On the Turning Away
mousethief
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
Sorry if this is on the wrong board.
I wonder what people's experiences have been of "deconverting" from Christianity, or walking away from the faith. (Or to be more precise having the faith walk away from one.) Especially of the risk of losing friends who have been co-religionists. Especially especially, if possible, as an ADHD person who has a fuck-hard of a time retaining friendships in the first place. Any thoughts would be welcome. The person on whose behalf I am asking has not yet told a whole lot of people of their (what seemed sudden) recognition of loss of faith.
I wonder what people's experiences have been of "deconverting" from Christianity, or walking away from the faith. (Or to be more precise having the faith walk away from one.) Especially of the risk of losing friends who have been co-religionists. Especially especially, if possible, as an ADHD person who has a fuck-hard of a time retaining friendships in the first place. Any thoughts would be welcome. The person on whose behalf I am asking has not yet told a whole lot of people of their (what seemed sudden) recognition of loss of faith.
Comments
If one's faith seems as though it as evaporated, or one's doctrinal position has changed, why the need to tell anyone? Keep friendships going I say.
I anticipate some heart-breaking stories in this thread.
I would say my struggle with the faith has to do with seasonal depression. As the light gets shorter I struggle with doubt. But as the light gets longer my doubts begin to fade. I take medication to help with my overall depression. It gives me a base from which I can function.
I find many people do struggle with certain teachings and dogma of a religious community. If so, I would encourage the person to find a group that they feel more aligned with. I have found the Universalist congregation in our community to be very open and accepting of people who question their faith. It has a mix of atheists, agnostics even believers that care for each other.
Existential challenges are hard, I know. There are other secular groups that may help fill that need for friendship. Explore the community resources available. Many people my age find good friendships in our Community Senior Center.
Will you keep going to church? If not, then you probably lose most of the "casual friends" that you know through, because in practice church is where you meet and chat and nurture your friendship, and if you suddenly stop seeing that person on a weekly basis, the friendship is likely to evaporate - not through any bad intentions on anyone's part, but because you stop showing up.
Close friends who you have developed a strong friendship with outside church (ie. you spend time with each other as individuals, not as part of a church group, which you arrange by phone / email and your friendship doesn't lean in any way on having a shared weekly church activity) are likely to continue as before, unless you have the sort of church group that discourages friendship with outsiders, or your friend won't stop trying to convert you back to their faith, and you get fed up with them.
The arrival of a new vicar who changed everything caused a young friend with Downs syndrome, recently confirmed, to leave the church, together with his mum, both of whom fulfilled a number of useful roles, the lad being a server, a task he had carried out with great dignity and pride. He was persona non grata, rejected. Unlike others who have left, they have not moved to another church.
A family related to me have ceased to attend or to believe because their priest is publicly outspoken against gays. Furthermore, the priest pushed the father out of his study when he challenged the priest about the extraordinarily rapid disappearance of many bottles of whisky from the bar in the church community centre.
Most of the people who've left the church entirely had already gone through it by the time that I knew them, for the most part. People settle into a groove, build their lives accordingly. Some of them are rather lonely people, maybe prefer it that way. Others are less so.
I feel like religion is a big fat multitool and different people use it for different things. Each person is their own particular blend and makes choices based on their own particular experience and needs.
On friendship in general, I've noticed that the vast majority of my "real" relationships happen online, mostly on facebook or on forums like this one. I'm not really good at socializing in person, partly because of suspected autism/ADHD on my own part. I find conversational timing inordinately hard, either monologing all over people or staying silent while I wait for an opening that never appears. Writing makes it easier, I guess, to put thoughts together without worrying about who has the right-of-way. But that's more on friendship and social networks in general than religion in particular.
No idea. I'd been drifting away for some time, then I just kind of looked back and realized it was gone. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with mood or seasonal affective disorder.
No. But we've not been going to church much since the the pandemic. I think that church was acting as a band-aid (plaster) over the growing hole. Absent the plaster, the hole became unavoidable.
This is a fascinating observation. I think you've hit on something.
Boy does that ring true for me.
Paraphrasing something I read recently, if it's presumptuous to think faith will be there solid and unquestioning for ever, it's as presumptuous to think doubt or unbelief are permanent conditions. In any case, the friendship, love and concern carries on.
Certainly I don't have anyone to call a friend.
I'm still I'm touch with former church friends who have lost their faith and I'm on good terms with people from former church affiliations. I'm not sure whether there are general principles - beyond the Golden Rule - and imagine these things vary case by case as it were.
That said, I think fellas find it harder to form and maintain close friendships than women do - although that might be a sweeping generalisation.
It's interesting that we are focusing on the relational aspects here, the community side. That's making me think about the extent to which faith itself is a relational thing.
