sent in by Angie I was born and raised in the Church of Christ. My father was a preacher from the time I was 8. He says he went to preaching school to prove the bible false but come to find out he really went to get the approval of his father. He would have surely found discrepancies if he had look hard enough. By the time I turned 11 my father was having inappropriate relations with me. Talk about living with a hypocrite, but still I followed the mindless Christian path. To cope with what I was going through I pushed it all far away. 2 years ago I started having a break down and finally came out with my 22 year old secret of incest. My father at this time had lost his ‘church’ due to his own crazy teachings and actions. I became a christian 'by being baptized'... yada yada yada... to hopefully make my dad stop touching me and having sex with me. Well that didn't work. How does a young girl tell the world that her dad the preacher was sexually molesting h

sent in by Chris Ever since I can remember, I went to church. Unlike many of you, luckily I was not subjected to harsh Fundamentalism thinking, though strong religious thinking runs deep in my family. I first started attending church at a Nazarene church, but the only thing I remember about that is attending with my best friend and his father. I only went to have fun with my friend. The second and last church (on any regular basis) I attended was a General Baptist church, in which my wife and mother still attend. If there was any joke of a church, this has to be one. Attendance has dwindled to probably no more than 20 people a service, except for religious holidays. They’ve been through at least 3 pastors in the past 3 or so years. And one of them thought it would be better to buy a $2000 sound system than to feed the needy, which he ended up doing without the church board’s approval. Wow… some Christianly duty. Anyway, I had stopped attending church on a regular

sent in by Jason I was born agnostic, as are all children, but both of my parents are Christian. My mom started me in church when I was five. She wanted to do what she felt was best for me; but she's never been able to see the religion from an honest, fresh, and impartial perspective. By the age of seven, I developed a keen interest in dinosaurs. I wondered whether the creation of man or the existence of dinosaurs came first. I learned in school and from my outside reading that dinosaurs were around for millions of years. Adam and Eve, on the other hand, were created in the first week six thousand years ago. I couldn't think of a way to resolve this discrepancy. I asked my mom, but she didn't know either. Instead, she advised me to ask my Sunday School teacher. Her answer was, "We don't know there were dinosaurs." I immediately realized the religion had problems if it resorted to such claims in order to explain scientific discrepancies;

sent in by Kevin When I had finally come up with sufficient courage to leave fundamentalism in order to take up secular work as a therapist, I had to come up with something to tell the congregations and individuals who supported me financially. I didn’t want to face an onslaught of letters from people trying to “re-convert” me, so I opted to simply say that my children were having some difficulties in life that could be best addressed if my family and I did not return to the mission field. While this was not false, it did shrink from telling the WHOLE truth about why I would not be going back to the field. I mailed the letter to all of my “friends and supporters” and then waited. And waited . . . . And waited . . . . I was surprised that there was no response from anybody. Nobody bothered to try and contact me to see what kind of problems my children were having. The only thing they were quick to do was to pull my financial support. This all happene

sent in by Marvin Hi my name is Marvin and I'm an exMennonite. For those who don't know what Mennonites are I'll give a brief description. Mennonites are very fundamentalist Christians who go way beyond the mainstream in their beliefs. For example they believe that television, radios, and other forms of entertainment is wrong. They dress differently than the rest of the world especially the women (almost the same as Amish). They have their own schools and try to avoid contact with the rest of the world as much as they can. I grew up in an environment where I had almost no contact with anyone outside of the Mennonites. With no TV or radio it meant that the influences in my life were almost completely controlled by my parents and the churches school. I've always been the type of person to question everything though and there were a lot of things that didn't make sense to me. I bought into the Mennonite thing to a degree and joined the church wh

sent in by Todd I would have to say that I never really feel like I totally bought into the bible, when I was growing up. I was brought up in a Xtian church, but it wasn't a really strict fundamentalist church by any means. My mother made did make me go to church as much as possible and attended bible school and church camps over the summer, but I only really had fun for the socialization aspect and not the stories of jesus being told. I have memories of questioning things at a rather young age. My mother had taken me to the minister a few times during my youth, when I had fears of "what if there wasn't a heaven when we die?" and similar thoughts. I would just be told over and over about how god loves me and how I would go to heaven. So, I never had a very strong faith growing up, which made it easy for me to leave it behind when I went to college. When I went to college, I would tell my mother I was attending church just to make her happy, but I ne

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sent in by Loren Charles Estes,III Where to begin? This is the shortest as well as the longest story of my life. I was raised as a christian. I was also raised in a very emotionally mixed up family with alot of anger thrown in for good measure. It wasn't all bad, I had brothers and a sister. I'm the oldest of 6 kids. I had a father and mother that did the best that they could, though I would say they were not really prepared to have the family they had. I considered myself to be the one who would be most likely to be the christian we had all hoped we would be. You know working with those less able to look after themselves. Nothing wrong with that really except that it really got in the way of me growing up to be me. I mean I had my life mapped out by everyone who had charge over me and noone thought about my thoughts on the subject at all. Well that didn't sit well with me and by the time I had been though 3 major religious shifts I was 17 and had had enough. But I stil

