We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community who had a religious upbringing and later distanced themselves from faith to tell us what inspired the change. We received some incredibly emotional, upsetting, and truly brave responses. Please note: These submissions don’t reflect a universal experience of religion. Everyone’s story is different. Here’s what people shared:
Warning: Post contains mentions of sexual violence, child abuse, anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, pregnancy loss, suicide, racism, and substance abuse.
1. “I was a preacher’s kid, so I saw the hypocrisy from the inside. Some parish members would smile and be friendly on Sunday to backstab and judge Tuesday through Saturday. I was expected to be perfect and was reminded that I was an extension of my father. My last straw was when I visited my very devout uncle, who was fighting pancreatic cancer. His church was his world, his support, and his extended family. They invited us to a Bible study where they said my uncle’s cancer must be a punishment for something horrible he had done. My uncle was the kindest, most soft-spoken man, and he didn’t deserve that.”
—Anonymous
2. “I grew up in the church and went every week unless I was sick. When I was 10, my closest friend at school died, and I stopped believing. I still had to go to church, but I could not comprehend a god who would let a 10-year-old be killed by his dad. We moved a couple of months later and have been going to better churches, and this summer I found my faith again. I don’t necessarily identify with religion, and I disagree with a lot of things Christians say. Still, I’m lucky to go to a very good church that is accepting and supportive of me as a queer and neurodivergent person. I don’t know if God is real, but I’d like to think that they are and created us (I could go on a tangent about outer space and math and how everything is intrinsically mathematical, but I won’t). I’m comforted by the thought that I might see Sebastian again someday.”
—im_dead_inside_taylors_version
3. “I was raised Catholic. When I was 6, a nun told me that my mother would not go to heaven because she was Lutheran.”
—Anonymous
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4. “My mother was super religious in a cult and swore she was one of the only 144,000 people going to rule in heaven. She forced religion on us as she raised us, including the Ten Commandments. I reached adulthood, started my own business with her as a silent partner, and caught her stealing from a client and the company. When I confronted her about it, she claimed it was ‘us against the world’ and it wasn’t wrong to do so. She threatened to take my kids away (and she eventually followed through). I reported her to the elders, but they said that because I didn’t have three witnesses to her stealing (paperwork didn’t count), I was being disassociated. I left, and to this day, my children believe the lies she told about me, and I haven’t seen/spoken to them in decades.”
—Anonymous
5. “My parents worked outside the home, so I spent most of my childhood in my grandmother’s care. She was very religious. My beliefs aligned with hers until I became a teenager and started asking more questions. I learned that I was pansexual in my 20s and went through a faith deconstruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. She got angry and couldn’t understand why I had changed, and then insinuated that my son was autistic and going to hell because I angered God. I didn’t care what she said about me, but I could never get over what she said about my son.”
6. “I grew up in a small town and attended a Catholic high school. One day, in grade nine, a local priest burst into our English class and gave us a 30-minute lecture about Protestants. According to him, if we dated, were friends with, or were affiliated with them, we would go to Hell. It was a Fire and Brimstone lecture about our immortal souls being in jeopardy by association with Protestants. I was shocked. Even the nun teaching the class was upset. This invalidated the teachings of Jesus that said everyone was welcome in Heaven. We lived in a small town. Some of my family and many of my neighbors were Protestant. So, if I went to my cousin’s birthday party, I would go to Hell. So was my grandpa if he had dinner with my aunt. I’d have to stop playing street hockey with my friends. Some of us stopped going to that church. I’ve never been back.”
—Anonymous
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7. “I grew up in the South, where a church is on every corner, and went every Sunday and Wednesday. What made me start to distance myself was a couple of different things. First, when I was a teen, I would get into trouble and get shamed by the church elders for speaking up against what I felt was wrong or questioning things that I should ‘just have faith and believe in.’ For example, shaming gay people. I could never agree with them (and I have always been a very outspoken person) and spoke up on what I believed was wrong. The church elders would purposely leave me out of things after that or not let me participate in helping.”