We've probably all heard the analogy about coals in a fire and how if one falls into the grate it soon ceases to burn.
Like all analogies it probably doesn't do to stretch it too far.
I'm not sure I can add anything else.
I have one close male acquaintance who approaches a friend but we don't actually do anything together without our wives. Whereas the two women of the foursome do things together not infrequently. So, no other man I regularly spend time with, or could sit and drink a beer and commiserate with.
I wish we were geographically closer—it sounds like some friends and maybe some help lifting some very difficult burdens over the years is much needed.
Husband had a close church friend who died and has not made any new friends since, superficial acquaintance only. He came to church a few times before dropping it because he was frustrated with people saying Great to see you and that was it. We don't really talk about it because I don't know how and if to move him on mentally. It might just no longer be the right place for us/him and I think he needs to work it out himself, all I can do is support. The kind of don't bother your husband about God, bother God about your husband thing.
Its a bit similar for me but at least there are a couple of people who still make the effort and I also stay in contact with them. I don't see them as trying to "shepherd me back in", but as having a genuine care for me as a person and we just get one another and have similar non-church interests. I think they'd like to see us back at church but are sensible enough to give us space.
Sadly husband can no longer do his favourite sport due to injury and only partially successful surgery. So that's a whole group of people he no longer connects with.
I'm not so much for the whole quiet time thing these days but do enjoy to read Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessey, Jeff Chu and Nadia Bolz Weber, I get notes from their substacks every so often and enjoy thinking on what they've written.
These days I'm more likely to submit to a parliamentary enquiry, sign a petition or give to a fundraiser online for the issues I think are important. I like that no one other than God sees me do this and I hope to somehow contribute to change even if only in a small way. Apologies if this is a bit all over the place
Not at all. I appreciated what you have to say.
Thinking about this: The handful of friendships that I have were all founded in the context of (conservative) evangelicalism. When I first became aware that some people in our circles did behave as though friendship depended on adhering to a statement of faith, it seemed important enough to remember (as it became relevant) to make clear to my friends how little my friendship depended on our/their beliefs or whether they acted in accordance with those beliefs.
Secondly, my experience has been that the true friendships last through whatever changes happen. I guess because you love your friend for who they are not for who you thought they were and vice versa. Based on your online persona I imagine that there many folk who deeply love and respect you IRL.
Thank you, that's very kind. I hope you are right, and only time will tell.
Their son has gone on to do very well indeed. Having weathered the shared experience over 20 years ago has certainly made them friends for life.
MT is a good guy and it's great to have him.on these boards.
A dozen years or so ago I went though exactly what the OP describes, though. I moved my family 700 miles for a 'corporate' church position, and we fell in quickly and strongly with a couple of highly engaged families. When things broke down for me there, however, and that job ended after not quite two years, it wasn't too long afterwards before those friendships died. I'm sure I was a catalyst in that process, but the pain was real, and definitely more for Mrs. The_Riv than me, I'm sure. And while the loss of those great people is a sizable regret, I can definitely say that I haven't and won't risk that again. No thank you.
But these are all "temporary friends", in the sense that when the work colleagues move away, they become "someone I used to know" - and I'll happily catch up with them over a beer if they're back in town, but we don't sustain an ongoing friendship. Mostly the same goes for the people at church.
There are a couple of friends of my youth who I exchange Christmas cards with, and think fondly of from time to time, but we're not in contact beyond that. Too much water has passed under the bridge, I think.
Aging, and knowing that many significant friends are 20 years older than me, is a bit worrisome.
Many years ago, I was Reader at a snake-belly low C of E church, at which I had been a regular attender for many years. Mrs BF was also a member - Sunday School leader, on the PCC etc.
Our marriage broke up rather suddenly in summer 1988, and, although the Vicar was informed straightaway, the ONLY visit I had from him was to request the return of a PCC file which Mrs BF had been holding...
Pastoral care? Ha-bloody-ha! Sweet fuck-all, except for four friends (a mother + daughter, and an older couple), who kept in touch and supported me (and Mrs BF as well, I think).
I left the church immediately (Mrs BF moved to another town 40 miles away), but attended a rather more inclusive MOTR church not too far distant, until I moved to my present area a couple of years later.
It wasn't so much a turning away from faith, as a turning away from the narrow-minded *faith* I realised was being preached and practised at my former church. It happened that a prominent member of the other C of E parish in the town - also evangelical - had much the same experience as I, at about the same time, and was similarly rejected and spurned as having let the side down, so to speak.
