This week’s guest is Josh de Keijzer, PhD. Josh writes at After God’s End: Fragments of a Post-Christian narrative Josh grew up in an evangelical home in the Netherlands. He knew his family was “set apart,” different from the mainstream Dutch culture. “I realized…I had been brought up as an evangelical…We were always part of a minority.” As a teenager, Josh took his faith seriously, so he had a hard time with the adults in the church. Their actions did not line up with what they believed, and th...
May 15, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 170
This week’s guest is author Jo Lloyd Johnson. Jo grew up in a “non-denominational charismatic commune”. She spent her adolescence in various churches, but they weren’t as “Spirit-filled” as she was taught they could be. She married young and the first years of marriage were difficult. There was alcohol abuse, church shopping, and the difficulties that come with having young children. She and her husband needed the church to be a place of deep and meaningful relationships, but it wasn’t. “When we...
May 08, 2023•59 min•Ep. 169
This week’s guest is Cat Delmar. Cat grew up in a nominally Seventh-day Adventist family. The SDA churches, however, were anything but nominal. They had all the rules, from no caffeine to no pierced ears. “There’s a lot of control of the body [in Seventh-Day Adventism].” At sixteen, Cat took ownership of her faith and started going to church on her own, but she never quite fit in. By her twenties, she realized that the difficult questions in adulthood don’t have easy “Biblical” answers. Before s...
May 01, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 168
This week’s guest is Stephanie, a Deconversion Anonymous group member. Stephanie grew up in the Assemblies of God church as a Missionary Kid for most of her childhood. Her younger years held all the trappings of white American evangelicalism, from conservative Christian school curricula to a paralyzing fear of going to hell forever. “The ‘hell belief’? It’s a sticky one.” Stephanie’s beliefs, however, had been set on precarious foundations: Christians are good and everyone else is bad; the Bible...
Apr 24, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 167
This week’s guest is Kelly. Kelly was raised as a daughter in a traditional evangelical household, “indoctrinated from diaperhood.” They grew up perfectionistic, depressed, timid, and anxious, given Christian cliches about ‘God always being with them’ through their depression. Who they really needed were queer, whole, mentally healthy adult mentors. “There was a dizzying array of mental exercises I had to engage in to keep the faith.” Today, Kelly is living their truest life with wisdom and comp...
Apr 17, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 166
This week’s guest is Bart D. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His new book is Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End . Is the book of Revelation a prophecy of future catastrophe? Is it a book of hope? Or is it a book of violence and wrath? In Armageddon, Bart delves into the most misunderstood—and possibly the most dangerous—book of the Bible, exploring the horrifying social and political consequences of expecting...
Apr 10, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 165
TW: sexual violence; intimate partner violence; postpartum PTSD This week’s guest is Grace. Grace was fortunate not to grow up in the church, but when she became a Christian in high school, she—in her own words—“quickly became the quintessential insufferable Christian teenager.” Grace was a zealous believer for years, and it wasn’t until she had her first child that the questions began coming. At first, she didn’t think she was deconstructing her faith; she saw it as spiritual growth. But then—a...
Apr 03, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 164
This week’s guest bares his whole heart. “My story—at the moment—doesn’t end really well, but there’s hope for the future.” This week’s guest is Matt. Matt grew up in a Methodist family and after partying through high school, Matt chose to attend a Christian college and became serious about his faith. As an adult, Matt did everything he could to be all things to all people—a good husband, a good leader, a father, a friend, a mentor… He tried for years, but superhuman expectations are put on Chri...
Mar 27, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 163
This week’s guest is David Hayward, also known as The Naked Pastor . David is “a pastor turned artist painting, drawing, and thinking about what it takes to be free to be you.” For over a decade, David has been creating online spaces for anyone “interested in deconstruction, spiritual journeying, freedom of thought, or looking for your authentic self.” His personal story and the wisdom he’s gained over the years continues to speak to those of us who have completely left religion and those who st...
Mar 20, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 162
This week we are celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Graceful Atheist Podcast! In this episode, you’ll meet everyone who works alongside David on the podcast, the website or the online community. Joining David are Arline, Mike T, Jimmy, Colin and Daniel. They discuss some of their favorite movies, shows and books highlighting deconversion or secular grace . It’s a great conversation that you won’t want to miss! Interact For quotes, recommendations, transcripts and more see the full episode...
