We asked the former Christians of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the turning point that made them leave their religion. Here are some of the stories they had to share:
Warning: This post contains topics of sexual assault and suicide.
1. "I was raised Catholic and was taught that God would intervene if you prayed to him. My friend was having a difficult pregnancy, and I prayed every day that it would turn out OK, but she miscarried. When I spoke to my priest, he said that God had chosen to terminate the pregnancy because my friend wasn’t married and wasn’t a Catholic. That was six years ago, and I never returned to the church after that."
2. "My sophomore year of college, I called it quits for good after an 'ex-gay' came to share his testimony. This campus church seemed super welcoming and open when I got involved my first year of college, but it ended up being very conservative, and I found myself burrowing deeper into the closet and feeling anxious all the time. I was already struggling with a lot of internalized homophobia, and the church majorly exacerbated it, and I still have hang-ups I'm working through now, in therapy, years later. The 'ex-gay' testimony was the final straw. I still believe in some kind of higher power, but I don't see myself ever being a part of Christianity again, and I'm finally okay with that."
3. "I left Christianity because I realized that the god I was praying to wasn’t there. My mom and stepdad would get into screaming matches. I would lock myself in my bathroom and turn the fan on so their yelling would at least be muffled. I would get on my knees and pray for them to stop fighting (along with all of the other bad things in my life to stop). I would cry so hard. I thought I was doing something wrong when nothing happened. After my stepdad killed himself, my biological father mentally, emotionally, and verbally abused me. He didn’t allow me to grieve. He also said absolutely horrible things about my stepdad. I soon realized that no all-loving god would put an 11-year-old girl through that."
4. "In high school, I went to church three days a week until one of my friends killed himself and I turned to my church for support. My youth pastor said that I was sinning for mourning him because suicide is a sin, that he was also going to hell because he was Jewish, and that it was all my fault because I didn't bring him to church to save him. I called the pastor out in the middle of the service and walked out. He still leads the youth group now, over 16 years later."
5. "My story started in 2020. I had just been assaulted, and I felt that God could have done something. I also came out as genderfluid. I realized that the assault wasn’t my fault and that I was raised in a really abusive household, and I left the church because they said everything I was going through was punishment and God trying to help me find a new path."
6. "I worked with a teacher who was arrested and convicted of six assaults with a student. At the sentencing, his entire church showed up to show him support. No one showed up for the survivor."
7. "I have lots of reasons for not participating in organized religion, especially Christianity. One of my main turning points was when a coworker, who I was also friends with, was having marital issues. It’s a small town, and her husband was a piece of shit who everyone knew. He couldn’t keep his junk in his pants and had several babies outside his marriage, and one of his baby mothers would even go to my friend's home and bang on the door threatening to beat her up. My friend was very, very religious and went to the pastor for guidance, and he put no blame on the husband at all. He guilted her into staying in the marriage and acted as if prayer would fix everything! I was disgusted."
8. "I used to go to a Protestant church in high school, and one time, a guy who was in his 40s came up to me on a church dinner cruise and started talking about how Hurricane Katrina was New Orleans's punishment for the gay rights movement and that bad things happen in places where the gay rights movement is popular. He then proceeded to ask me out and wanted to buy me a drink even after I told him I was 16. Also, we had a pastor who was very against gay marriage and put a sign up on the church with 'the church's stance.'"
9. "I had been wobbling on my faith since my childhood, trying to hold on, when I finally realized none of it made sense. I was horribly abused as a child and didn’t understand why my prayers were never answered. As a teenager, I went to a youth program with some friends and felt comfortable enough to share the very, very basics of what happened with the leaders, and the response was, 'It’s terrible, and we’re so sorry you’ve gone through that, but it’s God’s will and he has a plan for you.' WTF. You cannot tell me that a benevolent god is cool with the awful things that happen to children all because it’s in his plan. As an adult, I tried to go to various churches a few more times but just felt nothing. It’s kind of sad for me. I do wish I could believe, but I don’t. And it’s not even the church that turned me from it. It’s the actual teachings of the faith itself."
10. "I’ve known a lot of good and bad Christians. The bad started overpowering the good in terms of politics, but I was still stuck in there. Then I took a class on Hinduism and Buddhism. They made sense to me more than Christianity because they had a greater focus on self-improvement. I knew that there was no way I could be a Christian anymore if TWO religions sounded more appealing."
11. "My mother was raised in the Catholic Church, but her breaking point was when they demanded 10% of her monthly income in order to attend. My mom basically told them to fuck off and NEVER looked back."
12. "I was 9 years old and finally able to join my church's Scout group. In one meeting, they gathered us all and asked everyone individually if they were a good person. Most children said yes. Once they’d asked everyone, they told us that we were all wrong and that the only good person was Jesus. I was only 9 years old, but even I thought that was bullshit and a pretty cruel exercise to do with children. I left the church at 13 and have been an atheist ever since."
13. "I left after being judged in youth group for my clothes (tighter shirts and ripped jeans) and being called out in front of the group. Jesus doesn't give a fuck what I'm wearing, and now you've made me more important than Jesus LOL. I hate the hypocrisy."
