Christian to Atheist, one woman's experiences

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Mendalla

Mendalla

Happy headbanging ape!!
Pronouns
He/Him/His
I saw this video a few days ago and thought it interesting. The speaker is an atheist who started out as a fairly conservative Christian. She talks about her "deconstruction" (the term of choice for Christians who unpack and question their faith leading to a change or loss of said faith) and things that both Christians and atheists did that contributed positively or negatively to it. My own "deconstruction" was rather different given I started from a more liberal wing of Christianity and landed in a somewhat different place spiritually but that's an important point to all these stories: while there may be commonalities, they also tend to be individual journeys and you can't go "she did that wrong" or something because it's really an "if it worked for her, that's good" situation. "Why did she do that?" is a valid question, provided the goal is to learn about her journey, not a sarcastic, "Well, why would she do that?" kind of thing. IOW, there's no right or wrong here, just a variety of experiences that are right or wrong for the persons having them and therefore not necessarily ours to judge.

Have you had a journey in your faith or a change of faith? Have you "deconstructed"? Are you on such a journey now?

 
And, yes, there are likely similar videos out there for people going the other way. Those might be an interesting addition to the discussion. Or people who didn't change this radically, but maybe had their faith shift in a new direction.

To be clear, we aren't talking who is right and who is wrong here, or I hope not. We are looking at faith journeys and experiences, recognizing that these are individual things that need not be the same for everyone.
 
Mendalla said:
And, yes, there are likely similar videos out there for people going the other way. Those might be an interesting addition to the discussion. Or people who didn't change this radically, but maybe had their faith shift in a new direction.

To be clear, we aren't talking who is right and who is wrong here, or I hope not. We are looking at faith journeys and experiences, recognizing that these are individual things that need not be the same for everyone.
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Thank you for adding that in, Mendalla. I was about to.

Personally, I went from attending a liberal UCCanada church to being a conservative Baptist (FEBCC) to being a centrist Presbyterian (PCK)
 
This is my personal journey:

Liberal Christian upbringing

Return to same in my late thirties.

A walk with a well known progressive congregation

Return to liberal faith, slightly more conservative than my upbringing.

Back to square one with a different congregation.

A swing to agnosticism. Still influenced by teachings of Jesus.

Retired from church life.
 
My journey.

Raised in the United Church of Canada. As mentioned before, my grandfather was a minister who held a position at head office for the last part of his ministry (i.e. when I was a kid). Parents extremely active. Went through Sunday School and confirmation and all that. Generally a good Christian but hardly an ardent one.

The first tipping point was probably my interest in science which opened me to the idea of questioning ideas and testing hypotheses.

An even bigger one was having an ardent atheist as a friend (since the New Atheists hadn't come along yet, he was mostly invoking Bertrand Russell and other older atheist thinkers). We sparred in a friendly way but the questions he raised definitely stuck with me and showed that testing ideas had a place in faith, too.

A third was studying other faiths and their texts in various university courses, and I found ideas there that made a remarkable amount of sense to me (e.g. my first encounter with panentheism and process philosophy was in those courses). Of course, the fact that I even took those courses says something about where I was at in and of itself.

All of that kind of set me up for my discovery of UU'ism. My wife's thesis supervisor was a UU so that was my initial point of contact. I quickly realized as I learned about the UUs that their "chosen faith" made a lot of sense to me. Eventually, I was a regular attendee (but never joined) at First Unitarian of Hamilton, and then a member the London fellowship for about a decade. My departure was more about the state of the congregation and community than actually leaving UU'ism. At heart, I still embrace the UU principles.

Spiritually, I grew up a believer but in retrospect, I don't think I was ever really a strong one. I prayed out of habit and obligation, didn't constantly invoke God and Jesus, saw the world from more of a secular, scientific lens as well as an aesthetic one (being fond of the arts).

Over time, I evolved from just parroting what I was taught to developing beliefs that, while I did not know the words, were basically unitarian (rejected at least a literal understanding of the Trinity) and universalist (saw God as saving all people, not just some kind of chosen group) Christianity. I was also embracing philosophical agnosticism (I believe this but can't prove it objectively) which eventually gave way to spiritual agnosticism (I cannot be sure God, the afterlife, etc. are "real"). And I found great spiritual inspiration and presence in the natural world, which is why I was calling myself "pantheist" when I came to Wondercafe.

