sent in by Janet I don't know where to begin. I could really go on forever about this. I was born to a Catholic mother and had no choice whatsoever. I was forced to attend mass and religious classes and even went to a Catholic kindergarten run by nuns. The nuns scared the crap out of me and at 5 years old I was already confused. Shouldn't I feel safe with the nuns? Aren't they supposed to be "good"? I never understood the many contradictions of religion and the readings from mass, and whenever I asked about them, I got the same lame answer. "It's a mystery." Well, my mind doesn't wrap around "mysteries", and my mother would get very angry when I questioned her religion. In my eyes, religion has caused more problems that it has ever helped. I don't even have to go into the wars fought and lives lost and torture and rape and pillaging done in the name of religion. (There's not a doubt in my mind that if there were no re

sent in by Cecilia I stopped practicing Catholicism in my teens because a lot of the teachings just didn't make sense, especially the whole thing of Jesus having to die for our sins. If God is all powerful couldn't he just forgive us without demanding a blood sacrifice. I always planned however to raise my children in the church because I thought it would be good for them to have a belief system. Then five months ago my daughter was born. I immediately decided that there was no way I was going to raise this precious girl with the kind of guilt and fear I was raised with. Even when I was only seven or eight years old I lived in constant fear of burning in Hell. Everytime I said a bad word or disobeyed my parents I imagined my soul getting blacker and worried if I died before I got to monthly confession I was doomed. When my beloved grandfather died I feared he may not have been good enough to make it to Heaven. I have concluded that raising children with religion just isn'

sent in by William As a child, and young teen I followed my parent s instruction and went to church on a regular basis. I studied the bible, King James version and memorized hundreds of passages in my years. In my youthful ignorance, like a sheep I followed my adult leaders and gave my life to God. My first church was a very conservative Baptist church called, The First Baptist Church of X. It was very, very conservative. Women to this day do not wear anything that comes above the knee. They strongly believed that the King James Bible was the most correct version and still teach all to memorize passages in the old English tongue. I went to church two to four or more times a week. There was Sunday school, (Sunday morning, kids were downstairs in classrooms and learned a different bible story every Sunday, which was an hour long,) after that there was the Sunday service, (which was almost 2 hours long,) Sunday afternoon on occasion we went to one of the local retirement homes/cent

sent in by Michael I was raised in a family that could best be characterized as "unthinkingly Protestant." My parents (to their credit) hadn't really studied their religion seriously, but just got it from their parents. We were sent to Sunday school, because that's what nice people do. When I was a teenager, I started to take a serious interest in philosophy. I read Aristotle, Plato, Nietzsche, Sartre, and others. However, I don't recall that I ever seriously encountered or thought about the question of whether God really existed. It just wasn't something that people around me discussed. One day, I was talking about philosophy with a friend, whose father happened to be an anthropologist. The friend asked me, "Do you believe in God?" I answered, "Of course." He replied with the question, "Which one?" and went on to explain how he'd learned from his father than people around the world believe in all kinds of different,

sent in by M The grass was green and the sky was blue. The confidence of life I felt early in my life was intense. I adored life and clouds and rain and fireflies and people. That was my earliest recollection of living and loving life. I noticed as I got older that the name of the game was to conform to family, events, country, people who talked of god, corporations, etc. An interesting thing happened when I was 8 years old. My mother got lung cancer and was given 5 years to live. Now, I was the fifth of six kids, there was a nine year gap between the first three and the second. So, my parnets where relatively old to have the next group. My mother was a Catholic and Father said he was Lutheren, but didn't really practice anything. Anyway, after my mother got sick, thing's got worse. There was alot of tension in the house and uncertainty. She had a "mother be worshipped" things going on in her mind. We had moved from Illionois to Colorado when I was six. The first t

sent in by Jay I was born into Christianity, and just like everything else your parents tell you, it has to be true. Well, as a child my ability to reason did not go far beyond "stove hot", so naturally I fully believed what my parents told me. It is reasonable to assume that they taught me about their god and did so as a verifiable fact. So I didn't doubt it, I didn't know any better and if I went to church I didn't get in trouble. To be honest, I never really believed in Jesus Christ as he is presented in the bible, I believed in Jesus Christ as the church presented him (if he did in fact exist at all). I never read the bible or prayed, and I certainly didn't tithe. It took me until I was fifteen years old to read the bible, and at that point something very curious occurred. I realized that many parts of the bible, and I'm sure that those reading this need not be refreshed, flat out contradicted each other. Even the sections that made sense w

sent in by Kay Christian fundamentalism does not mix well with alcoholism. My 72-yr old father in Southern California has been an abusive alcoholic all his life; he used to attack my mother on a regular basis and emotionally abuse us three kids. He would get drunk all the time, cheat on my mother, and try to bring prostitutes home. That was my childhood. Then my mother died and my father suddenly became a Born Again Christian to help assuage his great guilt over abusing my mother. (It hasn't helped). My father has been driven literally insane by Chuck Smith Sr.'s teachings, and by fundamentalists and evangelists on TV. One reason why I know this is that he calls up people and does phone exorcisms on them, often in the middle of the night, in order to catch them off guard. After he did one to me on the phone, I asked him where he thought that got him. He said he truly believed that his phone exorcisms work and chase out demons. You can imagine what they sound like. "

sent in by No More When I was six years old my parents took my brother and me to be baptized in the Lutheran Church. We continued to attend regularly and I was confirmed at age 14. I don t think my brother was, because my parents divorced and stopped being involved in the church before he would have studied for confirmation. By the time I was 19 I felt adrift, without clear spiritual direction, and I wanted to be a real Christian. I prayed and received Christ into my heart. I married a Baptist. I studied the Bible fervently. Before long I became dismayed by all the different interpretations of scripture that are out there. I wanted the TRUTH! After about ten years of comparative religious study, in a used bookstore I chanced to run across a magazine called, The Orthodox Word, of the Russian Orthodox Church. Their claim to have faithfully preserved the original teachings of Jesus and the apostles impressed me and I became a catechumen and converted. But I gradually bec

