Deconverted Seminarian

[Anthony]

Hi everyone,

 

I lurked around this board for a while when I was in the process of de-converting, but haven't really been back since.  I thought I'd share a bit of my story.  I think shared experience is powerful when going through any challenge, and leaving the faith is most certainly a challenge!

 

I became an Evangelical Christian when I was in late Junior High (8th-9th Grade).  My friend went to a Pentecostal church and I went on a weekend retreat with his group.  At the very beginning of the event there was a "revival" - Pentecostal style.  Healings, speaking in tongues, people falling over "slain in the Spirit," etc.  It was a shocking experience.  After the revival service I spent the weekend with this group doing Bible studies, etc. along with just having fun:)  At the end of the retreat the leader led me through a Sinner's Prayer and I was born again.  It was the start of a new life for me.

 

After coming back, I immediately attached to this Pentecostal group, going to Wednesday night Bible studies with my friend.  Their leaders were great people and they seemed like they cared about me deeply.  It was exciting to learn about God and I became very passionate about the faith.  

 

Eventually I edged away from Pentecostalism and joined an Evangelical Free church in my area.  Throughout high school I was really involved at church and my faith was basically my identity.  I got really into apologetics, Christian music, evangelism, etc.  The whole nine yards.  My biggest driving motivation in high school was trying to get my friends saved.  The thought that non-Christians were going to hell consumed me in a sense.  I felt that I was responsible for the fate of basically everyone I met.  I wasn't a raving street evangelist or anything, but read my Josh McDowell, C.S. Lewis, Lee Strobel, and Greg Boyd and tried to convince my friends to accept Christ.  I went to a public high school, so there were plenty of people that needed Jesus!  

 

After high school I went to an Evangelical college and majored in Biblical Studies.  It was an academically rigorous major and actually taught from a fairly "mainstream" perspective a lot of the time.  My professors accepted non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, that Scripture was a composite document (i.e. the books were often not written by simply one author), that there were major tensions in theological ideas, that there was a lot of haze around the formation of the Canon, etc.  But even though the Biblical Studies was more liberal than I had expected, the official theology of the college was most definitely Evangelical.  My professors could come to liberal conclusions when interpreting a specific biblical text, but their theology still had to be within Evangelical bounds.  I was surrounded by other Christians and continued to be highly driven by helping people I knew from outside the faith find Jesus.  

 

But there were times in college that I went through serious doubts.  I felt growing cognitive dissonance as I continued to study the Scriptures from a historical-critical perspective.  All these ideas just didn't seem to fit together.  How can we say that the Bible is a composite document, edited over and over by unknown people, and yet say it is the inerrant Word of God?  How can we get out of what seem to be major contradictions in theological content between different books (i.e. James' understanding of justification vs. Paul's, Judges' vs. Joshua's differing presentations of the conquest, major differences in the presentation of Jesus between John and the Synoptics, etc.) and still somehow say that the Bible, as a whole, is giving us one unified message from God?  If the archaeological evidence doesn't fit Scripture, what does that say about Scripture?  If Genesis doesn't give a historical account of our origins, how do we reconcile thi.? On and on and on.  But these doubts would come and go in waves.  I was generally more concerned with intra-Christian debates (Calvinism vs. Arminianism, etc.) as everyone around me accepted the Christian faith anyway.

 

After graduating college, I went into the workforce running after school programming at a high school.  Here, more cracks in my faith began to show.  Mainly the doubts from this experience surrounded meeting and developing really strong relationships with non-Christians.  The group of students I worked with at this school were from a wide variety of backgrounds.  Quite a few of them were devout Muslims.  Being steeped in Evangelical thought, I basically came in thinking that Christians were "light" and everyone else was "darkness" because only we had the indwelling Holy Spirit.  But as I got to know my students, they started to shatter that paradigm.  Here were people who were clearly just as "good," and just as devoted to their faith as my Christian friends were to theirs.

 

But my students were not the only ones who presented this theological problem.  My co-workers were the same way.  I was on a team of about 40 or so Americorps volunteers.  Each of these people were passionate and giving their all to serve the world.  The partner I worked at at my school was an open lesbian and non-Christian.  And yet...I liked her.  I kept on catching myself trying to see the good in my Christian friends and the bad in everyone else, but it became harder and harder to do this as I actually got to know non-Christians!

