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Former Christian?

JemStone said:
Any former Christians here?
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Former Evangelical Christian, wanted to be an apologist because I wanted the strongest reasons to share my faith, and ended up instead with strong reasons to give it up.
 
James, your profile lists "Basic Beliefs: Agnostic Atheist" was that the case from your childhood?
 
Goodness no. I was a committed Christian all my childhood. Steeped in the Baptist church since nine months before I was born. My parents sent me to private Christian schools from elementary through college.

I didn't deconvert until I was 33 (an auspicious age). The process was much like Jarhyn's. I spent time on atheist messaging boards with the intention of "befriending" them and then leading them to Christ on the sly. From the other members of that board, I was pointed in the direction of counter-apologetic works which opened my eyes to the fallacies, the lies, and the wishful thinking that propped up my religious beliefs.

There never was a more reluctant deconvert than I, but (checks notes) over two decades later I have zero regrets.
 
James Brown said:
Goodness no. I was a committed Christian all my childhood. Steeped in the Baptist church since nine months before I was born. My parents sent me to private Christian schools from elementary through college.

I didn't deconvert until I was 33 (an auspicious age). The process was much like Jarhyn's. I spent time on atheist messaging boards with the intention of "befriending" them and then leading them to Christ on the sly. From the other members of that board, I was pointed in the direction of counter-apologetic works which opened my eyes to the fallacies, the lies, and the wishful thinking that propped up my religious beliefs.

There never was a more reluctant deconvert than I, but (checks notes) over two decades later I have zero regrets.
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My track was similar. My Dad was of French-Canadian culture i.e. Catholic and actively involved in several aspects of his parish church. He took me and my brother to daily morning mass. Even though the local public school was 1 block away, we were enrolled in a parochial school 2 miles away. Our next-door neighbors were Baptists. We were forbidden to ever step foot in their church building. One day my neighbor of my same age opened the door of The First Baptist Church so I could at least take a peek.
After college I was on my own and never felt a need to go through that daily or weekly church ritual and have hardly seen the inside of a church since - with no guilt, only relief.
 
JemStone said:
My Dad was of French-Canadian culture i.e. Catholic and actively involved in several aspects of his parish church.
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Ha haha!
I also grew up super Catholic. Two of my dad's brothers were Monsignors.

As I came to realize that Christian theology and ethics were "uncompelling", in my late teens, I thought that made me an atheist.

I couldn't be a Protestant, because then I would go to Hell.
:)
Tom
 
Personally, there is one thing I miss about church, and it is in fact more the primary role of the church, as opposed to it's secondary application of indoctrination: churches are community centers.

I miss more than anything else having a regular day where very different people all from nearby get together and do something and chat and maybe have a luncheon.

It would just be really nice to do that in a secular, eclectic, or religiously agnostic setting.
 
I had been intrigued about why Christianity became accepted versus the current (at the time) religious practices.
According to The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (1996) it was transmitted neighbor-to-neighbor, i.e. a weekly social gathering that had not existed with the other religions.
I agree with your sentiment. In some ways fraternal organizations, e.g. the Rotary Club, The Elks, Masons etc. appeal to the desire for fellowship.
 
JemStone said:
I had been intrigued about why Christianity became accepted versus the current (at the time) religious practices.
According to The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (1996) it was transmitted neighbor-to-neighbor, i.e. a weekly social gathering that had not existed with the other religions.
I agree with your sentiment. In some ways fraternal organizations, e.g. the Rotary Club, The Elks, Masons etc. appeal to the desire for fellowship.
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My take on it recently is that it provided a unified temple culture that would eventually allow the Roman empire to transition from local hegemony to international hegemony without having to actually conquer anyone.
 
JemStone said:
I had been intrigued about why Christianity became accepted versus the current (at the time) religious practices.
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I think Jarhyn has it.
It's about community.

Whatever else Jesus and His disciples did, they started communities. Communities that were sufficiently attractive to the hoi polloi to survive and grow in members. Sufficiently attractive for people like Paul to start more of them outside of Judea, in the Greco-Roman world. Which also grew, while adapting to the prevailing cultural norms and beliefs.

Then, over a few decades, the original communities were destroyed. They died out with almost everything else in Judea. The Romans looted, enslaved, and generally reduced everything in Judea to rubble.

But the secularized Christian communities outside Judea continued to grow. From Greece to Egypt, from Turkey to Rome itself, these disparate communities, with their individual versions of Christianity, kept on growing. While becoming increasingly pagan, like demigods and pantheons and water into wine miracles, those Greco-Roman communities became Christianity. Because they worked. Jesus based Christian communities didn't because they were too Jewish.

By the 4th century there were enough Christians to be useful to a Roman emperor. Christian hierarchy got access to the wealth and power of being a government agency, provided they developed an "official" doctrine that suited a Roman warlord. So they did.

And now we have what's known as "True Christianity". The doctrine agreed upon by the Roman elite.

More than a bit ironic, considering it all started as an anti-Roman people's movement.
Tom
 
TomC said:
JemStone said:
I had been intrigued about why Christianity became accepted versus the current (at the time) religious practices.
Click to expand...
I think Jarhyn has it.
It's about community.

Whatever else Jesus and His disciples did, they started communities. Communities that were sufficiently attractive to the hoi polloi to survive and grow in members. Sufficiently attractive for people like Paul to start more of them outside of Judea, in the Greco-Roman world. Which also grew, while adapting to the prevailing cultural norms and beliefs.

Then, over a few decades, the original communities were destroyed. They died out with almost everything else in Judea. The Romans looted, enslaved, and generally reduced everything in Judea to rubble.

