About the Author
As a work in progress I offer my story. Check back for updates!
My 30-Year Trip from Atheism to Fundamentalist Christianity and Back Again
I was born into the Anglican brand of the Christian religion on the island of Jamaica, to a father of Lebanese extraction and a mother of British (hence the Anglican, or Church of England affiliation). My family was white and relatively wealthy in a country with a population of mainly African descent, so I was part of a small, but privileged minority. The schools followed the British tradition of school uniforms and gender segregation in secondary institutions, so I was decently educated and, despite being in a boys-only school in my early teens, had a hot and heavy relationship with my on again off again girlfriend.
Though my family went to church every so often, and I was ushered through the appropriate rituals (christening, confirmation, etc.), I had a decidedly irreligious mindset. My two best subjects in school were Math and Physics, so I tended toward a rationalistic worldview.
My family moved to the US when I was 16, so I spent that first year in the States going to a regular, American 12th grade. During this year I told my mom for the first time that I didn’t believe in God or the Bible. In my mind, that was all a human-invented fantasy. She was dismayed, but probably hoped I was just going through a phase.
2. First Contact
My transition to fundamentalist Christianity began in college. When I started college at the University of Florida, I had not yet turned 17 and found myself terribly lonely, frightened and homesick. After my fall term I actually wrote my dad a letter begging to be allowed to move back home and get my college education among my friends and family. I thought I made a good case, but my request was denied and I returned to Gainesville after Christmas break more homesick than ever.
There was a young man who lived in my dorm who had become a casual friend, someone I’d go to the cafeteria with and whom I perceived to be a nice person, His name was Wayne, and he was in ROTC. I had noticed that whenever we sat down to eat, he would say a prayer of thanks for his food, but otherwise I hadn’t noted anything overtly religious about him.
One day, as we were returning from the cafeteria, he casually asked if I’d like to go to a Bible study with him the following week. I pictured a little church with friendly people, and since I was lonely, I told him, sure, I’ll go with you.
When the time came I followed Wayne to another floor of our dorm and entered the room where the Bible study was being held. My mental picture of a little church with nice, friendly people was a bit off the mark. Instead I was faced with a dorm room full of other students who were seated on the floor, on the beds, and in a chair or two. Very soon the room full of guys turned to one older guy, who welcomed us there and began the study.
The study leader read a passage of scripture (I noticed that everyone there had a Bible and found the passage quickly) and asked the group to share about someone who’d had a profound impact on their life. One after the other, these young men spoke without hesitation, naming a specific person, always another man, who had “brought them to Christ.” I remember being somewhat amazed that they all had their stories at the ready, since I had no idea at this point that they were all members of the same church and had organized the Bible study group with the sole purpose of recruiting others. Like me, for example.
A couple weeks passed and I had forgotten all about the Bible study when I was visited by one of the guys who had been there. His name was George and it turned out that he was assigned the task of following up with one of the visitors: again, me. Over the course of the next few weeks, George befriended me, inviting me to go to movies, skating rinks, the Bible study group (which I learned was called a “Soul Talk), and church services. Although I wasn’t into the church thing, he was persistent, and I went to church with him. Eventually George asked me to have a one-on-one Bible study with him on a weekly basis. Not wanting to disappoint him, I agreed.
At what point would a little bit of backbone have saved me decades of misery in an oppressive, guilt-inducing, control-mad cult? At what point would a polite but firm “No” have taken my life on a completely different trajectory? But I didn’t say no. Instead, over the following weeks and months I allowed myself to be talked into “giving up everything to follow Jesus.”
3. Conversion
In our one-on-one studies, George showed me from the Bible that my sin hurt God and caused Jesus to be crucified. He showed me that I needed to make Jesus “Lord of my life,” to repent of my sins and be baptized into Christ. This was the only way for me to please God, escape Hell and gain eternal life.
What were my sins? I cursed. I smoked. I tried, and sometimes succeeded, to have sex with girls. I masturbated and lusted. I lied. Was I ready to give up all these pleasures? Was I ready to commit myself to church activities, to evangelism?
During this time I was attending church services at the Crossroads Church of Christ. I had heard about a local cult group by this name in my first few weeks at the University, but the first time I actually visited the church, the sign was being repaired or something so I didn’t realize I was visiting the same cult I’d heard about. By the time realized what I was being pulled into, it was too late. I was hooked on the love and friendship these people lavished on me. I felt important, I had good friends who genuinely cared about me, or so I thought at the time.
Like most churches, Crossroads claimed to be better than the rest. As a Church of Christ, they were the only group who had the correct understanding and practice regarding baptism. (They held that baptism was essential for salvation and the point in time when salvation is bestowed.) But beyond the exclusivity afforded by their denominational niche, they were also the only individual church teaching the Lordship of Christ. (You could not be saved at baptism unless you had made a “total commitment” to Jesus as Lord.)
I’ve told you what we discussed, or rather what was put to me in my one-on-one studies. There was something very important that we never talked about; not a single time: What was the evidence for the existence of the god of the Bible? I was not a believer. I did not accept that the Bible was true or that the biblical god even existed. So why didn’t I raise any objections when we began the studies with the assumption that the Bible was true? To this day I have no idea how to answer that question.
The Bible says that God’s existence is self evident from the things we can see. It says that its various miracles were written down to convince me that its claims can be trusted. But this is just rhetoric without substance. It sounds good, but it just doesn’t hold up under examination. But I was not thinking critically. Perhaps I was willing to accept these things simply because I felt the need to belong.
Some additional aspects of this experience that attracted me were the fact that I had never before heard the Bible discussed in a way that seemed to hold relevance in my life. I was used to dry, boring sermons given from the King James Version of the Bible, and here we were using the brand new NIV, which was written in contemporary English. There was a continual effort to apply its teachings to my life. This was all new to me and somewhat intriguing. Additionally, the pews at the church were comfortable. The entire auditorium was tastefully designed and the seating was nicely padded. Again, this was new to me.
To illustrate how they used friendship to draw me in, I remember vividly the leader of my Soul Talk, Randy, purposely holding me off from the usual hug everyone else greeted one another with, specifically to make me see that I was still “other,” unsaved. I had not yet made the commitment to Christ and been baptized. The message was that I could only get the real friendships by getting all the way in.
Three months after my first contact, I agreed to be baptized. I told George, who relayed the message to Randy. Randy said he’s talk to me about it after Monday night’s soil talk. After the Bible study, Randy, George and I met outside the dorm. Randy asked me a few questions: Was I ready to give up everything for Jesus? Was I ready to make Jesus Lord of my life? Yes, yes. Then his last question: Are you sure you’re ready? I think so, I said. When you’re ready, you’ll know it, replied my Soul Talk leader. We agreed to talk again when I was sure.
One week later I told them I was sure. After the meeting we drove to the church and I was baptized. I didn’t feel much different after coming up out of the baptistery, but that was OK. I had faith that Christ had forgiven me and added me to his church. I was now one of the Crossroaders, with all the rights and responsibilities attached thereto. My long journey into guilt and subservience had just begun.
4. Early Born-Again Days
Some things changed after I was born again. I went to church activities on Sunday mornings (Sunday School and Worship), Sunday evenings, Monday afternoons (New Christians Class) and nights(Soul Talk), Wednesday nights (Bible Study) and Friday nights (Devotional). Every week. I also met with my Prayer Partner (George) weekly. My chosen major in these days was Electrical Engineering, and needless to say, the church schedule decimated my grades. I went from a 3.7 in my first term to a 1.5 in my second.
Other things didn’t change right away, though. I still smoked, masturbated, lusted and had sex with my girlfriend while on my first post-baptism Easter break. Back at school, however, and in the constant company of my Christian brothers, I eventually quit those things.
I was now responsible for inviting and bringing other students to my Soul Talk. I was saved in order to save others. The pressure to have a visitor with my every week was enormous, and the shame and guilt I felt on the frequent occasions when I came alone was almost unbearable. I remember spending all day Monday, every week, anxious and depressed, certain that not one of the many guys I had invited the previous week would actually come. Most of the time I was proven right.
There was one Monday night in particular I will never forget. Because Crossroads was the fastest growing campus ministry among churches of Christ in the country, we would often have visiting elders and ministers from other churches come to see how we were being so successful. My Soul Talk leader at that time, Paul, had assured our minister that his Soul Talk would impress the visitors with the visitors we would have. As it turned out, eleven of us had one visitor. Paul was furious. He spent the next hour metaphorically beating us about the head and shoulders for being lazy cowards. (I can’t even imagine what that poor visitor thought.) Apparently his rebuke worked: we had a bucket load of visitors next week.
Another burden I faced on a regular basis happened at the New Christians class on Monday afternoon. Before the class began each week we all had to fill out a questionnaire. How many days did you have your Quiet Time last week? How many people did you invite to Soul Talk? What were their names? I hated with a passion those questions, because I would always feel that I had done less than I should have.
One of the subtle but destructive results of being taught that everyone who isn’t a member of your church is condemned to an eternity in Hell and that you are possibly their only hope of salvation is that you see every person you encounter as nothing but a potential convert to your religion. Your parents, your friends, your classmates, your dorm mates, everyone is reduced to a lost and doomed thing whom only you can save, if only you will share your faith with them. This kind of responsibility for the souls of everyone around you is impossible to internalize without crumbling, if you take it seriously, so no one really does. This sets up a debilitating and stressful cognitive dissonance within the minds of believers that takes its inevitable toll on their mental and physical health.