 

After this year I taught at a high school for a few years and then went back to Seminary.  Biblical Studies and Theology were still my passion, and I wanted to teach theology in the future.  

 

But my experience in Seminary was short lived.  That Fall semester, I took classes in Pentateuch, The Gospel of Mark, The Gospel of John, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans.  I had my nose in basically every part of the Christian Scriptures.  

 

Here, when giving myself completely to the study of Scripture, my doubts came back in full force.  I simultaneously had questions about the Pentateuch: Who wrote it?  What do I do with Genesis 1-11?  Is there any actual history there or is it pure myth?  If it is myth, what can we take from it?  Why do we have to "work around" the creation texts and try to squeeze evolution in?  Wouldn't God want to make it obvious that this was His Word?  Why wouldn't He tell us about evolution?  Why do the two creation stories contradict each other?  Why is the flood story not one coherent narrative, but two different narratives with contrasting details spliced together?  Why isn't there evidence for a worldwide flood?  Why does the Law contradict itself, or at least develop?  How can I deal with the incredible violence?  Why do the laws seem so barbaric?  Why the anachronisms?  The Gospel of John:  Is anything in here historical?  Did Jesus really talk like this?  If so, why are his most popular quotes not found in earlier sources?  Who wrote it?  Why is it so different from the other Gospels?  How did the Christology get so advanced?  The Gospel of Mark:  How doe we get around the fact that Jesus, or at least the writer of Mark, seems to predict the end of the world in the near future?  For that matter, why does Matthew even seem to make it more explicit that Jesus predicted the end of the world soon?  And why does Paul seem to expect the same things?  How can mistaken expectations be in an inspired text or come from Jesus himself?  1 and 2 Corinthians and Romans:  What is Paul even trying to say?  Is he a coherent human being?  Is there really a vast difference between Paul and deutero-Paul?  If so, what does that make of our theology?  Should we follow Mosaic law or not?  Are we saved by faith, or judged by work?  What does he mean by "justification?"  Why does his view of government seem to differ so wildly from the perspective of Revelation?  How should I interpret "works of the law"?  New Perspective or Old, or a mix of both?  And how do all these questions relate to an inerrant or infallible Bible, or a God who is trying to reveal Himself through His Word?  Could I imagine myself, if I weren't already a Christian, reading the Bible with my current understandings and concluding that it was inspired by God?

 

Eventually these questions and others piled up to a point where I could no longer take it.  My mind became a fog and I felt my faith slipping away.  If I was sitting in class, my mind was going a mile a minute, but I didn't hear one word the professor was saying.  I started to have thoughts about "how I used to think."  Was I no longer an Evangelical?  Was I no longer a Christian?  I couldn't consciously get myself to believe the same things I used to believe.  My mind just went where it went, and it led me away from the beliefs that made me who I was.  I had the feeling that I had spent year and years in the trees and I finally saw the forest for what it was.  Eventually I felt forced to abandon both my commitment to Jesus as God Incarnate and Scripture as the Word of God.  I have up my scholarship and dropped out of seminary.  Within the course of a month, I went from being a committed Christian planning on teaching theology, to a lost and wandering human being.  

 

It has been roughly 5 years since I dropped out of Seminary and leaving the Evangelical faith.  It's been a winding road, but ultimately I do still believe in God.  I know that is a minority view for most people here, but it's where I have ended up, at least for now.  I have specifically gravitated towards the contemplative streams of the major world religious traditions.  Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy, Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism, and William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience became stepping stones to reading some of the great contemplatives.  St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, The Cloud of Unknowing, The Desert Fathers, Philokalia, The Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Tao Te Ching, Kabbalah, Sufis,  Buddhist descriptions of meditative states.  Maybe this common contemplative center is the core, "numinous," experience from which the diverse religious traditions are based.  Maybe I did find something real in Christianity.  And maybe that Something Real is bigger than my own religious tradition and the concepts I have been trained to understand It with.  

 

So...that's where I've ended up:)  I currently practice Centering Prayer (very similar to Transcendental Meditation and some forms of Zen) and have found it to be incredibly transformational.  Through this practice, I do still feel like I experience God.   Somehow my soul is transformed into something different, something better - less self-centered, less needy, more grounded, more authentic, more loving, more free, than it was before.  Maybe it's a delusion to think I'm actually being changed by God, but it's how I continue to interpret my experience.  

