This week’s Deconversion Anonymous guest is Bethany. Bethany grew up in the Pacific Northwest, attending an Assemblies of God church. It was an insular experience of their brand of Christianity against the world.
The older Bethany got, the scarier the church doctrines—eternal torment, losing one’s salvation, the Apocalypse, faith healing that doesn’t always work and even demons under her bed.
“[My dad and his friends] were warriors for Christ, going out into the world fighting evil forces, but as a child, it was so scary to me…”
Bethany was a conscientious and sensitive teen. She ardently believed what she was taught and would believe even if it led to martyrdom.
“…[My parents and church] weren’t that extreme; I felt like I became really extreme.”
In college, Bethany got exposed to reformed theology and progressive Christianity. She began to think, “There is no, ‘God says,’ or ‘Scripture says.’ These are all interpretations.”
After college, Bethany moved to California. She immediately joined a church, but it wasn’t the same. She was no longer tied to it the way she had been; she finally had space to think for herself.
“It felt more like I had been indoctrinated my whole life, a constant stream of indoctrination…and then I finally got a break.”
In California, Bethany’s been able to think, hike, read and realize who she is without outside influence, but it hasn’t been easy. She’s been afraid and uncertain, still haunted by some of her old beliefs. But she is free and life is full even while she is still “in process.”
“Maybe I’m worthwhile in myself, and I can have strength and autonomy in myself.”
She grew up in a loving home and didn’t realize she was in a “white Christian bubble.” Her church was almost all-white, her hometown almost completely white, and then after high school, Marla attended an even smaller completely white, conservative Christian college.
“I was all-in. [Faith] was all there was to life. That was the focus, the center. My faith was everything to me.”
Marla’s first inkling that something was missing came when she read the book, The Hole in Our Gospel. She had read the Bible many, many times over the years, and here was a new revelation—2,000+ verses about helping the poor?
four-letter words if you’ve never lived inside / the bubble of evangelical Christianity it / might surprise you to find that l-o-v-e / and p-o-o-r were new and controversial subjects for me / at age 35
Less than a decade later, while she and her family were part of a multiethnic church plant, Marla began to see more “holes” in Christianity, namely racism and white supremacy. Her eyes were slowly beginning to open.
“Once you start to uncover things, it really is a slippery slope or ‘the unraveling’…It’s all connected. You can’t stop.”
Since 2015, Marla has been back and forth to Cambodia, written a book of poetry, started an incredibly popular bookstagram, been through a painful divorce, connected tons of people to one another and is still sharing her knowledge and wisdom with her followers.
“I feel that there are so many Christians who just go along in their happy little lives and nothing really rattles them, and nothing really happens. So they’re not forced to question things or consider things…”
In her search for truth, Marla asks, “Is this loving to my neighbor?” She may not be certain what her beliefs are right now, but she does believe that love is what will change the world.
This week’s guest is Meghan Crozier, the writer behind The Pursuing Life blog and co-host of Thereafter Podcast. Meghan grew up in an Evangelical Free church and she was “all in”.
“I had my bible on my desk in middle school…so people knew that I was a Christian.”
After high school, Meghan attended a Christian university, signing a pledge to become a missionary. Her life turned out differently, and it took years to be content with that. Now, however, she is extremely thankful she never became a missionary.
At the beginning 2020, when so much was changing in everyone’s lives, she clung to her faith. She journaled. She prayed for an hour daily and read her bible every morning.
“I don’t know what to do, so I’m going to pray through this. I’m going to try to figure this out.”
As the year progressed, she began to see other aspects of her church that she could not unsee—homophobia, gaslighting, ableism. Then the January 6th insurrection happened, and her church’s response to this disturbing event, Meghan knew she had to reconsider almost everything her life.
“I’m a Person of Faith…ish.”
Meghan now holds her Christianity very loosely. She’s found community and connection through running half-marathons, social media, and her blog and podcast. Meghan is an important voice in the deconstruction world, influencing people with both the spoken and written word.
“You have such a window into so many different pieces of faith change and deconstruction and discovering yourself.”
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast. Welcome welcome. Welcome to the Bristol atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store and rate the podcast on Spotify. subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. The Facebook community continues to be a thriving place for people to connect every Tuesday night at 530 Pacific 830. Eastern there is a get together to discuss this week's episode. So if you are listening to the show and you have a very very strong reaction, and you want to talk about it with somebody, come join Facebook group facebook.com/group/deconversion links will be in the show notes. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's podcast. On today's show, my guest today is Meghan Crozier. Meghan is a professor at a community college in the Pacific Northwest. She has a blog called The pursuing life that began as a Christian blog and has developed into a deconstruction blog. She is the co host of the thereafter podcast with Courtland where they discuss deconstruction and their experiences within evangelicalism. Meghan is a really important voice in the deconstruction community. She has a huge Twitter following and she hosts a weekly Twitter spaces on Monday mornings at 6am Pacific 9am. Eastern that is really filling a need and creating community within the deconstruction space. Here is Meghan Crozier to tell her story.
Meghan Crozier Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Meghan Crozier 2:07
Yeah, thanks for having me.
David Ames 2:09
This has been a fun connection. Arlene who does our community management for our our Facebook group reached out to you she'd heard you on a number of podcasts and I think on a discord connection and asked you to if you'd be interested in being on the podcasts. And when she mentioned you. I was very interested. And now that I've listened to a bit of your work and read a bit, I'm fascinated by your position and all this. As I was thinking about this conversation, I was thinking we're kind of very close on the other side of the fence from each other so close. We can reach over and shake hands, right? Yeah, absolutely. So you are definitely still a person of faith. But you have been in the deconstruction world now for a bit. A bit of your bone a few days. You have a blog called pursuing life. And you're the co host of the thereafter podcast. Yes, yep. Fantastic. And then you're a bit of a Twitter phenom. It seems that you seem to have a pretty big following there as well.
Meghan Crozier 3:14
Yeah, I mean, it's it's too bad. You can't get paid to tweet you know. It, it's fun. And it somehow it works for me. I don't know. I love community on Twitter. So for sure.
David Ames 3:27
That's awesome. That's awesome. So let's jump in and I want to hear about your story. We often begin the conversation with what our faith tradition was growing up. So I'd like to hear what that was like for you. Was it meaningful? What was it like?
Meghan Crozier 3:42
Yeah, so my story starts where a lot of stories start, right. I grew up evangelical. I was in a non denominational church. Actually, it was an E Free Church, but we were we were modeled largely after Willow Creek Community Church. I grew up in the Midwest, we were very close proximity wise to Willow. And I was I was all in man. I was the student leader in my youth group and I was at the pole See you at the pole. You know, I was there I had my Bible on my desk in middle school, you know, so people knew that I was a Christian and and I went to a Christian college so I went to North Park University in Chicago, they're affiliated with the evangelical Covenant Church. And I didn't grow up covenant but I just fit right in and yeah, so I was very closely almost became a missionary. I studied Spanish in college and for a lot of reasons that led me to becoming a bilingual teacher instead, which I'm so thankful for I'm so I'm so grateful that I missed that missionary mark, because yeah, it's a whole thing. And
David Ames 4:56
we've we've heard one or two horror stories. Yes. Yeah,
Meghan Crozier 4:59
yeah. I really and it's funny because one thing that I write about sometimes is I signed a pledge at Urbana in Urbana Conference, which is a huge missions conference through university to become a missionary after college for one to three years. And it took a long time to feel like becoming a teacher was okay, and that I hadn't missed this, you know, path that God was supposed to have me on and, and all of these things, and it's kind of a mindfuck how I thought that becoming a teacher was such a, you know, not the path or the right path for me. And looking back, I'm like, oh, man, I'm just so glad that I never was a missionary.
David Ames 5:41
It amazes me how we treat teachers just in general, like, but specifically, you know, you comparing that to being a missionary, you know, it's quite a noble profession. It's really, really important. So, yeah,
Meghan Crozier 5:55
yeah, yeah. And, and so one thing that happened during the pandemic is I wrote through my story, I had time, and I was, I was, I was trying to process you know, I was teaching at the time, and I was trying to process the shift that I was going through, because, you know, for my husband, we were all working at home, but he just, you know, he was at a computer already. And he just did it at home. And for me, I had to totally change everything. And I had to learn, you know, how to teach online, I was teaching first grade in Spanish. And so it was a lot. And so I initially started with writing, and I was trying to process and I really at first clung to my faith that was, you know, I was like, Okay, I don't know what to do. So I'm going to pray through this. I'm going to try to figure this out. And I wrote a memoir, and it was a memoir of prayer. And it was very evangelical. And it was, you know, I kind of called it from college to COVID. And I had prayed for, to like, for two years, I had prayed for an hour a day. And I was trying to trace these arcs of these prayers through, you know, 20 years later, and how I ended up as a teacher instead of a missionary and in the Pacific Northwest, and, oh, I might have written about the Prayer of Jabez. Like it was, there was some cringe stuff in there.
David Ames 7:16
Sure. And it all makes sense time. Yeah.
Meghan Crozier 7:19
Yeah. And people loved it. I, you know, people I went to church with it, my parents in my, you know, family and friends were like, wow, this is so good. And I just didn't sit right with me. And it something was off about it. And, and the more I was reading the Bible, I'm like, there's some really, really messed up stuff in here. And I am, this is not okay. And, and I was, you know, I have a whole healing story with my daughter that people tried to really push, you know, pray for healing. And she has a whole genetic condition, which is a whole thing. But and she's fine. But people tried to say, she was healed for what she wasn't. And so there was just a lot of stuff happening in messages that I was in a lot of political stuff happening that I wasn't comfortable with. And so I just that I mean, slowly, bit by bit, started to really question things. And, you know, you say, you're still a person of faith, and I'm like, I'm a person of faith ish.
David Ames 8:18
Okay, all right. Yeah, you get to label yourself, that's fine. I really want to I want to explore, and if it's too personal, please say no, but this, the social pressure about healing, is, if you're not involved as an objective point of view, you know, you can see that there's a bit of manipulation there. But the as the person who is being prayed for, or the person who's the parent of the person who is being prayed for, there's a lot of social pressure to say, oh, yeah, it's a little bit better. It's incrementally better. And like, you can see how, you know, if we're being kind, well intentioned, care and hope, can lead to ultimately becoming wise, you know, basically something that that just isn't true. I wonder if you just explore that a little bit like, what was it that difficult for you as a parent?
Meghan Crozier 9:09
Yeah, for sure. And so I mean, yeah, this is not a private personal thing. This I'm absolutely willing to share about this. But when, when my daughter was a baby, we found cysts on our kidneys. And we had no idea what it was. And so we went to a small group that it was almost like there was excitement about, oh, there's this mystery medical condition that we don't know what it is. And like, let's pray for this. And, you know, I was in therapy because it was scary. Because, you know, a doctor had said, like, she could be fine her whole life or she could be on dialysis by the time she's two. And that was scary, right? And so we were navigating that and going to doctors and going to clinics and trying to figure that out. And in the midst of that. We have people playing praying healing for her and we are in the Pacific Northwest. We're not far from Bethel. Well, we had people say you should get take her to Bethel. And we're like, oh, we're gonna take her to doctors. And, I mean, they didn't, we didn't have pressure to not go to doctors. But then every doctor's appointment became this framing of okay, well, this is have grown, but her kidneys are still well, God is working on those kids, you know, and it was just the framing of what is happening. And when she was five, we finally we had an MRI, we did a diagnosis, she has a condition called tuberous sclerosis, and she has a very mild form of that condition. And many kids, adults live with this condition. And there's a range of severity. And there's a lot of kids that have that are on the autism spectrum. And, and so there was a lot of messaging of, Wow, thank God, she's not this, or thank God, it's not this. And I was not comfortable with that messaging, because I'm like, there are very whole people that are living with different versions of this, this condition. And, and I cannot chalk my child up to and say, like, Thank God, she's not this person, because I felt like that was just so I guess ablest I have that terminology. Now, for it at the time, I was like, something's wrong about this, you know,
David Ames 11:24
you know, again, on this side of deconstruction, I find it fascinating that it's never considered the opposite side of that coin. So your daughter was incredibly lucky to have a, a low severity version of this. Sorry, if lucky, is probably the wrong word. You know, what I'm trying to say that it wasn't, it wasn't more severe. And yet, you're now aware of people who have significantly more severe versions of this. And, and so that, you know, or given the example of COVID, right, you know, people who haven't had COVID aren't aren't able to recognize, you know, that there are people who will have very severe versions of COVID, or the, you know, they just had a cold, right. Thank God. Yeah. You know, and not, you know, recognizing the statistics, and particularly on the the subject of poverty. For those people who are well ensconced in the middle class, it's, it's very easy to think, Oh, well, you know, God loves me, without recognizing, you know, how many people who are praying every day to have food on the table on they don't have it?
