I\u2019ve been blogging for over half a decade now. From time to time, I revise my blog\u2019s \u201cabout\u201d page<\/a>. It\u2019s interesting, looking back, to note how my terminology has changed.\u00a0\u201cI am today\u00a0an atheist, a feminist, and a progressive,\u201d my \u201cabout\u201d\u00a0page declared in 2012. \u201cI am today a feminist, a progressive, and a nonbeliever,\u201d it read in 2014. At that point, the term\u00a0\u201catheist\u201d disappeared completely from my \u201cabout\u201d\u00a0page. Then, earlier this year, 2016, my wording\u00a0changed yet again: \u201cI write about religion as someone who grew up evangelical but is no longer religious,\u201d it now reads.<\/p>\n All of this is to say that I am not surprised that the name of the\u00a0Patheos Atheist channel (where my blog is hosted) changed to Patheos Nonreligious earlier this month, and that I support this change 100%. Dale McGowan does an excellent job\u00a0explaining the channel\u2019s name change<\/a>\u00a0in his announcement post. Rather\u00a0than explore the reasons he lays out there, I thought I\u2019d take some time to look at\u00a0the reasons for my own shifting terminology.<\/p>\n I grew up in a Christian home. I didn\u2019t leave Christianity because I was angry with God or because I was hurt by individuals bearing the label. In fact, I didn\u2019t initially intend to leave Christianity\u00a0at all. I became disillusioned with evangelicalism while in college, partly\u00a0because of problems with young earth creationism\u00a0but also because I became uncomfortable with evangelical teachings about salvation and evangelicals\u2019 one-dimensional\u00a0approach to the Bible. I didn\u2019t leave Christianity, though, I converted to Catholicism. The\u00a0Catholic Church today accepts evolution, encompasses a more liberal approach to salvation, and teaches higher criticism of the Bible.<\/p>\n Then, shortly after starting graduate school, my belief in God vanished. No one was more surprised than me. It didn\u2019t leave because I wanted it to leave;\u00a0I didn\u2019t. It left nonetheless. I could no longer believe in a God\u2014and believe me, I tried. I wrestled with the problem for some time\u00a0before finally accepting\u00a0that I was no longer religious.<\/p>\n A year or so later, as\u00a0I sought to understand some of the esoteric\u00a0aspects of my upbringing\u2014I was homeschooled, and grew up in a home that could be\u00a0loosely termed quiverfull\u2014I came upon a collection of atheist blogs. I read, and I read, and I read. At the time, I was feeling especially frustrated with the limits I had experienced growing up female in a conservative evangelical home. I had experienced some of these same limitations within Catholicism, and, when combined with other problems I\u2019d identified, I\u00a0began to feel that religion itself was a problem. At this point, I fit well within an online atheist community that set its targets on religion\u2014all<\/em> religion.<\/p>\n Then two things happened.<\/p>\n First,\u00a0Rebecca Watson said something about an elevator, and all hell broke loose in the atheist community. It quickly\u00a0became obvious that the same flagrant sexism I\u2019d experienced in religious circles was alive and well in atheist circles as well. In fact, it felt worse in some respects, because while\u00a0evangelicalism and Catholicism placed\u00a0women on a pedestal,\u00a0sexist atheists did not. I\u2019ve got real problems with the pedestal evangelicals and Catholics create for women, believe me<\/em>, and I\u2019ve blogged about this many times; still,\u00a0the things I was seeing within the atheist community felt worse<\/em>, somehow.<\/p>\n Second, one of my professors in graduate school assigned me to write a paper about the ways religion had been used, in a specific historical context, to expand underprivileged groups\u2019\u00a0roles and influence and to push back against patriarchy and other barriers. I was fascinated by what I found. Around the same time I made several new liberal religious friends. At first I simply avoided the topic of religion, not wanting them to be offended by my assertion\u00a0that the world would be better off without their beliefs, but ultimately I found that that was not sustainable, and my views shifted.<\/p>\n I stopped using the term \u201catheist\u201d because I no longer felt I fit within the online atheist community I had once felt\u00a0a part of. Oh certainly, I wasn\u2019t religious, and in that sense I was still technically an atheist\u2014that is, of one defines \u201catheist\u201d merely\u00a0as a person who does not believe in the supernatural. But when people use the term \u201catheist\u201d they frequently\u00a0mean more than that. For many people, the term \u201catheist\u201d has become synonymous with the term \u201canti-theist,\u201d and I am not an anti-theist<\/a>. And so\u00a0I let the term\u00a0\u201catheist\u201d drop from my vocabulary.<\/p>\n Today, if someone asks, I tell them that I am not religious, or that I attend a Unitarian Universalist church (belief in God is not required to attend this church; instead, the\u00a0congregation is unified by shared progressive values). To me, this feels more accurate;<\/em>\u00a0after all,\u00a0if I tell someone I am an atheist they will likely assume I am also an anti-theist, and I am not. I don\u2019t want people to be turned off by a label.<\/p>\n To be sure, there are some who argue passionately in favor of using the label\u00a0\u201catheist\u201d in an attempt to reclaim it from negative stereotypes. They frequently argue that anti-theists shouldn\u2019t own the term, or that anti-thiests are not the grinches they\u2019re often portrayed as. To them, the label is important\u2014and that\u2019s fine!\u00a0But it isn\u2019t to me, and it\u2019s not a battle I feel drawn to fight. I don\u2019t feel I need the label; I\u2019m fine without it.<\/p>\n