“Secondly, a few years later, I was married and actively trying to have a baby, but I was having trouble, and I ended up having a miscarriage. I was told that I needed to have faith, and there was a reason I lost the baby. Thirdly, exactly one week after I had the same miscarriage, my best friend at the time (and daughter of an elder) told me she was pregnant and didn’t even acknowledge that I had had a miscarriage. I lost my religion and my best friend in the same week.”
—Anonymous
8. “I was indoctrinated in a fundamentalist Baptist church setting with a family that was heavily involved in leadership roles within the church. We went to church three times a week, minimum, often more. My parents were very concerned about appearances both in and out of church and had no regard for mental health, even when my brother attempted suicide. I have vivid memories of the youth pastor announcing my brother’s suicide attempt to the youth group of 60+ kids, and language revolving around how prayer was needed. I still recall how shameful it felt to be looked at like our family had failed the church. I tried explaining to a therapist once how intensive moral absolutes in my formative years made my anxiety and OCD symptoms worse, and she looked blankly at me and said, ‘Most people who go to church are nice.'”
“While I wholeheartedly believe it’s beautiful when individuals find solace in their faith, I witnessed a lot of harmful extremes in organized religion, including misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. I’m still close with my parents, but I haven’t gone to church since I was 17 (I’m 32 now), and I know my parents are sad I don’t share their views. I had to grieve many friendships and relationships with extended family members whom I simply can’t relate to or respect because of their actively oppressive viewpoints. I’m now a therapist and am grateful I get to help clients work through their own religious trauma and form new identities with spirituality beyond organized religion.”
—Anonymous
9. “One of the church elders told my sister and me when we were about 13/14 that it didn’t matter if we came to church anymore because we were poor and didn’t give any money to the church. That’s when I realized that the church is all about money and mind control. I’ve never been back, and I’m a devout atheist. I’m perfectly happy with my choice, but my extremely religious mother (who claims god controls the weather) says I’m going to hell and also refuses to talk to my gay niece. I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints!”
—Anonymous
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10. “My preacher couldn’t help me when I was seeking guidance after being sexually assaulted. I was blamed and turned away when I needed support. In addition to seeing the greed of mega-churches and how churches cover for preachers who abused their power, that was what did it for me.”
11. “My biological mother ruined her marriage with my dad because she had an affair with a woman. This convinced her that homosexuality was an ultimate sin, and she ended up ruthlessly hateful towards the LGBTQ+ community. When she found out I was bi, she told me how disappointed she was and that she could help me; there were places she would pay to send me to repent. Unfortunately, it was a long time before I finally cut her off. Everything I’ve heard about her since, like how she was convinced that Democrats were the antichrist’s army, that the end times were coming, and that COVID vaccines were the sign of the beast, has all proven to me that cutting her off was the best decision.”
—Anonymous
12. “I grew up in the ’80s amidst the backdrop of televangelism and conspiracy theories. My mother was ‘saved’ when I was 8. In the following years, I tagged along to prayer groups and church to remain relevant as my mother became increasingly withdrawn from the family. But within a year or two, I realized (precocious me!) that religion was definitely not my jam. As soon as I began to pull away from it, my mother began forcefully trying to haul me back. Forced daily prayers, anointing with ‘holy oil,’ and other rituals drove the wedge in deeper, and by 11, I was suicidal because my mother promised me that I’d burn in hell for not believing as she did.”
“As I progressed through my teen years, she hung crucifixes in my closet and snuck into my bedroom at night to pray over me. I couldn’t watch TV, listen to music, see movies, or go anywhere without her. She beat me several times, chanting that her deity was going to ‘bind and cast Satan out of me’ or screaming that she was doing her deity’s work because not beating me was to ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ One of her beatings left me with bruises three inches wide and a foot long as she whipped me with my father’s leather belt. Bear in mind: I was a good kid. I’d never been in trouble, got decent grades, and even worked part-time. After I finally got out, she continued to make efforts to humiliate me. She died alone and miserable, crying and whining. And I celebrated with no regrets.”
