The other day I received this from a reader: “I would be interested to know how you have rebuilt your social network outside of the church. Although I feel trapped inside my own mind currently, I fear the ‘aloneness’ that I may experience once I do eventually ‘come out.’”

I’m taking a stab and responding to this, not because I serve as a model of how to rebuild one’s social network after deconversion, but because it’s a crucial challenge we all face as former believers, one that we respond to in different ways and with varying degrees of success. I’m hoping this blog can play some small part in meeting that challenge, both for myself and for those who happen upon this site.

On the one hand, I have been pleasantly surprised by how little resistance I have received on the part of believers as I transitioned out of faith. To be sure, I did face pressure to reverse my views, some of it unpleasant, but a few of my Christian friends have continued to remain friends, and we still get together periodically to shoot the breeze, chatting about our daily lives and sometimes delving into mostly cordial theological discussions. I enjoy that very much, even if these friends might be partly motivated by a desire to help bring me back to the fold.

Having posted my story online in 2003 and then having published my book in 2009, I’ve had the privilege of hearing from a good number of individuals who are struggling with their faith or who have put it behind them. So in a sense, this has provided me an online social network to help make up for the rich social life I enjoyed in the church, but as much as I enjoy it, conversing online is not as satisfactory as meeting face-to-face and participating in a variety of activities.

In addition, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet up in person with a few individuals in the Dallas/Fort Worth area that have read my book and who share a similar evangelical background and a common deconversion experience.

It can be difficult to find others like this, however, and it’s not practical for all deconverts to write a book and wait for readers in the area to respond. There are freethought meetup groups in most metropolitan areas, two of which I’ve sporadically attended in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. For new deconverts who feel more comfortable socially among Christians than among hard-core life-long atheists, though, attending these groups can be awkward, and it can be difficult to connect with those who have no present or past connection to the evangelical Christian world. In addition, after the first few meetings, for me it tends to become repetitious to continue rehashing why we are no longer religious.

In a recent Point of Inquiry podcast interview (starting around minute 43), Daniel Dennett had this to say about how he responded when asked by freethought groups for advice on how to proceed: "I often shocked them by saying, 'Well, why don't you get together with all your members and see if you can figure out a cause that you would all tithe for.' And their eyes goggle and they realize, 'Oh my goodness....' I said, 'How about putting together a group and helping rebuild houses in the wake of Katrina under the banner of your group?’ There's lots of things you could do, local things, international things, and just put the lie to that "[one can't be] good without God" idea. To me there's nothing more boring that just sitting around with a bunch of atheists saying, 'Oh my gosh, God doesn't exist, and aren't those people stupid to believe in God?' 'Right, right, we got that a long time ago. Now, what are we going to do?'"

I’m with Dennett on this--I think having a cause greater than ourselves or our ideologies can be a key to a fulfilling social life. One danger of this approach is that our charitable deeds can turn into merely a vehicle for defending or propagating our ideology, not simply as a means of making our communities and our world a better place. In other words, in participating as a group in these causes, I don’t want to help others “in the name of atheism” so the recipients of our good deeds (or others who witness them) will become nonbelievers or think better of nonbelievers. That’s called giving with strings attached, and is already far too common (though not universal) in the religious world.

At the moment I don’t have any firm ideas on how to start up groups of former believers with shared deconversion experiences who are eager to make the world a better place, but I’m hoping to start by posting this blog article. Because those of us who fit this description are generally few and far between, or at least unknown to each other, it seems the place to start is to establish an online presence, a call to identify who we are, where we are, and how/when we can come together to do what. I don’t have any concrete details yet, but I’m looking for ideas. Perhaps you can share your thoughts on how to get started...

This question came to me recently from a reader: “I was curious about your children. How do keep them from being confused or fearful that you will go to hell?”

In October I attended the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston, featuring luminaries like Richard Dawkins, the now late Christopher Hitchens, and Michael Shermer, among many others. The session I enjoyed the most was a panel on parenting, hosted by the somewhat lesser-known Dale McGowan, author of Parenting Beyond Belief and founder of the charity clearinghouse Foundation Beyond Belief. Several of the parents, when given the opportunity to ask questions of the panel, expressed concern about the possibility that their children might be exposed to harmful religious teachings like hell by well-meaning visiting relatives and other acquaintances. It was surreal to be in a room full of parents whose fear of contamination by religion was the mirror opposite of the fears I’ve heard expressed by evangelical Christian  parents all my life--parents who wish to shield their children from evolution, humanism, and moral relativism. One freethinking couple asked whether and to what extent they should allow their children to be left in the care of their Christian relatives. I was left with the impression they feared even one unguarded moment with the “other side,” since it could lead to traumatic indoctrination into hurtful, guilt-inducing nightmares.

Perhaps these fears are not entirely unfounded. I have a freethinking friend whose father grew up in a strong evangelical family and was a fervent believer in his youth but later left the faith, bringing up his family without religion. My friend looks back at a visit by his believing grandparents when he was about ten years old. They took him to the side and shared the gospel with him, cajoling him to accept Jesus as his savior and detailing the eternal consequences if he refused to do so. The memory of that day still brings him great pain.

And yet there are a great many children who grew up in exclusively Christian families, having learned the Bible inside and out, having attended daily devotions and several-times-a-week church meetings, having listened faithfully to Christian radio, and having attended Christian colleges and Bible schools, who nonetheless arrive at the conclusion that what they were taught and what they embraced all their lives has no grounding in reality, and they managed to pull away from it all. They were exposed to perhaps a thousand times the amount of Christian teaching than that to which the children of freethinking parents are typically exposed through occasional encounters by Christian relatives, and yet they found their way out.

This is not to suggest that secular parents should take a laissez-faire approach to parenting, refraining from offering any opinions on religion and letting religion have its way on the impressionable minds of their children, then hoping they’ll grow up to discover on their own that it’s no more real than Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny. The social and existential draw of religion--what humanist Paul Kurtz calls “the transcendental temptation”--is ever present in society, even if its power is waning to a certain extent in the West. Some children may indeed grow up and realize religion is untrue all on their own, but it’s simply misguided for a freethinking parent to withhold from presenting various perspectives, both religious and nonreligious, to her children, merely in the name of letting the children make up their own minds or out of a timid deference to the prevailing religion of the family or culture. It would be ideal to let children make up their own minds as adults, not having been previously swayed in any direction by partisan adult authority figures. But alas, a parent who says nothing almost certainly guarantees that the only perspective her children will hear will be that of the other side.

For those voluntarily living in happy mixed marriages--especially for those of us who left the faith after marriage and children--deciding how much of our own perspective to impart to a children is tricky business. In a sense, I’m the one who left the status quo, so on the one hand I feel as though I need to tread lightly because I’m the betrayer and don’t wish to upset the applecart any further than I’ve already done, but on the other hand, I can’t bear the thought that my children--my own flesh and blood--could imagine I’m hellbound. So I’ve ended up groping my way through this experience. I certainly haven’t exposed our children to my views to the extent to which they’ve been exposed to Christian teachings (they attend church twice a week), but every now and then I’ve read them some troubling passages from the Bible--to which their response has been, “That’s in the Bible?!” And I’ve encouraged them to watch science programs on public television, including those that offer evidence for evolution, and on occasion I’ve let them know frankly why I believe what I do. Finally, I’ve taken a hard line on one Christian doctrine, the doctrine of hell. I’ve told them in no uncertain terms that hell does not exist and that they have no need to worry about my ever ending up in such a place. I’ve been fortunate that my wife has not stood in the way of the occasional discussions I’ve had with our children about these matters; I can imagine some believers would not tolerate it in the least. This is not the place to detail where each of our children currently falls on the spectrum between faith and unbelief. Yet no matter where they end up, my love for them will remain unconditional and unchanged.

Each mixed marriage is made up of different personalities and backgrounds, so there’s no cookie-cutter approach to working through these issues, but it requires respect, not a steamroller approach. Teach them about various religions and their tenets and practices. Encourage them to do their own investigation and to come to their own conclusions when they reach adulthood, not accepting Mom or Dad’s perspective simply because they happen to be Mom or Dad. And above all else, love them regardless of what they believe.

