Letters From Leavers

All my life I was told to respect the church and believe and I did. When the clergy abuse scandals started coming to light I was horrified. I couldn’t believe institutions that professed to be about the truth and love covered it up, hid it and denied it. Then the media was blamed. I then did what I was always taught to do, I went and talked to someone in the church about it. In the end I didn’t get any kind of answers that satisfied me in any way. In fact I was purely disgusted! I got a retread of what was in the papers and the pass-the-buck-blame-game.

After a lot of soul searching and thinking I was close to making a decision about what I wanted to do then one action pushed me to one: the church asked the CONGREGATION to assist in paying off a judgement. Oh NO! NO WAY! NOT ME! Not only did they cover it up, allow it to continue, blame everyone else, do nothing about it, let the victims suffer, do nothing for the victims, etc. but now they had the GALL to ASK the congregation to pay for THEIR mistakes. I was DONE! D-O-N-E! I come from a large family who goes back countless generations with that religion but I was through. I didn’t just leave, I formally resigned with a letter that stated clearly, with no ambiguity, why I was resigning and how appalled I was by what was done.

No, it wasn’t easy. I got personal visits from clergy and other church members. I got calls from relatives (I was under 18 at the time). They tried everything but I was gone, G-O-N-E! No more for me. The disgust I felt for the institution knew no bounds. They may do some good acts but it cannot, in my opinion, make up for how it treated the most vulnerable of its’ followers.

At that point I still did believe in God. I bounced from church to church trying to find one I felt good in. I couldn’t find one. Either I was ignored by all, had their doctrine shoved down my throat, was creeped out by over-religious members that tried to reel me in like a fish on a hook, listened to sermon after sermon where the thing most mentioned was money and how to be sure you tithed, how they were right, blatant politics from the pulpit, having a rigid belief shoved down your throat with no room to question and everyone else was wrong so they were going to hell. In that exploration I heard, from a religion that is supposed to be about love and peace, some of the most hateful and nasty things about certain types, classes, kinds, etc. of people that I was horrified. I couldn’t believe the hatred and nastiness coming from places of worship. In the end I gave up, deciding to just be spiritual without a church.

I sat down and did what so many tell you when your faith begins to falter; I read the bible and anything else I could about my religion. In the end all that came from it is a great deal of confusion. Suddenly things I had never questioned and took as-is made no sense. The more I read the more it made no sense or came to me that it just couldn’t have happened or if it did where is the proof. The more I tried to find that ‘truth’ the more I was driven away. Finally, the inevitable happened: my faith died.

In the end I did find a faith that I believed but it wasn’t in the religion I grew up with. Then, from that religion, I am now seeing the worst yet again. Not only do people try to do the heavy duty conversion with me-trying to bring me back (that hard sell does the opposite with me sorry) but like so many others of my faith we see the worst of the hateful nature of that faith; being called the foulest of names, getting the superior attitude, out and out discrimination in so many cases, hatefulness and in some cases pure threats and meanness! It was so bad that those of us around here had to get an order of protection against several church groups! So much for peace, love and understanding…

Despite that I am finally happy with my faith and at peace with it. I made my choice and it suits me.

clergy abuse, hate