Today’s article is pulled from the archive. I originally wrote it in early 2019, after I had abandoned theism.
Last night before going to bed, I found myself praying the Evening Office from The Book of Common Prayer. I love The Book of Common Prayer — I love the liturgy's poetry and guiding, inner choreography. As I prayed last night I felt that warmth, presence, and silent awe I’ve experienced my whole life when I enter sacred spaces — many would call it the presence of God. Sometimes, when praying, I find myself speaking in tongues — a practice I learned growing up in the Charismatic evangelical world. It feels warm in my mouth, like something outside of myself speaking through me. I also still attend church (when I can), and I experience the love and presence of an external, invisible force.
And yet, I don’t believe in God, because I find tangible evidence for God lacking. Take careful note that this does not mean I believe no gods exist, but rather that I find the evidence for God insufficient, and I therefore withhold belief.
How can this be? How can I disbelieve in God but remain a Christian and experience him anyway? Why haven’t I rejected prayer and sacred spaces as supernaturalist and primitive delusions?
From an early age, I had tongues and Christian prayer drilled into me. Both carried with them a host of positive experiences including deep peace, stillness, overwhelming compassion, and feelings of interconnectedness. I believed that God was all loving, intertwining us all in a canvas of compassion. Praying to this God made me feel a profound security.
Now, after having lost faith, I still enter that space, and the parts of my brain that experienced prayer and meditation still activate. I find that prayer still makes me feel peace, love, awe, and stillness, so I still pray. I also still pray because my family and heritage have prayed these words for centuries. It’s a bloody, ugly history, but I don’t want to forget it.
I find one of Mike McHargue’s Axioms of Faith particularly helpful here:
Prayer is AT LEAST a form of meditation that encourages the development of healthy brain tissue, lowers stress, and can connect us to God. EVEN IF that is a comprehensive definition of prayer, the health and psychological benefits of prayer justify the discipline.
(For the sake of clarity, McHargue defines God in an earlier axiom as being at least the principles and forces that govern, sustain, and generate our universe.)
I feel less like the daily office is a vehicle to the Christian God as an end in itself, but rather that the Christian God is a vehicle to something More – the cosmos as a whole, a lens and metaphor for the forces — personal or impersonal — that shape our cosmos. Jesus is no longer the point for me — he’s now a launch pad for something bigger, better, and more mysterious. Because I have a ready-made mysticism, I see no reason to discard it. Why not use my Christian tradition to help me experience my newfound nontheism?
I’m tired of all the old, bullshit boundaries. I’m tired of hearing that religion is just useless superstition, and I’m tired of hearing that atheists can’t be religious, too. I’m tired of hearing that religion requires the supernatural, and I’m tired of hearing that a life without the supernatural is a meaningless life. I’m tired of hearing I can’t have mystical experiences, too. All these old boundaries need to collapse, in no small part because I think ritual, symbol, and transcendent experience make life delicious, regardless of our beliefs about the supernatural.
I sometimes wonder if, to many Christians, I’m the worst kind of heretic: someone who disbelieves in God but refuses to let go of Christianity. I often think many Christians would rather I walk out of the church. But I refuse.
I want to fling open the doors of religion to others like me — to those who can’t accept the existence of God or supernaturalism but still yearn for liturgy and transcendence. I want to open the doors to a heretical religion: one in which we can deny the supernatural and yet still have ritual, one in which we can deny God, but still experience him anyway.
2024 Stephen here. It was fascinating to review this article and notice what has changed and remained the same since writing this piece. I no longer pray, and I no longer speak in tongues. I now accept what I did not at the time of this writing: belief is an important part of having certain experiences.
I was riding off the fumes of my theistic belief, and I was still able to activate those Christian and Charismatic networks in my brain. But, as I drifted away from theistic belief, the experience of the Christian God slowly diminished. Prayer vanished from my life, and tongues dried up completely. The Book of Common Prayer, still a beloved artifact, has sat on my shelf, unopened, for years.
The truth is that religious believers have access to certain emotional experiences that I don’t. I no longer know the divine intimacy of Jesus. I no longer have the promise of eternal salvation. I no longer have the consolation that I will see people I love in the afterlife. These are experiences that nontheistic spirituality cannot replicate.
Letting go is the answer. Leading a good life means accepting that there are profoundly beautiful experiences that we will never have. We can grieve for those experiences and yield to their absence.
What strikes me even more, though, is what has not changed since writing this article. I still experience the divine, the numinous, and the mysterious. I still meditate and pursue spiritual practice. I still experience “God”, just a radically different God from the one I knew in Christianity.
And, more than anything, I still believe that the old bullshit boundaries must die. Atheists can be religious, and nontheists can know God. It was this core mission that drew me to The Satanic Temple, and eventually away from it. It is this core conviction that has now drawn me to non-dual spirituality. This is my gospel: that we can know spiritual transcendence without the supernatural.
But that’s just me. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and I might feature them in an upcoming post. Also, please consider becoming a paid subscriber and sharing this article with your friends.
The way you describe your religious experience is intriguing to me. I wasn't raised in religion and never really believed in a god. I've always been the logical, critical thinking, sometimes feel like a robot kinda person, but reading your work makes me want to experience what you're describing. Sometimes I feel like the emotional part of me never existed or maybe I don't know how to engage with it, either way I appreciate your writing, you've piqued my interest in something I wasn't aware of that I now want to experience.
“I was riding off the fumes of my theistic belief, and I was still able to activate those Christian and Charismatic networks in my brain. But, as I drifted away from theistic belief, the experience of the Christian God slowly diminished. Prayer vanished from my life, and tongues dried up completely. The Book of Common Prayer, still a beloved artifact, has sat on my shelf, unopened, for years.”
An obit for the Church of England.