered being taught that God doesn't want us to suffer, so why I was suffering? A lot of questions were entering my mind about religion, God & everything else. After a lot of thinking, I realized what was taught in Catholic schools is illogical, inconsistent & wrong. ...