Try to imagine: You’re a Pentecostal preacher in small-town Louisiana. Your public reputation, your connection with the people you love, indeed your own sense of self-worth, not to mention your livelihood, are hugely dependent on your passionate faith in Christ.
You’ve struggled to make a reputation for yourself as a man of God, a conduit of the Holy Spirit, who can bring spiritual hope and healing to the people around you. You’ve struggled to balance the rigorous demands of your religious calling with the pressing practical needs of your family.

You’ve struggled to make sense of the contradictory teachings of the Bible; of the widely divergent and often contentious sects competing for your loyalty; of the deep conflicts between your deeply held Christian doctrine and what you know, as an ethical human being, to be right.
And you’re realizing that you don’t believe in God. At all. Not just in Pentecostalism; not just in Christianity. You have come to realize that religion of any kind simply doesn’t add up.
.
What do you do?

That’s the story of Jerry DeWitt. It’s a story you may have heard bits and pieces of: if you read his
profile in the New York Times, or if you’ve heard about the Clergy Project , the support network for non-believing clergy members, which DeWitt has been intensely involved with since its earliest days. It’s a story that paints a very different picture from the one many people have of atheists: set in the blue-collar and working-poor small-town Bible Belt, it’s a story of a life driven by emotional devotion to service as much as an intellectual devotion to learning. It’s a story of a deep desire to understand and serve God… battling with a deeper desire to understand and accept the truth.


It’s the story told in DeWitt’s new book: Hope after Faith: An Ex-Pastor’s Journey from Belief to Atheism (available in print and Kindle editions). Fascinating, suspenseful, compellingly written, often heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, and always hopeful even at its darkest, the book had my head spinning. DeWitt kindly took the time to discuss the book with me, and to talk about some of its more absorbing questions and ideas.

Greta Christina: Can you briefly sum up what got you started questioning your faith? What were some of the thoughts and experiences that moved you forward out of religion and into atheism? And what was the final straw?

Jerry DeWitt: The catalyst was an investigation into the idea of Hell and Eternal Punishment. I grew up with an awareness of the Hell concept and even prayed for forgiveness before falling asleep most nights of my childhood, but it wasn’t until it became my responsibility to teach this doctrine that I began to be troubled by it. Is it justifiable for a person to be painfully punished
eternally for 70 years of sinful behavior? Something wasn’t adding up.
After more than 25 years of ministry and misery, I found that I had completely dismantled the theological house that I had been dwelling in. Although there were countless timbers of religious thoughts that one by one were tearfully discarded, I have condensed my transition into
five stages :
1. God LOVES everyone
2. God SAVES everyone
3. God is IN everyone
4. God is everyone’s INTERNAL dialog
5. God is a DELUSION

GC: It’s often said that people need religion in hard times, and that that’s especially true of people whose lives are particularly hard. Reading your book, I do get a sense of the comfort people get from their religion, but at the same time, I get a strong sense of guilt.
You talk about that a lot in the book: the feeling you had that if your faith were stronger, your life wouldn’t be so hard, or that if you could just find a missing piece of the puzzle of doctrine, your doubts about your faith would clear up and you could be a better leader.Can you talk about that? How did the comfort and the guilt religion provides play out for you, and for the people around you?

.
JD: Many times the comfort religion offers comes at a very high price. This form of comfort is at the same time both temporally present and linked to an uncertain moment in the future. I’ll use the doctrine of Healing as an example. If you are ill, you may be comforted by the idea that God can heal you and may very well do so…one of these days. For some, this is more comforting then “knowing” you don’t know what the future truly holds.
The exorbitant price that is paid at the very same time that a measure of comfort is received is the emotional abuse one silently suffers while trying to receive/earn the promised Healing. Knowing that God could heal you immediately, but doesn’t, naturally causes the believer to ask, “Why not?” “What do I need to do to better please God?” “Is it God’s will for me to suffer?” “What’s God’s purpose in allowing this illness in my life?” The list goes on and on.

GC: I’ve seen you speak at atheist events, and you have a passion, and a powerful and distinctive speaking style, that clearly comes from your years of experience as a Pentecostal preacher. Do you feel any differently when you’re preaching about atheism and humanism than you did when you were a preacher?
.

JD: As with most things, yes and no. I still feel the nerve-racking anticipation of being in front of a group and the excitement that comes from the audience. I even feel what I once thought was the presence of God, the Holy Ghost, as we would have call it.
What does feel very different is my personal congruency with the message I’m delivering. It has been some time since I felt completely at one with the concepts that I’m presenting and standing for.
.
GC: Reading your book, one of the things that really jumped out at me was all the competing churches and congregations and sects that were around, all with such different and mutually hostile views of God and what you had to do to be saved — down to minute details like whether you shaved or cut your hair. How did you see all that at the time? How do you see it now?
.

JD: Earlier on I saw those differences as possible missing-links back to an original (thus more effective) form of Christianity. Later, after years of bible study and personal experiences with believers of all types, I slowly came to see them as sincere misunderstandings of scripture.
Now they seem to be more like tribal customs or subcultural expectations, originally instituted with the hope of drawing closer to God but now, more or less, followed to stay close to the religious group.

GC: Even very early in the process of questioning your faith, when you still identified strongly as a Christian, but no longer saw yourself as a Pentecostal, you still kept up the facade of Pentecostalism, because you didn’t want to upset your friends and family and destroy the image they had of you. With your experiences in the atheist community in general and the Clergy Project in particular, how common do you think that experience is?