But the secularized Christian communities outside Judea continued to grow. From Greece to Egypt, from Turkey to Rome itself, these disparate communities, with their individual versions of Christianity, kept on growing. While becoming increasingly pagan, like demigods and pantheons and water into wine miracles, those Greco-Roman communities became Christianity. Because they worked. Jesus based Christian communities didn't because they were too Jewish.

By the 4th century there were enough Christians to be useful to a Roman emperor. Christian hierarchy got access to the wealth and power of being a government agency, provided they developed an "official" doctrine that suited a Roman warlord. So they did.

And now we have what's known as "True Christianity". The doctrine agreed upon by the Roman elite.

More than a bit ironic, considering it all started as an anti-Roman people's movement.
Tom
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To be fair some aspects of the original Christianity survived, were reborn, or were kept in secret even centuries later.

The Gnostic sects never entirely died out, and even one original JtB cult survived, and is still active.

Most notably, this kind of activity was vigorously opposed by the Roman Catholic Church which mutated into something like the EU of the monarch system.

As can be seen, notably, there were even competing organizations with England, the Orthodoxy, and the Papists.

Once civilization got powerful enough as a force among people, there was a vacuum for power and the tie that binds across borders was religion.

This opened the door for the Church to enter into that vacuum and set up shop.

It was as much international community as interpersonal community. The religion grew from communities, and the church grew around those communities.
 
James Brown said:
Goodness no. I was a committed Christian all my childhood. Steeped in the Baptist church since nine months before I was born. My parents sent me to private Christian schools from elementary through college.

I didn't deconvert until I was 33 (an auspicious age). The process was much like Jarhyn's. I spent time on atheist messaging boards with the intention of "befriending" them and then leading them to Christ on the sly. From the other members of that board, I was pointed in the direction of counter-apologetic works which opened my eyes to the fallacies, the lies, and the wishful thinking that propped up my religious beliefs.

There never was a more reluctant deconvert than I, but (checks notes) over two decades later I have zero regrets.
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I went to Catholic schools in the 50s 60s.

I think those of us who let it go as adults have a residual conditioned guilt for rejecting Catholicism. We are taught to believe we are guilty of something. We are born sinners redeemed by baptism.

As a school kld in grammar school we would be marched over to the church for confession. Scary for a kid. You go into a what amounts to a dark closet and speak to a priest through an opening.

One feels competed to confess about something.

It took a while to see priests and the pope as regular people wearing funny costumes and hats.
 
steve_bank said:
One feels competed to confess about something.
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OMG!

I so remember this.
I went to Catholic school. I only went from my last class on Friday to the church. It was all one huge building.

It was time for Confession.
I made up sins. I had to confess something, else I'd get a D or something. I dunno.

I sure as Hell wasn't gonna tell Father Schiava when I discovered masturbating. Eeew! According to my Mom, Gramma was in Heaven watching me every moment. If she didn't tell Jesus or the priests I wasn't gonna start anything.
Tom
 
TomC said:
steve_bank said:
One feels competed to confess about something.
Click to expand...
OMG!

I so remember this.
I went to Catholic school. I only went from my last class on Friday to the church. It was all one huge building.

It was time for Confession.
I made up sins. I had to confess something, else I'd get a D or something. I dunno.

I sure as Hell wasn't gonna tell Father Schiava when I discovered masturbating. Eeew! According to my Mom, Gramma was in Heaven watching me every moment. If she didn't tell Jesus or the priests I wasn't gonna start anything.
Tom
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As is often said on the forum, Christianity is about power, fear, and control. Tne RCC has had over a 1000 years to get good at it.


I went to St John's school in Stamford Ct for grammar school. The church next door was an New England gothic style, a cavernous basilica. Awesome to a kid. The pulpit was on the left raised above the people. Looks like the same confessionals. There was a large hanging crucifix with Jesus wearing a bloody crown of thorns,

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The Basilica of Saint John the Evangelist Stamford. 262 likes · 1 talking about this. See our website for complete information https://stjohnbasilica.org/
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I'm another former evangelical, hell fire and damnation Christian. I was raised by Christian converts. I was dragged to the so called Billy Graham Crusades in New York City back in the 50s, when I was in elementary school, when my parents were counselors to the newly "saved". I always was bothered by the concept that a loving god was sending non believers to be tormented in hell forever, for simply not believing that Jesus was god, and by believing in him, one was "saved" from eternal torture. What a strange ideology, that separates people instead of bringing them together.

Anyway, my story is that I deconverted while attending a very conservative evangelical college in Massachusetts, a few miles down the road from Salem, where witches were burned at the stake. Being around that idiocy 24/7 made me an agnostic after one semester, so I dropped out and transferred to another school, breaking my mother's heart. Atheism came to me by the time I was in my mid 20s, so it's been over 50 years since I've identified as a Christian and about 45 years since I began calling myself an atheist.

It's likely that more than half of us here were Christians at one time.

While we haven't been to Atlanta since before the pandemic, we used to find community in the Atlanta Freethought Society. We do have a small atheist group here in my area that gets together once a month to socialize. Although I do have some wonderful, liberal Christian friends here, it can be hard for an atheist to make friends while living in the Bible Belt. But, that's changing. There is even a group known as "The Black Nonbelievers" in Atlanta. They welcome anyone and I've met quite a few of the women in the group a few years ago. If you need community, check to see if there's a free thought or atheist group in your area, or start one up. Ours was started by a former neighbor. He used the Meetup site to get things going. It's been over 10 years so I don't even remember how I discovered the group, but it was a nice surprise to discover it was started by a neighbor, who now lives on the other side of Atlanta. The Pandemic has slowed things down. The AFS is still only having Zoom meetups. Another nearby group is still only meeting by Zoom as well. I will admit that we atheists aren't nearly as good as herding cats as the religious folks are.
 
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