 

The more I process my own deconversion, the more I realize that it helps to have shared experience.  When I was going through deconversion, I had to get this shared experience from books (and boards like this).  None of my friends were "former Christians." I read the autobiographical works of Edward Babinski, Thom Stark, Rachel Held Evans, John Hick, etc.  Some of these authors remained more liberal Christians, but still, sharing the experience of dealing with doubts that I could no longer look past was extremely helpful.  It was also helpful to see where others ended up afterward.  

 

I have thrown my own hat into the ring of those who offer a resource to those dealing with deconversion.  I recently published a book that shares my story and also just tries to describe American Evangelical Christianity really well.  I hope this can be one resource among many that can help people who go through the same thing.

 

I'm currently in the process of trying to get some exposure.  Self-publishing sucks:)  So I'd love to share my book with you and get some feedback!  Anyone who is interested can email me at theevangelicalexperience@gmail.com.  I'll shoot you an Amazon link for a free Kindle copy.  No strings attached...easy as that:)

 

I hope my story helps somebody in some way:)  Best of luck to everyone on the continued journey...

 

Anthony

 

 

 

 

[Anthony]

Dang, forgot to link to the book's page and I can't find away to edit my post!

 

You can check out the Amazon page here: http://www.amazon.com/Evangelical-Experience-Understanding-Religious-Movements/dp/1515160408

 

And the Kirkus Review here: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/anthony-coleman/the-evangelical-experience/

 

Again, email me and I can shoot you a free copy!

[Margee]

 

 

Eventually these questions and others piled up to a point where I could no longer take it.  My mind became a fog and I felt my faith slipping away.  If I was sitting in class, my mind was going a mile a minute, but I didn't hear one word the professor was saying.  I started to have thoughts about "how I used to think."  Was I no longer an Evangelical?  Was I no longer a Christian? 

 

 

 

Welcome to EX-c  Anthony and thanks so much for sharing your story with us. I can relate very much to what you wrote. I can remember clearly the day that I stood in the line up at the church to take communion and I couldn't do it. I couldn't 'drink the blood' or 'eat the flesh' one more time. I knew that day, I was done. I felt as if I was in an 'evil witches ceremony'.

 

Wow, you've done some really good reading! I hope you stay and enjoy all Ex-c's 'Bible scholars''. They get some great debates going here. (especially when the christians show up! Lol) Keep on meditating, it's wonderful. It was quiet meditation that helped me discover the direction that I wanted to go in my life. It's takes a while to form a new world view once you let go of what you once believed in so strongly. Sounds like you are well on your way!

 

 And a big congratulations on your book! I'll go and check it out. I have a newly deconverted friend who I think would love this for their birthday! Best wishes to you! I'm so glad you have joined us!

 

(hug)

[Anthony]

Thanks Margee!  I'm a veteran of Bible debates, so I'm sure I would find them enjoyable:)  

[TrueFreedom]

Welcome, Anthony!  I also appreciate a reader, though my reading has not given me the same appreciation for the heroes shared by so many religions.  I'm as disturbed by the Bhagavad Gita as I am by the Quran and the Bible, but I can appreciate other perspectives.  

[sdelsolray]

You are fighting the rational thinking part of your brain.  Consider stopping that.

[Lycorth]

Welcome to Ex-C!

[StephenW]

Hi Anthony,
Thank you so much for sharing your story, I really enjoyed reading it and related to much of what you wrote. I am also new here and I'm glad that you are here.
Best Wishes,
Stephen

[Anthony]

Thanks Stephen!

[VAmountaineer]

Thank you for sharing, Anthony. After months of visiting this website, your story brought me to the point of finally creating my own account. Our faith stories follow a similar trajectory in that I was heavily indoctrinated as a youth and college student. I went to a popular evangelical university. I was not a religion major, so I wasn't exposed to a lot of biblical criticism in college. However, Christianity was stressed as THE reason for existence and THE purpose for life. Anyways, it wasn't until a decade after graduating that, as a layman, I started studying Christian history, which disillusioned me. In an attempt to regain a confident faith and ascertain its supernatural origins, I began studying the "fulfilled" prophecies of the OT in the NT, which (to my surprise) were taken out of context or nonexistent. I did read the Christian explanations for the NT's use of the OT. However, at this point, I realized that, for years, I was not given the whole story by my Christian elders. I continued to read matters pertaining to biblical criticism, and I also studied evolutionary theory with an open mind. Coupling this new knowledge with my own preconceived misgivings about Christianity (e.g., hypocrisy, etc), I concluded that the faith as handed down to me could not be true

[dask]

Thanks for posting VAmountanier, I appreciate your post. How long has it been since you started doubting?