—Anonymous
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13. “My dad’s side of the family is extremely Catholic, and growing up, we already felt alienated by them because we weren’t Catholic and went to the Methodist church (which my grandma, the matriarch of the family, went to as well, so I don’t get why it was such a big deal). Even beyond that, they treated us like crap. As an adult, my parents finally confessed that my sister and I were IVF babies and were conceived with a sperm donor, and it felt like I finally got it. I realized as a teenager I was bisexual, and now, as an adult, I’m basically a Republican’s worst nightmare: a bisexual, gender-nonconforming, autistic witch. Since they are voting for Trump (and even attended the rally where he was shot), I realized they don’t care that I’m family. They will gladly do whatever to stamp out my existence for their own religious bigotry.”
“I might see them at a family member’s funeral, but I honestly feel nothing about cutting them out. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? They don’t invite me to holiday gatherings? They don’t even do that now. They’ve never invited me to Thanksgiving or Easter as an adult. I’m unsure if it’s out of laziness or intentional. But I’m done being treated like crap because I don’t fit into their religious ideology.”
—Anonymous
14. “It was abusive, neglectful, and controlling. I was told I would be either institutionalized or shot if I ever mentioned being queer again after coming out to my mother at 14. She would constantly tell me I had the devil in me and claim my grandmother, who had bipolar disorder, was evil and also had the devil in her. I was taught that people of color were a different species and that white people were superior. Bible stories were used to justify hate, supremacy, racism, misogyny, and even spousal rape. The church was horrible to the low-income families that showed up, as well as anyone of a different color, and they would eventually be run off. We were taught by the church that the government ‘of man’ was not superior to God and that we were preparing for a bloody war against those possessed by the devil. Friends, family, and loved ones would be on opposite sides, and we would have to kill them to ‘save’ them. It was bananas.”
“I was not allowed to socialize outside of school or church. My parents were employed in the school system, so I never had a second of freedom. I was bullied endlessly at school for being weird. I regularly thought about suicide or harming others (bullies, mean teachers, coaches). I won’t even get into how weird the church and my parents were about sex. They wanted me to have babies and never saved a dime for me to go to college, despite my being at the top of my class. They allowed my boyfriend to sexually assault me in the family living room despite my pleas to please make him go home. Getting pregnant meant I’d have to stay home, and they wanted that. When I broke off the relationship, they blamed me. My mother sabotaged my college FAFSA and made sure I didn’t get into the college of my dreams. A counselor at school helped me with in-state when they realized what was happening, and I got several in-state scholarships.
I managed to escape, and a dorm mother stepped up to help when she realized what was happening. My parents had thrown all my paperwork away and didn’t have me listed for move-in. The dorm mom found me a spot and helped me enroll that night. She saved my life. Even then, my parents would show up and demand I return home each weekend. They would drive an hour and a half to pick me up and force me to have a job every spare second of the weekend. They also forced me to call them every night at 10:00 p.m., or they called the cops.
They still blame college for me being ‘liberal.’ At 21, I had a nervous breakdown and realized I was queer. I had suppressed it due to fear. Then, I started separating myself from my parents. I paid for college myself, made friends, found the love of my life, and left religion and them behind forever. I can breathe, I am happy, and I feel loved. While it is sad that they have chosen hate and God instead of me, I never regret leaving. Therapy is an ongoing help. You can escape. Religion is a tool to repress, control, and harm. You can be spiritual, find faith, or just do your own thing. You don’t need a community of people who harm you, judge you, and try to control you. You can find one that loves and accepts you as you are.”
—Anonymous
15. “Born and raised Catholic. Grade school, high school, and college were all Catholic. I got married and had two kids. While at Sunday Mass, the priest said in his sermon that anyone who was using birth control was going to hell. I packed the family up, walked out, and never went back.”
—Anonymous
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16. “My sister and her husband became hyper-religious after we (four kids) became adults. Among other things, they shunned my ex-sister-in-law when she came out as gay. They had known and loved my SIL for over 25 years. She didn’t change; they did. I also heard my sister say she didn’t want anyone sleeping in her bed (as visitors) who hadn’t been vaxxed, yet she and her husband refused to be vaxxed, and, yes, they had COVID. They are Trump lovers, they are hypocritical, and they are so non-Christian. There is no milk of human kindness in them. I’m done with my sister!”
