Deconverted: Why People Turn Their Back on God

In my 2022 book, Deconverted: The Deconstruction and Dismantling of the Contemporary Church, I interviewed a number of former self-professed Christians who turned their back on the Christian faith and had embraced the ideology of atheism. Some had even become anti-theists, claiming the religion was not just a worldview to be rejected, but that religion as an institution was innately evil. There were a number of things learned from these interviews that I’d like to share.

Nobody Rejected Christianity Based on the Evidence 

            While I attempted to raise questions of historicity, archeological evidences, and scientific evidences confirmed in the Bible, there was not a single person who pursued religious deconversion as a result of evidential evaluation. All of the deconversions from my interviews were based on experiential events in their lives. A man who lost his son to a horrible accident which eventually led him to question God. Events or relationship in church that sourced or became toxic. There were people who lost jobs, experienced the death of parents, and other life events that instigated a re-evaluation of the transcendent. As a follower of Christ, the most disconcerting to me were the stories of apathy by the church as to the deconversion process occurring in their lives. Some of the deconversions occurred over the course of years as they struggled through the possibility of stepping away from the community of church that had become such a big part of their lives. For these people, experience trumped historical evidence, so they turned their back on God.

Cognitive Dissonance: God Versus Culture

Another common thread was evident among the interviewees; almost all were politically left leaning, even while they considered themselves to be a Christian. They supported key tenets of leftism in today’s moral culture war including abortion, LBGT activism, feminism, and gender/identity ideology; all of which conflict with the objective moral framework of historic Christianity and biblical scripture. Thus, was the basis of their cognitive dissonance (the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of the attempt to reconcile the differences).

Eventually, for those interviewed for my book, culture and postmodern thinking won a war of their mind. Even one gentleman who had been politically conversative before his deconversion, switched his politics with his faith and said to me, “I never knew how racist Republicans were before I became an atheist.” He even used the pejorative as a descriptor of the “Christian God” as well.[1]

There’s Only Two Worldviews

Even in a world of seemingly endless opinions and ideologies, they all boil down to only two: Either God is God, or I am God. The first recognizes something transcendent and greater beyond themselves. With the second, people simply elevate themselves, their perspectives, their experiences, their rejection of transcendent and objective truth, and in doing so, their own version of reality becomes their ultimate deity.

Harry Emerson Fosdick once said, “When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.”[2] One needs to look no further than the latest psychological literature to see evidence of the disastrous impact on modern society of the god of self. As God is slowly eliminated from relevance in modern society, psychosis, anxiety, mental health drug prescriptions, and suicides are at all-time highs. More than 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2023. More than any other year on record.[3]

Originally written in 1882 and reprinted in English countless times since, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote of a speech on a crowded street corner by a “madman” declaring the death of God and placing the blame on society:

“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace, and cried incessantly: ‘I seek God! I seek God!’—As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter . . .”

“The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his look. ‘Whither is God?’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? . . . . Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the godly decomposition—Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

“How shall we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? . . . Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods if only to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”

“Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last, he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men . . . . This deed is still most distant from them than the most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.”[4]

Nietzsche’s point about wiping away the horizon is that man unknowing eliminates humanity’s frame of reference for their reality. In doing so, we would become psychologically distorted and disoriented. There is ample evidence in the 21st century that Nietzsche was right on the mark.

Humanity needs God. Our soul thirsts for Him. Our psyche depends on Him. Meaning, purpose, destiny, and justice are meaningless words without Him. God is not dead, nor is He silent.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream, and does not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought, nor cease to yield fruit (Jeremiah 17:7-8).

[1] Jeffery Childress, Deconverted: The Deconstruction and Dismantling of the Contemporary Church (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2022), 32.

[2] Although commonly attributed to Fosdick and others such as Banjamin Franklin and John Ruskin, n evidence has been found to identify the original source of the quote.

[3] Staff Article and Video, “More Than 50,000 Americans Died by Suicide in 2023,” nbcnews.com,   https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/more-than-50-000-americans-died-by-suicide-in-2023-more-than-any-year-on-record-201161285832, accessed February 17, 2024.

[4] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2012), 125.