“ From then on , I hear to everything he articulate and how everything had repelling undertones of pure ire and hatred . I ’ve never been to a church service since . ”
Religion undoubtedly plays a significant role in many people’s lives. For some, organized religion brings a sense of peace and purpose, but for others, it can create lifelong trauma and feelings of shame and inadequacy. Corrupt leaders, hate-filled teachings, and hypocrisy are just a few of the scenarios that can deeply impact a person’s relationship with their faith…
So recently, Iaskedformerly devout people of the BuzzFeed Community to tell me about the turning point in their decision to leave their faith and received hundreds of responses. Here are some of their insightful stories:
Content warning : sexual assault , racial discrimination , violence , sterility , anti - LBGTQ , abuse , and death .
1.“My youth pastor was actively advocating for the teens in his sermon to engage in actual violence against non-believers.”
" He was talking about how TV and other distractions were taking people away from God , and he wheeled in a tub television and bashed it to bits , shattering glass everywhere .
He then instructed his worshiper to pick up their bat to destroy thing that counterbalance God . He tried to make it sort of seem ' metaphorical , ' but he was absolutely assay to spur a violent mob mentality . It was horrifying . Everyone around me was screaming violent menace against Muslims and other radical . I silently left .
And that led me on my path to question my faith and eventually become an atheist . "
— honk - toot - mcgee
2.“I grew up as a Southern Baptist and left my childhood church after realizing it was full of the town’s rich people. Even the youth director was such a snob he wouldn’t acknowledge the non-rich kids.”
" I join a small Baptist church in mellow schoolhouse and loved it because there was no snobbery . I was cursorily accept even though I had no family there . Another Pisces out of water was a 10 - year - old smuggled boy who also had no family there . He was also the only black someone . I adopted him as a little buddy , and we always hang out . Everything was slap-up until one daylight , the Preacher told a anti-Semite joke during his sermon . ( The punchline was ' a unsound negro . ' ) Everybody in the congregation laughed .
I expect at my friend , who was shuddering , trying not to cry . I asked if he want to leave . He grabbed my hand , and we left . Neither of us ever pop off back , and I was formally done with that denomination . The parson intend no harm , but the fact that everybody laughed did it for me . "
— kelani_x
3.“My mom’s family is very religious, like the kind where you can’t sing religious songs or pray with family who aren’t the same religion as you. We grew up very poor. I started working at age 12 to help pay for my school clothes and supplies.”
" At historic period 16 , I got a fast - food job and was promoted to supervisor a year or so later on , which descend with a raise . The minister of religion of the Christian church severalize my mamma that I was sinning because the Bible says that womanhood are subservient to men , so I should n’t be separate men what to do at work . I asked him to show me where it says that in the Bible , and instead , he brought me before the church service and tried to dishonor me publicly . That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with organised religion . "
— Age 49 , currently in Nevada
4.“I’m a bisexual man married to a woman. We were both raised very devoutly Christian — my family was at the church every Sunday morning, night, and Wednesday, or else people would say we were backslidden.”
" I was in my twenty when I realized I was bi , but since I married a woman , I did n’t consider it was that big of a mint . Still , I know that I can never tell my kin I ’m a member of the LGBTQ+ residential area because of their harsh views on the subject . My wife have it away and accepts me as I am , but it hurts deeply to know that I can never deal my lawful ego with them because I make out for a fact that they would choose their spiritual impression over a human relationship with me , even though I ' fit ' into their ' normal ' perspective of marriage . Their bigotry in the name of religion has made me turn from faith as a whole . If a impression promotes families to turn on their children because of an identity element they ca n’t control , then I want no part in it . “—Josh , 34 , Wisconsin
5.“I don’t know if you could call me ‘devoted.’ My parents are atheists, but my grandparents are Anglican, and I used to go to church with them every single Sunday. I loved it, the singing, Sunday school, helping out at church events, and even Christmas recitals.”
" But when I was 9 or 10 , I was n’t feel well , so I decided to stay on with my grandparents for the Robert William Service instead of going to Sunday schoolhouse - the Rev started talking about sin and ' bad ' people , which release into how this specific group of multitude were savages and how it ’s in their blood to steal , take drug and ' drink their liveliness away ' how it can be line back to their antecedent . I was untried , but reckon out he was talking about my people was n’t hard . I develop up in a very , very productive white community . I ’m Polynesian ( Māori and Tahitian ) . I think looking up at my granny , and she just squeezed my helping hand and secernate me how I knew it was not true .
