Received Monday, January 21, 2002 Hi David - your website's very moving; I shall read some of the ex-Christian books. I too got caught up in the charismatic thing; I was training to be a Bible translator when my father died very suddenly of cancer. I was blamed by my church for not having enough faith to allow God to heal him. I left the church and left Christianity about a year later. At about the same time time a close friend was raped by a member of her church; he reached the elders before she did, told them they'd been having an affair but he now repented, and she was kicked out of the church for fornication. They screwed so thoroughly with her head that she wasn't able to go to the police because they made her think it was her fault. I spent a few months exploring what I really believed and ended up a Pagan and more specifically a witch, but that's another story. I've healed sufficiently in the intervening years to now become involved in interfaith discussions

by Spider Monkey Long, rambling, un-PC, and extraordinarily snarky, but hopefully worth the read. The drama started in 1995, when I was 13. My father had "found the lord" that summer when I was staying with my grandparents. Being the naïve, sheltered child that I was, I had squashed out my initial doubts and began believing the xian propaganda about the loving biblegod and his abilities to change people. Before the saga began, I had had limited experience with the Southern Baptists during vacation buybull school. I was a loner, an outcast among my peers, and I wasn't getting along with my parents. During this time in my life, I was often suicidal and depressed. I was happy that I would finally become part of a loving church family…. Was I ever wrong. I had the feeling that something was wrong early on. I was expecting a miracle to transform the short-temper and impatience of my father. Instead, he became more punitive, arrogant, and hypocritical. My brother