Meeting people who fell outside of the narrow view of the Christian Bubble™ I had grown up in played a major role in my deconversion.
One of the principal tenets of conservative Christianity is that Christians are strangers in this world. Christians believe they are on this world for a time but not meant to be part of it. My hindsight clarity of this clever defense mechanism is both humorous and a bit sinister. If you isolate people from differing views of course they are usually not going to leave the view that has been instilled in them since birth. If you surround yourself with only those who have the same ideology as you, your ideology is never truly challenged and you go along happily believing in whatever it is you believe. This is why isolation is so often a tactic of cults. I grew up simultaneously not having my faith challenged and being told that all challenges to my faith were specious.
Given this clever first defense against challenges(if you don't ever get exposed to differing views how can you adopt that view?) attending a secular college and being exposed to views that differed from the very conservative, fundamentalist view I was raised in was definitely a huge factor in my rejection of Christianity. Meeting and becoming friends with people who had personal systems of belief on the complete opposite end of the spectrum as myself and those who I had grown up with and around was eye-opening, frightening and ultimately liberating.
I began participating in the college's musical theater program, having a long held dream to sing and act on stage, but not having had the opportunity since I was a young child participating in a Christian-run theater program. I began making friends there almost immediately, and the theater class was one of the only classes I didn't flunk that semester. It was a place where I was happy, accepted, and free. I was cast in the ensemble, and I spent 2 or 3 months that summer with people who were the kindest, oddest, rowdiest, funniest, most accepting people I have ever met.
My father began to worry when I began spending time in particular with several of the gay young men who were cast in the ensemble with me.
I had never met any out homosexuals before then, that I can remember, and definitely none who were as open and free as these young men, who were, like me, figuring out their places in the world. I fell in love with them, with their hilarity, with their bluntness, and with their utter acceptance of me. They understood what it was like to be on uncertain footing within yourself, and they were the first ones who taught me that it is 100% okay to trust yourself.
I had one of the first major arguments I can ever remember having with my father over my friendship with those young men. It was the first time I can remember truly standing up for something against my father. He wanted to know why I was spending time with “those people.” I remember that phrase, “those people,” the most clearly. He was upset that I was devoting time to people he felt were living actively in sin. I remember lashing out against that phrase, so dehumanizing and categorical. All I could think was that my father was labeling these young men, who had begun to show me how to love myself again, without even having met them. And I raged against that.
It was the first argument with my father that ever remember winning.
It was the first argument with my father that I ever remember doing anything other than sitting silently and being lectured at.
My father was afraid. He saw me moving farther out “into the world” that holds such danger for those of conservative fundamental Christian faith, and his first reaction, as it was usually, was to contain me. To try to force me back into the mold of Good Christian Girl, to make sure that I didn’t make any mistakes that would endanger my soul. I had spent so long allowing him to hedge me in, protect me from “sin,” that it was a revelation of power that I didn't have to. He couldn't put me back in the box and keep me away from my friends. He couldn't make me believe that something was wrong if I didn't believe it was. This was a huge step up the deconversion ladder. Suddenly I was a rung above my father, looking at his belief that my friends were some kind of contaminant, something that could dirty me, and rejecting it.Shortly after this I struck up a friendship with an atheist in another music class. I kept this friendship secret for quite awhile, since I knew atheism was even more verboten than homosexuality. If my father knew I was friends with an atheist, there would be all kinds of hell to pay, particularly since this atheist was male. Neil(name changed) was the first person to ever tell me “question everything.” This concept blew my mind. I had long heard the much touted “be like the Bereans,” the Christian version of this phrase; but “be like the Bereans” didn’t mean to apply skepticism to everything, it meant read the bible thoroughly, and compare it to other parts of the bible. I had never been told that I should analyze my own religion in the same way I analyzed all the other world religions. The idea that it was okay to ask questions set me free. I had felt for so long that questioning and doubting were flat out sinful and therefore to be avoided, that the freedom – the permission – to ask about those doubts was mind-boggling.
My relationship with Neil culminated in a short-lived romance, which led to another argument with my father, where I again put a foot down and demanded the freedom to make my own choices. At the time I was required (at about age 21) to ask permission and introduce any possible suitors to my father before I went out on any dates with them. In a scenario that I am sure is familiar with anyone raised in a conservative fundamentalist christian sect, my father needed to have a conversation with any possible suitors to be sure of their intentions. When my father found out that I wanted to go out on a date with an atheist he was again afraid. This time his fear was that something horrible, along the lines of rape, would happen to me. Since – of course – atheists have no morals what would prevent Neil from taking my virginity if he wanted to? Why would I even want to spend my time with someone secular, since being “unequally yoked” was such a terrible danger?
I had already begun to question the idea that had been drilled into me since I was a child, that atheists were unhappy, angry, angst ridden people who really did believe in god, but just wanted to sin. In Neil I didn't see any of that. I saw an honest man who was open, intelligent, sarcastically humorous, and who wanted me to learn as much as I could about as much as I could. So again, I stood up to my father, demanding to know how he could assume that someone he had never met had intentions to harm me, and demanding the right to act like an adult and make my own decisions.
I don't remember much of that argument except that I got to go on my date with Neil. I was shortly triumphant and then deeply terrified; I had defied my father in terms of my future and I had no idea what the repercussions would be. I was still a theist at the time, and I had no idea how to navigate a relationship with a non-believer, particularly under the scrutiny of my father. I stopped messaging Neil or responding to his flirtations shortly after that. The relationship ended amiably with Neil saying understandingly that he thought perhaps I wasn't ready to be in a relationship. Though he didn’t state it explicitly I think he understood my fears and distress about defying my father.
Though I didn't end up in any lasting romantic relationship with Neil, his friendship was an important part of beginning to question my faith. He was the first person to tell me that asking questions was neither sinful nor pointless, but an important part of sussing out the truth in my life. That encouragement to analyze what I believed objectively, to try on the lens of those who didn’t believe and weigh the evidence for and against Christianity for myself, instead of blindly accepting dogma, ultimately led to the realization that the faith that I had held nearly my whole life, just didn't have any support.
I started this series saying that the path to atheism was far from easy or instantaneous. The next several years would be full of fear, doubt, self-loathing, anger, an emotional agony. But I don't regret for one moment the pain of walking that road, and I am so thankful to every person who had a hand, big or small, in leading me along it.
