Deconversion

I promised y’all a deconversion story, so y’all are getting one.

I was born and “raised” a Christian.  Apparently going to church for a few weeks with years of sleeping in on Sundays in between those few weeks, and only recognizing Christianity around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter actually does count as “being raised a Christian”.  I don’t recall ever attending church prior to age 5.  At 5 or 6 I lived in the UK (I wasn’t born in the UK, I moved there at 4) and I went to this sort-of church thing where we goofed off and read Bible stories.  Not that I had any clue what was going on, I thought it was some type of daycare.

At 6 I moved back to the US, and right into Jesusland (though a different area of Jesusland).  That’s when my mom decided that we should go to church A.  Naturally, I hated it.

At 7 I moved to the part of Jesusland I’m in now.  It became harder for us to attend Church A because instead of being 10 minutes away we were now 30 minutes away.  That, and my parents got sick of the hypocrisy.  So we dropped out of that church, and after a few weeks we transferred to church B.

We did not get a warm welcome at Church B.  So my parents were like ”screw this” and once again we dropped out of church.   So then we were on to Church C.

I should mention that in my later years of elementary school (3rd and 4th grade, I attended 5th grade at the middle school) I had a youth group at Church C.  I had a few “friends” there (not that I had many real friends until probably 10 or 11, I was bullied and left out for 3 or 4 years and until 14 bullied and left out to a lesser degree) and I liked the youth group.  So my parents decided to check it out.  We only went one sunday.  My parents didn’t like the church.

So years passed before I went to church again.  When I was 11 my sister was invited to AWANA at Church D.  She brought me along for “Friend Night”.  (I have many, many rants about AWANA, but I will save them for a later entry).  So my sister and I were involved in AWANA for a few months before my parents decided to poke around Church D.

And so we attended Church D for two years.  Then, after my mom let it slip that (gasp!  SHOCK SCANDAL OMGWTFBBQ GASP!!!!) I liked Harry Potter.  Well Church D was a ”Community” church so naturally everyone thought I was some sort of Satanic freak. (All for reading a fantasy novel.)  So my parents dropped out of Church D when I was 13.

I was a crazy cuckoo fundie when I was 12.  I’m not sure why.  But I quickly snapped out of the homophobia and anti-unbeliever BS by 13.  At 13, my faith in Christianity started to slip.  I had never accepted many doctrines that I’d been taught.  Gays weren’t evil.  I had never accepted the Trinity, probably because nobody had ever told me about it until I was 11 and then it made no sense at all (now that I think about it the Trinity is possibly based on Pagan beliefs… again, another rant, another entry).  And there were various other doctrines.  I let go of less and less of the doctrine, until I found Paganism.

When I started studying Paganism at 14, I found that almost everything Christians believed came from Paganism.  I was confused. I left Christianity, realizing it was all ripped off.  I became agnostic, and then an atheist.

And I am still an atheist.

~ by thinkingteen on March 19, 2008.