A survey that I took the other day has had me thinking about why I walked away from the Christian faith. I didn’t walk away because I rebelled against God or because I was angry with God or because I was treated badly or hurt in the church. In fact, my church life was very good. I had good friends. I had a good relationship with church leadership. I even frequently sang solos during church services and sang in the praise and worship choir. I had a great time in church and I still miss the sense

My name is Jeffrey Mark, and I'm the author of Christian No More, a book that details my deconversion. Here's the short version of my story. I recently turned 40, and until around the age of 30, I was a devout Christian. Although I grew up in a family that was far from fundamentalist, I still went to church every week, and slowly the whole theology of Heaven and Hell was pushed into my brain. Throughout my childhood I lived in constant fear that I would do something wrong, and that I had

An Atheist in the Pulpit Public identity and private belief are never more at odds than when a preacher loses his faith. By: Bruce Grierson James McAllister, a 56-year-old Lutheran minister in the midwest, was working on his sunday sermon one Thursday afternoon last summer. It wasn't going well. The reverend wasn't suffering from writer's block—in fact, he was crafting quite an elegant parable about "the importance of making our whole lives a prayer." No, the problem was bigger than tha