When I was eighteen, I was preparing to get baptised, and part of the service included me sharing my testimony. The testimony of how I became a Christian, how God had changed my life, and why I was choosing to get baptised. The purpose of this was partly evangelistic, to share what had transformed my life in the hope it might lead to a similar transformation in somebody else. It was also really helpful for me as a self-reflection, to enable me to work out for myself exactly why I was making this decision, and to give me a written record to look back at in the future. I’ve blogged a lot recently about the ways my faith has changed and deconstructed. But I still get a lot of people asking me what happened. What caused my deconstruction, and the changes in my faith and beliefs? This post is an attempt to answer that question, a ‘Testimony of Unbelief’ if you like.
I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t go to Church. From a young age, my mum took my sister and me along with her on Sunday mornings to our local Anglican church. I went through Sunday School, youth groups, and started playing in the music group. When I was 16 I started going to the youth group at a different church, was introduced to a more charismatic expression of Christianity, and went to a festival called Soul Survivor where I experienced the Holy Spirit for the first time. My faith became more central to my life, and I started to take things more seriously. I got baptised and I was involved in various forms of leadership at that church, I lead youth services and youth groups, preached and got involved with numerous evangelistic projects. Alongside this, I was also playing in the band and running a lot of the technical production. By the time I was 20, I first started experiencing doubt and burnout. I was devoting a lot of my time and energy to the church, but being one of the only twenty-somethings in the church, I wasn’t getting much input for myself, so I decided to move to a church which was more geared towards my age group. This lead me to a large Anglican mega-church in Central London.
It was around this time that I also started to question some of the teachings that I had been brought up on. Throughout my Christian journey up until this point, I had been taught that homosexuality was a sin. I didn’t know anything else and didn’t really know any gay people (and those I did know didn’t go to Church), so I never really gave it much thought. Then something changed, some close family members came out, and I started meeting gay Christians. All of a sudden all the abstract teaching I that I’d been brought up on became personal, and it didn’t add up. So I started to question things and actively searched for some way of reconciling the teaching I had been brought up to believe and the reality I saw in front of me.
While this was happening, I began a leadership course at my church, part of which included two modules on the Bible. We looked at the authorship, the context and how the Church ended up with the collection of books exist today. This fascinated me because I started to read the Bible in a whole new way. I was shown the difficult passages, the contradictions and how little we know about who wrote it. I started to get more questions, more doubt and more uncertainty about the faith I had given my life to when I was a teenager. It was as if I had pulled a thread on my jumper and suddenly the whole thing was coming undone.
Once I finished the leadership course, I began to work for the Church doing media and marketing. I was surrounded by Christians, I spent almost every day and evening either working for the church, attending the church or serving the church through leading small groups and doing production. When it came to my six-month probation meeting I was feeling positive about getting a full-time position; I was meeting my targets, and I got on with most of my co-workers. However the powers that be decided for whatever reason (I didn’t find out), my contract wasn’t going to be extended beyond my probation period. I lost my job just like that, and with it lost some of my faith and security in the Church.
That happened a year ago, and since then I’ve tried to remain part of the Church. I threw myself into the leadership of my connect group; I set myself up as a freelancer doing the thing I loved, and I started investing in friendships outside of Church. However time and time again I’ve found myself being burnt by the Church. Empty promises were made, people let me down, but above all my questions and doubt spiralled out of control. Slowly but surely, all the certainties that I once had, the foundations my once strong faith had been built upon, vanished. I was left feeling lost, confused, and utterly alone.
I, like so many others, didn’t realise I wasn’t the only one asking these kinds of questions. It was only through discovering initiatives like The Liturgists Podcast, and later the work of radical theologians such as Pete Rollins that I realised I wasn’t going crazy. I found enormous comfort in listening to other people that are on similar journeys to myself. People who, like me, have been burnt or are frustrated by the (lack of) helpful answers given by the mainstream, predominantly evangelical, Church. I discovered that there is a growing movement of individuals who feel spiritually homeless, who don’t want to give up on the Christian story but feel that mainstream Christianity is becoming an increasingly sinking ship.
Last November I attended an event hosted by the Liturgists called ‘Belong’, here felt for the first time that there was a community where I could belong. In April, I attended a week-long festival in Belfast called ‘Wake’, which explored the importance of mourning the death of God, and how to move forwards in life after the death of God. Finding community and other people who are on a similar journey out of mainstream Christianity has been so valuable. It’s given me the confidence to be honest about my questions and my struggles, taught me that doubt and questions can be an incredibly healthy part of faith, and most importantly that I am not on my own.
W. H. Auden, a twentieth-century poet, in a lot of his writings talked about the difference between ‘believing still’ and ‘believing again’. For him, believing still referred to a naive approach to faith, still believing the faith that you were handed growing up, without question. Believing again, however, means coming face to face with that which you can’t believe anymore, face to face with your unbelief, and coming to terms with it so you can move forward in life. I’m choosing to believe again. In letting go of Christianity and the faith that I once had, I’m choosing to move forwards, not backwards. My goal is not to negate or ignore the experiences I’ve had in the past. For me, this as a journey beyond faith, beyond Christianity and towards the mystery. Because it really all is a mystery. Yes, I owe a lot to my tradition, it has shaped and formed me into the person I am right now. But Christianity, like all religions, is a human structure, a container to help us understand and make sense of the mysteries of the universe. I’m choosing to believe again because I’ve tasted and seen something beautiful in this mystery. It’s just Christianity as a container, for me, is not working.
I realise that this is my story, and yours may be totally different to mine. I’m not saying I have everything figured out, in fact, I’d hope reading my blog shows you that I really don’t. If you’re reading this and you call yourself a Christian, I’m not trying to change that. Christianity is still a system that works for many many people, and if you are one of those that is fantastic. However, if you’re reading this and you have questions or doubts about the tradition you grew up in, then know that you, too, can believe again. Don’t expect the answers you come to to be the same as mine, the one thing I’ve discovered as I’ve spoken to others I’ve met who are on similar journeys to myself, is that we will never agree on everything, and that’s OK. But please know that you’re not on your own, and I’d encourage you to find people you trust and talk to them about it, whether that’s face to face or online. I know first hand that this can be incredibly lonely, so please feel free to comment below or drop me a message here if you want to talk. I would love to hear from you.
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Gordon, I really admire the honesty and frankness of this post. As you may know, I went through something a little bit similar a while ago and in some ways I am still living with the scars and sense of loss. However, you certainly aren’t alone and I can assure you there is life beyond confessional Christianity. Personally, like you I find the work of Pete Rollins and John Caputo, in particular, very helpful in making sense of this. Best wishes as you move forward.
Thanks, Daniel. Helpful to be reminded that someone else has been here and I’m not alone. It can certainly feel lonely! Best wishes to you too, thanks for reading and taking the time to comment! G