Last night CBS Religion & Culture aired a short documentary (26:55) about the ongoing struggles of people who were raised in evangelical Christian churches but later left them for any one of dozens of possible reasons. Followers of this blog know that’s very much in my wheelhouse, and some may even remember CBS Sunday Morning including me in one of their previous treatments of this subject as a part of their coverage of the Openly Secular campaign. They interviewed half… Read more
December 4, 2018
Deconstructing My Religion: A CBS Documentary (Video)
December 4, 2018 By Neil Carter
0 Comments
December 3, 2018
What’s a Church For, Anyway?
December 3, 2018 By Neil Carter
0 Comments
I recently wrote about a revelation of sorts that I feel I need to unpack a bit more. I attended a large Baptist church in an affluent community not too far from where I live and witnessed first-hand how sincerely some white evangelicals are struggling to understand why all their valiant efforts at winning the culture wars in America haven’t actually made anything better. In fact, things seems to be getting progressively worse every day. To be sure, they’ve won… Read more
November 29, 2018
Disagreeing with You Doesn’t Mean I Hate You
November 29, 2018 By Neil Carter
0 Comments
From time to time I get commenters who accuse me of hating Christians and, no matter how sincerely I implore them to show me where in my writings I demonstrate hatred for them, they always seem to just keep repeating the assertion without offering anything specific. This both fascinates me and annoys me. Granted, this accusation tends to come from people who haven’t read much at all of what I’ve written. In fact, I usually get the sense that commenters like… Read more
November 22, 2018
How the Church Became What Jesus Hated
November 22, 2018 By Neil Carter
0 Comments
While I’ve considered myself an atheist for nearly a decade now, sometimes I go back to church again just to remind myself of why I left it all behind in the first place. The experience rarely disappoints. The past two free weekends I decided to visit a church I had never been to before—even though I did go to kindergarten there when I was little. Or rather I went there when it was still in its old location, back before… Read more
November 18, 2018
Outgrowing Our Religion: Are We Ready?
November 18, 2018 By Neil Carter
0 Comments
An old friend from my church days pulled me aside one day to ask me a few questions about why I left the faith. I appreciated her willingness to talk to me, especially given that her husband, with whom I had been closer, hadn’t spoken a word to me since he first heard the news. After grilling me about a handful of topics, she quipped that she didn’t see any horns sprouting out of my head. I didn’t at all… Read more
November 4, 2018
Husband to Wife: Without Jesus You’re Unlovable
November 4, 2018 By Neil Carter
0 Comments
I interact almost daily with friends who no longer buy the Christian story but whose families still do, and you wouldn’t believe the things they hear about themselves from their loved ones. Or maybe you would. If you’ve ever been the only skeptic in a sea of devout believers, it’s quite possible that nothing will surprise you. One friend who kept her atheism from her evangelical Christian husband for years finally told him the truth just a few weeks ago,… Read more
October 31, 2018
What the Great Pumpkin Teaches Us About Faith
October 31, 2018 By Neil Carter
0 Comments
Like every year before, last night my girls and I dusted off our copy of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown to watch while we carved our own pumpkin to greet trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood. I love watching how my daughters’ faces squinch up as they grope around inside the gutted gourd, extracting seeds and goop to make room for the little candle we’ll put inside. I also enjoy watching Linus van Pelt perennially gushing about The Great Pumpkin, a fictitious being… Read more
October 18, 2018
What the Church Is Doing Right
October 18, 2018 By Lori Arnold
0 Comments
I work for a humanitarian network, so I spend a lot of time talking about service in the community. At work recently, I participated in a number of meetings with different individuals discussing ways to increase service delivery and the engagement of volunteers. Unsurprisingly, what came up over and over again was people’s involvement in their churches. They shared the different missions and ministries their congregations are involved in, and these conversations made me want to turn the page a little… Read more
October 12, 2018
Smallfoot: Following the Evidence Wherever It Leads
October 12, 2018 By Neil Carter
0 Comments
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” –Upton Sinclair This past weekend I went to see the movie Smallfoot, and I gotta tell ya, it hit me in the feels. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a cinematic masterpiece, and if you’re not much for animated flicks, you’re probably not going to care much for this one, either. But with four daughters I’ve been a… Read more
October 4, 2018
You Do It, Too: How Whataboutism Teaches Us Not to Trust You
October 4, 2018 By Neil Carter
0 Comments
People use a lot of bad arguments online, but few frustrate me more than the tu quoque fallacy, otherwise known as whataboutism. It is, of course, one of the most commonly used methods of changing the subject, dating back as far as grade school when we used to win arguments by shouting “I know you are but what am I?” and “I’m rubber, you’re glue…” Sadly, most of us don’t outgrow this. But here lately it’s become a virtual epidemic,… Read more
get the latest from
Godless in Dixie
Sign up for our newsletter
POPULAR AT PATHEOS Nonreligious
Browse Our Archives
TRENDING AT PATHEOS Nonreligious