Meghan Crozier 12:27
Right? Absolutely.
David Ames 12:38
I feel like I pulled you off off your storyline a little bit. But so the writing of the book looking at prayer over time, your daughter's illness, you started to have some pretty serious questions. And and let's take it from there.
Meghan Crozier 12:52
Yeah, I would say you know, a lot of people ask what pulls what was what pulled the first thread for you. And for me, I was watching an evangelical megachurch, locally, I'm in the Pacific Northwest, I said that. But locally, we did a huge series on race. And that was it was great. Our pastor, you know, he it was almost like a docu series. He had traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, he had traveled to, you know, Montgomery, Alabama, and there was a lot of really good stuff in that. And then, you know, there was a lot of chatter about well, he's not afraid to lean into difficult topics. And I was like, what does that mean? And I discovered that his prior church, he had preached a very well known series called God in homosexuality, and dove into that, and I was, you know, it was the first time that me as you know, assists at White woman really saw what was being asked of the queer community. And so I saw, I watched him go through, you know, you know, you have three options. If you're queer, you can be celibate for life, you can force yourself into heterosexual marriage, and that might be fine. Or you can, if you, you know, do live into your full identity, you're just really not living God's plan for you. And so I started to just started to listen to myself for the first time and say, hold on. And as I started to share with other people, the reaction was so wild. And I was like, Wow, there's so much homophobia and what and, and I, it's hard to say that now. And now because I have so many queer friends now. And I and I just think I was blind to it for so long. And there were so many ways that I just fit right into what was being asked of people in the evangelical church. And so I just really didn't wake up to the exclusion and the hate and now I see the depth of the harm and how far it goes. And I've, of course, you know, looking at colonization and all these other things. It just opened the door for me.
David Ames 14:54
Yeah, I think that a lot of the missional you know, seeker friendly churches don't realize that by by not being positively affirming, they are non affirming. And they feel like they can get away with ignoring the issue. Don't Ask Don't Tell kind of thing. And yet they are causing harm. Active harm.
Meghan Crozier 15:16
Yeah. And I think, you know, well, I mean, I could talk about that forever. But I will just say that what is happening to is, there are parents that are being pressured to disown their children, when they come out as queer now, and I just, I see things like that happening. And it's like, okay, you can either choose God, or you can choose your child, what are you going to do? Because your family is just here for now. So, you know, God is eternity. And the messaging is so awful about that. And, and, you know, you see what the damage that it does to people trying to sort through their identity and, and, you know, growing up with messaging that says, you know, I'm, I'm inherently wrong for being this way. And so yeah, it's, it's infuriating.
David Ames 16:01
Yeah. I am amazed by how many says hit people, one of the major factors of their deconstruction is the treatment of the LGBTQ community. And in that, you know, it's not their personal experience, necessarily, but that they begin to recognize the humanity of this person is being is being minimized, it's being reduced in the same way that racism does. And, and that that is such a catalyst for people to begin to reevaluate. And why I find that fascinating is it's really a moral argument, one that from the evangelical point of view we shouldn't be able to make. And yet it is very strong. I feel like I didn't really understand the term righteous anger until about 2016. And then it was like, Oh, this is what, that's what that feels like. Yeah, kind of having a sense of this is wrong. Justice is not being served here. And something is missing.
Meghan Crozier 17:04
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that in the context of what was happening politically, I mean, I this is going to be tallied on how new I am to deconstruction. But I will just say, I was still going to this mega church, when somebody reached out and said, hey, you know, there's a progressive church in Portland that that has some of your same deal breakers, and I've seen you write about this. And after January 6, I watched both online, and I was in I was, I've never been one of those people. That's like, if your pastor doesn't preach about this on Sunday, walk out, just do it, you know, but it just, I think, the watching what had happened on Wednesday, January 6, and then going to church and having this like, lovely talk on making good habits. And, you know, making sure that you sometimes it might be helpful if you read your Bible before you drink your coffee, so that you know you get that time in and then going to this progressive Church Online and just having space held to say, how were you feeling on Wednesday? How are you feeling right now? Let's talk about that. And I was like, whoa. And that was that was the last time that I had opened that, you know, the Facebook page for that mega church because I was like, I you know, I think I'm just gonna just admit that I'm deconstructing and so yeah, I'm new in this.
David Ames 18:29
Ya know, I can hear that a little bit. Yeah, that it's also the that exciting time where you, you know, at some point, I call this the permission to doubt phase right? Or the information seeking phase where, like, up until this point, you have a lot of things happen to you, that cause you to question, but at some point, you take the kind of proactive step like, Alright, I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take responsibility for this, and I'm gonna go learn some things and decide what I believe or don't believe it's terrifying. But it can also be really, really exciting.
Meghan Crozier 19:01
And I mean, exciting is a word. I mean, it can be like, it's, I wouldn't recommend somebody to just like, hey, this is an exciting journey. But yeah, it's magical, airy, maybe. And, yeah, it's it's work.
David Ames 19:26
On that note, you know, we throw the word deconstruction around. I have a definition in my head. I'm curious how you define it. And is that something that you are recommending is a strong word, but is that something that you're you're active for people online to begin questioning that kind of thing?
Meghan Crozier 19:45
Cool. Yeah, that's the L. That's a two parter. So yeah, deconstruction. I probably have a different definition by the day. But I really believe it's a process of leaning into those doubts that you have have an understanding and, and really, you know, for me starting to understand that the inherited faith that you've had your whole life might have been, you know, you might have been taught an interpretation of something. And that, you know, there are other interpretations out there, you might realize, oh, there's other faith traditions out there that, you know, better match what I'm looking for, and what my value system is, and what my deal breakers are. And, you know, for some people, there's people that say, you know, this is not for me, and, and so I really feel like it's an ongoing, never ending journey. I really push back when people say I've deconstructed but I, you know, I think I'll, I'll say this is kind of when I started deconstruction, and it's, it will probably be going on forever. I still use the term progressive Christian, I hold it very loosely, there are times when I wonder if it's just to stay comfortable, because it's scary to let go of that. And so, but I'm willing to admit that and sometimes I say agnostic, Christian. But yeah. And then I on the second question, I was recently in a conversation on Twitter spaces about this where the question was, should we be evangelistic about deconstruction? And even though that phrasing kind of sucks, and people said that, which is fair,
David Ames 21:27
I hate that sentence. But anyway, yeah.
Meghan Crozier 21:29
But, you know, it's a shortcut to asking the question, right. And so it's a language to speak, some of us speak. And so there was a lot of really good conversation about, you know, not trying to push people out of their faith or what you know, their value system, but yet wanting to really point out the harm, and really help people understand, hey, this is super homophobic, and this is super queer phobic. And this is super colonizing, and, you know, and all of the things and help people understand and the harm towards women. And you know, my dad and I have had conversations where I'm like, your experience in the church has been a lot different than mine, as a woman who grew up in purity culture. So I mean, and that's, you know, we can go there, if you want.
David Ames 22:27
I think that unless you want to head down that road, I think what I'm more interested in is, it sounds like you were active. I don't know if you'd say leadership. But you know, you were a voice in the Christian world, right, writing a book, you had people that were listening to you, I believe your blog was originally more Christian oriented. I'm curious what the response was, as you began to change, and publicly so
Meghan Crozier 22:52
yeah, so once I wrote my book, I started to kind of explore what what will I do with this, and the blog came after the book, and there are posts on my blog that are not public anymore, about prophecy, and it's great. And, but I knew that if I wanted to be an author, I would have to build a platform on social media, I did not have that. And so I started this the pursuing life, which I still hold to that name. And I think there's something to be said about an ongoing pursuit of truth and what matters. And so it you know, it was interesting, because I did have initially connections with, you know, people I went to college with, or people that used to be my mentors, or people I was in small group with, and slowly as I started talking about pro choice things, and, you know, being queer affirming, and things like that, I would get messages. It was like, interesting thing that you said, Are you and, you know, pro and with a lot of language that I don't even want to say, because it's super nasty, and I and just so dehumanizing. And but then on the flip side, I would have like a neighbor that would reach out quietly and be like, Hey, I've been reading these blog posts that you're putting on Facebook, and I went through this, and I feel so seen. And, you know, I or, you know, I really feel like I could talk to you about this, can I let you know, and it was like, that was the beauty of it. Because even though it was hard to have people, you know, be so assuming about things and not want to have a conversation, but just kind of direct me away from what I was talking about. It was beautiful to really connect more deeply with some people in my life and then new people and you know, you can see now there's, I've been part of building community. And so it started as platform building and now I really see it as community building. Wow.
David Ames 24:56
Yeah. Fantastic. I definitely want to talk about community Need, I'm gonna pause there for just a second and say, I think an answer to the question earlier about being evangelistically. Towards deconstruction, I always think that my goal is not to make more atheist or more deconstruction, my goal is to be the place to land for those people who have already began that process, right? Or those people who can no longer live with it at all. And to be that safe place. And yes, just by being public, you know, you're putting it out there. There's there's some element but I feel like like your neighbor, there are many, many people sitting in pews questioning themselves and, and feeling alone and isolated, and not realizing that there's this huge wave of people who have been going through the same thing been asking very similar questions. And and I think the answer to that is community so yeah.
I know that you've been doing like clubs, clubhouse and Twitter spaces and things of that nature. How did that come about? And how's that been working for you?
Meghan Crozier 26:14
So interesting. Really early on some when I was, you know, still kind of trying to figure out well, what was going on, somebody reached out and said, I feel like clubhouse would be a good medium for you just the way that you are and the way you want to connect with people. And immediately after I joined somebody from my profile, my friend teal, short, he lives in Chicago, and he lives in an intentional community. And he's a progressive Christian. And that's how I had identified on my profile. And he was like, I really feel strongly about community. But it's so hard right now with the pandemic. And I just What would you think about having a weekly room to pull people together to talk about stuff, and it was beautiful, and the conversations were amazing. And we had our first our first night was about LGBTQ ally ship or something like that, which now I look back, and I'm like, wow, I really said that, huh? Like I called myself an ally, I would okay. But it turned into this beautiful community, there's something to be said about live audio conversations that aren't being recorded. There's nobody trying to one up or get likes or retweets, and just kind of come there. And through that, I connected with some other people that and I was on some deconstruction panels. And it was so early. I mean, this was January of 2020. This was, you know, I told you, I mean, this was just a couple of weeks after the insurrection where I was still kind of processing. So I always say, you know, I will be moderating the clubhouse room on music. And, you know, I would say something like, God, I can't listen to worship music anymore, because it's so triggering for me, because the organizations that put out what I used to listen to were complicit in this insurrection. And I would mute they would go on, and I would be like, on the floor, sobbing, like, what am I gonna do with me, like, what music is gonna carry me like, I had so much grief over the loss of things that comforted me that I, it was hard, but I was processing it in community. And that kind of led to Twitter spaces. And what I do now, and I have, you know, deconstruction, bookclub discord and things like that. And then, you know, that's how I connect with Courtland. And they started co hosting their after pod and, and I just became this thing where, and I think people saw that authenticity, and they were like, I, I don't know if people resonated or connected or what, but I think just knowing they weren't alone. And that's a powerful thing, I think.
David Ames 28:46
Absolutely. I think my experience so far has been, you know, once people find some community at all, they read, and they begin to say, Hey, I feel this way about this thing. And 10 people come along and go, Oh, that's me, too. That that experience, that recognition of one story being told by someone else, is incredibly cathartic and has some healing elements to it.
Meghan Crozier 29:12
Yeah. And I will say one other thing is, and I share this a lot, and it's just a small piece of it. I was also I taught for 15 years, and I was leaving my teaching career at the time, too. And so I was just unraveling everywhere I was, you know, going through faith change, career change. And so I think, too, I was very vocal about not being a person that had all the answers. And I think that's, that's the thing that draws people in sometimes is like, Okay, who I have totally put all my hope in these pastors that I thought had all the answers for so long, or this church that I thought had all the answers to this faith tradition, and it's I think there's something comforting about being in community with people that don't try to make it seem like they have all the answers and you They're totally together whole people. You know, I'm super vocal about therapy too. So
David Ames 30:05
we're very pro therapy here on the podcast.
