This week’s guest is Christian Lomsdalen. Christian is the current president of the Norwegian Humanist Association and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Bergen studying the didactics (science) of religion. Christian grew up in an ordinary Christian Norwegian family as “Christmas Christians”. He went to church for Christmas and other holidays, and that was about it. “I identified as a Christian…a quiet liberal Christian, probably. I guess a lot of the evangelicals in the United States...

This week’s guest is Benjamin Faye, also known as @heytherebenji.Benji was adopted when he was young and during middle school, his adoptive parents suddenly “wanted a spiritual life” and started going to church. His life as an adoptee was difficult. Benji questioned whether he belonged in the family and things only got worse as he got older. His adoptive parent became abusive and in his early twenties, he had to leave. He hoped the church could be the place he could question and process his...

This week’s guest is Ben Reed. Ben grew up in the Church of Christ with a cappella music, no clapping, no raised hands, no prophecies, no miracles, but also no demons. “Compared to the more charismatic denominations, the Church of Christ is pretty boring…I think that’s kind of why I stayed so long because it wasn’t that exhausting.” Ben’s years in the church were good—no cognitive dissonance or serious trauma—until 2020. “It wasn’t until Covid hit that I really started waking up, and I saw...

This week’s guest is Shifra Lowen. Shifra grew up in a small, well-controlled Hasidic community in Canada. As a girl, Shifra wanted to do everything according to the rules of their village. At the same, she desperately wanted forbidden things, like a kitten or a pet bird. At 17, her marriage was arranged to someone she knew and even liked, and Shifra was on Cloud 9 for a while, though suspicious of her own happiness. Then her husband did something unthinkable. “…Imagine my shock and fear...

This week’s guest is comedian and writer, Holly Laurent. See her full bio and work here. Holly tells a bit of her story, growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical household. From the fear of demons to eternal conscious torment, Holly is still dismantling the indoctrination. In comedy, she’s found a way to express her “voice that always got [her] in trouble” as well as an accepting community, something she struggled to find in the church. Her podcast Mega has a new five-part mini-series...

This week’s guest is Josh de Keijzer, PhD. Josh writes at After God’s End: Fragments of a Post-Christian narrative Josh grew up in an evangelical home in the Netherlands. He knew his family was “set apart,” different from the mainstream Dutch culture. “I realized…I had been brought up as an evangelical…We were always part of a minority.” As a teenager, Josh took his faith seriously, so he had a hard time with the adults in the church. Their actions did not line up with what they believed,...

This week’s guest is author Jo Lloyd Johnson. Jo grew up in a “non-denominational charismatic commune”. She spent her adolescence in various churches, but they weren’t as “Spirit-filled” as she was taught they could be. She married young and the first years of marriage were difficult. There was alcohol abuse, church shopping, and the difficulties that come with having young children. She and her husband needed the church to be a place of deep and meaningful relationships, but it...

This week’s guest is Cat Delmar. Cat grew up in a nominally Seventh-day Adventist family. The SDA churches, however, were anything but nominal. They had all the rules, from no caffeine to no pierced ears. “There’s a lot of control of the body [in Seventh-Day Adventism].” At sixteen, Cat took ownership of her faith and started going to church on her own, but she never quite fit in. By her twenties, she realized that the difficult questions in adulthood don’t have easy “Biblical” answers....

This week’s guest is Stephanie, a Deconversion Anonymous group member. Stephanie grew up in the Assemblies of God church as a Missionary Kid for most of her childhood. Her younger years held all the trappings of white American evangelicalism, from conservative Christian school curricula to a paralyzing fear of going to hell forever. “The ‘hell belief’? It’s a sticky one.” Stephanie’s beliefs, however, had been set on precarious foundations: Christians are good and everyone else is bad; the...

This week’s guest is Kelly. Kelly was raised as a daughter in a traditional evangelical household, “indoctrinated from diaperhood.” They grew up perfectionistic, depressed, timid, and anxious, given Christian cliches about ‘God always being with them’ through their depression. Who they really needed were queer, whole, mentally healthy adult mentors. “There was a dizzying array of mental exercises I had to engage in to keep the faith.” Today, Kelly is living their truest life with wisdom...

This week’s guest is Bart D. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His new book is Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End. Is the book of Revelation a prophecy of future catastrophe? Is it a book of hope? Or is it a book of violence and wrath? In Armageddon, Bart delves into the most misunderstood—and possibly the most dangerous—book of the Bible, exploring the horrifying social and political consequences of...

TW: sexual violence; intimate partner violence; postpartum PTSD This week’s guest is Grace. Grace was fortunate not to grow up in the church, but when she became a Christian in high school, she—in her own words—“quickly became the quintessential insufferable Christian teenager.” Grace was a zealous believer for years, and it wasn’t until she had her first child that the questions began coming. At first, she didn’t think she was deconstructing her faith; she saw it as spiritual growth. But...

