Wow! The response to my deconversion story (part 1) was way more than I ever anticipated (it’s my most read/shared piece on substack, by a long shot!).
I was pretty nervous about posting it, but I got through it by taking care of my nervous system and by allowing myself to feel connected to folks who had similar upbringings (instead of, you know, obsessing about how I was betraying all the rules I was raised with). It still feels strange though, to be public about all of this1. There are a heck of a lot of reasons why people don’t talk about childhood religious indoctrination or the similarities between white evangelicalism and cults, and that’s because we are all personally connected to people still in these spaces. The familial, social, and psychological pressure to keep quiet is really intense and is baked into our culture here in the US. I am trying to mitigate some of those pressures by talking about my own story and how it impacts me personally, while also looking at the systems and frameworks that led to me being exploited by white evangelicalism.
Today’s post is going to be behind a paywall, because it gets a bit more personal (while striving to be respectful of all parties involved), and it involves my own children—because they play an important part in me recognizing I was indoctrinated into a high control religion.
For those who are new here, I usually do about 3 public posts a month and one more personal essay that stays behind a paywall (because who wants to pay to hate read, ammiright?)
Anyways, thanks to everyone who came out of the woodwork to say “me too”. It helps me, and it helps more people than you know when we share our stories. I hope we can all find safe and non-triggering ways to talk about this more publicly, since America clearly has a white Christian nationalistic indoctrination problem!
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Some of you have followed my writing for years, and some of you are new here. If you are new, then you might not know my background, so let me (very) briefly spell it out:
I was an undiagnosed autistic child born to a small independent church pastor family. I was homeschooled, and was incredibly sheltered with very few friends (I usually had one friend at a time, usually from church, that I hung out with occasionally). We moved every few years and mostly lived on the west coast of the US (with some stints in Alaska and Wyoming as well). I was intense, full of anxiety, and had a very devout Christian mom who was obsessed with God and the end times. I was surrounded by adults who said God talked to them and told them terrifying things about the world, and that we were some of the only ones who truly understood God’s revelations.
My specific religious trauma centered around being undiagnosed autistic with a mom who talked to me constantly about the end of the world. She also brought me into charismatic spaces where everyone agreed with her, and it was prophesied over me multiple times that I would die a martyr’s death at the hands of the antichrist before I was 162. It’s hard to express how deeply traumatic it was for me to be surrounded by adults who told me—a vulnerable kid—shit like that. No wonder I have been in fight or flight mode since I was a child. I was trained to believe I was in a terrifying cosmic battle and the most horrific thing I could do was deny Christ. If I denied Christ, then everything was in vain: my parents’ faith, my mom’s spiritual experiences, even the central narratives of it being white evangelicals vs. the world. More than anything, this is what I was trained to do: never, ever deny Christ—or the belief that white evangelicals have a special and superior connection to God.
Besides all of that trauma, I also learned early on that the best way to receive basic love, care, and attention was to mirror my parents and what they cared about. This is a common enough experience for kids, but in evangelical-land, it gets amped up even more, and it helps explain why I went so all-in on religion.
If you can parrot what your parents/church believe and even take it farther—memorize the verses, read the right books, show up, serve, and pray aloud at all the Bible studies—then you find yourself receiving a lot of positive attention. I know at least for me, it made me feel special, and even superior3--a privilege that’s helpful when you’re neurodivergent and not quite sure where you fit in the world, or even how to be a human4. I learned how to mask how I felt and thought and what I liked by age 8-9, and became (literally, in my family) The Perfect Child (I was also called The Holy Spirit). I thought I had gamed the system nicely and wondered why my two sisters (one older, one younger) didn’t do what I did. As long as you are perfect and only have thoughts and desires that are in line with what your parents/church teach you to have, your life will be great5!
I think my sisters and I are an interesting case study in the variety of ways that a child without power or a fully developed brain can respond to intense religious indoctrination. My older sister checked out early and basically raised herself, pouncing on any opportunity for independence that came along. My younger sister had undiagnosed ADHD and possibly PDA, and either couldn’t or wouldn’t conform, resulting in so many power clashes. My older sister was like a self-sufficient little adult, I was the perfect spiritual child, and my younger sister was the strong-willed one6. You can detach, you can comply, or you can resist. Based on my neurotype and personality, I chose (or had it chosen for me, I’m still not sure) to believe my caregivers in everything they said and value what they valued.
I complied, I complied, I complied.
God became my special interest, out of necessity in many ways.
Over time, that special interest was exploited, molded, and shaped by people who wanted to see white evangelicalism increase in power.
And I know I’m not the only one who this happened to.
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No kid should be as into God as I was, and it wasn’t until I had my own kids that I realized this.
Like all good little evangelicals, my husband Krispin and I did the things you were supposed to do when you had kids: buy the Jesus Storybook Bible, play worship music constantly, pray for your kid, and take them to church7. We took it a step farther, since we lived in a mission organization among the poor and my entire life revolved around religion. But I will never forget (and I have written about it in my first book!) the first time I read the story of David and Goliath to my four year old child.