Meghan Crozier 30:08
Yeah. I love it
David Ames 30:19
I want to talk briefly about the thereafter podcast I listened to when you were interviewed on the show. And then, you know, a bit later their second season, you became the co host. I'm curious what that process was like, because as a, you know, again, I haven't listed a lot of them. But from my perspective, it was like, here have this podcast, they just handed you the reins, which is great. But I'm curious, like, were Was that something you were looking for? And how has that been for you as as an outlet?
Meghan Crozier 30:49
You know, I had thought it would be fun to have a podcast, I didn't really know why or would or, you know, I'm glad I didn't do it when I was writing my book, you know. And I have become good friends with Courtland. And that's a whole thing too. I think I've made some I write about this, sometimes I've made some really close friends that are men, and that has, its new and I really fiercely advocate for it is possible to be friends with people and close with people that aren't your partner and have good healthy communication about boundaries and, and know, you know, where things are at. And, and I love it. And I think you know, there's this messaging for so long that you should just not be close with anyone that's not your partner. And so anyway, Carolyn and I had become good friends. And his first season was awesome. But his co host wasn't going to continue on for the second season. And so I, you know, just kind of happened, I was kind of like, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. And we had a conversation that was like, what if, what if this is what it looks like, and started to kind of have talks and there was a, I run, I have this big goal to run a half marathon in every state. And so I was flying through Denver, and he came to the airport and we sat down and had dinner together and talked a little bit about it. And, and I love it, I it's just been so fun to sit down like you're doing I'm sure the you know, and have people share their journeys and have people you know, process and you see so many you have such a window into so many different different pieces of faith change and deconstruction and discovering yourself and all of those things. And so it's been really fun to connect with people. And also like, it's just yeah, it's it's a, it's a fun thing.
David Ames 32:44
You guys, I sound like you've been doing it forever. It's very well produced. Courtland has that radio voice thing going for him? sounds it sounds, it's a great podcast. So I recommend it. So we'll definitely links in the show notes for people to find that
one of the episodes that I listened to you in Portland, we're talking about the evangelical response to deconstruction. And this has been one of those things where I find it so infuriating that I hold back a lot like, you know, I've gone on some friends podcast, to vent and to be less than graceful. To say how bad it is, I've interviewed a couple of people who are in the evangelical world who consider themselves experts on deconstruction. And what I find most often is that you can tell they've never actually spoken to someone who is in the middle of deconstruction or or, or, you know, deep on the other side. So I'm curious from your perspective, what you think of the evangelical response to this moment in time that we are having?
Meghan Crozier 34:04
Well, I'll say this, I think a lot of the people actually might have spoken to people at deconstruction, but they've never listened to people. Yeah, yeah. And I so I think that there's a lot of pastors that look around and they see this hashtag or they see you know, videos, or they see people unpacking and, you know, like me, people are living their journeys out loud. And they it's like, they want to jump in there like I want to, I want to have a pulse on what's happening here and so they bring their hot takes, you know, there's the matt Chandler that says, people just think it's a fad and that it's sexy and they never had to pay to begin with and Joshua Ryan Butler had his for reasons people deconstruct and, and it was, you know, it's, it's to be cool to for street cred, you know, and it's, it is is infuriating, it feels because this journey is so personal. And because the first time I sat down with the the pastor at the faith community I've been part of and said, I'm going through deconstruction, and he was like, take care of yourself. Like, this is like really, you know, be kind to yourself. And it's like, he knew, you know, and these people that are making their hot takes, it's like, you have no idea how how much grief there is on this journey, you have no idea how hard this is. I mean, I, I said, I'd be like sobbing on the floor. Like, you just have no idea because it was because I was reading the Bible and, and seeing, you know, David fight, like winning over wives for you know, as part of a war prize and things like that. And I was like, no, like, I just, I could not, I could not do it anymore. And, and I and a lot of them are, you know, white men that have a lot of benefits from their position, and you know, and keeping their position. And so it is it's infuriating. And what's even more frustrating is those people that I mentioned earlier, that have you know, pushback on the things that I say they'll send me articles, and they'll be like, Hey, I saw this article in Christianity Today, about deconstruction. And it really made me kind of understand a little bit more, and I just want to be like, no, like, please, it does not make you understand a little bit more. And so that's the frustrating part. Because I think Christians that are trying to understand what's happening to their friends that are leaving the church are reading this stuff, and they're like, oh, okay, I feel comfort and like they never had true faith to begin with. And it's like, no, no, that's not it. And so I think there's, it's it's really false messaging, and it is very infuriating.
David Ames 36:51
In my Kinder moments, I try very hard to understand the position that particularly pastors are in. And having both sides of understanding both sides of that equation, I realize you realize that the very thing they are recommending, get closer to God read the Bible more, pray more, are the things that most people in deconstruction are doing, they have doubled, they have tripled, they have quadrupled down. They are working, you know, to maintain their faith, and they are being dragged away, kicking and screaming. And that's the part that they don't seem to understand. And I think you've said it really well that it is really a grief process. It is the process of losing many, many things, the intimacy of a relationship with God, the community, friendships, family, in some cases. And so while you're going through this grieving process, and someone is saying from a pulpit that you were never a real Christian, it's pretty, pretty devastating, pretty hurtful.
Meghan Crozier 37:52
Yeah. And I think, you know, to tell somebody that's healing from religious trauma. And I would say, my journey is like fear, like, you know, when I say that, I just, I have so many folks and community that I'm in community with that have had more severe trauma than I have in all of this space. But to tell somebody that's going through very severe trauma, you need to find healing from trauma in the institution that traumatized you. That I mean, it's just it's so bypassing of what's really going on and and or they say, it's really not trauma or it's really not, you know, what you're saying it is or it isn't that bad. And I think that you know, which is gaslighting? And then or they're just, this is my favorite. Why What about the good that happens from it that like people try to say like, but but this pastor even though he was an abuser, like there were he wrote some really good books, and it's like, no, like, no. So yeah, I they just don't get it. They really don't. And they're not listening to people that are hurting.
David Ames 39:06
You mentioned earlier that you person of faith ish. So I'm curious, what are the things and you also talked about, you know, what music will carry you through things? So what what are the things that you now find as spiritual however, you'd want to define that spiritually fulfilling for you?
Meghan Crozier 39:27
Yeah, so it took me a long time to close my Bible. I you know, and I, there was I had been during the pandemic, I had been had this habit of journaling and reading my Bible, and I, you know, and Enneagram one, it was just like, he liked to follow rules and have that kind of thing. And I was in therapy, and I was constantly saying, This is so triggering for me, this is so hard for me and my therapist was like, what if you didn't read your Bible? And I was like, what would I do in the morning? She was like, What if you read other things, and I started reading Brene Brown and I started, you know, reading other things. And then I started, you know, reading authors of color and queer authors and just really having more routine and structure around that instead of you know, that instead of trying to force myself through something that was not healthy for me. And I also started a vinyl collection. And I just really was like, I'm gonna reclaim what the role that music has in my life, because I am a runner, I run to music, I ran to playlists, and I needed to have a I have things that I resonated with. And so that has been amazing. And it's funny, because I, I read a lot, and I have not dug into all the theological, all of it, you know, like, all of the things and so Christians will try the Theo bros, you call him on Twitter, try to come at me with, you know, do you really think like, what do you think about hell? And what do you think about, you know, all of these things, the resurrection, and I'm like, you know, I don't really know right now. And I'm actually okay, not knowing that's not something that I'm sitting with, you know, trying to understand I'm okay, just kind of setting it aside, and really just saying, I don't know. And that's very infuriating. You know, I talked about having a, like sex positivity, and people get real mad that I, you know, push back on people trying to preach abstinence. And they're like, that is the biblical sexual ethic. And I'm like, Really, it's not. And they get so furious, because they want to tell me that I'm not a Christian. And I'm, like, you know, believe whatever you want to believe, like, you have no way of having, you know, deciding what I am or what I'm not. Right. And so I think, you know, like I said, I have that label ish. And I don't know it, well, I have it forever. I don't know, do I, you know, am I uncomfortable with it? Not really, but it's not something that I will ever hold grip onto, like I have in the past.
David Ames 42:02
And one of the things we've talked about on the podcast is that, you know, you own the privacy of your own mind, and no one has access to that you choose to reveal what you want to to people who are safe and trustworthy, and you don't owe anybody else, anything else. So they have no access to that.
Meghan Crozier 42:22
Well, and I do think that the way that I approached my faith is what I mean, you know, my co host, Courtland for the podcast is an atheist. And I mean, it's what has given me the opportunity to have these beautiful friendships with people of all different faith traditions, or non faith post faith traditions, or non faith traditions, you know, and so I think, you know, the fact that I hold it loosely, I don't feel this urgency to try to convert other people to what I believe in. And I, I love listening to what's meaningful to other people, right. And so if somebody's finding meaning in other traditions, I love it, I'm here for it, I want to read about it, I want to learn about it.
David Ames 43:08
So selfishly, you've mentioned running a few times. I'm a runner, and I, I talk about all the time that you know, I don't meditate I run. And it is so important to me as a as mental health. And I know that that is also a privilege that not everyone will be able to run, but I recommend that people do something, some kind of exercise something, get out of the house, move around, get out in the sunlight, that kind of thing. That's really, really good for you. So I'd be curious if that is that's meaningful for you. And tell tell us about the half marathons in every state.
Meghan Crozier 43:44
Yeah, so it's, you know, it's just kind of a fun hobby, but half marathon, I just feel like it's a good distance. For me, it pushes me to have those, you know, 789 10 mile runs on the weekends, but and you know, kind of stick to a schedule on the weekdays. That are it's a little shorter, and do it more doable. I've done a couple marathons, it kind of tears up my body a little bit too much. But I'm gonna say this because it has been part of my deconstruction is trying to navigate this. And so I think it's an important piece. For a long time running was very tied to my spirituality. I felt like it was, you know, God gave me the strength to get through that run. I was listening to worship music on the run, I was crossing the finish line to I'm no longer a slave to fear, you know, and it's just a coup. So I will say this, sometimes what I do, just to try to I live in the Northwest, and so to try to knock out some of those East Coast states. I will run a back to back half marathon. So I'll do one on Saturday and one on Sunday. I just did that last October. I did West Virginia and Maryland. And it's so what I do is kind of a typical training cycle, but I'll do double long runs on the weekends. And so I'll run on Saturday and Sunday. And I had this experience when I was training for that Um, West Virginia, Maryland, where I spent, you know, a weekend running. I'm not fast, I don't go for time I wouldn't be able to run, you know, for half marathons a year or six or whatever if I did. But I had this weekend where I went out on a Saturday morning, I was running for like, a couple hours. I went out on a Sunday, I was running for a couple hours, and I got in my car, and I was just like, sobbing. And I was like, What is going on here? And it was like, I felt like I got my body back. Like, I felt like I did that. Like, I felt like I worked hard. I got up, I hit the trail. I did it. I was listening to podcasts, and audiobooks. I listen to all kinds of things. And it was all for me. And it wasn't this. Like, I was like, Finally, I've reclaimed the role that this has in my life too, because I felt like I worked hard. And I knocked it out. And I did a great job. And I slayed you know, and I was like, wow, that was amazing. And so I think that's what running has done for me. And you know, whether I'm consistent every day, not really I've you know, and it's also helped me learn to not be perfectionistic about something because I'm like, you know, if I walked or in a race, that's fine. If I you know, if I don't go running on Monday, and I hit it on Tuesday, that's great, too, you know, so it has been it has been life giving for me.
David Ames 46:18
Definitely for me, too. And in my case, age knocks out the need for speed there. I just want to be able to keep doing it, you know, yeah. Great mechanism for listening to podcasts as well. So for sure. Meghan, thank you so much for for being on the podcast, I want to give you a moment here to share all the myriad of things that you're doing. How can people get in touch with you or interact with some of your work?