Now and then I find myself in a state of nostalgia for the Christian music I grew up listening to. This week I’ve been remesmerized by the songs of Leslie Phillips (now known as Sam Phillips). Even though the words no longer mean what they used to mean to me, there’s nothing like going back to long-ago-deeply-loved music that had lain dormant for a couple of decades and recalling it as if it I’d last listened to it only yesterday. Below is one of her songs (“Heart of Hearts”) that tugged at my heartstrings (others: "I'm Finding" and "You're the Same"). These are not by any stretch the deepest or most creative songs in the world; I'm not sure whether it was the words, the music, the memories, the knowledge that Phillips later found her way of fundamentalism like me, or all of the above, but they gave me that proverbial chill down my spine.

Verse 1:
Tears in the city
Nobody`s really surprised, you know
My heart`s taken a beating,
Existence is bleeding me dry, you know

Chorus:
Way down, in my heart of hearts
Way down, in my soul of souls
Way down, I know that I am a fortunate girl
To have known divine love

Verse 2:
The world is in shambles, I`m just a young girl
But its getting a little bit old to me

I`m already aching, the years have been taking
A little bit of a toll on me

Repeat Chorus
Instrumental

Verse 3:
Two in the morning, the siren is warning
That everything is not quite all right
The city is sleeping and I`m
Down on my knees in the night, tonight

Repeat Chorus

Anyone else out there have an experience like this? Do you periodically go back to the old Christian music you used to love and let it wash over you to bring back those indelible memories?

It was inevitable. Having recently written about whether and how to celebrate Thanksgiving as an unbeliever, I’ve been asked what I think about Christmas.

Everyone has their (yes, “their”; I know full well I’m mixing a singular subject with a plural possessive pronoun, but you know it’s become generally acceptable when the 2011 NIV does this) own take on Christmas, and if you’re happy with how you do or don’t celebrate it, that’s fine; I’m just writing for those who’d like to know my take on it.

Quite honestly, with each passing year, I look forward to much of the season less and less. The corny musical TV commercials, the uninspiring and predictable Santa-themed movies and TV shows, the endlessly recycled music on the radio and in the malls, the Black Friday rat race, the social pressure to buy and exchange ephemeral trinkets, the over-stuffing of our calendar of events, the earnest “Reason for the Season” preaching, the awkwardness when it comes to figuring out how to respond to Christmas greetings--these experiences just don’t give me happy thoughts.

There’s a movement afoot among some unbelievers to celebrate the winter solstice without any religious trappings. This I presume is in recognition of the fact that the annual Christmas festivities just aren’t going to disappear and that the best way to beat ‘em is to join ‘em. I'm reminded of how the Catholic Church starting in the fourth century co-opted pagan winter solstice celebrations to celebrate Jesus’ birth in an attempt to pry away the people’s attention from pagan religion to the Christian religion. It seems to me that, whichever direction you go--from pagan to Christian practices or vice versa--it’s still rooted in religion or the supernatural, and I simply don’t identify with either one.

That said, there are aspects of the holiday season I enjoy, particularly the opportunity it affords us to get together with extended family members, to eat well, to watch a good movie (NOT a Santa-themed one), and yes (Grinch that I am), to delight my kids and a few friends with a well-selected gift or two. I’m not an anti-Christmas crusader like secular humanist leader Tom Flynn, nor do I ever plan to be; if people--even atheists--enjoy the season, what do I gain by seeking to douse their joy?

So how do I respond to those who wish me Merry Christmas? In past years, I haven’t hesitated to respond in kind, and I might continue to do that now and then. This year I might also try this rejoinder: “...and a Happy New Year to you!”

And what about those family gifts? Scrooge that I am, I’d really rather not spend money on unnecessary stuff--which is what most gifts are--while visions of the ten-year-old boy who died of malaria in the back of my pickup truck (or shortly after we arrived at the clinic) in Niger in 2000 for want of a $10 course of antimalarial medications dance in my head. This year, we’ve made a deliberate decision to cut down drastically on our superfluous gift-giving. Frankly, I’d rather just cut it out altogether, but you know, oh well; I don’t think my kids are ready that quite yet until I can indoctrinate them a little more :)

Happy (Early) New Year!