The ‘Care List’: My Deconversion Story
Content warning: mentions of suicide, self-harm, sexual abuse and rape.
Just over three years ago I stopped calling myself a Christian. I have little doubt I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t. I consider the choice to stop believing to be the single best decision I have ever made or will ever make.
Eight months before that final goodbye to God, I was sitting on the couch in a church office avoiding eye contact with my Christian counsellor. I admitted that I’d had consensual sex. As a sexual abuse survivor the experience of having sex on my own terms had felt shockingly empowering. However, as a Christian the guilt had taken hold and so there I was sharing what should have stayed between myself and my Tinder dates…and maybe a few secular girlfriends.
At the beginning of our relationship my counsellor had asked me to sign a waiver that allowed her to disclose the content of our conversations under certain circumstances. The contract included the conventional confidentiality exceptions including suicide risk and the intent to commit a crime. However, the document also had a clause that allowed her to share the details of our talks with the church elders if she felt I was in ‘unrepentant sin’.
However, the document also had a clause that allowed her to share the details of our talks with the church elders if she felt I was in ‘unrepentant sin’.
For everyone who knows exactly where this is going, you will be glad to know I at least paused before signing my privacy away. I was wary about putting my name on a dotted line that would allow a group of men to discuss the intimate details of my life. I’d been in that situation before and it wasn’t fun.
Unfortunately, I was also desperate for help. I struggled with self-harm which stemmed from the trauma of my teenage years. My high school Church Doctrine teacher, also a church elder, had sexually abused me for close to three years before I had finally freed myself — no thanks to God.
I signed the document and for months had devotedly attended my counselling sessions every Sunday after church. I felt drained afterwards. Sometimes I would go home and study the cracks on the ceiling above my bed, unable to figure out what to do next and spiraling into an anxiety attack. Other times I would meet with friends from church, stumbling through conversations unable to get words past my uvula as shame clogged my throat. I’m grateful to the friend who would simply walk with me in the time between my counselling session and the evening church service. (Yes, I went to church twice on Sundays and sometimes on Wednesdays. Plus, I had Thursday Women’s Bible Study).
The more I buried myself under religion and therapy, the more desperately I subconsciously tried to claw my way back to any sort of control over my life. Against the advice of my church friends, my boyfriend, elders and my counsellor I decided to move in with a lovely lesbian couple for my final year at university. The attitude in fundamentalist Christian circles like the one I was in ranked homosexuality as even more problematic than your run of the mill premarital sex. My roommates brought real unconditional love, acceptance (despite my unaccepting beliefs), and cognitive dissonance into my life.
Against the advice of my church friends, my boyfriend, elders and my counsellor I decided to move in with a lovely lesbian couple for my final year at university…My roommates brought real unconditional love, acceptance (despite my unaccepting beliefs), and cognitive dissonance into my life.
I’d also been warned that I spent too much time kissing my church approved boyfriend. My boyfriend was at the time (before I broke up with him and tried Tinder) my only sexual outlet… besides, of course, my detachable showerhead. That ‘sin’ I was wise enough to keep to myself.
The Sunday I told my counsellor about my ‘sin’, I had planned a busy week showing my parents the city. It was the first time my dad had been able to get away from the farm to visit me at university.
Part way through the week I received a phone call from my counsellor. She had shared my ‘sin’ with the ‘Pastor of Biblical Counselling’. He had shared my ‘sin’ with the rest of the church elders. As a result, the elders were considering putting me on the ‘Care List’. The ‘Care List’ was a public list of people who were in ‘unrepentant sin’. The fact that I’d committed the ‘sin’ of sex while unmarried was to be announced at the evening church service.
For context, this church had a membership of over a thousand including members of congress, the head of the secret service, and any number of people I was hoping to ask for introductions to potential employers. Both my professional and social networks revolved around the church.
I did not believe I could cope with the public humiliation. I’d recently read about Sky King, a man in Seattle who had stolen an aeroplane and killed himself after doing a barrel roll and nose diving into an unpopulated island. I envied him. I wanted to go out with a bang too.