In the Jesus Storybook Bible, it talks over and over again about God’s never-stopping, never-giving-up, unbreaking, always and forever love. Over and over again8. And yet, the stories don’t always seem to match up to that phrase, do they? The first time I read the story of David and Goliath, my kid was silent for a moment and then looked up at me, brows furrowed in concern. “Didn’t God love Goliath? Didn’t God make Goliath too?” The logic wasn’t adding up for them. Was this a story about a good and loving Creator who made all things and never gave up or was it about good guys and bad guys--how some people are loved and others are made to be enemies?
I was stumped by my (undiagnosed autistic) child’s questions, but quickly realized I had no stomach for trying to get them to believe anything that didn’t feel right to them. I made sure they felt safe to ask questions or make statements about what they believed. When they got older, they would sometimes tell me how they couldn’t wait to be a grown-up, because maybe then they would believe in God. “What do you mean?” I asked them. “Well,” they said, “all the grown-ups I know believe in God, but I just can’t. So I guess that will happen to me when I’m a grown up too.”
A part of me wondered why I didn’t freak out more about this. Shouldn’t I be concerned that my child had no interest in God? Wasn’t that the unpardonable sin of my own upbringing? But instead, my instinctual response was to let my child be. To trust that they knew their inner world better than I did, and that their questions and ways of looking at the world were incredibly insightful and valuable. It would be an abuse of power for me to try to coerce or convince them to believe in something in order to fit in with my worldview. I was surprised, because I had no fear, shame, or guilt over my adorable little heretic. I just loved them, and wanted to know more of what they were thinking and feeling.
Five years later, I had another kid. This time a sweet, sensitive little boy who didn’t voice his concerns as much. About anything, really. I was still halfheartedly trying to read the Jesus Storybook Bible to him every now and again, but it didn’t stick. There was something about the way that he would look up at me, searching my face for how he was supposed to be responding to these confusing stories that were obviously important to me. It was his trusting, moldable little face that broke me. He wanted to please me, I could see that. He would have believed anything I told him. If I told him that God would be with him in the middle of the night when he was anxious if he would just pray, he would have believed me. And if he woke up in the middle of the night consumed with worries about spiders or strangers and called out to God, he would have blamed himself if he hadn’t experienced any comfort at all.
He was so god damn vulnerable. To the anxieties of the world, of course. But he was also so vulnerable to being exploited, or trying to believe something in order to please other people and out of a desperate sense of hoping it was true. He was vulnerable to being sensitive enough to notice all the places where it didn’t match up, but he would have blamed himself instead of the religion/theology.
I slowly started to come to terms with my own childhood by parenting my kids. I realized that *I* was a vulnerable kid, although no one in my life seemed to recognize that. Instead I was the star of the youth group, the church, YWAM, Bible colleges, and even Christian publishing. Deep down, I was a kid struggling with the cognitive dissonance of white evangelicalism. But because my caregivers had to be right, I needed to make sense of it somehow. Even if it destroyed my mental health, made me unable to think about or plan for the future, and made me no longer want to be alive. I had decided to comply as a child—to be a Good Religious Girl—as a survival mechanism. How could I ever stop?
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It took a year of therapy, getting an emotional support dog, having both of my kids be in school for the first time EVER for a few months, learning how to calm my nervous system down, med changes, and a complete and utter burnout for me to finally have the mental space to see that I did have autonomy and agency, and that I could finally start to be honest about what I actually believed.
I’m still in the very beginning stages of processing my personal religious trauma. I don’t blame myself for my particular reaction to religious indoctrination and throwing myself head first into white evangelicalism—it was one of the very few options available to me. There were multiple psychological reasons I was coerced into being a Christian as a young child, and then pushed down the career path of being a missionary and then ultimately trying to redeem/save evangelicalism through my writing and activism. And part of the reason the indoctrination worked on me for so long and so deeply was because I was undiagnosed autistic, in a family of undiagnosed neurodivegent people. A black and white thinker, drawn to rigidity, easily exploited and manipulated, and someone who goes ALL IN on their special interests (and mine just happened to be God—because it had to be).
For most of my life, I assumed everyone grew up being indoctrinated into religion. Being homeschooled, I only interacted with people at my parent’s church, followed by Bible college and then living in community with a variety of hyper-religious and devout folks ever since (including a three year stint in a community of voluntary poverty, plus very devout Muslim friends and neighbors). Everyone I knew was obsessed with helping their children carry on their own beliefs, traditions, rituals, politics. They used the fear of hell, loss of community and relationship, guilt, shame, family pressure, controlled media access and actively sowed doubt into the authority of anyone outside their worldview. I assumed this was normative for all humans—until I had my own kids.
There is a particular kind of grief of being in the thick of parenting kids and slowly realizing that what you thought was normal really isn’t. It has been shocking for me to realize I don’t want to coerce my kids into anything, really. To realize that fear and guilt and shame do not make for secure or safe attachments. That kids—especially anxious or sensitive ones or who process information differently in their brains—are extremely vulnerable to coercion. The most important thing for me to do as a parent is to simply accept my kids for who they are, and help them listen to themselves and their bodies and be a safe space in a world that is often devastating and overwhelming. Through parenting, I’ve realized that all kids fundamentally need to know that being loved, cared for, and accepted is not conditional upon them repeating the party line.
