Quite a few. Dan Barker was a Christian minister before he walked away. But the truth is, it is much harder to walk away from a religion when one is married and has a family. And sometimes, it can destroy families to even voice doubts.
Christianity isn’t the only religion that has this aspect. Among Orthodox Jews there’s a common refrain that too many are leaving the faith and a standard suggested solution for this is to make kids marry earlier because once they are married they are much more likely to stay in the faith.
But whenever this sort of thing comes up it is important to ask how much do the social structures really depend on the religion? Will your husband love you less if you tell you him don’t believe? Will your friends no longer be friendly? Will they stop providing social support? And if they will stop being friendly on such a basis, what makes you see them as genuine friends in the first place?
There’s no question that these issues are deep and difficult and should probably be handled slowly. I’d recommend maybe sending a version of your question to The Friendly Atheist- one of the writers there has a column (Ask Richard) where he regularly answers questions much like yours and if your question gets to posted then it likely to get a large amount of input in the comments threads from people who went through similar circumstances(it might be worth looking in the archives also to see if they’ve had similar letters in the past. I think they have but I don’t have a link to one off the top of my head).
Quite a few. Dan Barker was a Christian minister before he walked away. But the truth is, it is much harder to walk away from a religion when one is married and has a family. And sometimes, it can destroy families to even voice doubts.
Christianity isn’t the only religion that has this aspect. Among Orthodox Jews there’s a common refrain that too many are leaving the faith and a standard suggested solution for this is to make kids marry earlier because once they are married they are much more likely to stay in the faith.
But whenever this sort of thing comes up it is important to ask how much do the social structures really depend on the religion? Will your husband love you less if you tell you him don’t believe? Will your friends no longer be friendly? Will they stop providing social support? And if they will stop being friendly on such a basis, what makes you see them as genuine friends in the first place?
There’s no question that these issues are deep and difficult and should probably be handled slowly. I’d recommend maybe sending a version of your question to The Friendly Atheist- one of the writers there has a column (Ask Richard) where he regularly answers questions much like yours and if your question gets to posted then it likely to get a large amount of input in the comments threads from people who went through similar circumstances(it might be worth looking in the archives also to see if they’ve had similar letters in the past. I think they have but I don’t have a link to one off the top of my head).