#leaving the church | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

seraphimfall · 2 months

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i’ve read so much tradcath bullshit the last two years. i can confidently say tradcath men fit into one of two categories:

“protestant-raised and converted to catholicism because of his crippling porn addiction and racist tendencies. reposts crusader and conquistador memes. is hated in his local parish.” tradcath

“catholic-raised band kid who ate his lunches with the religion teacher. smells like mildew. cut off all his friends that came out as gay after high school. now larps as an aquinian scholar and cries after jerking off.” tradcath

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escaping-amish · 5 months

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It’s been an emotional week.

#personal #leaving the church #family might choose religion over me #I’m trying and crying #crying and trying #so many tears #exfundie #deconstruction #ex christian #ex fundie #ex pentecostal #exvangelical #diary of an ex fundie #ex fundamentalist #leaving christianity #christian fundamentalism

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illegalbootjeggingoperation · 2 years

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"It makes me sad when people leave the church but I keep loving them anyway."

I understand where you're coming from, but let's talk about why this sucks.

"it makes me sad when people leave the church"

There's no better way of telling someone "I know what's best for you and it isn't this." Are you sad when a friend takes you to lunch and doesn't order the same thing as you? No? Then your sadness isn't over a difference of opinion. It's over what you perceive as a naive, ill-advised life choice. You're telling them they're in the wrong while framing it as a feeling so they can't disagree.

Don't do this. Don't put yourself above them. You're allowed to feel how you feel, but expressing it this way is not about your feelings. It's about reminding the person that you're wiser than them, you've made better choices than them, and you hope they will come to their senses.

"I don't mean it that way," you protest. I know that and hopefully the person you're talking to knows that. But it's still harmful.

It doesn't matter if you think you're being self-centered or not. If you do the things a self-centered person would do, you are self-centered.

Repeat after me: "there are valid reasons to leave the church, even if I don't understand them."

And again: "leaving the church is the right decision for some people even if I don't feel it's right for me."

When you can look me in the eye and say those things genuinely, then I can be interested in what you have to say. Until then, please stay out of my decisions.

"but I keep loving them anyway"

This reads as "you've made a decision that hurts me but I am the bigger person so I'm forgiving you."

I cannot emphasize enough how much someone leaving religion has nothing at all to do with you. It is not your place or your right to be offended by it. They are not harming you. You are not a stakeholder. Religion is a heavy personal decision that can affect every aspect of someone's life. It would be deeply inappropriate for you to make it about yourself. You, your family, and your congregation are not part of it. You don't get to weigh in, you don't get to critique, you don't get to make up stories about how it happened. It didn't happen to you; you just happen to know about it.

I keep loving them is a way of making it all about you.

"Isn't that better than the alternative?" Sure, it's better than not loving them. But even phrasing it as a conscious choice is hurtful. Loving someone is a hard choice if they've attacked or abused you. It is not a hard choice if they've made a personal decision about their own life.

So what should you say?

"I respect their decision" is okay, but the subtext (and sometimes the explicit followup) is "even though I disagree with it." Remember how you don't get to weigh in here? It's not your place to validate or invalidate someone else's religious choices. Your "disagreement" is not relevant. It's gratuitous and selfish.

"I support them" is better, but vague and often performative. Do you really? How do you support them? Do you speak of the acceptability of their choice and the soundness of their decision-making? When you hear someone making up a story about how the person "fell into sin" or "was tempted by the world," do you shut them down?

Do you include them just as much as you did before?

"I believe them" is best. But it requires you to hear their story, to listen without offering advice or trying to reframe their experience. It requires you to empathize. It requires you to imagine yourself being in their shoes and making the same decision, even if the thought frightens you. That's what respect and support look like.

Maybe you can't offer that. It takes a lot of humility and internal work. Okay, then: prepare to spend the rest of your life in utter silence about the issue. Because how can you speak about something you don't understand? And how can you understand something you aren't willing to experience, even in your imagination?

Leaving religion was the most painful, lonely, difficult thing I've ever experienced. But I had to do it. After years hanging on by tooth and nail, using up every excuse, every argument, every philosophy I could muster, in the end I had to leave or I would not survive. It wasn't fun and it wasn't naive. It was necessary.

So don't tell me it makes you sad. You think I have room for more sadness in that part of my life? You think it's my job to hear your shallow and inconsiderate pity? Please.

And don't tell me you "still" love me. There is no "still." If you don't love me now, my fullest self, the way I am meant to be, then you never did.

#ex religious #ex mormon #leaving the church #faith transition

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petitmonsieur1 · 6 months

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#photography #image #illustration #photomontage #portrait #photo art #digital illustration #artists on tumblr #photocomposition #digital photography #image sonore #sound image #walking in the snow #leaving the church #winter #sortie d’église #hiver #creative art

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dissentdisdain · 3 months

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I think I'm so scared to let go

Because my stubborn self

Would have to release the idea

Of safety being encapsulated in you

Logically, I know I can find safety elsewhere

I can find comfort elsewhere

Within myself and new friends

New friends that have the same beliefs

But I think I took pride in knowing the fact

That I was able to love you unconditionally

Even if our core beliefs were vastly different

I was able to see you for who you are

Rather than categorize you under you beliefs.

But emotionally,

I am still attached to the community

That was my "first love" in a familial sense

To the people I truly felt alive through

The community that I lost myself in

And here I am 2.5 years later

Resisting my transformation

Resisting the opportunity of my future

The future where I see myself on stage

Healing others with my pain

Looking into the crowd and seeing sweaty yet smiling faces

People who truly know they are never alone

With the music reminding them.

I am resisting losing myself in happiness

For the comfort and security of my past

The past I did feel happy in at my expense.

But the only difference is that

In my past

I set myself aside for the ones I love.

