“I am waiting to die. I am not hopeless, just completely ignorant about what to do spiritually” 4 Ex-Fundamentalists Tell Me Their Stories

Last updated on: March 12, 2015 at 5:35 pm by Frank Schaeffer

“I am waiting to die. I am not hopeless, just completely ignorant about what to do spiritually” 4 Ex-Fundamentalists Tell Me Their Stories 2015-03-12T17:35:30-06:00 Frank Schaeffer

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“I am waiting to die. I am not hopeless, just completely ignorant about what to do spiritually and existentially, living a life lived from my whole heart and in my sense of what it means to live in Christ.” That’s a quote from one of my readers. I asked my Facebook family for their stories of deliverance from fundamentalism. I told them they would be shared on my blog. Here are a few they posted on my FB Page. These stories move me deeply: …Read more…

Danna Baker Watkins I am 62 years old. Raised fundamental to the max. No spending $ on Sunday. No dancing. Etc. ad naseum. My parents were both abusive and held every job in the church. I loved Jesus and knew He held me through a lot. I tried to live less fundamental as an adult but didn’t know how so ended up raising my own children in more law than grace. My 23 year old daughter walked away from all of it and it put great distance between her and her family. One night she cried and shared her heart with her dad and I. Why she loves all the marginalized and I thought, “Wow! She has more of the heart of Jesus than I’ve ever had.” She began to send me Benjamin Corey’s posts that would come across her Facebook. I began to see these progressive people who love Jesus! My husband and I started reading everything we could get our hands on from this different mindset. I ended up breaking one day and crying and crying. I saw my arrogance and judgmental-ism. We went to our daughter and apologized. Our relationship is sweet. I feel more free and happier than I’ve ever been. The law kills. Grace gives life!

Like · Reply · 3 · 6 hours ago
Heather Murphy Raised Southern Baptist and everything that entails. I went through a divorce at age 26 and some Christians persecuted me for leaving my adulterous husband…as though I should just sweep his behavior under the rug as an act of obedience to God. Through the divorce, I got a lot of separation from the church and realized there was considerable bullshit in the doctrines and theology I’d long believed to be true. Why is there so much hate when Jesus spoke and ACTED on LOVE? In the transition OUT of the church, I made beautiful friends in the LGBT communities and found a new faith in the ELCA circuit. Now I’m more independent, choosing to participate in communities that practice the love they preach. Love is the revolution, it is the way we change ourselves and societies. Love is how we find the motivation to create something beautiful and what grants us peace in times of chaos. I’ve discovered I love more deeply now, though I occasionally feel alone because relatives and friends are still entrenched in bad theology. But the bad theology is all they know and therefore I must be compassionate. After all, I was once entrenched too…I’ve only recently been delivered into a new awareness. I’m grateful every single day that I was rescued from the perils of religion. I’m equally grateful for the people I’ve met who are just like me, who have walked away from the poor examples of Christianity and into the open arms of love.

Like · Reply · 2 · 14 hours ago
Susan Lynn Peterson I grew up Evangelical and spent three years at Moody Bible Institute. I spent some time as a very serious Episcopalian and now via the path of least resistance find myself on the fringes of an ELCA Lutheran Church. Though I have a nice collection of scars from the various churches I’ve been a member of, I keep coming back to one thing: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself.” That’s my guide star. I choose not to throw my lot in with anyone who tells me who to hate. I don’t care who the haters hate, be it atheists or fundamentalists, liberals or televangelists, gun nuts or gun controllers. Any hater group, any group that defines itself in opposition to “those other people,” can’t be home for me. But ironically, all haters are my “neighbors,” so if I take Jesus’ words seriously, I don’t have the luxury of hating even them. Instead I choose to try to find harmony with my world and the people in it. (I find a lot of help from Taoism in that.) I choose creativity–writing books, cooking, gardening. I choose to hang out with the stories about Jesus in the hopes that some of his example might rub off on me. I choose close relationships with people who would rather laugh at themselves than someone else. I choose to strive for perfection but to accept anything no matter how imperfect if it’s done with an honest heart and a generous spirit. When it comes to the culture wars, I am a conscientious objector. I won’t fight for either side.

Like · Reply · 7 hours ago
Tim Warner I am 64 years old. I “asked Jesus into my heart” when I was seven, in the Baptist tradition. I was, from that day on, a True Believer, unwavering. My spiritual journey over time has led me to being as good a Christian boy while growing up as I could be, to inwardly renouncing my faith as my family deteriorated through the effects of my mother’s alcoholism, through the realization as an adolescent that I am homosexual in orientation/constitution, to a recommitment of my life to Christ at age 19 during the “Jesus Movement” days; to my leaving America at age 40 to livve elsewhere for about 11 years, including 7 years in a committed “gay partnership”, to four years spent in a residential ex-gay ministry upon my return to America as an attempt to rid myself of my homosexuality and embrace my sense of a calling from God to serve Him, to then embracing Eastern Orthodoxy as a convert, living a completely celibate and abstinent life, eventually coming to live in several different Orthodox monasteries, seeking a way to live out a sort of marriage to God with an ultimate denial of my sinful self. After those seven years I decided not to commit to monastic life, got a job with the ex-gay ministry in which I had lived 15 years earlier. After several years everything sort of crashed. I realized or honestly admitted to myself that I am as homosexual as I ever have been. I stopped going to church of any kind. And now I have no fellowship with Christians, although I still retain my faith. I am still celibate, although looking for acceptable expressions of my sexuality. I have no reason to be angry with anyone except myself, but I confess that I am angry with having never been able to find the spiritual community in which I could function wholly, with integrity and not fragmentation or compartmentalizing my diverse interior self. It seems like there are no further avenues to explore or places to seek out. I work to keep myself alive. I live and work in solitude and silence most of the time. I talk to God. I interact on internet sites. But I don’t see any Christian community in which I can honestly be at home. In many ways, I am waiting to die. I am not hopeless, just completely ignorant about what to do spiritually and existentially, living a life lived from my whole heart and in my sense of what it means to live in Christ.
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