This week Arline guest hosts, interviewing Bryan the Ex-Apologist. Bryan grew up in a deeply fundamentalist church. Not only did they believe they were the True Church…they were the Only Church.
Bryan spent his teen and young adult years preaching, evangelizing and heatedly debating others. He was convinced he had all the right answers and other people needed those right answers. He sees his younger self as a “jerk for Jesus.”
Realizing he was wrong about a single theological issue, he began to wonder, How do I know what’s essential and what’s not? If there was absolute truth in the world, Bryan was determined to find it.
He has come a long way from the fundamentalism of his youth, and you can find his current counter-apologetics research and writing at The Ex-Apologist blog.
Links
The Ex-Apologist blog
https://theexapologist.com/
Email
TheFormerChristianApologist@gmail.com
Quotes
“There are a lot of denominations who refuse to believe they are a denomination. They want to believe that they are The Church that Jesus built. They are the special ones.”
“This was my conditioning. I really inherited these views from my church family…but then I took it to another level.”
“Even my parents saw me as radical.”
“I wanted to save souls, and I thought debating was a great way to do that.”
“I was a ‘Jerk for Jesus,’ because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be doing.”
“Just within our church group…I documented over a hundred different issues that people divided over. Just within our group!”
“I love studying…I absolutely love geeking out on everything I can!”
“…I was still not treating the Bible within its context, because what I started realizing was, I’m not a Biblical complementarian…the Bible teaches a much harsher complementarianism than just about any view…”
“If there’s a god, why would he leave such thin, house of cards type evidence…”
Interact
Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!
Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/
Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/
Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats