Try to imagine: You’re a Pentecostal preacher in small-town Louisiana. Your public reputation, your connection with the people you love, indeed your own sense of self-worth — not to mention your livelihood — are hugely dependent on your passionate faith in Christ.
You’ve struggled to make a reputation for yourself as a man of God, a conduit of the Holy Spirit, who can bring spiritual hope and healing to the people around you. You’ve struggled to balance the rigorous demands of your religious calling with the pressing practical needs of your family. You’ve struggled to make sense of the contradictory teachings of the Bible; of the widely divergent and often contentious sects competing for your loyalty; of the deep conflicts between your deeply-held Christian doctrine and what you know, as an ethical human being, to be right.
And you’re realizing that you don’t believe in God. At all. Not just in Pentecostalism; not just in Christianity. You have come to realize that religion — of any kind — simply doesn’t add up.
What do you do?
That’s the story of Jerry DeWitt. It’s a story you may have heard bits and pieces of: if you read his profile in the New York Times, or if you’ve heard about The Clergy Project, the support network for non-believing clergy members, with whom DeWitt has been intensely involved since its earliest days. It’s a story that paints a very different picture from the one many people have of atheists: set in the blue-collar and working-poor small-town Bible Belt, it’s a story of a life driven by emotional devotion to service as much as an intellectual devotion to learning. It’s a story of a deep desire to understand and serve God… battling with a deeper desire to understand and accept the truth.
Greta Christina: I know that this is what your whole book is about — but can you sum up briefly what got you started questioning your faith? What were some of the thoughts and experiences that moved you forward out of religion and into atheism? And what was the final straw?
Jerry DeWitt: The catalyst was an investigation into the idea of Hell and Eternal Punishment. I grow up with an awareness of the Hell concept and even prayed for forgiveness before falling asleep most nights of my childhood, but it wasn’t until it became my responsibility to teach this doctrine that I began to be troubled by it. Is it justifiable for a person to be painfully punished ETERNALLY for seventy years of sinful behavior? Something wasn’t adding up.
After more than 25 years of ministry and misery, I found that I had completely dismantled the theological house that I had been dwelling in. Although there were countless timbers of religious thoughts that one by one were tearfully discarded, I have condensed my transition into five stages:
1. God LOVES everyone
2. God SAVES everyone
3. God is IN everyone
4. god is everyone’s INTERNAL dialog
5. god is a DELUSION
*****
Thus begins my latest piece for AlterNet, How a Pentecostal Preacher in Small-Town Louisiana Became an Atheist Activist, an interview with Hope After Faith author Jerry DeWitt. To find out more about Jerry’s unique perspectives on both atheism and religion; on the competition between religious sects; on the comfort religion offers — and the price it exacts for that comfort; on the power of religion to control and manipulate; on the value of atheist visibility; on the intensity of personal religious experience; on how his years as a Pentecostal preacher have affected his work as an atheist speaker and activist; on both the difficulty and the delight of letting go of religion and embracing the natural world; and more… read the rest of the interview. (And again, Jerry’s book is available in both print
I feel sorry for all the people roped into the church by DeWitt. He’s gone and they are still there, believing in ghosts, devils and demons, and handing over 10% of their wages to some con man who laughs at their gullibility.
Yes, grumpyoldfart, a lot of the people I helped get involved in the Armstrong cult are still stumbling along in the multitude of spinters of that old organization. I got free, but I can never escape the fact that I was instrumental in their slavery.
We just can’t undo all the damage we did in our delusions, but we can shout the truth out once we come to understand it. That’s what I do on my personal blog and everyday on my Facebook page. I can’t have much effect, but I do what I can, just as Greta and many others do. I’m certainly not going to crawl off in a hole and wither away even though I too am a bit of a grumpy old fart at 78.
Even moderate, ordinary, rank-and-file ex-Christians of no special distinction have a handful of conversions under our belts. It’s something we all live with and regret. It’s something that makes us more understanding of people who both accept and reject religion. I would be willing to tell each of the people I convinced to become Christians exactly why I became an atheist, but I can’t beat myself up over having been a “good Christian” and having acted for what I thought was their and my eternal benefit at the time. I can only explain that I was wrong.
WOW. I, like everyone, have a few regrets, but it has never occurred to me how big a bullet I dodged having my apostasy young. THANK YOU to all three commenters here; you have given me a new insight.
On the other hand, it is worth remembering that you were duped, so those actions were in some ways not your own.