I don't believe in god
This wasn't always the case, and I couldn't always say it aloud when it was.
I'm in third grade. I've just finished mashing the white Wonderbread between my palms, flattening it out, and ripping it into circles. The milk is poured, so that means communion is ready. I'm putting on a fake mass at home, just for fun. While serving communion, I playfully apologize that the fairies came in and turned the wine white last night. I get lightly scolded for this; apparently I'm not to mention "fairies" and the church in the same sentence.
My family and I go to church every Sunday and my mom teaches at a parochial school. We (my three siblings and I) behave at school and get good grades.
I'm in fifth grade. I find a pink receipt from Ward-Brodt—a receipt for a gift Santa had given us for Christmas. I put two and two together and then cry in my room. I feel ashamed, sad, upset that I've been lied to all this time, and upset at myself for having believed so strongly.
I'm in sixth grade. During Sunday School, my religious ed teacher says that part of the Bible is made up of stories intended to teach lessons. Not true stories. Wait a minute… I begin to question the existence of god.
I'm in seventh grade. By now I'm agnostic (though I don't know the term exists), so CCD and church start to feel a little uncomfortable. All of my friends and family members believe in god, so I don't have anyone to talk with about these thoughts. I reach a tipping point and can't keep it in any longer. But I also can't bring myself to say the words to my parents. So I write on a piece of paper "I don't believe in God" and give it to my mother. She thanks me for sharing my "doubts," and says that we all have doubts—it's normal. (But these aren't just doubts; I've thought about it a lot!)
I'm in eighth grade. I'm still on the mass server schedule, even though most of my peers have since stopped. (It's mostly younger grade-school kids who serve at mass.) My mom says if I do something else for church, I can stop serving, so I join the youth choir, despite internally cringing at the words I must continue to sing. One weekend I attend "Youth Quake," a religious retreat that many friends were going to. My mom is so happy I went.
I also join a bible study that some friends created on their own. We have weekly meetings, send out an internal newsletter, and babysit to give the earnings back to the group (to support a child).
I still don't discuss my continual lack-of-belief with anyone; I don't think there's anyone to talk to. I don't know the term "atheist" exists, but I am one.
I'm a high school freshman. My older sister gets confirmed, and I begin to worry (a lot) about what will happen when I reach my junior year. I draft up the following letter to my mother:
"Either last year, or in sometime during 7th grade, I told you that I didn't believe in God. You told me that they were just doubts, and that you had them too. And after that day I tried. I tried really hard to believe in God. I joined Hannah's bible study, went to Youth Quake, and joined church choir. I did this all so you wouldn't be disappointed in me. But even then, I knew that it just wasn't gonna happen. What I believe is what I believe. It's the same thing as how no one will ever get you to change your beliefs in God. This is also the reason why I don't like to sing in church—because I don't believe in the words. I've only been singing at church so that I wouldn't get punished. At one point you said that if I didn't sing in church choir, I couldn't take voice lessons. But that's not right—forcing someone to say things they don't believe. In the 1st Amendment, all U.S. citizens are given the freedom of religion, and I was born into a very strong Catholic family, but I don't share the same beliefs, which is why it's so hard for me to tell you this, with no one that agrees with me, but I'm still going to stand up for what I believe in. I think it's perfectly fine that you believe in God. In fact, practically all of my friends do too, and I accept that and don't treat them differently because of it. I'm asking that you accept me for who I am, and don't try to change me. Please don't think of me as a failure, but rather as a successful person—because I am an individual who's not afraid to stick up for myself. All of this stuff has been going through my mind every day, ever since Jacki's confirmation. And it eventually became too much for me to handle—wondering about how I'm going to tell you, how you'll react, etc. It especially got me thinking about confirmation and how that would have only been in 2 years, and I decided to tell you my thoughts now instead of waiting until right before confirmation classes. As I said earlier, this is really hard for me to tell you, but I had to get it off my shoulders. It's all I could think about for the past week. So please don't try to change me… try to accept me the way I am. This doesn't make me a bad person, I'm still the same sweet me =)
Your daughter,
Rebecca
I'm a high school sophomore. My grandpa dies of cancer. After he dies, my mom says that she had talked to him just that week about my non-belief. I'm upset that on top of grieving for my grandpa, I now have to deal with the fact that his final words are being used to try and guilt me back into the church.
I'm a high school junior. The arrangement is that I don't have to get confirmed, but I still have to go to all of the confirmation classes and retreats this year. It begins with a "confirmation interview" in the fall, before classes begin in January. During the one-on-one interview I crack, the pressure of having pretended to be something I'm not for so many years is too much. I cry, admitting my position and lack of desire to get confirmed.