Mar 13, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 161
This week’s guest is Jennifer Michael Hecht, bestselling author of Doubt: a History plus many other works. Her latest book, The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives comes out this week! Jennifer is a poet and historian and in this interview, she makes a solid case for the important place that poetry—and other art forms—can have in our lives. “It’s got to be a poet who says, ‘This virtue still matters,’ because we’re at a moment where we don’t even know...
Mar 06, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 160
This week’s guest is Stacie, the creative mind behind the @apostacie on Instagram and the co-host of @skeptichaven on Youtube. Stacie grew up in charismatic churches, believing what she learned about and experienced at church was normal—from speaking in tongues to full-on demonic oppression. It wasn’t until Stacie was an adult that she began to seriously question her upbringing. After watching a Reformed-Christian documentary about the Charismatic church, the questions started coming. “I made th...
Feb 27, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 159
This week’s guest is Anne. Anne grew up in an English family whose Christian history goes back generations. As a young child, Anne and her twin took their beliefs seriously, even the damaging ones. Her parents’ divorce shook her up. Her family had been “ that Christian family,” and it felt like her parents had become strangers. Still, she clung to her faith throughout her teens and twenties. Anne married young, meeting an American missionary while in Scotland, but it seemed her partner wasn’t as...
Feb 20, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 158
This week’s guest is Audrey. Audrey spent her childhood and adolescence deep in American Christianity. In college, she took a course in “biblical perspectives,” and she had many questions. She would shelve the cognitive dissonance for years, though, pretending that everything was fine. After years of experiencing church from the inside and working around more “secular” people, the uncertainty could no longer stay buried. “Something just wasn’t right.” Audrey is an atheist now, but deconversion i...
Feb 13, 2023•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 157
This week’s guest is Taylor. Taylor grew up in a small church in a small town, surrounded by Christianity. She had family devotions at home and a private-Christian-academy curricula at school. By twenty-one, however, she moved out and stopped attending church completely. Her “personal relationship with Jesus” was more important than church-going. While watching a loved one live with cancer and then face death, Taylor’s faith gave her hope and meaning, until it couldn’t. Depressive episodes came ...
Feb 06, 2023•55 min•Ep. 156
This week’s guest is Rachel Hunt. Rachel is both the Support Group Director and an Ambassador for Recovering From Religion. From her RFR bio, “Rachel is a motorcycle-riding ballroom dance teacher from rural Texas. Married with two adult children, Rachel has a strong interest in psychology, philosophy, and communication, in addition to the creative arts and home improvement. She was raised in Christian Science but drifted off as a teenager. She explored Scientology, Law of Attraction, and a varie...
Jan 23, 2023•53 min•Ep. 154
This week’s guests are Brian and Troy of the podcast, I was a Teenage Fundamentalist. They interviewed David at the end of 2022, and now it’s our turn to hear from them. Brian and Troy “used to be loyal Christians megachurch leaders. They’re not anymore.” Their parallel stories are fascinating, as we are given a glimpse into their past lives and the Pentecostal movement in Australia. Today, Brian and Troy’s “honest and often hilarious podcast peeks behind the curtain at the weird, the worrying a...
Jan 16, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 153
This week’s guest is Evan Clark. Evan is the Executive Director of Atheists United. Evan grew up in a partially religious home, but at six years old, the idea of a god didn’t make sense to him. He attended a Christian liberal arts college and was able to start its first atheist group. Since then, he’s gone on to create many humanist communities. In this episode, Evan explains why atheist spaces in the US differ from spaces in other more progressive countries, why community is not the only thing ...
Jan 09, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 152
Arline guest hosts to ask David anything. David tells his deconversion story. He talks about the beginning of the Deconversion Anonymous FB group. David goes deep on what Secular Grace is and what it means to him. Links Deconversion https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/ Secular Grace https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/ Why I am a Humanist https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/11/18/why-i-am-a-humanist/ Interact For quotes, recommendations and more see the full ...
Dec 19, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 151
AMA? Try AAA. Ask Arline Anything. This week’s guest is your community manager, Arline. Arline tells us what she has learned from managing the community and interviewing guests. She explains how her views have changed on Christianity and fundamentalism after deconversion. She let’s us know what makes her mad and what gives her hope. She reveals her love language(s). Join me in thanking Arline for all the work she does for the community and the podcast. Let her know she is appreciated. Interact F...