Meghan Crozier 46:44
Yeah, well, the best place to find me is on Twitter. And I am super responsive. DMS, comments, things like that. And so I'm at the pursuing life on Twitter. Check out the podcast. We love hearing from people that have listened to episodes and connected there after pod on Twitter. They're after podcasts on Instagram, and it's on all the platforms you can listen to. And I do have a blog, the pursuing life.com website. I'm kind of working on revamping it. Like I said, there's some older stuff that I'd love to update, edit, respond to. And keep an eye out because I have some writing things in the works. But yeah, like live conversations. We do Twitter spaces every Tuesday morning at 6am. Pacific Northwest time and so are Pacific time. I just must love to say the Pacific Northwest. Times. Sorry, I just I really do like it here. But don't tell anyone because we're good. But yeah, and I mentioned a deconstruction. Discord that's open, people can jump in. So if people want to see what that's about, they can send me a message and I can get them the link. And I think yeah, I think
David Ames 47:57
that covers it. That's awesome. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Meghan Crozier 48:01
Yeah, thanks for having me.
David Ames 48:10
Final thoughts on the episode. Meghan is truly fascinating in that she is in some ways in the early stages of deconstruction, when I said it's exciting, she pointed out that it's also very difficult that it's work. And at the same time she has become a central voice within the extra angelical deconstruction community. It's always fascinating when someone deconstructs in public the way that Meghan has, she began as a Christian blogger and was writing a memoir about prayer. And then to go through the questioning phases and identifying what you no longer hold to be true. Obviously, in Meghan's case, a lot of embracing the LGBTQ community recognizing the racism within evangelicalism, and the harm that comes from that, as I mentioned in our conversation, that that's truly a moral argument. And it is weird in many ways for us on this side of deconstruction to be making a moral argument. When evangelicals act as though we have no moral standing. I was deeply touched about Meghan's daughter, and I appreciate her being willing to share what could be a very painful part of her life with us. I am struck over and over and over again from people's stories about the dark side, the dangerous side of the concept of prayer for healing and the social pressures that a person is under to say, Yes, something is better. And especially if it was your child. I can't imagine the kind of suffering that that would cause I'm very glad to hear that her daughter is doing well these days. I appreciate Meghan's honesty and saying that she's a person of faith ish that she sometimes calls herself a progressive Christian, she sometimes calls herself an agnostic Christian. That is kind of what I've been trying to capture this early part of the year is those people who are really in the middle of it, although my core audience does tend to be the D converted, deconstruction is a part of that process. And not everyone will land in deconversion. But it is good to hear voices who are processing. Right now, in the middle of those kinds of questions. I have now quoted Meghan several times, in reference to my saying that many of the hot takes on deconstruction show that those thought leaders, quote, unquote, have not ever spoken to someone going through deconversion. And she corrected me and I thought this was really insightful. It's not that they haven't spoken to people who are going through deconstruction, it's that they haven't listened to them. And I imagine that you listener can relate to that, that it's very hard to be heard when what you are trying to tell them is threatening to their identity to, in some cases, their livelihood, and something that is so deep as faith. One of the most important things that Meghan is doing is that deconstruction voice against evangelicalism against the backlash from evangelicalism towards those of us who have deconstructed or deconstructing, I think that is an important role that Meghan is fulfilling. I want to thank Meghan for being on the podcast, I appreciate the vulnerability, talking about grief, talking about her experience with her daughter, talking about the work that deconstruction is, we need to hear that we need to understand that it is a process of grief, it is at times and existentially difficult time in one's life. I appreciate Meghan's honesty, and I think she is a significant and important voice within the deconstruction community. Thank you Meghan, for being on the podcast. I'm all over the board on a secular Grace thought of the week I have several things that are just popping to mind having read listened to Meghan's interview. First is the true downside to prayers for healing. And those of us who were a part of a charismatic or Pentecostal faith tradition, or had a more full gospel perspective within a Baptist or Reformed theology, will have that experience of the expectation as someone has prayed for you that you are prompted to say, Yes, I feel better the headache is gone. So much of the apologetic argument about healing is questionable not because I think people are lying, but because the kinds of studies that have been done on healing are very rarely double blind, scientific studies. And therefore the people who were the subjects have a motivated reason to say that they got better. And therefore those kinds of studies are just not valuable. But really, what I wanted to talk about is the pain of being the person who is ill put the pain of being the person who is disabled, the pain of being the parents of the person who is ill. What begin is well meaning and well intentioned, and trying to show care can turn very quickly into something painful, and something that induces suffering. So much better to be like Meghan, and just to be present with someone as they are going through difficult times. As you've heard me talk about losing my father in law, I've recently learned from a nephew of mine a really powerful way to try to be present for someone who is going through grief or some suffering, and that is to ask them, Do you want to talk about it? Do you want to have space? Or do you want to be distracted? And that's really powerful. Because sometimes if we just say, What can I do for you, the person who is in the middle of grief of some suffering, doesn't have the emotional capacity to tell you what it is that they want, but they can answer those simple questions. It's a practical way of being present. Letting them know that you care without putting social pressure on the person who is in need to have to say the right thing or do the right thing or live up to some expectation. The other thought I had was about the evangelical response to deconstruction and how we respond to that response. As I mentioned in the episode, I get very, very frustrated that that, especially for very public evangelical leaders, and again, they show as Meghan pointed out, that they have not listened. I've said before that if they truly did understand us, they would be condemned. instructing themselves. And in some ways that relieves the burden, that we know that we won't be able to convince them, because we wouldn't have been convinced double. And if they did understand they would be on their own deconstruction path. Having said that, I do think it's very important that we represent deconstruction and deconversion, atheism, secular humanism, agnostic, whatever label you choose for yourself, that we are moral, that we do have a sense of purpose and meaning that all of the shortcut dismissals from the evangelical response are incorrect. And one of the ways that we do that is by doing so in public, I don't expect everyone to have a podcast, I don't expect everyone to have a blog. But for those of you who do, or are interested in doing so, every little bit, makes an impact. The last thought is about the community that Meghan is creating with the Twitter spaces on Monday mornings. You've heard me go on and on about community about the deconversion anonymous Facebook group, but also we are nearing the end of the pandemic. And we need to begin to look toward a in person connection. And I just encourage you to think of ways that you can create community, wherever you are. As I keep saying, we've got a long slate of really amazing interviews coming up we have Marla Tobiano coming up, we have April, a joy from Instagram fame, Ryan will kowski who is a secular humanist hospice chaplain, we have community member Bethany coming up and also Luke Jansen of the recovering evangelicals podcast. So I'm excited to share all of those, we do have a bit of a backlog. If one of those people you're really excited about don't panic, if it doesn't come out in the next week or two, it will be there. And until then, my name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings, it's
time for the footnotes. The beat is called waves for MCI beats, links will be in the show notes. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can promote it on your social media. You can subscribe to it in your favorite podcast application, and you can rate and review it on pod chaser.com. You can also support the podcast by clicking on the affiliate links for books on Bristol atheists.com. If you have podcast production experience and you would like to participate podcast, please get in touch with me. Have you gone through a faith transition? Do you need to tell your story? Reach out? If you are a creator, or work in the deconstruction deconversion or secular humanism spaces and would like to be on the podcast? Just ask. If you'd like to financially support the podcast there's links in the show notes. To find me you can google graceful atheist. You can google deconversion you can google secular grace, you can send me an email graceful atheist@gmail.com or you can check out the website graceful atheists.com My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist join me and be graceful human beings
this has been the graceful atheist podcast
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
This week’s episode is Natalie. Natalie grew up in a traditional Christian household, one of six kids. Living in the South and attending a Southern Baptist church most of her childhood and adolescence, however, left a bad taste in her mouth.
“[At church, integration] was never talked about. It was a complete separation of community and religion, and yet the missionaries would come and show their slides about the brown people in South America and Africa that we were ‘saving.’”
One place she found solace? Books. Natalie was an avid reader from a young age and reading authors like Judy Blume opened her eyes to a whole good and happy world outside of her Christian bubble. Fictional, though it was, that world made her wonder, “How can [my family] be so unhappy and still have these beliefs about this religion?”
“Reading was really the gateway for me to questioning everything.”
Natalie escaped the South at seventeen for a few years and began seriously examining her childhood faith. Even as she was questioning her beliefs, she had to move back in with family. It wasn’t long amidst the chaos that she needed to escape again. After a quick and clandestine wedding, she and her husband moved.
“The further I got from my family, the easier [questioning] became until…I woke up one day and realized I hadn’t thought about a god for a long time.”
It’s been a while since Natalie deconverted, and she has lived a fulfilling life, with both happy and hard times. Today, seeing those who are deconstructing their faith, she empathizes deeply .
“You have to take everything you’ve been told most of your life and run it through a ringer to see what’s true…And a lot of it doesn’t survive.”
This week’s guest is Judah. Judah grew up “Church of God, Pentecostal adjacent,” where Judah’s father was convinced, “God is alive in these people.” By eight years old, Judah was speaking in tongues and absorbed into eschatology—the study of the end times.
Around ten, at a more “separatist” church, the family started homeschooling. His church and family were convinced they were right and everyone else was wrong. Answers in Genesis was the science curriculum, but Judah was also exposed to science on public television.
“I knew if [the creationism] pillar is knocked out; it’s going to be really hard to recover from.”
As a teen, another pillar began to crack. Judah believed his attraction to guys and girls was sinful. It felt like God was two opposing forces—one god you lean into for love and grace, the other shames and condemns you.
“If god really is all powerful, and I’m praying to him and wanting these things to go away, then why aren’t they going away and how can I be a better christian?”
Judah doubled down on young earth creationism and repressing his sexual attractions and dove deeper into eschatology. The family’s eschatology changed over time, but 2012 was the year the end of the world would come.
“Cling to family. Cling to beliefs. Cling to this idea that we will be saved from this awful place they call earth.”
Eventually 2012 comes and 2012 goes. This undid Judah. He spends the next three years learning what else was not true, debunking creationism, conspiracies and various theological matters.
“If I deconstruct this all, and I fully leave the faith, I’m willing to accept the fact that I’m risking hellfire but I care about the truth too much to live a lie for the rest of my life…”
Judah was a more liberal Christian for a while but eventually science and logic led him to become an agnostic atheist. He came out with his beliefs to his family in dramatic fashion and hasn’t looked back. His future is in his own hands and whether his family takes responsibility for their beliefs and actions during his childhood is in theirs. He now lives a life true to himself and his own values and ethics.
Hannah and Jose Click to play episode on anchor.fm
My guest this week is Hannah Ramos. Hannah grew up in an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist family, one of ten homeschooled children. Dissuaded from going to bible college, she waited for her Prince Charming. When Jose showed up to speak at her church, she knew he was “God’s choice” for her as a husband.
Very early in their marriage, Jose took over as pastor of a Spanish speaking church. Everything seemed to be going according to God’s plan, until three years later when Jose admitted to Hannah that he no longer believed. Suddenly, she found herself in an unequally yoked relationship.
For six years, Hannah focused on her own faith and raising their three children as believers, and they loved one other through this time. Jose supported Hannah’s faith, and Hannah had given up on changing Jose’s mind. Hannah had the space to begin to question her own faith.
Her children innocently asked her to explain the Trinity, and they were not satisfied with her answers. She read through the Bible, asking, “But is this true?” She no longer could assume that it was. Finally the pat answers Hannah received no longer satisfied her, and she admitted to herself that she also no longer believed.
To Jose’s amazement (and slight disbelief), Hannah revealed that she was no longer a Christian. Today, they are closer than ever, and their children are free to decide for themselves what they believe. Hannah has found a peace she did not think was possible.
My guest this week is Monique. Monique grew up a cultural Christian until the family of her boyfriend “made it known they were Southern Baptists.” She married that boyfriend and had kids. He became abusive. First psychologically, then spiritually and eventually physically. He gaslit her, told her she was not worthy and that she was not following god, and called her purity culture epithets we won’t recount here.
How dare I question him [ex-husband], how dare I question god.
After years of isolation and spiritual abuse, Monique left after executing a cloak and dagger level plan to serve divorce papers and a restraining order simultaneously. Eventually, her kids were taken from her as he had lawyers and she did not. She was estranged from them for years.
Monique went through a deconstruction and deconversion that began to give her some peace. Her youngest son reached out to her to tell her he is gay. She opened up her arms and showed grace, love and respect. She and her daughter attempted to reunite but this was ruined when the daughter took offence to a passing joke about prayer.
I am not going to conform. I will not conform to meet someone else’s standards. I am who I am.
