Any Ex-vangelicals?
I'm wondering if anyone in DU self identifies as an Ex-vangelical or if anyone in DU has close contact with anyone who is Ex-vangelical (family, friends, colleagues, etc). I am seeing a small but growing community of Ex-vangelicals who have left far right churches and are returning to more moderate churches or perspectives. Given how far to the right some churches have moved (even more so since 6th Jan), some appear to be less churches than they are political movements. As such I'm interested in learning more about the triggers and mechanisms that lead people to leave these far right churches and find alternate ways to worship or live. Understanding those seeds, triggers and mechanisms may be useful in helping people make better choices about what churches to attend - Any insights would be much appreciated - The Hippo
= new reply since forum marked as read
...much respect.
You need your own YouTube channel.
Mouth...hanging...open...
Hi Aristus - Thanks for sharing. The more people I ask this question of and the more video's I watch of Ex-vangelicals or ex-cultists, the more I get the sense that in many cases it is small drips that build up over time. I get the sense you can't convince people with direct confrontation, they have to get there on their own. What outsiders can do however is stay calm, stay supportive and be a source of those drips 
But yeah, it was a long time coming.
I think she's truly happy now as a liberal Democrat. Yeah, she directs a great deal of hate and ire towards the Republicans, but otherwise she's has aligned herself with a group of people who are open, accepting, loving, forgiving, and who derive happiness from the happiness of others.
I can't take all the credit. My wife is a dental hygienist, and the dental assistant she works with is a lesbian. Mrs. Aristus, even before making the clean break with evangelicalism, was fiercely protective of her. Real mother-grizzly stuff. I think it was something of a surprise to her that she could love and be protective of a member of the LGBTQ community. It was like opening a door to a new world.
I grew up humanist (technically, the Ethical Culture Society - anyone heard of it? No? Thought so!
My parents morphed to Unitarianism, which encourages members to find their own spiritual path and is very inter-denominational. There are UU pagans, humanists, etc.
I, too, connect with paganism, or more accurately for me, earth-based spirituality. I experience the divine in the natural world.
when I was a teenager. My family was not religious, but I joined the local small-town mega church for two reasons: my two best friends were members, and cute boys from other school districts. Seriously. 
I spent about five years in the church, mostly thinking “W-the-everloving-F are these people talking about?” I watched the teenage Peyton Place that went on, the girls mysteriously going to visit family members out of state for a year followed by young married couples suddenly adopting babies, newborn babies, upon their return. The guys in their 20s dating girls in their teens. I watched the Left Behind movies all the time thinking this is, as Shrub says, some weird shit.
Then I started dating a very nice Methodist boy, the kind of boy every parent wants their daughter to date. We regularly attended each other’s church services. Everything was cool. I was seventeen on my last Sunday at the Baptist church when a substitute Sunday school teacher, a man who had no business in my business, spent the class berating me for dating someone outside the church. It got personal. I must think I’m real cool. Then he told me I had two choices: break up with him or convince him to get “saved” because if I don’t, when the “Rapture” comes, he will be “Left Behind”. I told him I actually had a third choice, and that was to get the hell out of this insane place. And I walked out and never went back.
I’ve gone to other churches in my adult life, but I’m not comfortable in any of them. I believe in a higher power, and that power is more readily available to me on my morning walk than it ever has been in a church.
Hi pwb - Indeed, Matthew 18:20 says where two or more gather ... The hate preachers don't focus on that piece for some reason. I guess that's because although Jesus can be anywhere, the hate preacher with their offertory plate can't
I automatically said Yes.
He asked Why?
Again, without hesitation I said, I was brainwashed as a child.
That was my first step to being an Atheist.
I was just giving you one of the recent sources for the other poster's remarks. As an atheist, I was very excited until I looked at the data. Then, I bemoaned subeditors' need to sex up titles and the lack of knowledge of statistics in general.
but in the mid 50s to mid 60s, before they went completely off the rails. They were still wackadoodle, just not political...yet.
We were very involved in the church. Went to services or meetings 5-8 times a week, Dad was a deacon and in the choir, Mom helped the secretary, I was determined to be the first female Baptist minister, etc. When I was around 12 I decided I needed to read the Bible from Genesis 1:1 to Revelations. I was really confused by what I read. The church was not yet pushing the young earth propaganda very hard and I was also fascinated by science...and dinosaurs! 
So I had questions about what the Bible claimed that my parent's couldn’t answer, so they sent me to our preacher, Brother Bob. He was an ex-Marine and had completely bought into young earth creationism. It didn’t go well. I think it was the third or fourth ‘counseling’ session where I asked him, "After Cain killed Abel and went over the hills and found a wife, where did she come from????". Because of all the previous head-butting we’d had when he got so frustrated by my questions ("Dino bones were put in the ground by Satan to lead you into sin!" "If you don’t stop questioning, you’ll go to Hell!" ), he completely lost it, yelled at me and refused to meet with me again.
That was the beginning. It took another 8 or 9 years of me reading, researching and questioning, but I was an atheist by 21. Two things that I remember as startling me the most into questioning the existence of a god shortly after that fiasco was: 1) we studied Greek mythology in Jr High and I thought "Oh! Other people created ‘false’ gods to believe in, hmmm, could my god be false, too?" and 2) reading Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain when I was around 14 or 15. He presented ‘Satan’s’ view of humans and our religions with his inimitable humor, sarcasm and style. It made me ‘furiously to think’. 
I also visited a bunch of other churches in my teens, from Catholic to Pentacostal searching for answers. Nothing checked my growing questions and doubt.
My parents didn’t do anything drastic to prevent my questioning, although they were somewhat distressed by it. I don’t think they understood where it could lead, we’d never really heard of atheism. But even after my deconversion, they never brought strong pressure on me or berated me. I give them huge credit for that because they both drifted to the right politically with Reagan and the churches and becoming "born again", but still treated me the same. Well, Dad and I argued, but it was never...vicious.
That’s my tale. I’m 70 now and have never been tempted to re-convert.
It was my good fortune the J.W.s booted my mom out of their Kingdom Hall before I started questioning anything. It was literally big bouncers at the door barring her entry.
My mom is a wonderful person. She can't stay out of politics and she talks to God directly. The Witnesses couldn't deal with that. Neither could the Catholics before them.
The only religion that ever embraced my mom was the Quakers. She'd speak her mind, people would listen respectfully, and then they'd move on.
I was the weird kid in school who ignored the flag salute. Participating in that crap bought you a free ticket to hell. I may still believe that.
"One Nation Under God?"
It was my good fortune, or maybe my bad fortune, to grow up in a religiously diverse Wild West family. The only official religion in my extended family is "NOT MORMON."
Christmas was always a time of religious warfare in my childhood, similar to the Troubles of Northern Ireland, or the schism between the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Pacifist Protestant Churches. It was sometimes bloody. Thankfully all those bloody minded old people are dead.
Half the old people in my family couldn't agree if celebrating Christmas was a sin and the other half were fighting about the date.
Easter wasn't any better.
I had just one grandparent who celebrated traditional U.S.A. Christmas and Easter but she was long past convincing anyone else it was about Church or God. She and her sister had run away to Hollywood because they couldn't imagine any fate worse than being married off to good Christian California dairy men.
