Sent in by Johnny Being brought up by evangelical parents in a very strong Christian community it was only natural that I was indoctrinated with falsehoods from as far back as I can remember. I even spent the first 14 years of my life living in a church house for the first seven and then in flat above a church for the following seven. I was taught the same stories and morals as many of you on here; the doctrine of the trinity, heaven and hell, the resurrection and countless other miracles. My parents were unwavering in their faith, and most of our family and family friends were Christians of some sort too. Despite this, my parents were not overly strict, openly admitted they could not answer all of my questions about God, and wholly accepted the fact I was to ‘experiment’ with other religions/world views before committing to anything. I have always had a very inquiring mind and can remember grilling them from about the age of 4 or 5 with difficult questions such as ‘who created God?’, ...

Sent in by Andrew It's been about a year since I've stopped considering myself a Christian. I want to put together a 'coming out' letter to give friends and family some idea as to why I have given it up. Please let me know if you think I should add something, or leave something else out. Is it even a good idea to do something like this? I sent this letter to a close friend who is pretty devout, and she seemed to appreciate it. Here goes: Dear Christian Friend, Because you mean so much to me, I wanted to give you at least some sort of idea as to the ‘why’ of my deconversion. I want to let you know, at least at a surface level, why I’ve chosen to ‘leave the fold’, to share a bit of my story. To begin, I want to let you know that this is not something that has just come up or that I’ve decided on a whim. I’m sure you didn’t think as much, but I just understand that it can be difficult to comprehend why someone would ever leave Christianity, especially whe...

Sent in by Jacolyn I'm a 29-year-old female who has been an ex-Christian for about six months now after being a very devoted Christian for at least 20 years! I was brought up in a Christian family (Baptist), and when I was 18, I started going to a Hillsong style church, and never looked back until six months ago. The short story is that I could never understand why a good and loving God would send people to hell, no matter what the reason. Not long after I changed denominations (when I was 18) I was forced to think about hell in a more pragmatic way, as the church spoke quite openly about hell. I went through a period of depression, as all I could think about was, "Most people around me are going to hell.” Every day, with every person I encountered, I looked at them thinking, "They're probably going to hell," and I kept thinking, “What's the point?” I managed to get past that phase; I think I just tried to put it out of my mind. Eventually I managed to stop ...

Sent in by Melenie I realized at an early age that something was very wrong with the Baptist church I went to. It was pretty bad when a eight year old child can tell a place is corrupt. My first of many churches was in north Alabama, a very horrid and dim place where half the population cannot read or write. At the early age of four I was taught that homosexuality was wrong, and if you were you would go straight to hell. In fact, you would go straight to hell for lots of things it seemed. If you read anything by Darwin, you were doomed. If you talked back to your husband, then I hope you enjoy fire. If you think about sex you are a dirty whore and you will go to hell. The place was really more like a cult then anything. The people were brainwashed into believing that everything they did was evil. Luckily we moved from there, not long after we found out that a small religious faction that had developed in the town was over throwing the pastor because his daughter was a lesbian. We mov...

Sent in by Jimmy Okay, maybe "journey" is bit of an overstatement. It's quite simple really. I was born and raised in a Christian household. I went to church every Sunday (though it bored the piss out of me when I was younger). I was taught that the Bible was the inspired Word of God. I was taught that evolution was a big lie perpetrated by the scientific community. (Or was it liberals?) Oh, wait, I know! It was the Devil himself. Eh, I can't remember which one it was; all those things were taught. Every time I would hear the big, bad 'E' word I would loudly and proudly announce to anyone who gave a crap that "I didn't come from no monkey!" I was taught that to be a homosexual was a sin and an abomination against God. Yep, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," was one of my favorite sayings. I was taught that everything written in the Bible were historical accounts of actual events. I believed all these things without question. T...

Sent in by Stephen I am a long time lurker on this site and I just felt the urge to "come out" as a ... well I don't know if there is any word to describe my belief system but I'm sure you'll all get the idea once you read what I have to say...I guess the term "truth-seeker" is about as close as the English language allows. My upbringing was of the loose catholic variety where we belonged to a church but were about as far from any extremist belief as you can get. I live in New Zealand and here, any kind of extremism is generally frowned upon, even the Christian variety and extremist Christians are often a target of public ridicule (yay! :o) ) . So I wasn't wrapped up in any evangelical/extremist type belief system, but I was still influenced by dogma to believe that there was a god, who was watching over us and was basically in control of the universe and everything and that everything was going along according to his will. Luckily the denomination o...

Sent in by M. L. It has been a long and often emotionally turbulent journey, but I can now state, without fear eternal damnation, that I am an Atheist. I am not angry. I do not feel “done in” by Christianity. I do not even feel that my years as a Christian were wasted. In fact, I believe that I am who I am today due to the sum of my experiences. And Christianity played a big part in that. That said, becoming an Atheist has had a greater impact on my life than all those years of Theism ever had. I now go through life with eyes wide open. My relationship with my husband has reached an all time high. I can be adventurous without feeling guilty. I can unequivocally state that he is the true love of my life without the nagging voice in the back of my mind reminding me that Jesus should actually hold that position. I can be the woman he loves, completely rebellious and devoid of all notions of submission - my true self! But it is not just my marriage that has benefited. I can now ask qu...

By James M. Wilhelm When I was a fundamentalist Christian it was the devil I couldn’t get out of my mind. Over thirty years later, as I finally give up Christianity, it’s that Jesus character I can’t get out of my mind. Jesus was supposed to save me from evil. Now, who will save me from Jesus? If you want to believe in evil then evil will be real to you. If you want to believe in a savior then Jesus will be real to you. Therefore, I have concluded it’s all in your mind. There is no eternal struggle except that which you chose to believe or allow in your thoughts. Christians will go through all kinds of mental gymnastics setting up the forces of good against evil, self-righteously using the Bible as their guide but in the end the Bible has no supernatural power to do anything except maybe take your money and make you feel guilty. I’ve decided to no longer let that happen. It took many long hard years to get to this point. In the end, when all the books are closed and you shut y...