I didn’t receive that. A lot of us didn’t receive that! But I never let myself process this until recently. Now, I am. And you can too. I’m doing a bit of it in public, in the hopes that we who are in the thick of it can find each other. Because each of us has our own story and ways that trauma gets stored in our bodies and brains. But together, we can find ways to heal.
When I used to try to tell people about my life, I used to say I was sheltered. Now, I would say that a better, more precise word would be isolated. Writing here, for this community, is a way for me to gently reparent my childhood self. She was so isolated, so anxious, so desperate to be a Good Person. But she is not isolated anymore. I have found community, and solace, and support in my mid-life that I never knew was possible. And I know it is only going to get better from here.
Thanks so much to everyone for reading my un-testimony. Especially if you are still a person of faith, it means a lot to me that you honor my story and the ways it might differ from yours. I’m not trying to convince anyone about their personal spirituality, but I will keep talking about organized religion as a whole and how it impacts vulnerable people.
The number one rule of fight club—I mean childhood religious indoctrination—is that you don’t call it childhood religious indoctrination!
I took it all literally. To the point where I made no plans to go to college or even get a driver’s license until after I graduated high school, and for the rest of my life have a very very hard time imagining or planning for the future without being overwhelmed by dread and foreboding. Fun times!
The toxicity of white evangelical supremacist beliefs is beyond disturbing. This belief that WE are special, set apart, the apex of God’s divine revelation . . . We see this play out in the authoritarian dominionist politics that have consumed the religious right for decades now. I can identify how my autism made me more likely to gobble up this false theology/ideology while making sure I take full responsibility to do the work to deconstruct my supremacist beliefs, which will be a life-long endeavor.
Humans were so confusing! I feel like my teen and young adult years were just me being perpetually confused why Christians never ever seemed to believe what they were saying. But I just assumed I was the problem. I had missed something pivotal, or just had sin in my life. And there was always an eager adult who validated my feelings that the problem was NOT with the theology/ideology, but with me.
it was, I can assure you, not actually a great plan
It’s interesting to note that while both of my sisters experienced some trauma from the end times/charismatic prophecies stuff, they never bought into it as completely as I did and were able to get out much sooner than I was. They also have less societal collapse/end times panic now currently!
And yes, we got married pretty young and had kids pretty young by westernized standards.
Indoctrination, much? I’d be curious how many times that phrase shows up in the Jesus Storybook Bible, but I’m guessing close to 40 times!
Danielle, you just blew my mind. Sitting on my couch, reading this on my phone, BOOM, a revelation. After aaaalll these years of deconstructing, I still don't think I'd put the pieces together that my middle kid's anxiety (she's 20 now and it started when she was 9 maybe?) was BECAUSE of my religious beliefs. I think I'd always thought she was just "a kid with anxiety" and I tried to make it all better with my prayers and all of that, and I was most likely trying to fix the problem WITH THE PROBLEM. Oh my god.
I have so many Jesus Storybook Bible stories too (that I've probably mostly pushed down deep in my mind). That same kid saw the Abraham/Isaac page one night before bed and said, "Oh, I don't like that one! Would you ever do that, Mom?" And I said, "If God told me to." NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. And she said, "Well, do it on Livi or Nina." (her sisters) OH MY GOD.
She actually doesn't struggle with anxiety much at all anymore and we talk every once in a while about how she managed to deal with it on her own. She developed routines, started working out, a bunch of stuff. And now I'm putting MORE pieces together. I deconstructed and let go of harmful beliefs and stopped fixing things with prayer, and that gave her room to heal. (I realize she—and all of us—still have a lot of healing to do, but man)
Also thinking about aaaallll the ministries I've been involved in over the years helping vulnerable kids (like the ones trafficked in Cambodia) and my own kids were vulnerable and being harmed, and sooooo many other kids are STILL being harmed.
So much to think about and if I didn't have to work today, I'd just sit here and reread this and all the comments and keep talking to you. Maybe this is for the best—ha!
Last thing—I am soooooo sorry about those prophecies over you. What in the actual hell??
You’re making me cry on my lunch break at work Danielle.
I can’t believe those prophecies over you, and yet I can.
Having kids made me doubt original sin. People saying toddler tantrums are evidence of sinfulness? Or a baby crying is manipulative? No. I think I knew it was the beginning of the end, and I was so scared to pick up and examine that particular cornerstone. Side note - and what did that mean about what I thought about myself? The constant shame and passive suicidal ideation?
Then a colouring sheet of Abraham holding a knife over Isaac, with some verse about obedience written underneath was sent home with my four year old’s scribbles all over. It made me realise we would be leaving church just as much for them as for us.
A relative asked recently ‘but what about the children?!’ trying to convince us back to church. Like they would lose out so much by not being raised in church. I couldn’t respond in the moment, but I knew that I was a child in that environment and it deeply hurt me (to put it briefly). So why would I do that to my children?