Today, Monique is free and loves learning true things. Her and her new husband (who happens to be a believer) have respect and love for each other. Monique is telling her story to give hope to others so they may know they are not alone.
You are not alone. I am here. I am may not be able to help you, but I am here with you.
My guest this week is Joel. Joel grew up in the WELS Lutheran church. He met his wife at a Christian group during college. They attended a few churches, one of which was Mars Hill, Mark Driscoll’s church.
Joel began to question what he had been taught. He began noticing discrepancies in scripture. He began to see the way the Church handled LGBTQ rights and the role of women was wrong.
Am I waiting for revelation to confirm what I have been taught or am I avoiding an inevitable confrontation with my real thoughts and beliefs.
He was able to reconnect with his sister as they grieved the loss of his grandfather. He discovered that she had deconstructed as well. He began to see atheism as not just reductionist and evil but as a viable option.
I got really afraid, to be honest, because I am not thinking “oh, I am finally learning the truth.” I am thinking, “I am losing this faith that I should be given and I am falling away I am going to be punished for it.”
Today he is making his unequally yoked relationship work with mutual respect and love. And he is experiencing “absolute joy that the shackles are off.”
It started to make me think of blind faith as a concept. And I started to think, “Am I also blindly faithful of things and what does that look like?”
My guest this week is Eli Fuhrmler-Wheeler. Eli grew up going to Awanas at an Evangelical Free church. Eventually, he attended an Assemblies of God church and spoke in tongues. His parents forbade him from going to that church and “of course I felt they were keeping me from the gates of heaven and pulling me into hell.”
Eli’s childhood was traumatic in many ways. He experienced sexual abuse, neglect, his mom was very sick her whole life, her boyfriends were abusive, his father had an antisocial personality disorder, and he lived on and off in foster homes.
Eli sought the comfort of drugs and alcohol. He discovered he was a lesbian. He was told he was going to hell by his family.
As an adult he began a relationship with his now wife. At 30 he realized he was a man and began transition. Eli has faced rejection by family and some friends. However, his gracefulness through it all has won some of them over.
[Rather than show grace, why not be angry at those who have not shown you grace?] That wouldn’t teach anybody anything. It wouldn’t teach me anything and it wouldn’t teach them anything.
Eli deconstructed from Christianity through the years. He has explored various world religions including Norse Heathenry and various mystic traditions.
Transition and therapy have given Eli the wholeness he deserves. Eli and his wife show unconditional love for one another. This is the relationship that Eli has experienced grace for himself.
My guest this week is Daniel Kelly, the new co-host of When Belief Dies. Daniel began as a Charismatic Christian, moved to an Orthodox Christian church and eventually was at a Bible church that preached through every verse in the bible.
Daniel was a dedicated Christian working in a Christian non-profit helping those with disabilities. His mother had MS when he grew up so he was focused on helping his family through difficult times and did not always get to be a kid.
I believed I had to be perfect and I had to be helpful to everyone in order to be valuable.
Daniel’s feminism and belief in the humanity of the LGBTQ community, led to moral objections to some of the harder Biblical passages that do not uphold the humanity and full autonomy of everyone. His serious investigations into theology and the Bible were some of the early seeds that led to deconversion.
The grief Daniel experienced leaving the faith and the loss were profound. He lost his faith, his community, the health of his relationship and on top of that the pandemic hit. He was isolated and alone. He experienced “Hell Anxiety” and worried he was a “vessel of wrath.” The first year after deconversion was one of the most difficult of his life.
He made it through and today he is the co-host of the When Belief Dies podcast. He is building healthy relationships and restoring family relations. He is experiencing the freedom to love people unconditionally.
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast. Welcome welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Please rate and review the podcast on pod chaser.com or the Apple podcast store and subscribe wherever you are listening. Also, please consider voting and nominating the podcast on the podcast awards.com spirituality and religion category. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's episode. onto today's show. My guest today is Daniel Kelly. Daniel is the new co host of when belief dies with Sam Davis. Daniel and Sam interviewed me on an episode a few weeks back and Daniel and I interviewed Sam that went on when belief dies a few weeks ago as well. Daniel has recently appeared on the when belief dies podcast as the ongoing co host. I got the opportunity to interview Daniel and hear his story firsthand here. And it is an amazing story. Daniel began as a more of a charismatic Protestant, he went to an orthodox church for a while, he really got serious about theology and studying. And some of those seeds lead to future doubt. Daniel also expresses the incredible grief and loss of the deconversion processes. This occurred for him shortly before the beginning of the pandemic, and the experience of the loss of community was profound and difficult. And it just reminds us to tell you that you don't have to go through this alone. If you need to talk to someone immediately recovering from religion.org has a chat hotline and you can talk to someone right now. Secular therapy.org also has a list of secular therapists that we highly recommend. But now here's my conversation with Daniel Kelly.
Daniel Kelly, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Daniel Kelly 2:30
Thanks very much, David, looking forward to chatting to you again.
David Ames 2:33
Yes, absolutely. So we're gonna acknowledge here that the timing is interesting, you are a host of when belief dies with Sam. And you actually were on when you and I interviewed Sam, and that aired on when belief dies. But you are just now i'll probably as people are listening to this coming on as the CO hosts for that podcast. So the timing is just a little different based on the delay that you guys have had. But I'm really excited to have you here today to hear your story. So as much of your story as we can tell. And then at the kind of near the end there. We'll we'll talk more about your work on the podcasts. So let's begin with what was your faith tradition growing up? What was that? Like? Were you a really serious Christian?
Daniel Kelly 3:19
Yeah, so I grew up in a Christian household. And it was a far more charismatic, you know, gifts of the Spirit kind of church that I grew up in. And, you know, obviously, as a kid, that's all I knew, sort of went along with it. But as I sort of entered into my teenage years, I found this magical thing called theology. And I absolutely loved it. You know, I had a copy of Wayne Grudem, systematic theology, and I'd worked my way through the entirety of it. And, and I found that the church that I grew up in, I became more skeptical of the cultural Christianity. And I, I started to question, well, you know, is this true? Or is this just what people want to be true? And I found in theology like, okay, no, no, I'm actually accessing the truth. That's, that's sort of how I viewed it. And I went around to a bunch of different churches in the end in the local area. And I really struggled. It felt like they all sort of had this culture of Christianity. But you know, having these these theological conversations that I was reading about in all my, my textbooks just wasn't going on. And I really struggled with that. So, curiously, I ended up at an Eastern Orthodox Church.
David Ames 4:52
Oh,
Daniel Kelly 4:54
I can't wait, which, you know, was tiny because it's, it's it's Scotland. This is not a The images that you didn't expect much orthodoxy around, but I fell in love with it. You know, obviously, there was just such a different type of worship. But it felt older, it felt ancient. And alongside that, you know, they introduced me to a lot of the, the early church fathers, people like basil couristan Athanasius, these sort of people and, you know, discovered the work of Augustine as well. Okay, who, as I was engaged with Reformed theology was a key part of so you know, that there's some really great teaching there as well. So I absolutely loved, absolutely loved the place and yeah, but eventually I moved out of Scotland, I went to work for a Christian charity down in England, in Yorkshire. and rent a bit there, I had the same struggle finding a church, you know, I couldn't find an Orthodox Church with the same sort of culture. You know, there were very other few Christians who would had any knowledge, real knowledge of Orthodoxy, nevermind, Orthodox themselves. You know, I wasn't fully orthodox myself, I wasn't fully part of that church. But I kind of, I would have said, I had the heart of an orthodox while the mind of a reformed Christian and okay, you know, this was my Christian project to find what what was the true Christianity at the very core of it, because the Orthodox claim to hold on to the original Christianity, the reformers were trying to bring it back to the original Christianity. So I want you to get at that sort of eternal truth.
David Ames 6:45
Now, and you're telling my story, theology being an important part, I often say that Jesus, the Jesus of the, the Gospels, one my heart, you know, I've come for the sick and not the Well, that was like, I'm there Right? At but it was the ology, and specifically systematic theology and college for me that was like that one my mind. And like, I think I've remained a Christian, for much longer than I would have had not had that theological background, and it kind of gave you the playground the, to work with that to have a kind of an never ending puzzle to work with and engage with the intellect. And in some way, the question that I have for you is, I think it's relatively unique, relatively rare, let's just say, to go from a more Protestant to beginning to look at an Orthodox Church. What were the differences? And was was that striking to you? In some way I am, where I'm getting at is, I think many people remain myopic in their own cultural Christianity to use your term and don't, and then they can be shocked when they go, even to the church down the street. Right. So what was that experience? Like?
Daniel Kelly 8:03
Yeah, I mean, I guess the curiosity too, called First and foremost, and just, I guess, because it was outside of my culture, all I could get out of it was the more things that I could understand and things that I could intellectually engage with. But also, there's the sort of the, like, because the liturgy is that they use an orthodoxy is so old. Yeah. And you're surrounded in that room with all the different icons of these, you know, Heroes of Christian faith. There's, there's almost a timelessness to it. And it's, it's closer to, you know, I can't get along with meditation now, which is weird, because in that Orthodox liturgy, it almost feels like a meditative state. And the, you know, to describe it emotionally, it's sort of like the walls fall away, and you're there with the Church throughout, not just throughout the whole world, but throughout all time. And that sort of connects you into that wider story, which I guess because I was on that intellectual journey, trying to uncover sort of more historical intellectual Christianity, that sort of experience alongside it sort of coincided with that. So yeah, it was kind of foreign and I just asked so many questions, which, obviously, they were more than happy to, like, ya know, why do you kiss icons, and, and all these sort of things. But, you know, at the core of, of, particularly that church, there was sort of a strong core of teaching theology and understanding the truth and holding fast to the truth that has been inherited throughout the generations. And I was more of that side of things that I really enjoyed going along and engaging with time again again.
David Ames 10:17
So one more thing that I relate to, and I'll try to get you back to where where I interrupted you. I talked a lot about when I was at Bible college, you know, we would have our dining commons would be open 24 hours a day, and you'd literally be in there at four in the morning having some deep theological conversation. And when I got out of college, the hardest thing for me the most difficult thing was that people did not want to have four hour conversations at three in the morning. And ironically, coming full circle, a lot of the work I'm doing today is people want to have these deep conversations, right, and and when we find each other, that's really exciting. And so I definitely feel like you're a kindred spirit, if I can use that term. In that in that regard. And then secondly, to get us back to where I interrupted you, you were talking about moving and trying to recapture lightning in a bottle and that I relate to that as well, like when you are forced to go to a different church, even within your own denomination, you don't always find the same feel that you're looking for, you have a sense of what you want to be there. And when it's not there, it's can be disorienting.
Daniel Kelly 11:34
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I very quickly sort of came to this recognition that denominations, men, virtually nothing, every single individual church had kind of its own culture. And, and it was very few, that actually really, I felt captured that, right, that desire for truth, over and above what was comfortable. And, you know, part of the culture. And you know, when I was when I was in Bradford, it took a couple of years. And eventually I went along to a church where they taught the entire Bible from, I mean, the entire Bible, like literally, their sermons for this week, we're reading chapters one and two. Next week, we'll read chapters three and four, right? Not a single verse was missed, you know, The Good, the Bad, and the ugly. And this was what I struggled with so much, you know, working at a Christian charity, where you're surrounded by all these different types of Christians. And, you know, the Philo theologian me with, every single time someone says, For I know, the plans I have for you, plans for you to prosper. It's, oh, it made me so angry. I mean, I laugh No, because obviously, my interpretation was just as much of a reading into that passage, you know, saying it's a promise of price does, as there's is no, you know, there is a, a funny arrogance that I know, viewed by for myself with that I had then. But you know, it the way that people used the Bible more like a scrapbook, where you took out your favorite passages, and just held to that, rather than, no, actually, that's, this, this book engages with the hardest and darkest themes of life. And, and we should be engaging in embracing of that. So I eventually found the church and it was, you know, a far more conservative, fundamentalist church, then I was used to, you know, as much as I was quite a strong Christian, I was also quite lefty, in my politics, and I'd grown up with a feminist ideology, you know, as as the standard. And so going along to church were some of the I'm I'm then having to challenge myself as well, you know, when they started to teach about complementarianism. And all of a sudden, I'm like, I'm not comfortable with this. Yeah. But at the same time, the challenge came back. Well, while I was trying to escape cultural Christianity, you know, am I just dismissing what the Bible actually says, in favor of the culture that I grew up in? And so eventually, you know, I tried to convince myself of that, and various other things along the way.
