My Deconstruction and Eventual Deconversion from Fundamentalist, Evangelical Christianity
I was raised in a fundamentalist, evangelical, southern baptist church. I was active all the way through high school, then in college, I started volunteering more actively. Then I started getting paid for the work I was doing, then was offered a salaried staff position. When the pastor I was working for started making plans to leave to start ( “plant” ) a church, my wife and I made plans to go with him and I took a staff position at the new church.
The whole time I was getting paid to work for the church, I had this persistent, nagging question of whether I was ‘serving’ out of devotion to faith, or because it was how I knew I could support my family. Like, was I devout, or just getting paid the best way I knew how? Especially since we were in a recession and I had dropped out of college to ‘join the ministry’. That specific tension, along with the general, nagging guilt that I just ‘wasn’t doing enough to support the ministry’, and the realization that my devotion to the ‘mission’ was having a negative impact on my family and my personal well being, led me to leave my position on staff.
Fortunately, the church was gracious to me in my departure, and I was able to transition relatively smoothly into a satisfying career opportunity that paid well.
After my last paid Sunday at the church, my family and I never returned for regular services. At the time, I didn’t feel like I would be able to attend as a member without being expected to perform the same duties I had as paid staff.
It came as a surprise to us when, after we stopped attending the church, there was no contact from any of the 100+ people we engaged with every Sunday, including a dozen or so that we hosted in our home on a weekly basis. I’ll be the first to admit that a phone works both ways and I made no special effort to get in touch with anyone either. My wife and I are both introverts, so the reduced social engagement was a welcome relief, but to go from ‘doing life’ with people to being ‘incommunicado’ was definitely strange.
Then, as if to formalize our disconnection from that community, the pastor, who I’d worked with on a daily basis and considered a best friend for the better part of a decade, didn’t communicate with me for a month, then sent a text basically asking “should I stop being your pastor now?” Having seen from the inside how people who ‘bailed on the mission’ or ‘flaked out’ were talked about after they moved away or took positions at other churches, I knew that I had committed something akin to ‘church treason’ and shouldn’t expect much in the way of a relationship with the leaders or anyone under their leadership, many of whom I had considered close friends for over five years.
Our family tried attending several different churches over the following years, but assimilating into a church after working in a church is not easy. I knew too much about the internal mechanisms and conversations that drove churches I had been involved with to not be cynical of other churches. Our kids didn’t like going to childcare, my wife and I felt instantly pressured to get involved in small groups and ministries and membership classes. This ‘full court press’ that I had learned and performed from a staff and volunteer position was now targeting my family and it felt gross.
Even before leaving church work, my theology and political beliefs had been shifting more progressive / liberal, and now that my income was no longer tied directly to my beliefs, I felt freed up to genuinely explore and be curious about faith, religion and philosophy again. In my position as a lead volunteer, then as paid support staff, I wasn’t in a place to second guess the leadership on matters of doctrine. Exploring new ideas felt like it would at least result in conflict with other leaders and staff and potentially lead to loss of my job. Better not to rock the boat, lest I be thrown overboard.
As a father of two young children, this time of questioning and doubt caused considerable distress because I feared for my childrens’ salvation. They’d not yet been baptized and I felt there was some kind of ticking clock pressing me to figure out my beliefs because their eternal souls were at stake. But without a church home or elder figure to seek direction from, I turned to the internet and the Bible and books and podcasts from a variety of sources, and that’s when things got interesting.
The question I felt to be of utmost importance was ‘what are the consequences of failing to evangelize my children?’ Initially, I was able to allow myself some ‘wiggle room’ by trusting that God was in control. Then I started considering the ‘age of accountability’, which quickly led me to exploring the variety of ways that different denominations understand Hell. Learning that there was plenty of scholarly support for the idea that there was no eternal conscious torment awaiting myself or those I loved after death, I felt the freedom to explore other religions and ideas about faith, the spiritual, the supernatural, etc.
After several years outside the structure of the religion I was raised in, working through questions of what I truly believed and how I should talk to my kids about religion and faith, I realized something. The most that I could confidently, objectively say about the Bible (or any other ancient spiritual text) was that it was a collection of writings from long ago by people doing their best to understand how the world works. Indeed, there is no factual support for the supernatural claims of any religion. Having just written this sentence for the first time, I can see how obvious it must seem for many whose childhood wasn’t overpowered by an entire culture of what I would now call indoctrination and brainwashing. But even now, it feels like a revelation. It’s easy to see now how Christianity has built up defenses against the “your supernatural claims can’t be tested” through ideas like “the rain falls on the just and the unjust”, “God works in mysterious ways” and “sometimes, God answers prayers with a yes, sometimes with a no, and sometimes with a wait.”
Disconnecting from the faith, religion, community and culture that I spent nearly 3 decades immersed in has left a kind of void and lack of purpose. For so long, I believed myself part of a global war to reclaim the souls of humanity from the clutches of Satan himself, constantly praying and seeking to grow my faith and show people the way. There remains in me a longing for a some greater purpose, new identity, or a people or place to serve. I work to provide for my family, I spend time with a few friends, and I have a few hobbies. I struggle with this feeling that I’m not doing enough, so I’ve started to put some of my financial resources towards supporting things that I believe will make the world objectively better like public media, fighting climate change, reducing poverty, providing clean drinking water, etc. Basically, doing good for the world without expecting anyone to validate my beliefs before receiving any aid from me.
This post is part of my effort to make things better. I want to be one more voice in what I’ve found to be a growing, welcoming community of people who are finding life after God, life after religion, and life before death. I’m just one more person saying, “You can leave your faith and religion and be okay.”
Resources
Below is a list of resources that helped me along the way so far, loosely in order of when I found them on my journey:
Rob Bell’s books, one man shows and podcast came as a welcome first step for me. His time as a pastor, Bible knowledge, and name recognition from my time inside church culture provided a safe exit from my fundamentalist beliefs. The folks he interviewed and the ideas he discussed opened me up to a lot of new ideas.
Richard Rohr’s mystical perspective on Christian faith helped me loosen my grip on a strictly fundamentalist understanding of scripture.
Reconstruct podcast helped me pull apart some doctrine and beliefs and see that Biblical interpretation is very ‘up for grabs’ between reasonable, thoughtful people.
The Liturgists Podcast provides a ton of great content to help dissolve calcified fundamentalist doctrines.
Peter Rollins’ unique perspective and interpretation of the Gospel story in the light of philosophy and psychoanalysis was another one that helped me loosen my grip, and the Fundamentalists podcast he does with Elliot Morgan helped me stay lighthearted along the way. All credit to them for the idea of “finding life before death”.
Homebrewed Christianity podcast introduced me to the diversity of thought and scholarship starting with the Bible but not holding it as 100% literal, factual truth.
THIS, a podcast and book by Michael Gungor, helped me let go completely.
Born Again Again podcast, which I found through The Life After podcast, is a couple that left fundamentalist church backgrounds, has been a recent addition to my podcast feed, and (Patreon account). The candid, honest discussion of their experience of leaving the faith was one of the things that compelled me to share my story in this way. They’re virtual friends who help you realize you’re not losing your mind, just setting it free.
#ExVangelical | r/Exvangelical and #ExChristian | r/ExChristian communities on Twitter and Reddit. Leaving your faith community can be lonely, but there are friendly people on the other side willing to offer advice and support.
Two notes:
- There are a tremendous number of resources out there that pull apart the claims of religion, dig into the logical fallacies, expose the psychological damage caused. This is not intended to be one of those resources. This is by no means an effort to deconvert anyone, just a record of my experience so far. Throughout my time inside Christianity, I never believed that I could convince anyone of anything by stating facts, only that God might use my words to change someone’s mind. I still believe that facts, logic and reason alone can’t change minds, but I hope that by sharing my story, I’m at least offering some invitation or encouragement to those whose minds are already in the process of turning towards a life that I’ve found liberating and satisfying.
- I’ve found that while leaving my faith has been liberating and satisfying, the most difficult aspect so far is working up the courage to discuss these changes with family and friends still in the faith. The desire to preserve their feelings, avoid their scorn, and prevent them from seeking to convert my children are all very real concerns that have led me to share my story anonymously. Whether you deconstruct or deconvert in public or in private, I wish you all the best.
Stay curious, press on.
