I left Christianity Because I Stopped Believing In It

It should be obvious

Photo by Akira Hojo on Unsplash

In a recent article for The Atlantic, Jake Meador writes about the enormous decline in church attendance. He cites two reasons for the decline: abuse at the hands of the church and, most significantly, the structure of American life. Meador argues that our American culture of overwork squeezes people so much that the additional commitments of attending church just don't feel feasible.

I have no doubt that Meador is describing a genuine phenomenon. Modern life is exhausting, and church, like all community, takes effort. Who wouldn't prefer to sleep in on Sunday morning when you've spent the entire week at the office, stressing over bills, and taking care of your kids? "Workism reigns in America," writes Meador, "and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn't add up." He's concerned about this because church attendance is an important institution that correlates with general well-being:

Participation in a religious community generally correlates with better health outcomes and longer life, higher financial generosity, and more stable families—all of which are desperately needed in a nation with rising rates of loneliness, mental illness, and alcohol and drug dependency.

I agree with his concerns. I worry about the loss of institutions that contribute to human flourishing. But I want to point out another reason people stop going to church that is conspicuously absent from Meador’s article: they no longer believe the truth claims of Christianity.

I wouldn’t point out this omission if I didn’t notice a broader pattern. Meador wants to focus on the ways American culture constricts religious life, and that’s all well and good. It’s an excellent article, and you should read it. But I can’t help but notice a trend: whenever I read an article about declining church attendance, or I have discussions with Christians about why I left the faith, there’s virtually no acknowledgment of the intellectual dimension of losing faith.

I sometimes feel like Christians take their worldview so much for granted that it is inconceivable to them that anyone could simply not believe it because it doesn’t intellectually add up for them. The only excuse anyone could ever have for not believing in Christianity is that they were raped by a pastor, wanted to pursue a life of sin, were kept from the church by the pressures of modern life, or were treated horribly as an LGBT+ minority. But what if some people just stop believing because they think it is wrong to believe? A huge number of people fall away from church out of exhaustion and disillusionment, certainly, but some also step away because they no longer believe the Christian creeds.*

I stopped being a Christian for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was that I don't like lying. When I recite the creeds in church, I feel like I'm lying. It feels weird to be in a community that circles around a number of extraordinary claims that I no longer believe hold merit. That's a deeply unpleasant cognitive dissonance, and I would rather be in a religious community that aligns with what I believe to be true about the world.

I'm often frustrated by assumptions about why I left Christianity. The prevailing assumption is that my treatment as a gay man is what shattered my faith. I will certainly acknowledge that being gay made my life a living hell and that it didn't help my eventual crisis of faith. But my life was also saved by Christians who demonstrated genuine Christ-like love for the outsider. My life is a testimony to Christian love. My life was ruined by Christians, but it was saved by them, too.

By the time I left Christianity, I felt like I had made peace with my sexual orientation and my faith. I loved Jesus, and I loved the church, and I kept attending church for a long time even after I stopped believing because I loved it so much. I didn't want to leave, even as my faith was draining away. I finally stopped attending because I was exhausted from being in a creedal faith that demanded I say “I believe” every Sunday and mean it, or at least try to mean it.

There are a lot of Christians who play fast and loose with the creeds, and I support them. I'd love to see a Christianity less obsessed with orthodoxy and more concerned with orthopraxy, and there are Christians working to create that kind of Christianity in the world. But the fact remains that Christianity is, historically and today the world over, a creedal religion that puts special emphasis on confessions of faith. By the time I'd lost belief in God, I was so exhausted from fighting within Christianity that the struggle for nontheistic Christianity was one fight too many.

What would it take for me to come back to Christianity? I would need to be convinced that it is true—no more, no less. I will not be brought back by Christian love, total acceptance, the allure of religious discipline, or the myriad of benefits associated with church attendance. Only this will bring me back to church: proof that Christianity is true.

*Insert acknowledgment that belief is a complicated phenomenon that does not operate at a purely rational level. Of course, social dynamics play an enormous role in what we believe. That being acknowledged, I think the point of this article still holds true.