17. “When my beautiful son committed suicide, a religious therapist told me that I better hope God has some special circumstance for my son or he’d burn for all of eternity in Hell. Imagine the cruelty to say that to a grieving parent!”
—Anonymous
18. “My father is a pastor in a conservative Christian denomination, as are a bunch of other male extended family members. It was the central thing in my life growing up. I drifted away because, let’s see: subjugation of and refusal to ordain women, rejection of the LGBTQIA+ community, and the refusal to acknowledge science, just to name a few. As a recovering people pleaser, I still played the part and would attend church when visiting my parents until I found out that my dad had been carrying out a multi-year affair with the parish pianist, who was half his age. Did I mention my mother also worked at the same church? He’s still a pastor, and they’re still together, but that experience changed me. I’ve given enough time and attention to something I absolutely don’t believe in. Unless it is a wedding or funeral, I’ll never darken those church doors again.”
—Anonymous
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19. “My father died when I was 7 at Christmas, when my mother was nine months pregnant with my youngest sister. My mother went into labor after the funeral, and while she was in the hospital, she was ‘visited’ by members of the local Church of Christ. Until that point, she had been a non-practicing Catholic. We began attending church three times a week, and the sermons usually followed the same theme: burning in hell. We were taught to believe that my father was in hell because he hadn’t been born again before he passed. Also, it was pre-arranged that my sisters and I would go to a Christian orphanage if anything happened to my mom. I was informed of this decision because I was the oldest child. I had just turned 8.”
“There’s a passage in the Bible that says, ‘The Lord will return like a thief in the night.’ I took this literally and started believing that God was going to take my mom at night when everyone else was asleep, so I stopped sleeping because I thought that if I didn’t sleep, the Lord couldn’t take my mom. This happened for a few years, with me sleeping in bits and pieces. I had to get up several times during the night to make sure my mom was still breathing. No one seemed to notice that anything was wrong with me. My mother worked full-time and was with my younger sisters during any free time.
I wasn’t allowed to participate in most school activities because they were considered sinful. At 14, I started sneaking out of the house, drinking, and doing drugs to try to deal with the trauma of being constantly told that I was a sinner. By the time I was 17, I was a full-blown alcoholic and drug user. I quit going to church, and eventually, so did my mom, but the damage was done. It’s been 40 years since I quit going to church, and I’ve never recovered from the trauma. Both of my sisters became abusive alcoholics and drug addicts who took their trauma out on their children. I have struggled mentally for years, on and off anti-depressants, and constantly battling suicidal feelings. I feel worthless and unlovable. Despite all this, I tried to believe in God but finally gave up.”
—Anonymous
20. “I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church and attended a Baptist college as a commuter my first year. As girls, we were required to wear skirts or dresses. On a day I didn’t have class, I stopped by to pick up something I needed. I had on jeans, a white collared shirt, and penny loafers. A woman I didn’t know saw me in the hall and started screaming, ‘How dare you come here in beach attire!’ I explained that I wasn’t attending class, but right then and there, I’d had enough. I married a boy I met there, and we finished college elsewhere and never went back to church. We’ve been married for 55 years, have led moral, upright lives, and never regretted our decisions.”
—Anonymous
21. “The first instance was when I was four and called bullshit on the whole Noah’s Ark ridiculousness. I could not believe adults bought into all of the very obvious problems with this story. (And for those saying that all civilizations have a ‘Great Flood’ mythology: Of course they do. Humans need water to survive, so they necessarily lived close to flood-prone places.) Secondly, if this god is all-powerful and loves us, why does he allow so much suffering? Why create flies that blind children? Or spread disease? Why all the famine? Why all the abuses we can imagine? If being the victim of childhood (or adult, for that matter) sexual abuse is part of an ‘all-loving’ god’s plan, he can suck my lady dick.”