Where as my future requires me

To release the idea that happiness

Will only be found through them.

I'm scared that they think that if I move on

It will mean I never cared for them,

I abandoned them.

But when they hear my lyrics

The whole reason why I'm starting the band

When they hear the power of the sound

Of the distorted 7 string

The low, anguished cry

Accompanied by the ambience of the pads

And the striking weep of the piano keys

They will truly hear how painful it was

For me to let go.

#ex jw #ex christian #exjw #leaving the church #spilled ink #loss #grief

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circedivine · 2 years

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Faith is a Cruel Thing.

tw : abuse, child abuse, csa

From a young age, I was taught things that took many years to unlearn. That homosexuality was a sin. That those who did not follow the same God as myself were going to burn in eternal hellfire. That women were to submit to their husbands, because that is what God directed.

My mother was raised in a church even more vicious than our own. Still, she is strong in her faith, despite the things that have happened to her. While she now accepts her queer children and believes that religion should not be forced upon an individual, that was not always the case.

She was the victim of abuse, and she projected that trauma onto her own children with a hellacious force. She was someone to fear.

Punishment from her was always something to fear in our household. While my younger sibling never faced much punishment, my older sibling and I were the victims of so many acts of abuse that were labeled as punishment.

The more I think about the things I was punished for, the more I realize that my childhood behaviors were dictated by obvious trauma responses.

The abuse that I can remember all took place in the bathroom at my grandfather’s house. I can easily picture the bathroom, even now, close to two decades later. I can see him, there, standing in the doorway, too. There I was, alone with a man who had an extensive history of abusive behavior. A known pedophile.

Now that I am in my twenties, I understand that my behavior was linked to the setting of these events. I would consistently have accidents, which, in turn, made me feel ashamed. I would hide my dirty underwear. Each time my mother found a pair, she took me to her bedroom, made me bend over her bed, and whipped me with a belt until I was red and screaming.

All of these years later, I realize this behavior was because I was afraid of going to the bathroom. After all, the bathroom was where her father had repeatedly molested me. While it was not the same bathroom, it is easy to understand the association my brain had made.

Why, you might ask, did my mother allow us around the man who had abused and beaten her as a child?

He had found God, and he was a changed man.

To this day, she holds that as her defense. My grandfather had become a man of faith, and he desperately asked for her forgiveness. So, she forgave him. She allowed her infant, toddler, and young child to be unsupervised in the home of a man who was unfathomably disgusting.

While I do feel some rage towards my father for allowing this to happen, I do understand why he never spoke up for himself in the time he was with my mother. She would have done everything in her power to ruin his life. It was selfish of him, but he was already struggling.

While the blame falls on my mother, I often find myself asking God why he allowed such a heinous thing to happen to me. There is a rage that burns inside of me. An anger and hurt that are unmatched by anything I had ever felt. God allowed this to happen to me.

For the majority of my life, I believed things happened for a reason. Before that, I believed that God made things happen for a reason. Now, as I cope with what I endured, I realize that things do not always happen for a reason. No child should ever have to experience what I, and many others, have experienced for any reason.

Today, I think, I have finally lost my faith.

It had been in question for so long, and I finally feel as though I am prepared to let it go.

#leaving the church #blogging #trauma #personal vent #my story #childhood trauma #abuse tw #csa tw #religion #csa survivor #survivor #journal #journaling

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walk-in-the-wood · 1 year

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reading all the anons i’ve never answered ;-; u guys are so nice

#like fr u guys have been there for me through a fucking engagement breakup #through rehab #leaving the church #and moving to colorado #amidst navigating autism diagnosis #ed bullshit #and relationship anxiety #muah i love u guys even u anons

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weirdcatperson1 · 6 months

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Does anyone else know how to stop making themselves small and pleasing for men? I’ve mostly managed to stop the conscious decisions, but the subconscious stuff I can’t seem to stop.

When I’m in a relationship with a man I can’t help but stop growing as a person, softening my opinions and beliefs, softening my voice and altering my appearance to be desirable. And it’s subconscious, I didn’t even realize what I was doing until much later. But it’s not even just guys I’m dating, I give all males I care about way more sway over me than I want.

How do I stop?

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qupritsuvwix · 6 months

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#atheism #leaving the church

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rubyspiders · 10 months

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leaving “home”

a small poem that’s a part of a bigger fragmented story

#poetry #literature #original art #art #creative writing #writing #poem #prose #catholocism #vent post #ex catholic #leaving the church

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pangur-and-grim · 3 months

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my parents brought Rusty Nail to the funeral, and she was not quite on her best behaviour.

#rusty nail #they didnt bring her to the actual service in the church #they just couldn't leave her at home for two days so she came with

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seraphimfall · 1 year

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i’m sorry but even if your personal version of mormonism excludes all the “if you’re a good mormon your skin will turn white when you die, no matter your race” and “dark skin is a sign of the devil” bs, your religion is still racist.

the idea that israelites sailed across the atlantic ocean and formed a population in north america that could be attributed to native americans is racist.

the idea that jesus christ appeared to native americans and converted them to christianity pre-colonial times is racist.

the idea that the arrival of christianity to north america with european colonialism was a prophesied “reintroduction” of christianity is racist.

the foundations of your religion are racist.

the foundations of your religion are historical negationism.

the foundations of your religion justify american colonialism as the will of god.

try as hard as you want, it’s impossible to remove racism from mormonism. it’s racist by nature.

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andrewpcannon · 2 years

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Unity

I think it is time for the church to grow again. In this pilot episode of X-Church, I open up about what I think the church can be in our day, my thoughts about denominationalism, and what it takes to erase the dividing lines in the church. Christ is not divided. We are only divided because we exalt our desires and thoughts instead of centering our lives on the Bible and having sincere…