[VAmountaineer]

Hi dask. Growing up, I was a very spiritually-impressionable young man, which continued through my college years at a Christian university. Even though I found some questions/observations disturbing, I truly was convinced that Christianity was the truth, and that my concerns had answers somewhere in the mind of God. After several years of living in the real world (and working in the fields of mental health/social work), I observed that a lot of what I had been taught in the church wasn't matching up to what happened around me, which led to a period of serious doubt back in 2009-2010. It should be noted that these doubts, back in 2009-10, were very emotionally and experientially based. In 2011, I experienced a "spiritual awakening" that once again was very emotional and experiential. The real tipping point for me happened in 2012 when I participated in The Truth Project (an apologetics video course touted as almost undeniable arguments for Christianity). Let's just say the teacher's arrogant demeanor and weak arguments left me, as a sincere believer, shaking my head. I decided to do my own apologetic work by studying Christian history, starting from Pentacaust. After all, the truth of the Faith would SURELY be exhibited over and over again (despite a few dark spots), right?!? Well, you know where the story goes from there...

[Blood]

Once the questions start, there is no stopping them. 

 

Studying the Bible in seminary school (or on any academic level) is never a good idea for those who want to maintain their faith. 

[dangitbobby83]

Good story Anthony and glad you're out of it. 

 

You mentioned being a better, more loving person after leaving. I experienced that too, after my deconversion. But as an atheist, I obviously don't accredit that to god. I think much of it comes from rejecting the idea that our own beliefs are morally superior to someone else, recognizing the truth that good behavior (treating people with respect, etc.) is a much better indicator of "morals" than any ideology or religious beliefs. 

 

In any event, no matter where you end up, you're better off then believing in the demented and psychologically damaging beliefs of christianity. 

[BobCu]

"It has been roughly 5 years since I dropped out of Seminary and leaving the Evangelical faith.  It's been a winding road, but ultimately I do still believe in God."

 

I read the whole thing. You are obviously a very intelligent person. Congratulations on throwing out most of the ridiculous bullshit. But you are not done yet.

 

This not rocket science. It's not necessary to write a book about it. Just a few words you need to understand before you become a free person, and not a slave to a moronic childish fantasy. Here it is:

 

God is just another word for magic. Magic is not real. Therefore magical beings (Allah, Zeus, Easter Bunny, tooth fairy, Santa Claus, God) are impossible.

 

 

Period. There is nothing more to say about it.

[BobCu]

One more thing. A quote from a book you should read. Hitchens wrote about "faith" in his masterpiece "god is not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything".

 

"If one must have faith in order to believe something, or believe in something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished."

[BobCu]

Sorry, just one more thing.

 

Evolution is the strongest fact of science. Biologists understand in great detail how new species develop and they know the Magic Man had absolutely nothing to do with it. Since the fairy's magic wand was not necessary for something as complex as evolution, it's ridiculous to pretend the fairy's magical powers were necessary for anything else.

[Wizened Sage]

"Maybe it's a delusion to think I'm actually being changed by God, but it's how I continue to interpret my experience.  "

 

I'd be interested to hear what the evidence is that makes you think a god is involved in this. Given your history in churches and revivals, you are surely aware by now that your feelings do not constitute evidence of anything outside your head.

 

And thanks for posting your very interesting story.

[dangitbobby83]

"Maybe it's a delusion to think I'm actually being changed by God, but it's how I continue to interpret my experience.  "

 

I'd be interested to hear what the evidence is that makes you think a god is involved in this. Given your history in churches and revivals, you are surely aware by now that your feelings do not constitute evidence of anything outside your head.

 

And thanks for posting your very interesting story.

I think for many people, myself included, emotional and mental experiences can easily seem supernatural, until you really look at the science of how the brain works, as well as at the shear amount of conflicting stories that include supernatural experiences. 