“If an all-seeing, all-knowing god allows bad people to skate through life unscathed, yet innocent people are jailed and put to death, he either doesn’t care about us at all, or worse, he’s a sicko getting his jollies from the devastation he’s caused.
And then there is the whole abortion issue. If abortion is murder, then that means the collection of cells has a soul. Yet, according to the Bible, two souls inhabiting one body is possession.
Finally, and most importantly, I actually read the Bible. From front to back, not just cherry-picking different passages and verses. The number of contradictions is almost as numerous as the passages themselves. Every single person I know who has read the entire thing is now an atheist. Every. Single. One. The ‘facts’ just don’t add up.”
—Anonymous
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22. “Living in an incredibly abusive family — my father, the physical abuser, and my mother, the emotional abuser — at the grand old age of five (at school), I learned that there was this magical being who could create whole universes with the wave of a hand, and who even loved losers like me. I became top of the Bible class, praying every night for the abuse to stop. After two years, I realized that nothing had changed. So I decided there either WAS no ‘god,’ or if there was, HE didn’t like me either. I started questioning this wonderful ‘god’ and found him lacking in so many areas, it was incredible. Then I discovered dinosaurs, and that was the end of it.”
—Anonymous
23. “When I was an altar boy, one morning, a Black woman genuflected and then entered a pew to pray before mass started. That entire pew of pious all-white congregants and those in the one adjoining it abruptly got up and moved to other pews in the church so as not to be near a person of color. My belief in their god got up and left me that very instant. Haven’t had anything to do with organized religion since.”
—Anonymous
24. “I was brought up Southern Baptist; my father helped build our church. I was baptized at 11. I attended church on Sundays and Wednesdays and went to Vacation Bible School, revivals, etc. As I learned about the world, so many questions arose about my religion. I quickly learned questions were not answered or welcomed in my church. ‘Good girls don’t ask things like that.’ My final straw was when I was around 17 years old. The pastor gave a sermon about how the Equal Rights Amendment was the devil’s work. I turned to my mom and said, ‘I’m done.'”
—Anonymous
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25. “I didn’t so much leave a religious family, but I’ve alienated myself from a bunch of relatives and in-laws as an adult. My heathen crimes: pointing out the hypocrisy of their actions vs. what is actually Christianity, quoting Jesus’s words from their own scripture to support my points, pointing out that those firm ‘moral convictions’ they throw at everyone are actually fear and wickedness, not faith and love, and my favorite, reminding them that Jesus warned his followers about people (like them) who are easily influenced by appearances while they judge others.”
—Anonymous
26. “I was raised in a very strict Catholic household. I went to Catholic school and was very active in my parish. My parents were active in the church — eucharistic ministers, members of the choir, and did readings at mass. It was the center of our world. After college, I was married in the church. My husband and I tried for years to start a family. When we finally got pregnant, we lost our baby at 12 weeks. It was beyond devastating. We turned to the church for comfort and guidance in our grief. Sadly, we were told that since our baby was not baptized, they would spend eternity in purgatory. We were also told that our loss was ‘part of the Lord’s plan.’ Neither sentiment was comforting to either of us.”
“After physically recovering from the loss, we kept trying for our rainbow baby. After another two years, we realized this wasn’t going to happen for us the ‘old-fashioned way’ and sought help from a fertility specialist. Our breaking point was the church not supporting IVF. We walked away and were constantly guilted by our families. As a result, we have cut most of our families out of our lives. To end positively, we are currently expecting our rainbow baby!”
—Anonymous
27. “I was raised Catholic and went to parochial school through eighth grade. It never sat right with me that the nuns said my Methodist neighbors would never go to Heaven. When I moved away after college, I continued to attend church regularly and even joined a parish close to my home. It was mostly couples with young children, but I kept up attendance. I tithed at the beginning of one year, but then I was in a pretty bad car accident. An 18-wheeler decided he wanted my spot on the freeway. I never heard from anyone in the parish to see if I needed anything. I was out of work for months, actually years, recovering. But at the end of that year, I got a past-due notice because I had not kept up my tithe. It just didn’t sit right with me. I never went back. I never lost my faith. I just separated myself from organized religion.”