January rolls around, and my mom asks the coordinator who is in my class. It's an odd mix of popular kids and other people I don't know at all, thus there's no way I'd open up in front of these peers during class. My mom emails back and the coordinator ends up moving a friend into my class.
Then he uses this fact as leverage to try and get me to go to a retreat in Baraboo. "Since I was able to switch Amber into your class for the entire year, I think you owe me one. Yesssssss…. I think you owe me one." After listing all these reasons why he thought I should go to this particular retreat, he went so far as to add "… and …and… I would pay for it if you would go!"
I do not go to that retreat. (Yet still meet the two-retreat quota during the year.)
I must pick a sponsor—someone who is already confirmed—so I choose my sister and she comes to some of the meetings and gets annoyed at my science-based responses to discussion questions.
Wednesday night classes are the low point of my weeks; they're difficult to sit through. I'm not brave enough to ask my teachers challenging questions, or to let my peers know that I don't believe in god, so I mostly feel lonely, uncomfortable, and frustrated with the waste of time. I don't like to disobey authority or cause conflict, yet I want to stay true to my personal beliefs. So it becomes this tricky dance of keeping quiet during class, so as not to be put in the position where I'd have to reveal my atheism, but to still do what the teachers ask of us without saying things I don't believe.
Confirmation retreat #1
On the last night of this weekend retreat, we're each given a small paper bag with a letter from our parents inside—which they'd written and submitted ahead of time without our knowing. We're all sitting in church pews with time to read our letter in silence. Everyone else just has one or two letters, from one or two parents. Not me.
My mom had gotten letters from everyone in my immediate family (dad, both brothers, and my sister), plus my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and even a cousin. Aside from my cousin (who said holidays would suck without me) and my brothers (who had to send in the letter via email to my mom, and thus kept it very brief and told me to try and have a good weekend), everyone else highly encouraged me to open my heart to god. "Even if you think you don't believe in God, God believes in you," wrote one relative. In time, we know you'll believe. That was the message they all told me, one after the other, and it stung. Nobody said "We love you either way," or "We're proud of you for sticking up for your beliefs," or "This must be a really hard time for you with all of this pressure to get confirmed." Nope, I should just open my heart and give god (another) true chance, and do what my parents say. In time I will know that god exists and my life will be better for it.
The tears start to fall when I read my dad's letter, because as a man of few (deep) words, he opened with a powerful, emotionally vulnerable paragraph about when I nearly died the previous year after my spinal fusion. (I overdosed on narcotics when the nurse gave me blood through the same IV they'd been sending my narcotics in through, and my central nervous system had started to shut down.) I'd never heard his account of what had happened before, and reliving the event from my dad's perspective cracks me open.
I continue to cry as I move on to the other letters, because they make me feel totally rejected by my family. Over and over. No one is accepting me for who I am; my non-belief is not going to change.
Confirmation retreat #2
I'm in a church full of juniors from ours and surrounding towns, and everyone is supposed to go to confession during mass. There are extra priests from local dioceses set up in different parts of the church: up front, on the side wings, and even in the back. There’s no formal order for going to confession, you just get up when you see an opening and go to whichever priest you want.
I do not want to confess "my sins" one-on-one to a priest in exchange for a penance of prayer. I'm getting really worried as mass goes on, what am I going to do, what am I going to do. And then a brilliant idea comes to me!
I'll just get up and walk to the bathroom! The bathroom is located off of the gathering room, a side room connected to the back of the church. For the people in my row (if they kept looking straight ahead), it would appear as though I'd gone to confession at one of the priests in the back. For people in the back, didn't matter, because there's nothing wrong with going to the bathroom. Win-win-win! I was so relieved, yet a bit nervous.
I get up and start walking to the back. Holy cow I'm really doing it, I'm not going to have to confess! I wait a few minutes in the bathroom before coming back and sitting back down in my pew. Ta-da!
But then one of the retreat staff comes over next to me and quietly says, "Did you go to confession?" And here's where I start to lose my grip. Why? Because I can't lie. I could have easily told this woman that yes, I had gone, end of story. But no, I may not believe in god, but I cannot blatantly lie to her face. (Nice job parents!) Heart beating, emotions swelling, I tell her no, I hadn't gone to confession. She says well why don't you go up front, there's an opening.
It's all hazy from this point forward, but I think then I told her I didn’t want to go. I also started tearing up because it was just the most uncomfortable situation ever. I didn’t want to go, I was surrounded by a church full of high school peers, but I couldn’t lie to this woman. She tells me well, you don’t have to confess, you can just go talk to the priest for a bit. My honest reaction is “I’d have no idea what to say.” She says I could ask him to pray for me.