I could n’t believe no one say anything . I thought church was all about dearest and acceptance until that day . I have never matte so alone and isolated . From then on , I listen to everything he tell and how everything had repellent undertones of pure ire and hatred . I ’ve never been to a church building since . "
— tiiarexox
6.“We were Southern Baptist. Our marriage was stressed due to careers and deployments. I called our pastor to request counseling, and he said, ‘You can’t do that. Only your husband can request that.'”
" When my husband got home from work , he was wild with me for abash him by telling the parson our problems AND that I even shout the curate at all without his permission . Never heed the fact we were both officers in the military . We were divorced within a yr , and I never set groundwork in a church again , nor will I link up any religion . We pass every spare day and Nox volunteering with that church building . It was refreshing to live in the real world again . "
— deliciousmatcha323
7.“It was the summer between my 7th and 8th grade year, and I was in a vacation bible study at a pretty traditional Baptist church, the first year with the older teen kids. I made friends with a lovely Muslim girl at my school during the school year.”
" She was the oldest of three or four siblings , the only young woman . She loved soccer and music and pass water jokes . During VBS , I call up seat on the stair during an outside time , address to the adolescent ’s teacher , and asking him about a sermon from earlier in the week . I take him , ' What about my Muslim friend ? She ’s a sweet young woman who takes care of her kinsperson . Does that imply she would go to hell because she does n’t consider in Jesus ? '
Even at 13 , I could tell this man did not desire to tell me the solution that , technically , the hard-core Baptist Church we were a part of would require . Once I realized that Christianity was meant to be taken to heart as a black - and - ashen situation , I knew I could n’t go forward trusting that institution with my marrow . "
— officialtrash88
8.“I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school for 13 years. It was very important to me when I was younger — there were several years where I wanted to become a nun — but I started to grow disillusioned as I got older. There was one final nail in the coffin for me, though.”
" I had gotten married when I was very young , and the family relationship was not particularly respectable . After he jockey on me for the third time , we decided to divide . Quickly after that , I take on someone else that I fell deeply in love with . After struggling with this for a few week , I sought guidance from my parish non-Christian priest , who I had love since I was a child . Two sentence in , he stopped and told me I was ' disgusting ' and ' an affront to God for having an affair ' and in ' a permanent state of mortal sine for a temporary tactile sensation . ' I erupt into tears and left the rectory .
Two weeks later , one of this guy ’s other local priest acquaintance was nail for harry tyke , and the non-Christian priest that had made me feel so shitty made a huge pot during his homily the follow week about how we need to forgive these priest for their mistakes in ' the same way Jesus would forgive . ' The hypocrisy was astonishing — I was an affront to God for meet a man without getting my late matrimony annulled , but the priest who chevvy a dozen children over 30 years was merit of forgiveness . I have n’t been back to any church since , shun a 2d church wedding party to run off with the man I had ' temporary feelings ' for in a b , witnessed by cows . "
— 47 , Pennsylvania
9.“I left my former faith when I was 21-22. I was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and we had an issue of one of the church’s magazines that proudly showed little pictures of all the kids who were ‘martyred.'”
They all die because their parent withheld blood donations . I knew about the church ’s anti - blood posture , but I did n’t realize how many people lost their lives because of it ( the church always said that with origin substitutes and talented aesculapian intervention , people commonly did n’t need actual bloodline transfusion . ) That was the last straw . I had theological business organisation that I ’d been struggling with for some time but had just chalk it up to a want of religion , but I finally realized that even if the JWs were right , I could n’t live the eternal rest of eternity with hoi polloi who think this was okay , so I left . "
— Beth , 48 , Illinois
10.“I was raised in a Presbyterian home. At a young age, I was molested, and when my parents found out, we moved to a new neighborhood, and they took me to counseling.”
" The counselor read me a volume that talked about how God was raging with me for letting someone touch me in ' my special places ' that was n’t my husband . I arrive victim - shamed at seven years sometime . After that , I see church out of certificate of indebtedness to my family . As soon as I move out at 18 , I did n’t typeset foot in a church again unless it was for a nuptials or funeral . "
— Misty , 43 , Washington
11.“As a teen in a Bible study class at our family’s new church, the youth group leader was talking about how anyone who had not accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior would go to hell upon their death.”