—Anonymous
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28. “The fact that I had to accept what I was told without any questions bothered me. With the marriage of faith and fundamentalism that started in the ’70s, I knew something had to be wrong. Maybe everything they taught me was wrong. I had questions, and I wanted my answers. They still had none. I finally gave up when they aligned with a politician I felt did not represent my values. I felt Jesus supported my decision.”
—Anonymous
29. “I grew up in a small, all white Southern Baptist church from birth through high school. I attended public schools in the city close by, with a fairly diverse racial/social/religious demographic (which I’m thankful for). As I became a teenager, I could no longer handle the constant rhetoric of anyone and everyone that wasn’t Baptist (basically, all my friends at school) were evil and going to hell. You could also feel the racist undertones in the sermons as well. The final straw came when a girl, whose family was a multi-generational member of the church, started dating a young Black man from her school. The elders of the church first tried to bully her into standing in front of the congregation and confessing her ‘sins’ and asking for forgiveness.”
“When that didn’t work, they basically ran their family out of the church (but not the grandparents, because they were well off and tithed well). Thankfully, my family listened to me and understood the hypocrisy of the whole place, and we left. Aside from random weddings/funerals (not at that place), I haven’t been to church since. That was 25 years ago. Throw in all the Christian-nationalist crap we have today, and yeah, I’m good…”
—Anonymous
30. “I grew up in a Baptist church and went on Sundays and Wednesday evenings for a couple of years. My parents suddenly moved our family to the Assembly of God and became very, very active. I was pushed into a youth group. It was very cliquish. Being from the wrong side of the tracks, I just didn’t quite fit in. It came to a bitter end for me when, on a church youth retreat while in my senior year of high school, the youth pastor yelled, screamed, and cursed at me for hanging out with other youth I knew from previous years. I wound up calling home, spending the night at the bus station in the freezing cold as it was snowing, and going home alone. I have been back to church exactly twice since then: my wedding and my father’s funeral. To this day, I can remember what the youth pastor screamed at me. He never apologized. He told my parents and the church pastor it was my fault. It left emotional scars and mental ones as well.”
—Anonymous
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31. “I couldn’t ‘honor’ my horrifically abusive parents. And the stories made no sense to my logical brain. When I asked questions, I was told I was faithful enough and to be careful, or I’d go to hell by a priest. Also, why can’t women serve in the Catholic Church? No organized religion makes sense to me. I’ve been better off without it for over 40 years.”
32. “I grew up in a very strict Church of Christ household. We attended church services every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night. This doesn’t count gospel meetings (an entire week of evening church services), church camp, vacation Bible school, or mission trips. My first negative experience was around second grade when our Bible study teacher told my best friend that her grandmother was going to hell for being a Baptist. When I went to college, I worked in a dive bar where the servers wore tank tops and typically short shorts or skirts (hey, I had bills to pay). One night, I had a big table come in, and one of the guests happened to be the son of the preacher from my childhood church. He looked me up and down very demeaningly and said, ‘I wouldn’t expect you to work…here.’ Mind you, he was patronizing the very establishment he was chastising me for working at!”
“Finally, when my grandfather died, it was revealed that he had sexually abused members of our family. When brought to the church’s attention, they decided to sweep it under the rug as long as my grandfather paid restitution to those he had abused. That’s when I realized why he had left me way more in inheritance money than my sister. I had blocked out the abuse and still don’t have closure because some old dude in a church found it more important to save the sanctity of their congregation than to out a sexually-abusive monster.”
—Anonymous
33. “I was married to an abusive alcoholic. I went to a priest for counseling or assistance to leave. He said, ‘If you prayed, you could deal with it.’ I was sitting in front of him, with a black eye, a busted lip, and bruises on my neck where he’d choked me. I replied, ‘I don’t want to deal with it. I want it to end.’ He said, ‘Just pray harder.’ I just walked out.”
—Anonymous
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