As I talked to my counsellor, I day dreamed about all the ways I could kill myself. I hinted to her about my state of mind but I now knew she could not be trusted. I wanted to be in control of my life more than I wanted to live.
It was a beautiful sunny day. I sat on a rock wall contemplating how I would cope if my entire church knew about my few sexual exploits and condemned me for them. People would feel obligated to reach out to ‘check up on me’ and ‘hold me accountable to God’. I would be told by acquaintances they ‘were praying for me’. People would gossip about me in Christianese as they met at the Starbucks down the road from the church.
I began to wonder if I needed these people in my life.
My counsellor gave me a choice: I could meet with her and the Pastor of Biblical Counselling or I would be put on the ‘Care List’. This wasn’t the first time I’d been given an ultimatum by a church leader, but that is a story that deserves its own article. I’d only been given one time slot to meet with them, the exact time I was supposed to drop my parents off at the airport and say goodbye. Already, the stress of my predicament had put a damper on my parents’ visit. At the time, I hoped I could at least keep them from hearing about the men I had slept with. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that my ‘faith’ and my church were more important than my family.
I was told, in no uncertain terms, that my ‘faith’ and my church were more important than my family.
My Christian friends told me this is what Christian love looked like. They told me that one day I would be grateful to my counsellor and the elders for saving me from my ‘sin’.
I went to the meeting. I cried. I begged. I said anything I thought would play in my favour. I was told I would have the option to tell the congregation myself about my ‘sin’. I considered walking out of that church office, stepping onto a metro platform and going the way of Zoe Barnes from House of Cards.
Eventually, they decided I was ‘repentant’ and gave me a two-month probation. But by that time I had realised what these people called ‘Christian love’ was simply manipulation.
The Pastor of Biblical Counselling wrote me an email in which he told me, ‘you are ruining your life’. He also implied rape had ruined me as a person and as a Christian. He gave me a list of homework: share my sexual ‘sin’ with other Christians so they can hold me accountable, attend every church service, listen with particular attentiveness to the prayer of confession. He concluded by telling me not to back him, my counsellor, or the elders into a corner like that again. I understood that for the BS that it was. I knew who held the power in that situation and it wasn’t me.
Until then, I’d always attended church. I’d put my heart into worship. Apparently, that honest devotion went unnoticed.
I made it through my probation sneaking shots of tequila before service. I went to Europe alone to consider what I wanted my faith to look like. I also gave my first blow job and started to learn how sex actually worked with foreign men whose names I forget. I read the Bible from cover to cover asking myself if what I read was actually true or right. I didn’t want to worship a god who would send some of the best people I knew to burn for eternity simply because they were gay.
I read the Bible from cover to cover asking myself if what I read was actually true or right. I didn’t want to worship a god who would send some of the best people I knew to burn for eternity simply because they were gay.
I kept going to church, making sure I was seen by an elder, then slipping out and coming back at the end of service to mingle. I wanted out, but I knew if I stopped attending I would end up on the ‘Care List’.
The opportunity for escape presented itself as a job offer on a different continent. I sent in my formal resignation from church membership to the elders with the promise (fingers and toes crossed) that I would find a new ‘church home’. No one at the church had connections in the city where I was going and so no one could make recommendations or check up on me.
I did attend one church service in my new country. Sitting in the pew, listening to the service, I knew I never wanted to experience so-called ‘Christian love’ again. I stopped calling myself a Christian. Then, not quite a year later, I announced publicly that I was an Atheist.
I will never take for granted the joy of being free to think for myself and decide morality according to my conscience and a genuine compassion for living creatures. My life is no longer dictated by the arbitrary set of rules laid out in the Bible by a jealous, vindictive and somewhat useless god. Never again will I give a group of self-important men so much power over my mental health. When I tell my story, it’s because I choose to.
E.D. Paige now lives happily ‘in sin’ with her partner. Since leaving Christianity many of her PTSD symptoms have subsided and she no longer struggles with thoughts of suicide. Follow her on Medium at @ed.paige for more articles about her thoughts and experiences in religion.