JD: Based on the relationships I’ve made over the past two years, it must be very common. And of course, I can wholeheartedly understand the reasons that people continue to maintain an identity they no longer relate to.


GC: And when your atheism became public, your community turned against you, in some cases made threats against you, demanded that your boss fire you. Why do you think that was? With all the religious divisions and sects and schisms they’d dealt with, why did they have to ostracize and economically ruin the atheist?

JD: First, I’m not sure that they have dealt with that much religious diversity. Yes, there are several different religions represented in our small town, but the majority of our residents are either Pentecostal or Baptist. Both of which think that the other is going to Hell… but have been forced to work together for the last century.

I’m not in trouble for thinking differently, I’m in trouble with this “not in my backyard” town for talking differently.

GC: As you moved further and further out of your religious faith, you clearly were undergoing an emotional crisis, but at the same time, you write about the increasing sense of delight and even awe at the natural world. And your increasing acceptance of the natural world was obviously bringing you a great sense of peace. That’s a common experience for a lot of atheists. Can you tell me more about that?


JD: The religious framework I hail from envisioned a natural world at war with its human residents due to demonic influence and control, all allowed of course by Adam’s sin. This placed a filter over my ability to perceive reality as anything but sad, diseased, destructive and in need of redemption. This obviously create a disconnect between me and my surrounding environment.
Once that filter was removed, I found in nature and reality the “glory” I had been hungering for all along.


GC: You talk in the book about how becoming an atheist meant realizing that it wasn’t God or Jesus who had gotten you through so many difficult times, it was yourself. People often say that religion gives people strength in hard times; do you think it can also undercut their strength, or make them feel more helpless and weak than they really are?

JD: It does cause people to greatly undervalue there own abilities and self-worth.
A few weeks ago I overheard a relative of mine saying she couldn’t have made it through a difficult situation without “the Lord.” Uncharacteristically, I interjected that she was a very strong person and had endured her hardship with her own strength and determination. She was embarrassed by the thought of it and insisted that I was wrong.

source

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/why-a-pentecostal-preacher-gave-up-on-jesus-and-became-an-atheist-activist/

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I pray he finds peace in atheism and do his part in making the world a better place.

Nice Thread!

Never knew he was once a pastor.

CeoMYN:
I pray he finds peace in atheism and do his part in making the world a better place.

I pray too oo

CeoMYN:
I pray he finds peace in atheism and do his part in making the world a better place.

he's left the gathering of deluded bunch of humans

his eyes are now clear

prayer is useless and you know it

The bottom line, they have no proof that God does not exist.
Anyways I wish him all the best.

hopefulLandlord:


he's left the gathering of deluded bunch of humans

his eyes are now clear

prayer is useless and you know it

Exactly

adjoviomole:
The bottom line, they have no proof that God does not exist.

Anyways I wish him all the best.

bottom line, you have no proof that the flying spaghetti monster does not exist

Anyways I wish you all the best

hopefulLandlord:


bottom line, you have no proof that the flying spaghetti monster does not exist

Anyways I wish you all the best

Yes I have no idea the flying indomie exist. That's a fact. So nobody can say who is who until when we die. We will know who is telling the truth.

adjoviomole:



Yes I have no idea the flying indomie exist. That's a fact. So nobody can say who is who until when we die. We will know who is telling the truth.

agreed

analice107:
I pray too oo

your prayers don't work brother

hopefulLandlord:

he's left the gathering of deluded bunch of humans
his eyes are now clear
prayer is useless and you know it

agreed lol

hopefulLandlord:

he's left the gathering of deluded bunch of humans
his eyes are now clear
prayer is useless and you know it

endorsed lol

ColdHardTruth:

your prayers don't work brother

Ok Ma

hopefulLandlord:

agreed

Good so let's just chill till then.

analice107:

Ok Ma

I'm a guy, I've got a dick

hopefulLandlord:


bottom line, you have no proof that the flying spaghetti monster does not exist

The very fact that you dont spend your life trying to refute its non existence is enough proof.

hopefulLandlord:


he's left the gathering of deluded bunch of humans

his eyes are now clear

prayer is useless and you know it

How about those of us it has worked for, how about those it keeps working for?
Should we join you too?

winner01:
How about those of us it has worked for, how about those it keeps working for?
Should we join you too?

see the below pic

hopefulLandlord:


see the below pic

How about those who are conversant with situations which smacks of divine intervention?

[quote author=hopefulLandlord post=49397349][/quote]

No...
It should be:
We are gathered here today because his time is up.

God did promise us everlasting life in this present world, it is consistent with scripture.

Did you lose someone? Cos im wondering why you love that pic. so much. I've also lost dear people, it does not disprove the power of prayer.

winner01:


No...
It should be:
We are gathered here today because his time is up.

God did promise us everlasting life in this present world, it is consistent with scripture.

Did you lose someone? Cos im wondering why you love that pic. so much. I've also lost dear people, it does not disprove the power of prayer.

nah, I didn't lose someone

but statistics fully proves that majority of prayers are not answered

the others that appear answered are just coincidental

Christianity is a wheelchair for the hopeless,weak,unintelligent and gullible. If you have much to do and less time,religion won't cross your mind,not to talk of defending an unknown deity. I may sound a bit harsh,but I had to say it

hopefulLandlord:


nah, I didn't lose someone

but statistics fully proves that majority of prayers are not answered

the others that appear answered are just coincidental

Which statistics?

Is there any natural statistic that shows the supernatural?