" Another student postulate for clarification on baby ( like those stillborn or in other country who had never even see of Jesus ) , and the juvenility loss leader ranted for a while and was adamantine that they would go straight to hell , too . I decided properly then that I could n’t stick out such a cruel god , and even though it was a few geezerhood before I quit going to church entirely , that was the moment that ruined religious belief for me . Unborn babies die straight to underworld for the ' crime ' of not living long enough to be able-bodied to have Jesus as their Lord and Savior . "
— 33 , Texas
12.“I spent my childhood with (evangelical) church being a huge part of my life because my mom had spent her entire life as extremely devout. I started emotionally separating a bit in high school before coming back to it in college and early adulthood. I even explored the idea of becoming a missionary and dedicating my life to it.”
" However , I always believed in a firm legal separation of Christian church and state and the right field for anyone to prefer if and how they idolize , and I ’ve always been pro - LGBTQ . In 2008 , there was a vote measure to outlaw same - sex marriage in California . One Sunday , I attended the Christian church where I had spent most of my life and saw lots of hundreds of star sign supporting the ballot measure in their lobby . I noped right out of there and did n’t set foot in that church service again until my parent ' deaths in 2020 and 2021 because they wanted their funeral service there .
After their deaths , I was able to do a deep dive into my own genial health and start to in full explore and repair the damage the evangelical church service had caused , including heavy reliance on preserve mystery because you would be judged and cast out , which left a lot of room for all kinds of revilement to occur . I do n’t conceive in dwelling house on sorrow , but if there was one matter in my living I could change , it would be the influence the evangelistic church service had on so much of my life . Looking back , nothing salutary came from it , just a lot of demolition . "
— 45 , California
13.“My husband and I had tried for years to have a baby. A famous religious family with too many children had a TV show at the time in which they proclaimed they would take as many children as God would give them. Why give that family so many children but yet not give any to others?”
" It made me walk away from religion completely . We eventually had two child , but I cower every time I hear someone say children are a talent from God . It is so insulting for people struggling with sterility that do not receive the gift . "
— 44 , Wisconsin
14.“My roommate and I grew up in the same church, so I assumed we had the same experience. While we were in college, she told me that her dad was abusive, cheated on and left her mom, and gave her an STI as a result of the cheating.”
" When her momma reached out to the church service for avail as she was struggle to lift three young children on her own , the church leader blame her and said the only way frontwards was to forgive him and plead to take him back . I had NO thought this eccentric of abuse was going on behind the scenes . She recount me that ’s why she and her full fellowship left the church . It open my eyes to the foul hypocrisy and misogyny of the faith , and I could never go back . "
— Anon
15.“I grew up in a very religious family. I didn’t know till my 30s that it was considered evangelical, but that would explain some of the teachings when it came to women. I remember the exact moment I was done with the church.”
" We were standing in rail line to mouth with the minister of religion on Easter . We were all wearing fancy Easter wearing apparel , and I take the Pastor why I had to wear thin a hat , and my blood brother did not . He inform me that , as a adult female , I was n’t suitable of receiving God ’s blessing now . It would have to go through the head teacher man in the menage . I then call for what would pass off if my father was n’t there to give me God ’s blessings . He say it would then be my brother ’s province . I looked over at my piddling brother , who stuck his clapper out at me and said , ' Yeah , I ’m the man . ' I realized that there was no way in hell I was ever go to receive God ’s benediction , and this was a giant crock of mother fucker for fair sex . I ’m out ! "
— Rhoni
16.“I was a devout Christian until I saw evangelicals and other conservative Christians start talking about Donald Trump like he is a ‘savior.’ Trump is one of the most unethical, ungodly, and narcissistic politicians who have ever lived.”
" He is a malefactor who was foundliablefor sexual abuse and is on trial for other serious crimes , but many Christians still patronise him , and some almost hero-worship him . Trump has put forward that he does not ask God for pardon because he does n’t make many mistakes ( LOL ) . The Trump phenomenon chair me to interview whether Christianity is what I always thought . It turn out that my questioning resulted in a falling aside from the Christian organized religion . "
— years 70 , TN
take down : Some responses have been edited for distance and/or clarity .
If you or someone you bang has experienced intimate assault , you’re able to call theNational Sexual Assault Hotlineat 1 - 800 - 656 - 4673 ( HOPE ) , which routes the company to their nearest sexual rape service supplier . you could also seek for your local centerhere .
If you are implicated that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of ill-treatment , you’re able to call or text theNational Child revilement Hotlineat 1 - 800 - 422 - 4453 ( 4.A.CHILD ) ; service can be provided in over 140 languages .
If you or someone you know has experienced anti - LGBTQ violence or torment , you could adjoin theNational Coalition of Anti - Violence Programshotline at 1 - 212 - 714 - 1141 .