sent in by Sage My mother was the American Suburban version of "good Christian". That is, believes in the Bible word-for-word, does devotions and prayers exactly as they are written out on the book, prays before every meal - but doesn't go to church because she's fat, and she just KNOWS everyone is going to stare at her and she'll be so embarrassed and look so bad......Apparently God judges appearances a lot. My dad on the other hand, nobody knows what he thinks. I think the best label to apply to him would be "pessimistic agnostic"; that is, whether or not there is a God doesn't matter to him, so long as it's the worst-case scenario. My mom brought me up in the church. We went every Sunday, 8:00 AM sharp, in the frilly dresses and horridly uncomfortable tights my mother always made me wear. The kids in the church didn't get programs like the big people, we got little booklets with Bible stories inside to color. Only, we couldn't have

sent in by Max I was delighted to find a place where so many share experiences like mine. Despite any implications of my chosen screen name, I m a woman in my late 40 s, married, no kids, professional. Here's my story. I was brought up Baptist (American, not Southern), and I was a very good one - went to church every Sunday, prayed several times a day, studied the Bible diligently. The latter was eventually instrumental in my loss of faith. In retrospect, there were problems early on. When I was six, I became obsessed with the fear of going to hell. My dad loved "good fire and brimstone" preachers, and listened to them on the radio daily, spilling forth their warnings of eternal damnation. On top of that, my Sunday school teacher taught, "A lot of people think they're saved, but they're not, because people lie to themselves." Great, I could be on the road to unspeakable, eternal suffering, and I couldn't know. I cried myself to sleep eve

sent in by D.E.C Dear Webmaster, I've been surfing your site for a while and have finally got round to posting my testimony. It's not the most dramatic or exciting conversion story but I hope that some might be able to relate to it. I apologise for any spelling errors, but having a learning disability and being an ex-fundamentalist is hardly the best recipe for good literary skills. It's a shame that there was no Internet and Websites like yours at the time of my deconversion in the mid eighties; it would have made the whole affair less stressful. Having read the testimonies posted, I must confess that I feel somewhat ashamed since I realise that I have less of an excuse than many of you for getting sucked into this crazy business. Firstly my family background is not a Christian one. Secondly my country is one where fundamentalism is low profile; the ratio of bars and pubs to fundamentalist churches is at least 100 to 1 in the UK. Gay bars are probably about as comm

sent in by RJ Hi I have been a Christian since I can remember, there was the few years when I was a teenager when I departed from the faith and was a regular guy for a while, all the time in the back of my mind thinking I was sinning greatly. So I guess you could say that I was a Christian for over 25 years, with the last 13 years being a well respected member of a couple different churches, even helping in the planting of a new church and leading the worship team over the years. I have seen it all from conservative Christians, to barking and clucking, speaking in tongues with and without interpretation, gold fillings in teeth, slain out deal, prophesy, word of knowledge, and the list goes on and on. Somehow I was able to keep my faith through it all. A little over a year ago after reading in my Bible, yes it's true I was a Christian that actually read his Bible, I came to the conclusion that Jesus really wasn't God. At first I thought it was a devine revelation, but now I real

sent in by Unborn Again I am what my mother would characterize as someone who thinks he's too smart for god. By this she means someone who is intellectual, who has thought about religion and has chosen to leave the church. I was born into a church-attending family; both parents have been in the choir, have been elders and deacons. I grew up in church, attended sunday school and youth groups, and first became "born again" at age thirteen at summer church camp. Somehow god seems so real in the woods. I remember feeling an enormous sense of peace and tranquility. I reconfirmed my beliefs in high school--I especially recall when I was fifteen, attending a winter youth assembly with several hundred other teenagers, and the way the youth leaders poured on the guilt and shame, finally offering eternal salvation on the last day of the meeting as kids stood in line waiting for communion, tears in their eyes. Despite being a pious young man, however, I was never much of a bible

sent in by Andy This is very short and to the point. I was born into a Roman Catholic family. Mum and dad divorced when I was four. This is not good for R.C.'s. As a result of this I was treated like a leper by my teachers, who actively encouraged the other kids to do the same. Mum was depressed and took me to church when she could. On the occasions that she couldn't, I'd catch hell at school for not being able to tell the class what the previous nights' sermon was about. At no time throughout my R.C. education was I ever allowed to question the belief system that they were forcing on to me. I did question it once, when I was about six. I think I asked something like "If Adam and Eve were the only people on Earth and they disappeared to wherever, that left two sons; Kane and Able. One son killed the other, which left one man, so where did we come from?". I might add that the "theologians" out there will probably see the holes in this questio

sent in by Chad Before I describe the details of my de-conversion, I’ll describe why I converted to Christianity in the first place. My family background is marked by extreme dysfunction. The hippy sub-culture of drugs and rock-n-roll hijacked both my mother and father’s mind; so much so, I was conceived, carried to term, and birthed under the influence of weed and coke–my umbilical cord was a super-highway of drug trafficking. A dynamic duo of drug-dealing white trash; this constituted their career and the deleterious environment I was raised in–exposed to everything from vulgar language to domestic violence, which lead to placement in foster care for two years. From the beginning of my childhood, consequently, recidivism consumed my father’s life and rendered him a classic deadbeatdad. And my mother, who was his co-defendant, received a sentence of probation, yet, she continued to live a life of crazy instability throughout the entirety of my adolescence. Needless to say, I w