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Goodbye Jesus

How Long Have You Been Out Of Christianity?


DoubleDee

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two weeks ago when even a gay church wouldn't accept me. I'm out of this mind-game.

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This was an enjoyable read. I wish a group like this one had been around when I got out of the Fundamentalist Baptist Church in 1979--I had to do it by getting married, unfortunately, well, that's the way it worked out, and it was a bad marriage, but it was better than being IN the church.

 

My family and I were converted in 1972, when I was 11. I was, as a young teenager, a big soulwinner, since I was convinced of the horrors of Hell as described to me, so I did my best to bring people in to the church, people who are still in the church today, sadly. That feels bad to even write that.

 

At age 16 at the "worlds largest sunday school" with tens of thousands of teenagers who'd been bussed in from all over the country, and after being at this retreat for a week, on the big "recommit your life to Jesus" day I had one of those moments when it all got very clear. Everything became very quiet, or, muted and sort of in slow motion as I watched all the kids, all my friends, bawling their eyes out--kids who were acting perfectly normal just a few hours earlier--and I realized it was all a big sham. I think they gave themselves away at this one, earlier that week; they just went a little overboard on the shaming techniques and I was able to see it this time. From that point on, I paid a different kind of attention and have been onto them ever since. Ever since I've been kind of hypervigilant about belief systems.

 

So, conservatively, 28 years!

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Guest sawitch

I finally left the church 1 week and 2 days ago, but It's been a year since I started to seriously question.

 

I've attended church all my life (51 years!) and feel as though I've been bereaved. I have the urge to go back and saying I've made a mistake!! But also, I feel good about being honest with myself and others.

 

I guess this is a normal process :Hmm:

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I finally left the church 1 week and 2 days ago, but It's been a year since I started to seriously question.

 

I've attended church all my life (51 years!) and feel as though I've been bereaved. I have the urge to go back and saying I've made a mistake!! But also, I feel good about being honest with myself and others.

 

I guess this is a normal process :Hmm:

 

Glad to have you here. It is nice not living life for a lie anymore.

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I finally left the church 1 week and 2 days ago, but It's been a year since I started to seriously question.

 

I've attended church all my life (51 years!) and feel as though I've been bereaved. I have the urge to go back and saying I've made a mistake!! But also, I feel good about being honest with myself and others.

 

I guess this is a normal process :Hmm:

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I finally left the church 1 week and 2 days ago, but It's been a year since I started to seriously question.

 

I've attended church all my life (51 years!) and feel as though I've been bereaved. I have the urge to go back and saying I've made a mistake!! But also, I feel good about being honest with myself and others.

 

I guess this is a normal process :Hmm:

 

Sawitch - congratulations on having got out! I hope your kids will now take you out for a drink, as you said in a previous post. Please don't think about going back - I've done that, and I'm now in so much bother and confusion - it's just not worth it, so don't weaken, but enjoy your honesty and freedom.

 

I just realised what your name 'sawitch' means - Salvation Army Witch - HA HA, I like it.

 

Cliff Dweller

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Guest sawitch
I just realised what your name 'sawitch' means - Salvation Army Witch - HA HA, I like it.

Cliff Dweller

 

Hi cliffdweller,

 

Sorry you've been confused and in bother. Just keep plodding on, it can only get better, I hope.

 

My kids haven't got me down the pub yet but they have taken me to bingo - quite an experience!

 

Well done for cracking my on screen name. The witch bit is because my birthday is on Halloween and the SA bit is obvious, but now out-of-date.

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I don't think it all happened at once, it was a gradual process of becoming de-converted (and decontaminated, haha). But I believe it was when I moved away from my Christian group, left the city I mean, that it all began. Looking back, probably was the best choice I've ever made! That would be 1999.

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two weeks ago when even a gay church wouldn't accept me. I'm out of this mind-game.

 

Just wondering, what were the reasons?

 

Personally I think "gay Christian" is an oxymoron, and don't understand why gay people would want to have anything to do with a Christian belief system which is anti-homosexual!

 

Then again, the church is supposed to be anti-greed, anti-gluttony, but you sure as hell don't see rich or fat people getting excommunicated!

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Welcome all newbies (to the site and to deconversion)! I am a newbie to this site only. At 24 years of age, I have been happily "agnostic" to varying degrees since I was 17. I am currently leaning more towards atheism than agnosticism but, like with all life decisions, that is subject to change.

 

I don't know if anyone else remembers the moment they "accepted" Jeebus but it was quite an emotional one for me (at age 5) and my deconversion was strangely emotionless. I didn't weep, I didn't rejoice, I simply smiled. A weight was lifted off my shoulders. Every single day becomes easier (especially with those from this site) as you realize that you are living your heaven or your hell right now. Today is what matters and tomorrow is what to aim for. Now, I'm going to go back to listening to my favorite band ("Bad Religion") and proof some cellular contracts. Get ahold of me, people, I'm here all day.

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Guest Rammknot

About 8 months, I started realizing that it is really impossible for a god to exist a year ago when I was talking a history class and we started talking about the Christian religion and what they have done in the past, and how it is contradicted by what I knew of the bible and what I was raised to believe about god.

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  • 1 month later...

I don't really know when I deconverted because my family was never really big on going to church. Those few weekends that we ever went, it felt so weird. I'm not really sure about everything at the moment, but right now I consider myelf atheist. I could be agnostic and I could convert to some other religion, but I doubt it. Right now, I'm proud to be atheist.