Dec 12, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 150
Content Warning: Spiritual, physical and sexual abuse. Depression, post-partum depression, infertility and suicidal idealization. Arline guest hosts interviewing author and podcaster, Nicki Pappas. Nicki Pappas is a writer who critiques the evangelical establishment that shaped her. She’s the author of As Familiar as Family: Leaving the Toxic Religion I Was Groomed For . She’s also the host of the Broadening the Narrative podcast where she interviews guests who are broadening the narratives she ...
Dec 05, 2022•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 149
This week’s guest is Jessica Moore, a life coach focusing on purity culture. Jessica grew up in a non-denominational Christian in Salt Lake City Utah surrounded by Mormons. She felt both the pressure to evangelize and be proselytized. Jessica went to an unaccredited Christian college where she first began to have doubts. She wound up traveling to Israel and seeing life on both sides of the Palestinian/Israeli border. She experienced the reverse culture shock coming back to the United States. Jes...
Nov 28, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 148
Ben and Ang have been married for seventeen years. They met as tender homeschooled church-kids. They married young, and the church’s “formula” worked well for a while. They were mostly happy and went on to have kids of their own. But little things from childhood would pop up now and then—purity culture shame, fear of emotions, fear of the end of the world… In June of 2016, the shooting at Pulse nightclub “broke” Ang, and she knew she had to find a different way forward. By 2017, they both were o...
Nov 21, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 147
This week’s guests are podcasters, Nathan Alexander and Todd Tavares of Beyond Atheism . Nathan grew up Anglican and in his early twenties, he realized there were no good reasons to continue believing. Todd grew up Catholic—technically still confirmed—but even at ten years old, he was a skeptic, wanting to explore reality rather than make-believe. In this interview, Nathan and Todd discuss racism, humanism, community-building and what it means to live thoughtfully in a godless world. It’s a shar...
Nov 14, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 146
This week’s guest is Heather Wells, author of Trustworthy: A Journey from American Christianity to Freedom . Heather grew up in a happy Christian home, attending a variety of churches—from “Women cannot wear pants,” to “There are drums!” She married at eighteen and expected to have a similarly happy marriage as her parents, but no matter how hard she worked—both literally and metaphorically—that was not going to happen. Heather felt like a spectator, watching the men around her plan her life. It...
Nov 07, 2022•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 145
Humanist author and speaker, Joe Simonetta, grew up in a Catholic home with good values. He and his brothers “did well,” and he is thankful for the foundation his parents gave him. As a young man, affected by all the suffering in the world, he vowed to be part of the solution. He has lived a fascinating life, holding degrees from multiple universities, traveling extensively and enjoying all kinds of professions. His full bio is available here . Joe is hopeful about the future and has three basic...
Oct 31, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 144
This week’s guest is the content creator, @boundless_and_free . Boundless grew up in a good Christian home, attended a PCA church and believed all was well in her life. She would later learn the term CPTSD and understand that a “good Christian upbringing” may not have been quite what she’d thought. In college, Ms. Free first experienced anxiety and depression but had no vocabulary for it. The Church rarely discusses these things. It wasn’t until the “perfect life” she’d been promised began to un...
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 143
This week’s guest is Keke. Keke grew up a PK. Her family was in church, “running the show,” anytime the doors were open. Life at home was difficult for Keke, however, so the church provided a safe haven. But over time, domestic violence, mental health problems and other family secrets were too great a burden for her to carry. After high school, she joined the military, got married and even led her husband to Jesus. Then in 2017, as she was reading a most peculiar bible story to her daughter, she...
Oct 17, 2022•49 min•Ep. 142
This week’s guest is Daniel. Daniel is a social scientist with a master’s degree in psychology. He grew up in the United Church of Canada, but church wasn’t a huge part of his life until high school. He then went to bible college and worked in ministry. He tried to experience God like others were, but it just wouldn’t happen. He took on the “Office of Skeptic,” for himself. He hoped it would both help his faith and the church. He could articulate questions and doubts that others couldn’t. Were t...
Oct 10, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 141
This week’s guest is Treasure who is interviewed by Arline, the Deconversion Anonymous community manager. Treasure grew up in the Seventh Day Adventist tradition. Her whole family was focused on ministry. Treasure is a singer and she was continually asked to sing for every church she attended. She was focused on mental health issues and ministering to people in need. In 2020, Treasure began to quietly question her faith and began the slow painful process of deconstruction. Though she still loves...
Oct 03, 2022•58 min•Ep. 140