And really, my old label of "agnostic pantheist UU" still largely holds even if I don't use it anymore. I remain unchurched right now but retain my interest in spiritual and religious ideas and might re-engage somewhere at some point.
 
Hey @Mendalla
Nothing you have said in your story surprises me. I think you have shared it all with us in bits and pieces along the way.

I could expand on my information but I don't think I will. I have already spoken/ written extensively about one of the pivot points.

And now here I am.
Post Christian. Agnostic.
But I remain influenced by the Jesus of my understanding
 
paradox3 said:
But I remain influenced by the Jesus of my understanding
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Me, too, really. I mean, I was in a Christian church for my first 24-25 years and went through Sunday School and Confirmation Class so there's a certain amount of Christianity engrained in me. Not just Jesus, either. There's some Paul in there, too, for sure. I realized that when I watched a Great Courses course on the New Testament as the prof went through the letters.
 
paradox3 said:
Aside from I Corinthians 13, I don't see a lot of influence by Paul on my thinking.
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Few think or use ponderous processes on such complexities ... it just goes that way ... as we get more emotional ... something is lost!

The devil I say ... she knows how to tend fires ...
 
I grew up a strange little Lutheran. My parents very devout atheists, but we had Lutheran next door neighbours, there was a Lutheran church around the corner, and it turns out little Red had a god gene. Parents never came (I think my mother showed up for my confirmation), but I was welcomed to drag my sisters with me, for many years. Taught Sunday school.

This period ended in late puberty, aided by science education and the feminist movement. No-one in my life cared that I had left religion, except that my Dad, in his own honest way, required that I tell my pastor that I was leaving, and why. Dad was not fond of quitters.

My interest in religion didn't wane but become more literature focussed. When I divorced in my 30s, with kids 6 and 9, I decided that they should be educated about religion so they'd have a stepping off point to their own religious journeys. I'm still a beloved member of a wonderful community, who don't care what I believe, which is basically nothing useful theologically. An agnostic non-theist with some attraction to process theology, largely from the same delusional self-interested urge that leads to belief in 'heaven' or 'hell', I rather suspect.

I co-lead a progressive theology group, currently working through a Matthew Fox series about the Cosmic Christ, and attend a lectio divina bible study every week in addition to Sunday service. My partner, who I originally met at this church three decades ago (and then lost and re-found), has re-engaged with it, and keeps busy with practical tasks, like the property team and our weekly food bank satellite service on Tuesdays.
 
Man, sometimes I wish I had a faith that I deconstructed. I would feel less boring. I started out not knowing anything about religion, so by the time I started figuring out what the lowercase "t" on buildings meant, it sounded so ludicrous that I never once believed it. Gideons came to my public school and handed me a little red bible. I did crack it open a couple of times but it just cracked me up. A (very clever) high school friend who I started debating Christianity with took me to a youth group meeting. Turns out, the sort of funny lines I used in private with him did not play as well in a group setting, surrounded by believers. I was not invited back. Not that I wanted to spend any more time with those boring people.

I wasn't taught faith in my formative years, I was not moved by hearing about it in my teen years, and I've not since found a use for it as an adult. Utterly boring.
 
chansen said:
Man, sometimes I wish I had a faith that I deconstructed. I would feel less boring. I started out not knowing anything about religion, so by the time I started figuring out what the lowercase "t" on buildings meant, it sounded so ludicrous that I never once believed it. Gideons came to my public school and handed me a little red bible. I did crack it open a couple of times but it just cracked me up. A (very clever) high school friend who I started debating Christianity with took me to a youth group meeting. Turns out, the sort of funny lines I used in private with him did not play as well in a group setting, surrounded by believers. I was not invited back. Not that I wanted to spend any more time with those boring people.

I wasn't taught faith in my formative years, I was not moved by hearing about it in my teen years, and I've not since found a use for it as an adult. Utterly boring.
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chansen, I'm not joking when I talk about the god gene. And it's not left brain or right brain (although I graduated with an English degree I started in biophysics, then geography, then economics, in the process accumulating enough credits for several degrees had I maintained any degree of focus). And it can arise in strange people, like the child of two determined atheists. And neither of my sisters, despite all my church-dragging, have any interest in any sort of religion.

I found a community of people who care about others. Also, they are very good people who inspire me to improve my attitude, which largely needs it. I do tend to frighten small chlldren.
 
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