 

As for how long? It's probably been around 2 years

 

 

 

 

 

About 8 months, I started realizing that it is really impossible for a god to exist a year ago when I was talking a history class and we started talking about the Christian religion and what they have done in the past, and how it is contradicted by what I knew of the bible and what I was raised to believe about god.

I was reading about the founding of the catholic church. I felt like the founding was more of a business deal than building a religion.

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3 years today! :woohoo:

It is odd looking back at my days as a Christian. Just before my road to deconversion I could not have fathomed becoming an apostate. Even more bizarre is thinking how lost, twisted, delusional, and blind non Christians were :twitch:

This site was among many that I came to as a Christian and though it wasn't the deciding factor in my deconversion, it was helpful to see so many others who had been through it before me.

 

Thanks Dave for a site that has allowed me the freedom Christianity promises but never delivered. Fuck yeah! Oh, and thanks for letting me swear LOL.

 

I'm glad this thread is still alive after a year, keep posting, cuz I'm still reading.

 

DD

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Guest energumeno

7-8 years ago ...

 

Somehow i always seemed to have doubts about all christian nonsense my family was trying to program into my brain since i was a child. Then somewhere around 1st year in college after lots of reading and introspection i decided to let go of christianity and started calling myself an agnostic.

 

Then, around 18-24 months ago i discovered Buddhism and after lots of reading on the subject and a couple of visits to the Puerto Rico Zen Center, i decided to begin practicing Zen Buddhism. I really found Buddhist core belief system to be a down to earth, easy to understand and very practical philosophy and way of life. It was difficult for me to find a spiritual path which would satisfy my ever skeptic intellect specially in a country like Puerto Rico, being a around 90% christian country and personaly knowing 0 buddhist people (or atheists or any other religion for that matter) prior to my first contact with buddhism.

 

Anyways, i feel glad that i left that christian baggage behind and found a community like this which is an excellent place for those struggling with their crhistian faith to discuss their doubts and concerns and take the step forward to leave dogmas, repression and fears behind.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest Agnostic Aussie

Raised in a conservative Christian family in country New South Wales, Australia.

De-conversion was, like many (most?), a gradual process with the typical stages. Started doubting in early 2004 at age 21, was still clinging to the faith for about a year, and went on with very heavy reading and thinking for another 6 months. Realised christianity was never going to feel plausible given the lack of evidence and huge number of problems. Late 2006 broke up with Christian fiancee (having been engaged for around a year and a half). Still very much an armchair anthropologist, despite my melancholic personality i am loving life. I have overcome my addiction of easy answers, and am now fascinated by the mysterious, and refuse to let a lack of answers depress me. Although I don't call myself an atheist, in practise I am because I don't believe in any particular god, so I'm a weak atheist/agnostic.

 

In summary, 2 years.

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Mother - Primitive Methodist

Father - Roman Catholic (by the time I was born, he was 'no longer welcome in the church' for thump;ing a preist who upset my mum)

 

I was baptised Anglo Catholic (Church of England)...

 

I was nearly expelled from school for pointing out that I was certain babies didn't happen that way, and the method of taxation was a nonsense, so there was no need to go to Bethlehem... That was Xmas 1970... so 37 years this Yuletide!

 

I maintain I was never ACTUALLY Christian, since I decided BEFORE confirmation time, that it was hokum to subdue the masses.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My unofficial one-year anniversary as an atheist was about two or three weeks ago :)

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Left Xianity in 1970. It was like a great weight was lifted from my mind.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Left the fold in March of 2005....ahhhhhh, two years free from Christianity.

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I left the splendors in 1998, with my kids in tow while my husband went to prison.

Did he keep the faith?

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It depends what you mean by 'out of christianity'

 

As a teenager I had some odd interpretations about things (didn't believe in a literal Devil, wondered whether reincarnation could be a possible interpretation of what the Bible says about the afterlife)

 

I stopped going to church or equivalent (I was sally army originally you know) in 1993 and pretty much immediately started developing some pretty heretical ideas (became polytheistic for a while for one thing)

 

didn't stop believing that Jesus was divine until 1996 though. Around this time I realised that praying was pointless (because what difference would prayer make - surely what God wills is what will be. How can prayer change anything?)

 

Then i developed a lot of strange ideas (mostly pantheist/hindu or buddhist related)

 

And I became atheist this year.

 

So when did I stop being a christian?

 

I'll say either 1993 or 1996 - making it about ten or twelve years that I've been out of christianity (actually 11 or 14. Bloody hell time flies!)

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Guest Florida
I left the splendors in 1998, with my kids in tow while my husband went to prison.

Did he keep the faith?

He was raised as a Catholic and that was pretty much it for him. He never got into the religious cult scene, just the drug one.

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two weeks ago when even a gay church wouldn't accept me. I'm out of this mind-game.

 

Wow. This sounds like me. Not the part about gay but the part about not even being accepted by the most liberal church around.

 

Aug. 11, 2006. That was the day the optometrist felt a need to evangelize me after a hasty eye-examination. He did this because I was going to meet with a pagan after the weekend. So I guess according to him I was "out." I let him know in some pretty strong language what I thought of his evangelizing so he kicked me out. A formal letter informing me not to come back.

 

September 9, 2006. That was the day my sister grilled me about god's existence. All because I shared with her about the eye doctor. Up till then I did not know I was really "out." It seems that according to her I crossed some invisible line from believer to unbeliever. It's a line I can't see.

 

March 10, 2007. That was the day I was informed by my siblings that I did not qualify to eat with them at our mother's up-coming funeral. Formal shunning. Nothing feels quite so definitely "out" as that.

 

So yeah, when the xians literally kick you out you kinda get the message that you're "out."

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