David Ames 14:39
Interesting. In some ways, it's your moral intuition that is getting in the way, right. You have a sense of the equity for women in particular, and when that is getting challenged, you're having this moral reaction to that and having in your words to kind of overcome that.
Daniel Kelly 14:59
Yeah, absolutely. and you divide. I remained part of that church for six years, you know, I learned a lot there, you know, they were really intensive with the teaching of sort of biblical theology and sort of reading the entire book I, you know, I felt like I learned a lot. But yeah, there was always that discomfort. And well, I felt like I could really get along with and except the people in my church, sometimes the, the wider community when we went along to conferences, because the other thing was, obviously I, I always struggled with LGBT issues as well. And, you know, going along to a conference where I'm being told, oh, you should support this legal campaign to against gay marriage, you know, it was always this really uncomfortable like me, because, you know, I didn't have this disgust response to sexuality, about, you know, the vast majority of people have been attracted to be women. There were exceptions. And I just went, but you know, I was, I was a very good Christian boy, and I repressed everything. I was just one more thing on the pile, and, you know, it. But at the same time, this, I could see the disgust response coming out of people. And that's was driving their theology rather than, for me, it was a reluctant. Well, God has said this, and I can't question that. It's, it's clear, right? And we have to submit to God, but it was this very reluctant. So yeah, these these sort of, to moral issues around, you know,
David Ames 16:55
human beings, as human
Daniel Kelly 16:57
beings. It's so much easier though. I don't have to hold this conundrum in my head. Yeah. So So these, these really came out quite strong. So what happened is, I got a job offer down in London, and it was a great opportunity. And obviously, London had many, many churches, most of which were considered good ones, within our circles, and so you know, where you could get good teaching. And so yeah, so mid down there. And I saw obviously, stepping back into a secular workplace, having been in this Christian community where I worked at a Christian workplace, and went to church. And, you know, by this point, 95 to 99% of my social circle was Christian.
David Ames 17:57
Right. Okay.
Daniel Kelly 17:59
You know, it was actually really quite hard to break out of it. A lot of the time. And literally, I'm, I'm in the office the first week, and it will, it would have been actually, three years ago, almost to the day. No, because, of course, very first, you know, one of the first things that happens as I'm meeting some people, and they give me this rainbow iced cupcake
David Ames 18:23
for a price. Okay?
Daniel Kelly 18:26
And I'm just stood there holding this cupcake going, Oh, crap, what do I do? Can I eat the cupcake? If this cupcake, am I betraying my Christian values? Am I betraying their values? Like, and, you know, I kind of had an intellectual answer to this. And obviously, I was not someone who's shouting this from the streets, and I had very clear, gay marriage should be legal, you know, God's law is something separate, and, you know, all this sort of thing. But still the idea that, actually no, I'm, I'm now actually working alongside and engaging with people on a regular basis, who are homosexual, gay, bi, trans, you know, and I want to engage with them. And I want to, you know, I started to really go, how am I going to explain this, if it if it ever needs to come up? And how am I gonna talk about this? And also, because I'd taken a job where I was managing policy, and sort of the development of of debt advice. I, I knew that a lot of my policies really impacted women. And I was reading an amazing book by women called Caroline criado Perez, called Invisible women talking about the biases that are built into sis stones and places by men, because we just assume, well, how we live our lives. It's how people live their lives. And so therefore, women are sort of missed out.
David Ames 20:14
It's, it's built into medicine and technology and in almost every facet of our lives. Yeah.
Daniel Kelly 20:21
Yeah. I, I love this book. And obviously for me, this was a massive challenge. And it was, it was that that that made me go. I'm also uncomfortable when I read passages in the Bible, where I could come up with an apologetic, you know, I could I could use every hermeneutic trick in the book. Well, you know, and, but more and more, I started to read the Bible a bit more with the anthropological lens, you know, and there were some other dates, which we'll get to, but the passages where I was reading, where was it an easier and more sensible position, or made more sense, that actually the passages that related to women, were coming from men with that perspective, versus coming from a god with the omniscient expected perspective, right. And obviously, you know, if there are some truly horrendous passages in the Bible in relation to this, and, you know, there's those passages like numbers five, where I could provide an apologetic for it, I could just about squeeze it out so that I couldn't hold to that passage and try and argue that not only could I answer it, but I could show how it was a good thing. In terms of purity, and the importance of Jesus's genealogy and things like that. But at the same time, why what if I was wrong? If I was wrong, then I was holding on to passages and declaring them as good and perfect when actually, they're saying something that that's deeply problematic.
David Ames 22:22
Could you refresh me? Numbers five, I'm sorry, I don't have an off the top of my head.
Daniel Kelly 22:29
Yeah, no worries. So numbers five is a tricky passage, where, effectively if a woman is suspected of sleeping with a man who is not her husband, then she would be brought in front of a priest who would take some holy water and some dust from the tabernacle, mix it together and force it to her to drink. And if apparently, according to the verse, if she's not set forth, the man should be fine. And she will be, she will go on to give birth. If, however, she has slept with another man, then she will be cursed. And the description of the curse is that her womb will swell, and her thigh will fall away. And when you take that sort of a theological reading of that text, you can sort of say, well, first of all, this is really important, genealogies are absolutely vital to the Israelites, and we're going to rely on those genealogies by the time we get to Jesus. And, you know, it's, uh, they're about to enter into the holy land. And it's not just any water or any dirt, this is holy substances. And so what we see here is God is in complete control. And it's as the purity and the holiness of his presence touches this awful depravity.
David Ames 24:01
And, again, I don't know off the top of my head, probably not a lot of mention of the man who was involved in this scenario. No, no.
Daniel Kelly 24:14
Whereas obviously, if you read it from an anthropological perspective, her womb will swell after she's supposedly just had sex with another man. But if she's innocent, she will go on to give birth, you know, probably doesn't take much to read in between the lines here. And that's problematic on a number of levels because obviously, this is not by her consent, she is brought to the priest by her husband. So the thing is, is you can try and push that apologetic, but the question for me is, but what if I'm wrong, but if I'm wrong, this isn't something people are acting out Obviously, I don't, I don't think any Christians are trying to find the tabernacle to write fulfill this, but it's still part of that moral framework of this. This is what God commands, this is the importance of purity. Even that word now sends a bit of a shiver down my spine, knowing how it's been used, especially in the context, particularly of sex and women. But, yeah, that that question really loomed large and became just more and more problematic.
David Ames 25:43
You know, we'll just acknowledge here, the obvious fact that throughout Christian history, women have borne the brunt of being blamed for men's failures. In other words, they are treated as the Jezebel, they're treated as the temptress when it's ultimately the, the men within that culture that have been the problem. And, and even to today, they're complementarianism of today. The problem is, it's not acknowledging that the men are the problem. And I would, you know, would have included my previous self in this as well, of just, you know, a buying into that culture at any level.
Daniel Kelly 26:21
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I guess, like, I guess I had, like, these were things that were really niggling away at me. And they were way more problematic, because I felt like, Okay, I actually have to talk to people. And if this ever comes up, how am I going to respond, but at the same time, there was also more, the more boring and technical stuff that just was weighing on top of me, because, you know, I, I kind of always had this really funny relationship with Genesis that I just could not get my head around. And obviously, there's, this is a classic, you know, Christian problem, in terms of what genre is, is Genesis, because, you know, when I read it, you know, there were there were clearly elements of poetry in here. And my main argument was always, this is teaching theological truth like that is its core purpose, rather than, yeah, if you were there with your eyes, this is precisely what you would see. At the same time, there was always this question of, well, how did the New Testament off authors then look back at the Old Testament? And how did they read it? And I kind of got myself into this, a bit of a loop in terms of, you know, I want it to read the Bible for truth. And that meant understanding the author's intent and what, what they meant by it in their time and place. And so now, trying to figure out well, actually, it seems like both Jesus or Paul reference Adam, as a real human, and even some of Paul's theological arguments, are based on Adam being a real man. It seems to really struggle. And obviously, to a certain extent, while you know, the ancient readers of these texts were not scientists, they don't think in the way that we think now, at the same time, when they see this big, long list of people and how long they lived, they believe that that's how long they lived. That was kind of the 10. And it's, to a certain extent, I was struggling to figure out how do I match up this special revelation of God and how he's revealed himself through the Bible, verses? Well, what we observe in the world. And then Paul did something weird in the book, in this letter to the Galatians, where he says, Oh, the promise was made to Abraham. And it said to your offspring, singular, rather than plural, except that doesn't. It just doesn't. I tried to read a number of apologetics on on this and trying to figure out how to understand it. But you know, effectively Paul is taking this promise that was made to Abraham and showing how it relates to Jesus. And to, like, I didn't have a problem with the theological points he was making, but he was, he was stretching this passage and changing it to fit what he wanted it to see. As opposed to the clear reading that the author of Genesis had, you know, you know, even like Abraham is his name was originally Abraham, which meant father, and then Abraham father of many, and his offspring will date number this Stars. So Paul's assertion here that the singular rather than plural actually cuts against the entire narrative that was there, right by the original author. And so it all came to a head when, you know, I was reading one day, First Timothy, chapter two in it, it was another passage about women submitting to their husbands. And it were more around teaching in the church, sorry. And so women were not to teach in the church, because Adam was created first than Eve, which, you know, was this doctrine of created order, and it was quite common use by complementarians, and was kind of the thing that I'd accepted. But then he goes further and says, Oh, and Eve was deceived. But Adam wasn't. And once again, and you know, when I read the original story in Genesis, it's like, it's not really there. Yes, she is deceived, but I don't say with her, and then he eats the fruit. And if if she's deceived, well, then at least she she was just mistaken. Adam was just in pure rebellion, like, surely that's the bigger problem here like, yes, yeah. And then he goes on, oh, well, but she'll be saved through childbirth. What do you mean by that poll? I don't know that you've just thrown that in there with very little clarity, and how am I meant to take this passage? And go, Yes, this is good. This is helpful. Or do I take this passage as well, actually, you know, he's, he's a male, and he's living in a patriarchal society. And this is their interpretation. And even, you know, doing some reading around, you know, well, are women more easily deceived? Or is there any literature to support such a position? And the answer that, that I found, sort of reading through a few studies was quite effectively, a kind of yes, in that women are more likely to be victims of deception. But that's because they're more likely to have people try and deceive them. Because of us this morning, you've easily deceived. It's a vicious circle.
David Ames 32:26
Yeah. So it's a self perpetuating cycle. Yeah, exactly.
Daniel Kelly 32:29
But not because of anything intrinsic to that. It's, it's, it's society actually creating its own message. So. And that was just like the pinch point where both this technical concern of I can't make sense of this, and how it was then being used to create this narrative, which, yeah, despite constantly trying to tell myself, well, I can't judge God. The more and more I was considering it, and also, I, I read this obscure philosopher called zero, you call who was also a theist and a Christian and had sort of thought about different ways of morality. Ultimately, my moral contact I still had responsibility for, and to me that the cost of being a Christian, as a cisgendered, heterosexual, white male, was virtually nothing like it was it, you know, I probably will look back now and say, Actually, there were a few things, I missed out on problems and huge, but in comparison to the cost that it demands of others, it was too great. And, you know, for me, I was worried that one day I would become a father. And, you know, if I had a daughter, what would I teach her? If she came home one day and said, I don't think I'm a girl, or right, I'm attracted to girls, which even tell me these things. How much damage could I do? And I think the best image of I've found for this is like before I could flip a coin and if, if God existed, great, I win. If he didn't find a rot in the ground, no, no harm, no foul. And it looked a lot more like I was just a roulette table, putting it all on one number. And they weren't even my chips that I was playing with.