5. Forks in the Road
Yogi Berra reportedly said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. What happened next, or what I did next, began a series of taking forks that would lead me further and further away from my previous life path and essentially lock me into my new-found faith.
Once I got serious about being a Christian, I began to be enamored of church leaders and the admiration they engendered in the hearts and minds of church members. I took note of how enraptured the congregation became when leaders climbed to the pulpit and orated their way into a kind of spiritual rock-stardom. Not only that, but members spoke of leaders in almost worshipful tones. To become a leader in the church was considered the highest possible achievement, reserved only for the most spiritual and holy among us. I began to want this for myself.
I started my pursuit of religious stardom by announcing my intention to become a campus minister. No more electrical engineering for me. This decision would necessarily include changing my major. Within the brand of Christianity I had joined, it was taught that an academic foundation for ministry was not only unnecessary, it was counterproductive. In the scriptures men were trained for ministry by “walking with” effective ministers, not by attending a university that would probably diminish your zeal for Christ anyway. And I could not focus on ministry and pursue a degree as demanding as engineering, a degree I had no intention of using. So I chose to switch majors to something that would be less arduous and still make use the classes I’d already taken. That degree was Physics Education.
At around this same time, I took another fork. About a year into my new life I went home for Easter to find that four of my cousins wanted to become Christians. They wanted to study the Bible with me, get baptized and join the local branch of the Church of Christ that I had been attending on breaks.
Of course I was thrilled, not because they would be saved from eternal damnation and have heaven to look forward to. I was thrilled because I was going to be fruitful! I was going to be an effective servant of God! To this point I had not been successful in my recruitment efforts, so this would be wonderful, enhancing my standing among the members, and especially the leaders, of my church.
One of my cousins, a third cousin actually, was my first girlfriend and, if truth be told, the woman I would never get over. When I moved away from Jamaica, and more so when I became a Christian, we had drifted apart. Now she was living in Ft. Lauderdale and wanted to join my church. I still had a deep love for her but, in my new spirituality, I saw any involvement with her as a sign to everyone in my life that my Christianity hadn’t made a difference. So I chose to put her, and all thoughts of her, out of my mind. This is one of the choices I’ve made in my life, a direct consequence of my religion, that I will always regret.
So I set off on a path to make the church my entire life. My career was dependent on my faith. In this church we were not allowed to date outside the narrow confines of our denomination, so I married in the church. I progressed in ministry to the point that I became a lead evangelist, planting churches in the Caribbean then eventually returning to the U.S. to lead churches in the southeast. My wife and I had four wonderful children, all raised in the church. I converted my parents, my sister, and her husband. For all these reasons I could never allow myself to doubt what I was a part of or what I claimed to believe, for to do so would jeopardize my career and every relationship that mattered to me.
6. Doubts Rise
At some point, however, I allowed myself to entertain these doubts and questions. What changed was, I was downsized. In 2004, after 23 years of service, I lost my job due to a massive upheaval among the churches in our denomination. This had been brewing for years, of course. The oppressiveness of and growing corruption among the churches’ top leaders eventually caused an exodus of members all over the world when individuals who had believed their own experience to be isolated came to learn that thousands of others were suffering the same abuses.
When all this exploded in early 2003, I tried to be a voice for change, but I was outnumbered by those who wanted things to remain the same and I was consequently without a career. I was forced to look for a new ladder to climb, even if I had to start on the bottom rung. But this turned into a path to freedom for me, since I no longer had the fear of losing my means of making a living to keep my wayward thoughts and doubts in check.
At first I questioned only the fundamentalist evangelical doctrines of the Church of Christ, not the validity of the Bible itself or the existence of God. I had been listening to R.C. Sproul on the radio from time to time, and it seemed to me that Reformed theology, which Sproul espoused, was far more honest in its interpretation of the Bible than anything I’d been used to previously. For example, they make no excuses for their God’s seemingly inhumane and unfair treatment of humans. According to them, he’s God and can do whatever he likes. Essentially, might makes right.
Another very significant aspect of Sproul’s philosophy that was made abundantly clear at every service was his belief in a reverence in worship. He repudiates the pervasive “seeker sensitive” approach to worship espoused by most of modern evangelical Christianity. I admit being almost nauseated by the maudlin, shallow, saccharine songs and music of most evangelical worship services that are clearly designed to induce a trance-like state in worshipers. I was glad to see that “Jesus-as-my-lover” worship style eschewed by Sproul.
Perhaps I was looking for logical consistency, as well as a group that respected some boundaries. So I and my family said a metaphorical goodbye to the Church of Christ and became members at St. Andrews Chapel. Read More...