sent in by Sam After years of watching my mother drink herself into a stupor every night, something even more dysfunctional came to be. Upon learning of her pregnancy, she reconciled with and married an ex-boyfriend, who happened to be a church of christ preacher. So, after years of unsupervised delinquency, I was suddenly smashed in the face with all of these ridiculous rules and regulations brought about by her new husband (religion). Of course, I rebelled. And what better way than to fully immerse oneself in witchcraft! Regardless of my heartfelt angst, I was always a pacifist. So, the ways of Wicca appealed to me, and even in retrospect I feel it was a very positive experience for me at that time. However, as I grew older and was failing in many areas of my life, I began to wonder if maybe my Mom was right. I mean, I hadn't even given her the opportunity to explain what she believed in. So, I gave it a go. Hmmm...where to begin...ahhh...yes, t

sent in by exhihhuli Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount to build the houses of our faith on the solid rock of his teachings (Mt 7:24-27). Too bad that the religion based on his teachings is a house built on sand. However strong you make the internal structure of your faith, there is no external rock that it is anchored to. So when the flood of rational thinking hits it, it will fail. My parents became born again Christians when I was 5. They started in Pentecostal and Lutheran circles, but soon ended in charismatic and Word of Faith (you know, the name-it-and-claim-it bunch, e.g. Hagin, Copeland, Oral Roberts) connections, though there were no such churches in the area we lived. As the only child I grew up with the faith, starting to speak in tongues at 7 and getting baptized at 14. When the super-charismatic "Toronto movement" landed in Finland in 1995 (I was 18), our family jumped in with no restraints, as the drawbacks of the Word of Faith movement h

sent in by Sallie I went to a small Nazarene church when I was little, and it had things for the kids to do, so I became very involved in the Caravans and Quizzing programs. In Caravans, you learned verses and such and earned patches -- kind of like Bible boy and girl scouts. Quizzing we studied books of the bible and went to competitions where we were tested on our knowledge and got trophies and ribbons and such state-wide! Then I went to middle school and befriended a Mormon girl, who gave me a Book of Mormon, and then they started telling me how her religion was evil and so on and so forth, and I started wondering about which church was right. I went to several churches over the years and participated in several youth groups, but I eventually converted to Mormonism when I was seventeen, and quickly quit believing after hearing a bunch of the fucked-up doctrine. I also came out as bisexual, and had to sit through Mormon therapy that told me that I was no better than a child

sent in by Deamond (First, a warning; this story doesn't get interesting until well after I became an Atheist.) Perhaps it was a mistake for a catholic school to bring children on an excursion to a museum, because such places, unlike schools, encourage you to THINK. When I was a kid, I had a tendency to question everything. I would never do anything I was told unless they explained to me why I should. I knew, from an early age, I would never be a very good soldier. I once believed in God, and back then, I also believed in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, Witches, Vampires, Bugs Bunny, you name it. I think I believed in Santa longer than God, actually. I think Courtney Love said it best; "I don't really miss God, but I sure do miss Santa Clause!" After I became aware of the contradictions between Religion and Science, I began thinking about it. During that time, I didn't know the word "Agnostic", but that's what I was. I was also aware of

sent in by Meagan I have been writing for a few years now, and a great deal of my writing revolved around how my views of Christianity changed. I have seen my close friends change, and many others who I have known remain the same. My close friends have turned away from the Christians, as I have done as well, sometimes unwillingly. My unanswered questions were the same that everyone else had. For the longest time I had the feeling that God was being sincere to me, and he put me in situations where I was to keep the group of Christians that I had known together and close in the body of Christ. Many agreed with me and followed in my footsteps. We gathered out in the parking lot of a restaurant after the praise and worship service. Three times we had done this, and every experience brought us closer to seeing a glimpse of heaven. The third time was a true experience that I still cannot explain. It was November, fairly cold and late in the evening, right downtown in the heart of t

sent in by John E. Denison I have spent a life time looking for the answer to mankinds most profound questions. I first had experience with church as a child. I would go by myself to evening protestant services at the Army Post Chapel in Bamberg Germany. A very bizarre thing happened one night when a man I never saw before wouldn't let me and my friend in because we weren't with our parents. That ended 3 years of my faithfull attendance. We moved to Ft. Ord Ca.(Monterey Bay area) when I was 13 that is where I grew up. I had already begun my search for answers to mankinds burning questions of why are we here, how did we get here, and how are we supposed to conduct ourselves etc? During my adolesence I pretty much professed atheism. This was the 60's. I drifted towards left wing beliefs I joined several well known radical groups thinking they had the answers, I was wrong. I joined several different eastern religious groups and some new age groups couldn't f

sent in by Iris I’m now 34 years old, I was raised in the Christian Faith. I was in the Church of God in Christ all my life and was taught the doctrine of that domination (cult). At 21, I received the baptism of the Holy Sprit, which was one of the happiest days of my life because for the first time I really felt the presence of God or some higher power in my life. At the church I attended, I sang on the choir, was the secretary of the Women's Department and I participated in the activities that went on there. Everything in my life surrounded by the church I lived and breathed it and I looked down on others the didn’t share my beliefs. I made lots of friends... good friends at that church. I know they are good friends because I always choose my friends carefully. Although I no longer attend church, we are still friends. My life as a Christian was almost the same as everyone else here before they left Christianity; very restrictive, most confusing and almost op