David Ames 34:50
Wow, that is an amazing analogy. I want to respond to a number of those things. I don't want to take away from any of it but like, you know, I have daughters. In what through my deconversion, kind of prior to them becoming young women, so like, you know, I feel like I was able to get around that and really embrace them for whatever they chose, but definitely had the same concerns of when I was in the faith, you know, like, my daughters were whole, complete autonomous human beings, and I was gonna fight for them. And there was no way I was gonna diminish who or what they could become. So I definitely feel that
the other thing I want to touch on, and I don't know if I've, if I've mentioned this yet on Mike, but I recently have done like a Bible study, my wife and some friends. And it's interesting because it is going through the Old Testament. And it was reminding me of some of my Bible college training. So you have these two ideas, you use the word hermeneutics, which is how we interpret things. But the other word that is really important is exegesis, which has nothing to do with Jesus and said, Gee, and there, it just means interpreting the text, as the original author meant, and as the original readers and hearers would have understood it to mean. And then a third concept that is either very heavily implied or sometimes overt is this idea that you read the Old Testament in light of Jesus. And as I'm sitting here, you know, as an atheist, with my family, it was kind of this epiphany moment, like, wait a minute, you can't do both of those things. You can't do exegesis correctly, and do and read it in light of Jesus. And so what you highlighted earlier, and I want to compliment you, first of all, for being one of the most detailed person, people. That is very specific, Daniel. But what you highlighted was not only our propensity to read into the text, our current culture, but Paul's tendency to read his culture into the Old Testament text. And that is the thing that where we where we get, we break down. And my simple example of this is when I had mer Simka, on who's an Orthodox Jewish person. He pointed out that Isaiah 5553, rather, it has not only nothing to do with Jesus, it has nothing to do with the Messiah, as you know, so that just to give you perspective on the original hearers, didn't hear, Oh, this is talking about the Messiah, that now as an atheist, it's easy. This is a human document. These, as you've said, multiple times, every one who is an author of a biblical text is writing a theological document, they are making theological points, they are making a theological points within the culture that they are living in and on, you know, this side of faith that it's so much easier to just accept it, as it is. I recognize it for all of its flaws and some of the wisdom that's there as well, and, and then not be obligated to accept every word of it as literal truth.
Daniel Kelly 38:12
Yeah, I think obviously, like, just because I'm saying this is not a divine book doesn't mean that you have to strip away its humanity as well. You know, you've read through Ecclesiastes, and you're just thinking, were you friends with John pulsar? I mean, you're just having this existential breakdown. And if you just at the very end, it's gone. Well, you know, life must be absurd, you know, we could have just had the early existential is, but instead, it finishes or therefore sort of gods, but you know, actually,
David Ames 38:48
which many people believe is tacked on?
Daniel Kelly 38:52
Yeah, it's brilliant. I think, you know, you can see some real humanity in it. And I think when you do appreciate it as such, and I think this is sort of, you know, I guess, you know, sort of stuff that was gonna touch on but, you know, obviously, coming out of Christianity, I just wanted to destroy it all. And to a certain extent, I believe this, you know, it's a lot of my learning, since I guess I've, I've actually come to appreciate more of, you know, this is a human story, and it's created by humans. And for that, I can just appreciate that. It's going to have all the characteristics of humanity. In all its brightest and, and darkest points along the way.
David Ames 39:44
Yeah. To drive this point home just a little further, you know, in the last 10 years, just the last 10 years, we have gone through dramatic cultural changes with the acceptance of LGBT marriage. trans people are having a racial reckoning of the systemic racism within Western cultures in particular. And, you know, so that even in my lifetime, you know, I can read something from the 90s and think, oh, man, that's problematic. So, no wonder you're reading a document that's 2000, you know, 3000 years old, it's going to be problematic. And if we don't just accept it, that this is these are human beings who are flawed there in their context and their setting, that is just always going to be a terribly frustrating process. And then if you add on top of that, trying to interpret it as literal and authoritative truth, that's where things go deeply, deeply wrong.
Daniel Kelly 40:45
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
David Ames 40:56
You've hinted here that, you know, you have kind of this, this Reckoning and you kind of want to burn it all down, which I think is, first of all, a very natural response. I think that is, I think everyone goes through that for at least a certain amount of time. But what were those first few months, that first year, what was that like for you?
Daniel Kelly 41:18
Yeah, it was, it was scary. It was great. Scary. You know, it was not even. I can't remember exactly when, but not long after that. I was just the in the house. And my wife turned to me, as she quite often would. She was reading first Timothy chapter two. And she was wondering what Paul meant by a when she'll be saved through childbirth. And it was this weird coincidence, but I was just caught in the headlights of it. And I all I said was, I don't know, I moved on, because it was truthful. But I, I didn't know what else to say. And I was scared. I was scared of what would happen if I said much more. And, you know, I was still going to church every Sunday for a good few months, probably about six months, in the end. But when you when I kind of made that shift from a dating Christian to a doting atheist, you see so much more. When you observe from the outside, and you see in, because in my, in my job, I was having to learn a lot of behavioral science things as well. You can see it in the songs, you can see these little nudges towards submit submit. Yeah, Jesus is the only answer. So if you leave, you're gonna be in trouble. Yeah. In in the sermons and, you know, this will satisfy you for a bit, but you'll need to keep coming back. It's yeah, you just see so much more
David Ames 43:12
that you cannot unhear the manipulation. Yeah,
Daniel Kelly 43:15
yeah. And it got harder and harder. And obviously, I was, I was just feeling like a fraud. Because I still had all the knowledge. It's like the skill set hadn't just disappeared to be able to read a passage and bring to light various historical facts, and it's different interpretations away stuff up. So I could still do stuff. And yet at the same time, I was going to believe it. But I don't, you know, this, this had been my entire life. And, you know, I'd only just moved, I had not long moved to London, this is probably a good year, after I'd moved down, this is going on and I'm I don't know what, what exists outside of that community, but I just couldn't do it anymore. And I eventually started to tell people and obviously, you know, I felt a lot of people responded with pity, mostly. Obviously, there were, there was suspicion as well. I got a dozen books just sent to be without any notice no one that wants, like, no one was really willing to have a sit down conversation with me. And, you know, especially because I done quite a lot of reading. I knew that. And, you know, I kind of had my arguments as to why I don't think this is either right or healthy. Right. You know, I was afraid of speaking. And, you know, for me atheists were Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. They were the smug, snarky Oxford men.
David Ames 45:08
Yes.
Daniel Kelly 45:11
He were just mean. And I didn't want to be that they were still my friends. There were still people I wanted to connect with. But at the same time, you know, and also looking back, I projected a lot of anger. Because, you know, I was angry with who I was, as a Christian, I was angry with the way I dated, I was angry with the fact that I'd laid aside my moral intuitions under this, oh, well, I can't question God's I need to accept the truth I need to, uh, not really, I felt engaged with these things properly. Like, why had they not asked these questions sooner? These weren't passages that I hadn't read before I knew them. But Why hadn't I asked these questions in these ways? And also, you know, if someone had turned to me and said, I'm no longer a Christian, you know, my response, technically, as a Calvinist was, well, actually, that kind of means you probably weren't a Christian in the first. Yes, I know, I'm so sad there is this walking, talking contradiction to my former beliefs, and, you know, or, you know, something else has gone wrong. And so, of course, I am angry at myself. So I'm angry at other Christians. And I also feel that there was some rejection. I mean, I went for a walk with a close friend of mine, somebody was really close with and who I had talked a lot through my Christian journey, you know, they were originally a Christian, but they were this very liberal, free flowing, God is just love, kind of Christian. And I had taken them and turn them into this former evangelical Christian. When I tell them, you know, I'm bombarded with, you know, well, what have you been reading? Who Who have you been speaking to? How? How could you come to believe something so evil and arrogant? Wow. And, you know, when when they said that to me, I wasn't surprised. I wasn't shocked. I, I wasn't angry with them. I was angry at myself, because I heard like, behind those terms, I knew the thinking that was there. And I was hearing back. Things I had to create. I had indoctrinated, and I pray, I hated it. And those words haunted me for for a long time.
David Ames 47:55
Man, Daniel, I can't tell you how well you are expressing this idea. I think that there the guilt that we feel for what our former selves have said and done. And you know, and you have the kind of the literal experience of having a friend kind of mirror that back to you. That's pretty intense. That's a pretty intense experience, I think, I think part of this deconversion process, or post deconversion or however you want to say it is forgiving yourself. You know, like, a few episodes back, I talked about, you know, you did the best you could with the information that you had. That was your understanding at the time. And all of us have said terrible, terrible things that we wish we had back. Right. When we were living within that bubble.
Daniel Kelly 48:48
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, it took me a long time to get through that and also to get through, you know, how I then responded to all this, because, you know, a few months later, I I wasn't connected into the church, you know, unfortunately, my wife and I separated. You know, we, yeah, it just went through an incredibly dark time. I felt so completely isolated. Because most of the social interaction I was getting was at work, which kept me busy, but after a while and going through, yeah, just a really difficult place. I recognized actually, I'm, I'm really struggling here. I need. I need a new community. I need people around me who are going to support me because I didn't. I didn't know who my friends and family I could truly trust because they were all Christian. I felt they were all You're going to judge me. And some of that was true, some of that wasn't. But that's how I really felt in that time. So I had to go out, I had to go out of the house, so I needed to engage with people, I need to breathe the same air as them.
David Ames 50:19
On this foreshadowing
Daniel Kelly 50:21
was March 2020. Wow, yeah. Yeah, perfect timing, of course, as as prime minister, Boris Johnson comes out and says, You will stay at home, you will save lives, protect the NHS COVID is here, don't go anywhere. And, yeah, it the isolation definitely came at the worst possible time. And they got a lot worse. And, you know, it's, it's hard and weird to describe what I went through at that time, because I just really wasn't healthy. And in all this, as much as I have my reasons, you know, I was fairly confident that I had left my faith for, for good reasons. At the same time, I still had my moments of doubt. And, you know, those moments of panic, and I'm fear of being wrong, especially when, you know, as someone who was a Calvinist, it is kind of weird, because you look back, and then if we contextualize everything, you know, either I was mistaken the entire time. Or actually, I'm forsaken. Like, the every, every prayer that I made, every time that I felt like I was relying on God, and you know, he was the one person I could trust. I mean, what was he doing? Was he just laughing at me? Was he was the second by me, like, what, what was that? If I'm wrong, you know, why am I left in this situation? And then, you know, I, if you've ever talked to me about hell, as a Christian, I would have given you a very long talk about how Dante's Inferno is not canon. Be very careful about what we think about this topic. But at the same time, obviously, there is there is a motif, and there are passages like and, you know, especially for me, you know, the second John, it talks about people who would be deceivers, and they would speak against Jesus and, and I didn't want to be one of those people. That even though I did, because I was so angry, and but I didn't know what to do. Because if I open my mouth, I would be guilty. And you've got passages and revelation of a wine press, where you know, that people are, are thrown in, and Jesus tramples them to death until the blood runs for 200 miles. You've got Romans nine, where it talks about vessels of wrath. And this was, this was like the passage that really just was constantly in my mind, because it, it talks about people being prepared for destruction being set up so that and the kicker for that was the vessels of wrath were prepared for destruction, so that God's glory might be known to his first vessels of mercy. And, you know, for me, in those moments of panic in those moments where I'd got things wrong, you know, it would feel like, okay, this is what God created before. God created me so that I would have this moment, I would start to speak out and tear it, my friends and family so that in the final day, he would have this long list of things that goes, see, you're, you're nothing but that's their sort of wrath and I'm going to crush you to the cheers and adoration of your friends and family.
David Ames 54:42
That's dark down. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Kelly 54:46
And I knew this wasn't rational. And I think that that was the that was the thing that really got to me because I'm usually this calm and collected, rational kind of person like these Yeah, these horrible fears were, were something else. And you know, there were things that I try and tell myself, it's like, well, you're not, you're not scared of Allah, you're not scared of these other gods with other forms of hell, why? This is the indoctrination, and you just need to work past this. But at the same time, obviously, and I was aware of that also, it was no coincidence that a lot of this is happening with the isolation. And with that, cutting off of off people, and this, this disconnect from, you know, the huge social circle that I had. And I couldn't even I felt like I couldn't even turn to my youth work colleagues or or some of the few non Christian friends that I have. Because if I then had to say, Well, I believe this, they've got sorry, you believed what?
David Ames 56:15
Can I just acknowledge the, the incredible amount of loss that you're experienced. So those of us who have believed before we are losing the intimacy of a God, who knows that every hair on our heads, we lose that we lose, as you mentioned, 95% of your social circle was were Christian. So you lose, you lose that that was the end of a marriage. So that's got to be devastating. And then on top of all of that, the pandemic is happening. I mean, I just You're breaking my heart down, you're like, I feel for you how I know what it's like to go through parts of that. And you were having all of that at one time. That is absolutely incredible.