14. "I had fallen out of the Christian faith before, but then 9/11 happened and I thought I needed to reconnect. I saw The 700 Club blaming the sin of America and Vegas and thought it was crap. I went to a Calvary Chapel service down in Fort Lauderdale the Sunday after. The sermon was almost verbatim from The 700 Club. They were blaming people in Vegas for the loss of lives of thousands. No thank you. I realized religion was a hoax. The pastor of that church was later brought up on charges of money laundering and child pornography."
15. "I was always a very open-minded kid growing up (my mom always encouraged me to think for myself), so I was never a hardcore Catholic or Christian like most of my family. We also never went to a hardcore Catholic church, either. I never cared for church much and always thought religion should be something personal, but what made me never want to go back was when my church wanted everyone to sign a petition against same-sex marriage after the sermon. I think I was the only one who just stood there without signing. I watched as the whole congregation signed. It made me angry and sad. They also had a sermon about abortion one day that was downright offensive. After those two events, I just couldn’t go back."
16. "I was raised Catholic, but I came to the conclusion on my own that I don’t believe in God. However, I truly turned my back on Catholicism when I learned how rampant child molestation is in the church and how much it is covered up. I can respect the beliefs of people in my life who are still religious, and recognize its significance, but I am so disgusted by this. I also realized in recent years that if I were to believe in any form of Christianity, I would be a follower of Jesus, not God. What my years of Catholic education taught me is that Jesus loves everyone no matter what. They also taught me that God's love is conditional. Anybody from my former church would argue it’s unconditional, but that can’t be true if you go to hell for not believing in God, have sex before marriage, or are gay."
17. "There are two big things that added up for me to leave Christianity behind. I was raised Catholic, went to a Catholic school, and was fully indoctrinated into those beliefs, but life knocked that right out of me. In high school, I was sexually assaulted by a stranger. I never told anyone because I was so scared they would retaliate. At any rate, in Sunday class, they had a sermon about everything in life being our fault. Needless to say, I broke down, sobbed, and told my youth pastor everything that had happened. I was then forced to tell the police that day and my mom (who was mentally and physically abusive) what had happened."
"While she didn’t take it out on me, I just didn’t need that added fear in my life at that moment. As an adult, I then had my daughter too early (was six months along in pregnancy), and she passed away. I tried to use religion to cope, as my mom had healed from a lot of her abusive tendencies through the church, but her crass way of saying that God took my daughter away for a reason made me hate God."
18. "My parents were raised Catholic, and so was I for the first 12-ish years of my life. I never bought into the rhetoric — not sure I ever even really believed in God — and I used to bring books to read at church. So I wasn't heartbroken when we left the church at the time because my parents said they just needed a change. I didn't find out until a couple of years later that it was actually because of me. I'm adopted, and my parents and younger sister are white. Apparently, many of our congregation had trouble wrapping their heads around that idea. They would be preaching love and acceptance of everyone on Sunday, and on Monday they would ask my mom why she adopted a brown kid when she could have a white one on her own. My parents (obviously) got tired of the hypocrisy and abuse and swore off institutionalized religion."
19. "My mom's Polish, so my brothers and I are Catholic, and she and her whole side of our family have always exemplified the purest and most loving form of Christianity. I went to church all my life until my mid-20s, listening to BS I didn't quite always agree with, but just sort of tuned out the iffy parts of sermons. I got a job with a Catholic organization working under a very difficult priest, who believed that we should be working full time for free because we were doing God's work. He would always berate us for not working hard enough or putting in more hours. He said we should be glad to be 'filled with the light of God instead of being materialistic' (which was expecting a living wage)."
"Someone once replied, 'God doesn't pay my bills or put food on the table,' and he went into a flying rage. Then, on Sundays, he would preach about goodness and kindness. One particularly hard workweek just broke me, and I couldn't go back to work or church. I'm more agnostic now, which works better for me."
20. "I am a female only child of a divorced mother. My parents had been divorced since I was 5 because my father cheated on my mother. Around the time I was 15, our pastor was replaced because he had been convicted of sexually abusing his foster daughter. I was still heavily involved in the church's choir, youth group, orchestra, and more. The new pastor gave a sermon about how kids just couldn't 'turn out right' without a father in the house. He said the kid would become a 'criminal, a drug addict, a sex worker, or somehow a less-than-good member of society.' We didn't walk out that day. But we didn't go back, either."
21. "I told a counselor at my Christian college that I was deeply depressed and suicidal. Her advice boiled down to 'pray more, and trust in God.' I told her I’d been trying that and it wasn’t working. She told me that if I had really been trying, it would be working, so the problem was my lack of faith. This was, suffice it to say, not helpful in dealing with my depression."
22. And lastly, "There were a lot of reasons I left the church. The pastor had an affair, and it was conveniently swept under the rug because heaven forbid people actually acknowledge the issue. And there was the time the youth pastor told me (a then-preteen) that I needed to put on a bra because I was distracting. And also when members of the church in charge of hiring a new pastor utilized both sexist and racist practices and kept women and minorities from being hired."
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.