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My recent discussion with my conservative Christian sister Elizabeth Schultz sparked some interesting discussion among my audience. Stu commented,

I also thought a lot of the questions she had for you only make sense from her point of view. In particular, the question of what you worship struck me as odd. I feel like it should be fairly obvious that when you strip a religious person of their orthodoxy, all that is left is their orthopraxy. Your answer of maximizing human flourishing and minimizing human suffering reminded me a lot of Sam Harris' definition of morality and it's one I wholeheartedly agree with. I think TST's [The Satanic Temple’s] endorsement of compassion, empathy, social justice, and bodily autonomy are affirmative calls to action and form the basis of our orthopraxy. And I think it should be safe to say many Satanists do practice a form of self worship to various degrees, but it's complicated to explain that we don't think we're gods and we aren't practicing self worship in an egotistical way as if other people matter less, so I don't particularly blame you for not jumping down that rabbit hole.

I did struggle to answer some of Elizabeth’s questions because I found it difficult to engage with some of the concepts. Divine judgment, worship, etc. are not things I tend to think about a great deal. I found the conversation an excellent exercise in cognitive empathy and attempting to enter other worldviews.

Jane wrote,

On a second listening, I noticed an interesting difference in how Christians and Satanists view God as the ultimate law giver and how that affects their view on morality. Everyone agrees that power corrupts and that people are fallible. In Christian mythos, God is a perfectly good and infallible being, so Christians are completely fine with giving him total authority over deciding what's good and evil instead of letting humanity decide for themselves. Power corrupts imperfect people, so people cannot be trusted with absolute authority. In Satanic mythos, God is an imperfect tyrant corrupted by power, so Satanists reject God and do not trust leaders with too much power. *Power corrupts imperfect people, so people cannot be trusted with absolute authority.*

Interesting observation, and it points to how subconscious intuitions can direct people’s perceptions. Satanists are famously contrarian, and we, therefore, have a deep suspicion of any religious authority.

Fellow Substacker M. E. Rothwell (you should check out his writing!) had this to say in response to last week’s article The Ravenous Craving for Religious Order:

I really enjoyed this and found your distinction between theist/atheist and Bound/Unbound fascinating. I think in the end everyone is Bound, whether a believer or not. We all have a thirst for meaning, a need for a ‘why’. The difficulty is in finding it after we leave religious dogma behind.

Nietzsche was right when he said God was dead, the Enlightenment and resulting Scientific Revolution has destroyed the possibility of the old notions of religious meaning. However, the dangers of nihilism are even worse than dogma, we each need to find our own whys to live fulfilled, meaningful lives.

This gets to one of the great challenges of modern life: the loss of totalizing religious authority has been (in my assessment) positive for civilization, but it has also left a gaping hole of meaning through which monstrosities can enter. How do we generate institutions that align with modern science and yet still cultivate myth, community, ritual, and meaning-making?

Kit shared some of their religious journey after reading the article:

I am not too great with podcasts but loved reading your thoughts because they help me understand the trajectory of my own life: from Baptist preacher's kid to welfare worker, to Baptist home missionary, to junior-high school teaching and counseling, joining a Unitarian Universalist congregation in 1976 and ultimately becoming a UU minister. I maintained my Christian identity to maintain my relationship with more conservative family members, but as I grew spiritually, began to see myself as walking what I call the Jesus Path, open to Jesus' teachings yet understanding the miracle stories as meaningful fiction. I've recently retired as a UU minister after 24 years of joyous service and gradually understanding where my ethics and understandings had led me. UUism is friendly to Jesus' teachings but not to Christian nationalism and I never want to be associated with that abomination.

I love this because it demonstrates how a religious person journeyed towards a more expansive orthopraxy. Kit is an example of the type of Christian I wish I could have become, and I still support from afar. I also love the term “meaningful fiction” to describe religious ideas, and will be using it in the future.

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But that’s just me. What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments below, and I might feature them in an upcoming post. Subscribe if you haven’t already, share this post with friends to rise on the leaderboard, and join the cult … I mean Discord server.