Daniel Kelly 57:02
It was bad timing. Certainly. You know, I, I did. I did find my way through it, though. And I guess I and even through the darkest times, there was always something I was always driving myself for, as I knew there was a way through, and I could kind of find that way. I wish I'd gone for therapy at that time. I really should have. That was, that was a mistake. Because yeah, I was on the edge. And in a really unhealthy and unnatural for me, state coming out of it. But you know, a couple of things that start to help. So, you know, because for me, for some reason, in my head, there was still this idea that people don't lose their faith. Or the people that did didn't act. Like even though I had lost my faith, it still felt like I must be the only person that's true. And then I just thought, I wonder if like, I went onto YouTube. And I think I just typed in former Christian. And I started watching videos, I remember coming across a guy called drew in his channel, genetically modified skeptic, a great atheist activist. And I remember seeing his videos, hearing a bit about his story, seeing him critique other atheists for the same things that I was like, Yeah, that's what I don't like about it. And sort of demonstrating a bit more of a actually as atheists, you can have empathy, as well as intellectual rigor. And I'm like, yes. Okay. Yes, that's, that's, that's it. And a various bunch of other people, including, you know, going on to Facebook one day, and a friend of mine, Sam, put up that he was going to be on unbelievable. And I thought, oh, Sam, that's cool. I wonder what atheists you'll be debating because I've just been watching some of those episodes. Until he put up another post that was recommending Alex O'Connor's video and I was like, hang on a bit, Sam. I did a bit more looking. And I came across his blog and his podcasts, and we had worked at the same Christian charity. And basically, it's gone our separate ways. When I moved down to London. It's it's funny looking back at his texts, then we're just texting back. I'll be praying for you as you move into iron and all these things. That's hysterical. I know all of a sudden, it's like, I know someone who has gone through this like, Yeah, and so I reached out to salmon. Obviously, we started talking again. And, you know, obviously a couple of months later, that's when we then actually said, Hey, do you fancy joining me on when belief dies? When obviously, I've moved past quite a lot of this. So yeah, so that was, that was great. And also, obviously, Sam introduced me to your podcast and hearing other people sort of engaged with the real, the real loss that does come with, you know, I don't mind using the phrase losing your faith, because it is a loss in some way. I would, I would wish atheism on everyone. Yeah. The journey? I mean, yeah. On the one, you know, that's sort of a paradox. But yeah, I find that incredibly helpful. But also, I think, what was what was really important for me was just before lockdown, I think it must be in the weekend, or just two weeks, weekends before my dad has come down to London see me? Because, you know, he just really wanted to talk. And obviously, you know, I was so nervous, coming up to this. And my dad just reassured me that, you know, they still loved me, though, the, this wasn't going to change that. And as much as they'd said that when I first told them, there was still a lot of doubt, that actually that was true. But he said, I've just got one question. Do you think I'm stupid for believing in God? And it's kind of funny, because of all the questions like, it seems weird that it wasn't a question about me, but just sort of insecurity about this. It kind of took all the pressure off of
David Ames 1:02:03
Yeah, like, that's an easy one to answer. Yeah, no.
Daniel Kelly 1:02:07
I don't think I was stupid for 20 years, and then suddenly got intelligent. That's not how I think this works. Right. Exactly. Yeah. But I was able to talk about everything with them, and actually just really recognize No, I was, I was still loved by them. I was not a failure. As a son. Yeah. And yeah, eventually went forward for some therapy, to work some things through. Because obviously, like, I was so aware, that sort of this, this journey I'd been on that was, was more than it should have been. A, I knew it was irrational, there was something that all of this was was really setting off. In me, there's real insecurity. And, you know, even when my dad came down to visit, you know, he had said to me, you know, his, his, his main worry was that him and my mom had been bad parents, and that they hadn't done the right thing. And obviously, you know, my instant response was to reassure them and say, No, you guys were loving parents, I know you did your best. But at the same time, you know, my mom had multiple sclerosis. As I was growing up, my dad used to work Saturdays, and all the other days of the week, basically, because we had to keep a roof over our head, we eventually had to lose our house. That's why I work in debt advice, because I actually know the journey of Song of what it's like to grow up in a house that's actually really burdened with debt and to go through that journey. But he would work Saturdays, so the only day we have together as a family was once a Sunday. And that was the one time we be able to spend together. And also just recognizing that, you know, a lot of the behaviors and patterns that I had about myself had grown during that time when I had to be super independence. And when I needed to that sort of comfort, actually, my faith had provided that to me as a such a young child. You know, I and it reinforced some unhelpful things as well. You know, I believed I had to be perfect and I had to be helpful to everyone in order to be valuable. And of course, you know, my faith men, you know, yeah, you you, you have to suppress the desires of the flesh, you need to serve people. And in the end, you'll you'll hear from God Well done my good and faithful servants, you know,
David Ames 1:04:57
all you have to do is be superhuman, and it's, it's okay. Yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Kelly 1:05:01
And, you know, I think, sort of working through that journey sort of realizing that, you know, and this wasn't overnight, but through a long process, so of recognizing, you know, as a, as a little kid, I, I could not comprehend my mom's multiple sclerosis, I can understand that, I couldn't understand really, why my dad had to work so many hours, or why my brother needed extra support, you know. So when I couldn't get sort of the support that I did need, uh, you know, it was sort of this message of, I had created this narrative for myself, Oh, it must be because I'm ugly and broken. You know, I'm a vessel of wrath. And when I could really connect with the kids that had gone through that and reconcile some of that stuff, all of a sudden, this fear of judgment, this fear of, from Gods sort of, came into context of actually just been taking these destructive narratives that I've lived with my entire life and my faith, it's provided some cover to some things, it depends, some things that sort of provided half answers to, and all of a sudden, it was all just coming up, and I just had to work through it. And I needed to take the time to understand myself a lot more. And thankfully, I had plenty of time for that. Thanks. Thanks to COVID.
David Ames 1:06:45
I think as we wrap up, I think it's really something very deeply important that you just described, and that is, when you are giving out to someone else, and you recognize someone who has been in the place that you've been, and you feel empathy and compassion, and you can then recognize that you are deserving of empathy and compassion and, and attention when you were a kid as well. So So for me, it's drug and alcohol and the family and being the family hero, it sounds like for you, you know, the, you know, a serious illness and the need for your dad to work all the time. But regardless, in the long run, you aren't getting the attention that you needed and deserved. And when you see that in someone else, yeah, that that light bulb goes off. And it's like, oh, you know, they did the best they could. It's not there's not an attack against your parents in any way. But you can also acknowledge that you deserve that you needed that. And it wasn't there.
Daniel Kelly 1:07:49
Yeah, absolutely. And that was the thing like, hearing, hearing that from my dad, I know, sort of their recognition of that. And they wanted better as well. It was it was they were doing the best they could and I'd always wanted to support that message. But recognizing that and recognizing just okay, yeah, I need to change the way I think about myself, because, yeah, I've carried that along the entire time. And the faith was my coping mechanism. So when that was stripped away, you know, looking back, it's like, I can see why I fell apart just so much during that time.
David Ames 1:08:31
Wow, Daniel, I cannot tell you what a powerful story this is, your story is going to really impact some people out there the hell anxiety that, in your words, you know, thinking of oneself as a vessel of destruction, I think is very, very common. And it's an area that can take years for people to overcome as they deconstruct and D convert. So I thank you so much for the vulnerability that you've shown and the depth of your story. I'd love the detail. That's been it has been wonderful having you on
Daniel Kelly 1:09:08
Grant. Thanks very much for having me.
David Ames 1:09:17
Final thoughts on the episode. Daniel has an amazing story to tell. And he tells it so very well. I really appreciate Daniel telling his story here. One of the ironies of deconversion is that it's very often that a person has a moral feeling of the wrongness of what Christianity teaches, and that that is one of the precipitating events that leads to deconversion. And in this case, Daniel having an understanding of feminism and the autonomy and wholeness of women and LGBTQ community members, as he was going all the way through the Bible that that was one of the As triggers for him, The irony being that Christianity tries to claim whole ownership of morality, and suggest that non believers don't have any moral framework. And this is just demonstrably untrue. The other thing I thought was really fascinating is talking about Paul's interpretation of the Old Testament, and the recognition that this is not a new phenomenon. There is no way to approach the Bible without interpreting it. So everyone has an interpretation of the Bible, including Paul himself. And that realization can be really freeing, in that you aren't rejecting some deities, word off the mountain, you're rejecting someone's interpretation of the claim that that comes from some deity. And as I recently said, on another podcast, whether or not there is an objective morality, and that's a whole other conversation, you should be terrified of anyone who tells you that they know what it is, and you should do what they say. Bottom line, that is the most dangerous thing has ever happened in history as any one group or any one person who says, They know what's right, and you need to do what they say. Daniel also expressed this idea of the guilt that we feel about the way we used to talk to people the things we might have said the things we might have done, he recognized when he told his friend that he had he converted. And his friend saw that as arrogance. What was brilliant about Daniel is he recognized that he would have done the same, that's the humility that we need to get to. And that's the secular grace, we need to get to that we would have done the same. So how we handle the conservative believers in our lives, needs to be with grace. And that is really, really hard, and it is unfair, but that is the way it is. And then Daniels experience of so much loss, all at the same time. Going through deconversion, losing the community, he said 95% of his social group were Christians having marital difficulties right then probably because of the process of deconversion. And then all on top of that 2020 hits, and we're all isolated. So I just grieve for Daniel, and I'm so thankful that he has made it through. It is a difficult process. I'm not gonna lie to you, it can be very lonely. Part of the reason we do this podcast is to say that you are not alone. And as I mentioned at the top of the podcast, if you need immediate assistance, recovering from religion.org, has an online chat, I believe you can even get on the phone there. Reach out to them, somebody can talk to you right right now, as well as secular therapy project.org, which has a number of secular therapists who you could talk to you you can talk through this process with someone so you do not have to go through this alone. I want to thank Daniel for being on the podcast for sharing his story with such vulnerability and how articulate he was going into specific verses in numbers add Second Timothy at the specific reasons why he had to reach some intellectual honesty. Thank you, Daniel, for being on the show. Remember, you can catch Daniel on the when belief dies podcast with Sam Davis. He is an excellent co host. You can hear he and I interviewing Sam on the Wimba leaf dies podcast from a few weeks ago. And you can hear Sam and Daniel interviewing me on this podcast a few weeks ago as well. So I will put links into the show notes for all of these things. So you can hear more from Daniel. For the secular Grace Thought of the Week, I want to give a shout out to Tris Ramon, they wrote an article about self grace, after having read some of my work about secular grace. And this ties into what Daniel talked about as well, having felt gullible, how could I have believed these things feeling guilty? How could I have said these things. And it's just really important to recognize that the first person you need to forgive is yourself. I've realized how trite this is this sounds so sacrimoni Sweet, and I appreciate that. But the reality is, that's true. You cannot continue to beat yourself up for previous versions of yourself, the mistakes that you may have made, you can make amends if that's helpful, and you can forgive yourself and you can move on and grow as a human being. So the secular Grace Thought of the Week is to have self grace. I have a bunch of interviews lined up in the very near future. But due to scheduling issues, there is a possibility that we may go to an every other week for a while. I'll see what I can do. We'll see if I get things lined up properly and we'll try to continue that once a week. But one of the things I said to myself when I began this podcast is that I wouldn't beat myself up if I couldn't live up to once a week, which is really challenging, right? That's a lot of work. So we're going to do our best Mike and I and I've got again several interviews scheduled and we will try our best to get those out to you as fast as possible. Until then, my name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings.
Time for the footnotes. The beat is called waves for MCI beats, links will be in the show notes. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can promote it on your social media. You can subscribe to it in your favorite podcast application, and you can rate and review it on pod chaser.com. You can also support the podcast by clicking on the affiliate links for books on brisket atheists.com. If you have podcast production experience and you would like to participate, podcast, please get in touch with me. Have you gone through a faith transition? And do you need to tell your story? Reach out? If you are a creator, or work in the deconstruction deconversion or secular humanism spaces and would like to be on the podcast? Just ask. If you'd like to financially support the podcast there's links in the show notes. To find me you can google graceful atheist. You can google deconversion you can google secular race. You can send me an email graceful atheist@gmail.com or you can check out the website graceful atheists.com My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist join me and be graceful human beings
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