 

Considering Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Hindu's all claim unique truth, all claim the others are false, and all claim religious experiences (feelings of peace, feelings of god, feelings of a presence, etc.) as evidence, it is reasonable, and rational, to ask "where does these experience actually come from" - if several belief systems use experiences as evidence for their "rightness". Because they cannot all be correct - only one can or none can. 

 

To me, it seems, there is another explanation. A perfectly natural one. Our brains are capable of easily tricking us into thinking an emotion is something outside ourself when it is not. In fact, our brains aren't really good at dealing with facts of nature - what we can see, smell, touch, etc.

 

I remember a time in college when a friend of mine saw me flirting with a very pretty girl. He came up to me and asked me "wow Bobby, I see you flirting with Kristin over there...good going man! When did you two meet?"

 

"I met her when I was 5 years old. She's my sister and we aren't flirting!"

 

To him and his perspective, he saw flirting. He said later he was actually a bit jealous before he found out the truth because he liked her. Blinded by his own desires, his brain tricked him into believing something that was not so and his emotional response of jealousy followed, even though what he saw and believed wasn't true. Sure, he saw something, but what he saw and what he thought he saw were two different things!

[Anthony]

Wizend Sage,

 

Yes, I realize that most on this board will probably think continuing to believe in a God/Higher Power that impacts us directly is foolish.  It seems that most ex-Christians end up interpreting the world atheistically.  For me, I continue to be persuaded by some traditional arguments for theism - cosmological, moral, anthropological (i.e. humanity seems to naturally look for a "higher purpose" and is disposed to a "spiritual" interpretation of reality), etc.  Even something as simple as the fact that what we're made of, DNA, is information encoded leads me towards the universe being the product of some kind of intelligence.  Not looking to debate arguments for God's existence here (I've had enough to last a lifetime), but I'll just say that this still remains my persuasion.

 

As far as the "experience of God," I'm aware that any experience can be interpreted in multiple ways.  It can certainly be reduced to a simple product of evolutionary psychology, a biochemical reaction, etc..  The same thing can be true of a lot of human experiences.  Take the feeling of "being in love."  If I told my friend "I'm in love with Sarah," and they replied "Don't you realize that the feeling you're experiencing is simply a biochemical reaction in your brain caused by a certain combination of visual, audiological, and tactile sensory inputs," I would tell him that something in his explanation is missing.  Yes, we can reduce our experience to that level, but it doesn't do justice to my actual experience.

 

When I sit in meditation or when the right exterior circumstances are present, I have experienced what the writer of the Bhagavad Gita wrote about: "When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.  In the still mind, in the depths of meditation, the Self reveals itself." 

 

What I experience could be interpreted theistically or atheistically.  For a ton of reasons that are unique to me, I continue to interpret reality through the lens of theism.  

[Positivist]

Welcome, Anthony!

Yep, there's nothing like (1) the Bible itself and (2) other humans, to start the cognitive dissonance happening. I could relate a lot to your story!

A book the helped me understand fundamentalism (yes, that's what you and I were--fundamentalists) is "Slaves to Faith":

http://www.amazon.com/Slaves-Faith-Therapist-Fundamentalist-2009-04-30/dp/B01A1MI2XI

It sounds like you're in a really good place right now. When you find peace, and the fires of cognitive dissonance are reduced to smoking embers, you'll know you're where you belong.

 

Peace!

[nightflighter]

Thank you for your testimony! I was never in the seminary, I just read the bible too many times. Who was the king in the OT that got killed about six times? Paul said his lies glorified god? Yeah, that sort of stuff. 

[★ Citsonga ★]

Who was the king in the OT that got killed about six times?

 

Good question. I'm curious who you're referring to.

 

Paul said his lies glorified god?

 

Actually, that one's not true. I suspect you're alluding to Romans 3:7, but in that verse Paul is quoting someone else's argument, and in the very next verse he condemns them for the argument.

 

The Bible is rife with problems, but there's no need to go and invent other alleged problems by taking things like that out of context.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Greetings, Anthony, and welcome! It's great to see another one breaking free.

 

I didn't go to seminary, but I did spend a lot of time in "the Word" and apologetics, and was even asked by my pastor to seriously consider going into the ministry. Over time, though, I discovered a lot of problems with the Bible and found that a lot of the shallow apologetics arguments really didn't hold up under genuine scrutiny. So, I can certainly relate to where you're coming from.

 

Good luck as you move forward. Enjoy the journey ahead of you....