So with the pressure of this woman, and with all my peers looking at me, I go up front to the confessional. I tell the priest I'm not going to do a confession, but I ask him to pray for me, as the woman had suggested (which disgusts me). He rattles off some prayer-speak and might have even given me a prayer penance too. And then I leave, returning to the pew in front of everyone. The girl next to me asks if everything is all right. "Bug off!" I later type, as I retell the incident on my blog.
I'm a high school senior. I discover Hemant Mehta's blog "The Friendly Atheist" and I read his book "I Sold My Soul on eBay" once it comes out. Hemant and Dan Myers even comment on my angsty teenage blog from time to time! I email Chris Hallquist questions about UW-Madison, and he also takes the time to respond. This is the first I learn of an atheist community, and see there are others out there like me.
I start bringing a notebook to church and sit in the very last pew at 10:00 mass on Sundays. During the homily, I jot down crazy quotes from Father Eric and later post them on my blog.
I continue to hear from my mother that I'm rejecting our family values, I'm rebelling against everything they've taught me, and that I only think about myself. I strongly disagree.
It's Sunday afternoon and I'm crying as hard as I've ever cried, on the floor in my bedroom closet. I never went to church in the morning, and I've just been told that I'd have to go to mass in downtown Madison that night, to a church which has a Sunday night service. But I have so much homework! That drive to Madison plus mass would take up so much time! And more importantly, an hour of church today—hearing a service I've heard every week my entire life, which only differs week to week by a 10-minute homily—will not change my life. It will not make me a believer. It will not make me a more moral person. It will not make me feel better. Basically, whether I go or not, I will be the same me. So why do I need to go?
They tell me that as long as I'm living in their house, I must go to church every Sunday. End of story. I sob uncontrollably, the deepest cries my body has ever poured out. Ever. My parents leave me for an hour, and I do not stop breaking down. It's hard to breathe. But I can't stop. Inside I'm just so emotionally exhausted and frustrated of being misunderstood. Of not being taken seriously. Of being forced to do something I do not believe in. Of being thought of as a failure, a disappointment, a rebellious teenager who "thinks" she doesn't believe in god. Of fighting for my freedom from religion. Because THIS IS ME! I am kind to others, I work hard, I get good grades, I sing in school choirs, I tell the truth, I compete in cross country, I help others, I edit for the school paper, I manage the girls' basketball team, I am a peer tutor, I don't drink, I don't do drugs, I got into UW-Madison, I drive safely, I am a role model for others. WHY IS THIS NOT ENOUGH?! WHY CAN'T YOU ACCEPT ME AS I AM?!
I cry for a second hour, never letting up. I consider moving out in order to free me of this church obligation. Where will I live? My parents want to call our neighbor to have her come talk to me. "You have to talk to someone," they say. This gets me even more upset. I don't want our neighbor to see me like this. Plus I could never talk to her about what I'm feeling and going through.
At some point I do finally stop crying. A bit later, one of my parents drives me into Madison for mass. I did not move out.
I'm a freshman in college. I join AHA (Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at UW-Madison) and go to weekly meetings. We watch documentaries, eat pizza, and have philosophical discussions. My mom finds out that I've joined this group, and majorly freaks out. I return from class one day to several missed calls and a voicemail on my phone. She thinks we're a group of rebellious college kids who are up to no good. On the panicked voicemail, she says that she's really worried about me, and to remember why I'm in school, focus on school.
I attend the Freedom From Religion Foundation's 30th National Convention that fall, meeting Matthew LaClair and Ellery Schempp, among others. In the spring I get to see Richard Dawkins speak, and my Spanish TA offers kind support when I open up about my atheist struggles in a composition.
The summer after my freshman year I go on a road trip from Madison to Washington D.C. with two upperclassmen (fellow AHA members Kristin Degeneffe and Travis) to attend the 17th World Humanist Conference. I apply for and win a $200 grant from the Secular Student Alliance to help fund the journey. I stay in my very first hostel and meet other humanists from around the globe—including the famous Hemant (who asked me to take a picture of him with his digital camera during his panel!).
It’s really impressive that my mother "lets" me go—whether she actually feels okay with it or not—considering where we were at ten months earlier, the fact that she didn't know either of my road-tripping buddies, and also that this conference was going to be full of atheists. This is progress.
As the years go on, we continue to move in this direction; my atheism becomes "normal." It paves the way for my younger brother to do the same come his junior year of high school—to go to the confirmation classes but not get confirmed.
Outside of our family, during the next decade atheism grows and becomes more visible in the country as a whole—no doubt partly thanks to the rise of the internet. I become more and more comfortable in my atheist skin, proud to show what a kind, friendly atheist and humanist can look like.
If you'd like to support any of the organizations that helped me in my journey to becoming an out-of-the-closet atheist, here are the links:
