sent in by anonymous In 1971 I got "saved and became one of early "Jesus People" who attended Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa in Santa Ana, California. First it was in the big circus tent, and then in the new sanctuary. I was baptized in 1971 at Pirate's Cove at Corona Del Mar, and I married Calvary's live-in janitor in 1973, for ten years. I also attended a small charismatic church called Shekinah who had this flamboyant "healer" preacher named Brant Baker, but he ended up dying of AIDS. There was a lot of conforming for a female in the church to do. I was to "submit" to my husband, "obey" him and in other words, dote on him and be his yielding slave. It didn't bother me at the time, not until after I matured. Even worse, was the rampant anti-intellectualism. We were not encouraged to go to college because it was "secular" and "of the flesh," and yet at the same time it was demanded of the men ...

sent in by Jess I left the Jehovah´s Witnesses at the age of 25 (It´s 2005 now so it´s approximately a year ago). For a long time I´d felt miserable attending the activities (meetings, fields service, public talks) of that religion. I´d lost my faith completely...I´d done some independent research (a very forbidden act among the JWs and other totalitarian religions!) in the fields of general science, evolutionary biology, origin of man, origin of diseases, so-called "full-filled" prophecies in the Bible etc... My findings were very contradictionary to what I´d been taught from a fundamentalistic interpretation of the Bible and I couldn´t manage this Orwellian double-thinking anymore ´just´to keep my social network...Furthermore, I was very interested in the surrounding society and not just the world view presented in my religion... As a 25-year old gay virgin who´d been battling with my sexuality and masturbation since the age of 13 (anti-wanking-log, da...

sent in by Chad I became a Christian when I was 17 years old. My cousin invited me to a revival at a local church that I attended on and off while growing up. I wanted to run from it all at first, but I was drawn by the youth group there that seemed to love me and care about me. They were very nice to me and that was such a radical change from the "friends" I had at the time. Overnight I went from being cynical and condemning of the Christian religion to fully embracing it. I remember attending youth rallies, retreats, Wednesday night services and other events where I was always on the front row. I was so very zealous. My stepdad was agnostic then (still is) and I remember praying for him and requesting prayer for him. This was my senior year in high school. My new friends and life made me happy then. Life was tense at home with my stepdad which I realize was mostly my fault in my attempts to convince him of the new truth I had found. My mom followe...

sent in by Jeff I just converted fully to Atheist this week. I grew up and still live in Missouri. I was pretty much your average Midwest kid born to two amazingly supportive and loving parents. Both Mom and Dad were Christian, and from about the ages of 6 to 12 we went to church most Sundays. The thought of God made sense to me as a kid (especially with all the encouragement of belief that a well meaning Christian family brings). As a young boy, I remember my Mom having a religious experience one day in which the Holy Spirit truly entered her and she ended up speaking in tongues. This happened at home. As a teenager I went to church on special events only (Christmas, Easter, funerals, etc.). I didn’t give it much thought, but I figured Jesus was real and I hoped I would get close to him later in life (I was playing the odds that I’d die later in life). As a teenager I always had the “but why would God let a good Japanese person (who statistically will pro...

sent in by anonymous female First, my spiritual history (condensed): I've got to skip over a lot, but this story would be a book if I told it all. This is the way my spirituality evolved(in a nutshell). I was born into family that had been Seventh-day Adventist since the sect originated in the 1800's. I can remember going through my grandmother's bookcase and finding a journal that belonged to an ancestor in which he had recorded in longhand his witnessing of the trance-state of Ellen White, that sect's prophetess and founder. Growing up, I sincerely believed that the only acceptable belief system was conservative christianity. Any other beliefs were literally "of the devil". I believed what my authority figures told me. I was not allowed to go to public school until the seventh grade, and could nor consort with non-Adventist kids. I was allowed to play softball in a public league at age 10, but missed the majority of games because...

sent in by Jamie McDonald I became a Christian at the age of 17. At the time I was living in a University College - anyone who knows those sort of places know its like living in a goldfish bowl, everyone knows everything that you're doing all the time. Anyway my conversion was nothing short of spectacular, in the space of about two weeks I went from boozy party animal to hyper spiritual mr. Born Again. People were fascinated by my conversion, and in the following weeks I was able to lead several to Christ. I became something of a talking point amongst my fellow students. From there things only became more intense. Over the following years I led still more people to Christianity. Upon graduation from Uni I felt a 'call' to ministry, and several years later ended up on the full time staff of my church. My role was as an evangelist amongst university students, as well as leading our churches youth group of about 100 young adults. These were certainly spec...

sent in by Scott Stahlecker From as far back as I can remember (at age eight, lighting the candles on the alter of a Lutheran church), I have been fascinated by religion and all of its mystical qualities. I recall as well catching a city bus to a friend’s house at about the age of nine from my home in Pearl City, Hawaii, to a nearby suburb called Pacific Palisades. On the bus route was a church that I always made a point to look at as I made my journey. In a rather naive way, I would tell myself that one day that church would play a significant role in my life. What I was really telling myself was that I was intrigued by spirituality and I thought that organized religion was the means by which I would pursue my spiritual quest. Boys will be boys, though, and at that early age I certainly wasn’t fanatical about spirituality or religion. In the summer before my eighth-grade year, I moved from Hawaii with my mother to Tucson, Arizona. I was not active in a churc...

sent in by Reverend Jeremiah The longer I have been an Atheist, the longer I realize that I was never much religious before my conversion. I can remember my earliest Sunday school experiences rather well actually, my mother practically had to drag me into the church on Sundays! While I was in the classrooms, I would drift uncaringly into the land of unrestrained imagination, resulting in poor "grades" on my religious assignments. This of course, even at the tender age of seven, did not worry me one bit. Sometimes, now that I'm mentioning it, I would straight out skip Sunday school, making sure that my mother would see me enter the classroom hallway, smile and wave at her, look around to make sure the aggravating teacher didn't see me, and dip out with my friends. I found that walking around my neighborhood with my friends was more interesting than coloring pictures of a dead man on a stick. I had to be on my toes though, and make sure to return on t...

sent in by Ex-COG I've been reading this website for quite some time now, and think it's great! Along with other ex-christian and ex-fundamentalist sites, the deconversion stories here show how there are people turning from christianity, despite the evangelists assertions that they are winning the world for Christ! This will be the third site that I add my story to, so it's possible that some of you have read it before. I grew up in a fundamentalist group called the Church of God. Both of my parents had grown up in it, although my Dad did not attend anymore when I was a child. We only went off and on, mainly because my Mother didn't always drive. (Driving was one of many things she was "nervous" about. She had an abusive childhood, which may have set her up for fundy religion). This group was very strict; women couldn't wear pants, men couldn't have long hair, no one could wear jewelery, rock 'n' roll was sinful, yadda...

sent in by Aaron I wanted to share my experience. Not so much to convince anybody one way or the other, but to mostly to vent. My father (married 6x) and his wife are extremely devout born again christians. As part of their faith, they are to evangelize to all the unbelievers they know, which unfortunately for them includes their son, me. I have had an ongoing email debate with my step-mother. I have pasted a portion of it here. You'll see that you are unable to argue/debate with them because they are unable to step outside the box they have chosen. Kim is my fiance. Shirley is my step-mom. Tucker is my 1/2 nephew who has Poland's syndrome (a flipper like left hand). I am a firefighter by profession. Stepmom - I was thinking about what you said about our not being able to say that what we believe is right...that we cannot prove that what we believe is right. It seems to me that this is kind of like me telling you that what you believe about Ki...

sent in by CJ My first experiances of religion came from my childhood going to Church. When I was young, going to Church was something you just did, I used to think probably it was just a place to go on Sundays and listen to stories and sing songs; A place where you dressed up and went, I didn't understand about God, Jesus or Christianity until I was older. I went to Sunday school and read the Presbyterian Chetichism and the King James Bible, I done all the colouring in stuff, bible stories and picture books, I enjoyed it as a kid and thought little of it. When I was 7 or 8 I was diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy, which is a muscle wasting desease that causes disability, I remember the day I had to go and get the test done, because of the pain, they had to remove muscle tissue which wasn't pleasant. I don't remember a great deal of the affects of MD in the early days, but gradually I needed the use of a Wheelchair, which I am now totally dependa...

sent in by Daniel Neubacher First of all, I'm not the typical exchristian, since I was never a complete member of this religion. Actually, before I entered those times in which I started to feel so drawn to seeking God I had already been quite a convinced atheist. What I find so hard to understand about myself is why I, then, felt so drawn to God, felt so thoroughly that God has to exist. I had no traumas to overcome, and no deep fears to calm with the God thought. I was ... bored with life, and I felt that God would be some kind of vehicle for me, something by whose help I could somehow enter life again and get to enjoy happiness. I had no fundamentalistic notions of belief, I pursued a God of magical realism, someone who would show me the way into bliss, it was monotheism and pantheism, all in one. Some months ago I asked my friend what I talked about in those time, since I have already forgotten much. He told me I would have gotten lost in math, and that I w...

sent in by AtheistMommy I was born into a christian family. At about 12 I protested to going to church. See before that age I didn't know I had a choice. I was sent to private catholic school during the weekends. I never made my communion. In fact I refused to do that too. My very religious grandmother informed me that I was going to go to hell like my mother who was trying out different sects. Did you know that was a sin? My father converted to Baptist to marry in a Baptist church because his new wife was a Baptist. Of course that wasn't a sin according to my grandmother. Skepticism seem to come naturally to me. I doubted many things that they told me. Like for one, my father did his best to instill fear in me by telling me if I went outside at night the boogie man was going to get me and kill me. Of course the fear of the unknown got me but I got older and wanted to know more about this "boogie man." The next time he said that I opened...