This week’s guest bares his whole heart. “My story—at the moment—doesn’t end really well, but there’s hope for the future.” This week’s guest is Matt. Matt grew up in a Methodist family and after partying through high school, Matt chose to attend a Christian college and became serious about his faith. As an adult, Matt did everything he could to be all things to all people—a good husband, a good leader, a father, a friend, a mentor… He tried for years, but superhuman expectations are put on...

This week’s guest is David Hayward, also known as The Naked Pastor. David is “a pastor turned artist painting, drawing, and thinking about what it takes to be free to be you.” For over a decade, David has been creating online spaces for anyone “interested in deconstruction, spiritual journeying, freedom of thought, or looking for your authentic self.” His personal story and the wisdom he’s gained over the years continues to speak to those of us who have completely left religion and those who...

This week we are celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Graceful Atheist Podcast! In this episode, you’ll meet everyone who works alongside David on the podcast, the website or the online community. Joining David are Arline, Mike T, Jimmy, Colin and Daniel. They discuss some of their favorite movies, shows and books highlighting deconversion or secular grace. It’s a great conversation that you won’t want to miss! Interact For quotes, recommendations, transcripts and more see the full...

This week’s guest is Jennifer Michael Hecht, bestselling author of Doubt: a History plus many other works. Her latest book, The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives comes out this week! Jennifer is a poet and historian and in this interview, she makes a solid case for the important place that poetry—and other art forms—can have in our lives. “It’s got to be a poet who says, ‘This virtue still matters,’ because we’re at a moment where we don’t even...

This week’s guest is Stacie, the creative mind behind the @apostacie on Instagram and the co-host of @skeptichaven on Youtube. Stacie grew up in charismatic churches, believing what she learned about and experienced at church was normal—from speaking in tongues to full-on demonic oppression. It wasn’t until Stacie was an adult that she began to seriously question her upbringing. After watching a Reformed-Christian documentary about the Charismatic church, the questions started coming. “I...

This week’s guest is Anne. Anne grew up in an English family whose Christian history goes back generations. As a young child, Anne and her twin took their beliefs seriously, even the damaging ones. Her parents’ divorce shook her up. Her family had been “that Christian family,” and it felt like her parents had become strangers. Still, she clung to her faith throughout her teens and twenties. Anne married young, meeting an American missionary while in Scotland, but it seemed her partner...

This week’s guest is Audrey. Audrey spent her childhood and adolescence deep in American Christianity. In college, she took a course in “biblical perspectives,” and she had many questions. She would shelve the cognitive dissonance for years, though, pretending that everything was fine. After years of experiencing church from the inside and working around more “secular” people, the uncertainty could no longer stay buried. “Something just wasn’t right.” Audrey is an atheist now, but...

This week’s guest is Taylor. Taylor grew up in a small church in a small town, surrounded by Christianity. She had family devotions at home and a private-Christian-academy curricula at school. By twenty-one, however, she moved out and stopped attending church completely. Her “personal relationship with Jesus” was more important than church-going. While watching a loved one live with cancer and then face death, Taylor’s faith gave her hope and meaning, until it couldn’t. Depressive episodes...

Enjoy the rest of Arline and Bryan, the Ex-Apologist, in this bonus episode. Bryan goes into more detail around apologetics and counter-apologetics. Links The Ex-Apologist blog https://theexapologist.com/ Email [email protected] Interact For quotes, recommendations and more see the full episode show notes https://gracefulatheist.com/2023/01/29/bryan-ex-apologist/ Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/deconversion Support the...

This week Arline guest hosts interviewing Bryan the Ex-Apologist. Bryan grew up in a deeply fundamentalist church. Not only did they believe they were the True Church, they were taught they they were the Only Church. Bryan spent his teen and young adult years preaching, evangelizing and heatedly debating others. He was convinced he had all the right answers and other people needed those right answers. He sees his younger self as a “jerk for Jesus.” Realizing he was wrong about a single...

This week’s guest is Rachel Hunt. Rachel is both the Support Group Director and an Ambassador for Recovering From Religion. From her RFR bio, “Rachel is a motorcycle-riding ballroom dance teacher from rural Texas. Married with two adult children, Rachel has a strong interest in psychology, philosophy, and communication, in addition to the creative arts and home improvement. She was raised in Christian Science but drifted off as a teenager. She explored Scientology, Law of Attraction, and a...

This week’s guests are Brian and Troy of the podcast, I was a Teenage Fundamentalist. They interviewed David at the end of 2022, and now it’s our turn to hear from them. Brian and Troy “used to be loyal Christians megachurch leaders. They’re not anymore.” Their parallel stories are fascinating, as we are given a glimpse into their past lives and the Pentecostal movement in Australia. Today, Brian and Troy’s “honest and often hilarious podcast peeks behind the curtain at the weird, the...

This week’s guest is Evan Clark. Evan is the Executive Director of Atheists United. Evan grew up in a partially religious home, but at six years old, the idea of a god didn’t make sense to him. He attended a Christian liberal arts college and was able to start its first atheist group. Since then, he’s gone on to create many humanist communities. In this episode, Evan explains why atheist spaces in the US differ from spaces in other more progressive countries, why community is not the only...