The friends I mentioned above are all now safe in Abraham's bosom, but they remained friends (even though two of them moved to darkest Dorset
It really isn't unknown for an evangelical (say) whose friend-through-church "loses their faith" to try to maintain the relationship in a more notional form (if at all), or switch into "saving the lost" mode. You can analyse this reaction in terms of feeling betrayed, questioning their own faith, sheer incomprehension, etc but, whatever the response, it appears to be rationalised within an all-encompassing faith worldview that doesn't allow them to do otherwise. It's pretty tragic.
Maybe the negligent Vicar, and others, didn't think me worth *saving*.
I have never forgotten though a conversation with a lay leader in the first church. I have a friend of almost forty years standing (only saw her last week) and the church leader took me aside one day to suggest that as this friend was showing no signs of "getting saved" (their language) I should drop her and move on to a more fruitful investment of my time!!
I was utterly appalled and it also caused me to reassess the relationship with me that the church leader seemed to think existed...
My friend is still agnostic and still one of my dearest friends.
Just who the dickens do these people think they are ?
Happily, no-one tried to *save* me, Hellbound Heretick that I am, which is just as well, as I can speak Very Sharply and Icily at need...
I wonder, however, if the reverse hasn't been true for some people. Has the loss of a friendship ever caused a crisis or total loss of faith?
Example 1: a falling out with a friend/ family member ( plural applies) with involvement in church/ religious group can result in such a sense of alienation/ abandonment as to put a dent in/ destroy faith.
Example 2: excommunication/ disfellowship can do likewise, especially in. Church/ religious setting where the group dynamic is important
Example 3: a situation where the church leader/ highly respected individual is seen to be less than perfect/ totally wrong/ abusive (you name it). Disillusionment, disappointment and downright anger can and does call the same.
Church as community can be great but when things go alwry then the faithful suffer.
Yes.
I've experienced Examples 1 and 2 (both at much the same time). They certainly put a dent in my faith, and led to my spending 20 years away from church. I did eventually return to the fold, but...
...Example 3 has been my experience more recently, thanks to the egregious Father Fuc*wit, and this has encouraged (?) me to look more closely at what I once called faith.
But that depends on what you mean by "friendship", doesn't it? There are a group of people who are "church friends". I like these people. I enjoy spending time with them, but we only spend time together at church functions. The thing we have in common is church. So we seek out each other's company at church meals and social occasions.
Are they my friends? Sure - but if I stopped going to church, I'd stop seeing them, because I would no longer be going to the place that I see them. In this context, stopping going to church is no different from stopping going to any kind of club associated with a sport or hobby: you're probably going to stop seeing most of the people you used to do that thing with, purely because you're no longer doing whatever that thing is.
It wouldn't be the loss of belief per se that would affect the friendship - it would be the loss of showing up at church.
I've been enjoying working through Rachel Held Evans searching for Sunday and the she made a comment which resonated with me that probably explains why I still see myself as in the tent rather than outside at present. She says, "I have an investment in the church universal, ... I have an investment in the community that first introduced me to Jesus. Like it or not, I've got skin in the game". That was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me, it really resonated. I wonder whether it does so for anyone else?
I suppose it also depends on the extent to which loss of belief involves personal change - plenty of friendships already end with people drifting apart because they 'grow' apart.
This has happened to me twice. The first time, many MANY years ago, I was in a highly charismatic Baptist church. I fell ill and was off work for over a month. This was about a month after our first child was born. During that time, almost no-one from the church called to see how we were doing. We thought we were in a caring Christian community but it turned out that most people weren't interested in us if we weren't happy and joyful.
The second time was much more recently. Some people in the church where I was the minister conspired to force me out - this was during COVID, when I (and every other minister I knew) had been working flat out to get such things as online services etc etc in place. Although I desperately wanted to stay on, it was finally made clear to me by people I trusted (not in that church) that it was a hopeless situation and for my own welfare, I needed to leave. Once again, I found that people I thought I could count as friends simply disappeared. They may not have been part of the conspiracy, but they didn't even try and phone me to ask how I was doing.
Both times, this changed my faith. Not so much lost it, but it certainly changed its nature. When life is going well, it is easy to buy into the happy platitudes about how great God is and how great it is to be a part of the Christian family. But when things collapse and you find yourself alone and abandoned, you see things in a very different way. And it takes time to work through all that and start to go forward again. It is very easy to just quit or else to become bitter and cynical.
I am still in contact with a few from our most recent congregation. One person knows for sure that I've moved to an agnostic position. Others I am not so keen to share with. I sometimes wonder if people don't make contact because they either fear rejection, or that they don't want to have to assess the difficulties some are facing against their own faith position. I'm sorry I can't articulate that more clearly.
I think I've been in the bitter/disappointed stage for a while, but I do rejoice in the commitment of others and the faithfulness of those relationships in a mutual sense.