Graceful Atheist Podcast

This week's guest is MJ, the heart and mind behind the Instagram account, @dissident_daughters MJ grew up in a conservative evangelical home where Focus on the Family reigned and her whole world consisted of family, church friends, and a few Christian homeschooling families. She believed wholeheartedly, feeling all the existential pressure as a child to "save" everyone around her. As a...

Dr. Darrel Ray is the founder and President of the Board of Directors of Recovering from Religion and the founder and project leader of the Secular Therapy Project. See his full bio here . Dr. Ray grew up in a Christian home but was already skeptical of certain claims at the age of twelve. He stayed in church—singing and teaching—but was relieved to finally leave the church as an adult. He has dec...

CW: sexual abuse; suicidal ideation This week's guest is Religious Trauma Life Coach, Mary Burkhart. See her full bio here . Mary grew up in the Apostolic Pentecostal Church, and her family's devotion goes back generations. When she was little, unspeakable things happened to Mary, but their church self-righteously dismissed the situation, forcing her mom and her to move. They found differe...

You're going to want to grab a cozy drink and pull up your favorite note-taking app because this episode is jam-packed! Former guest, Daniel shared his deconversion story here, and now he returns with a lesson on the psychology of modern—and often, predatory—apologetics. He knows his stuff, so prepare to learn a few things. "The target audience of apologetics is actually believers, and the...

This week's guest is artist Stephanie Stalvey. You can see her full bio here. She is the artist behind Instagram's @stephanie.stalvey.artist . Stephanie was a "90's church kid" attending various evangelical churches when she was young. She took her beliefs seriously, and it wasn't until her twenties that a sudden loss forced her to question whether life was as simple as she...

This week's guest is Benoit Kim. He is a "Veteran, Penn-educated Policymaker turned Psychotherapist, & Podcaster at Discover More ." Benoit is a Christian, creating space for deep and meaningful conversations and stories. The Discover More podcast is a show for independent thinkers with an emphasis on mental health. Benoit is currently a forensic clinician at Project 180. Links Dis...

Content Warning : Sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, severe mental health disorders Kyler's story is one of "beauty from ashes". He lives with dissociative identity disorder, a category of CPTSD. Kyler is one distinct personality in the "system". The adults in his life abused him as a child—would not keep him safe—and so his brain stepped in and made a way to survive. Kyler watched...

This week's guest is Christian Lomsdalen. Christian is the current president of the Norwegian Humanist Association and a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Bergen studying the didactics (science) of religion. Christian grew up in an ordinary Christian Norwegian family as "Christmas Christians". He went to church for Christmas and other holidays, and that was about it. "I identif...

This week's guest is Benjamin Faye, also known as @heytherebenji .Benji was adopted when he was young and during middle school, his adoptive parents suddenly "wanted a spiritual life" and started going to church. His life as an adoptee was difficult. Benji questioned whether he belonged in the family and things only got worse as he got older. His adoptive parent became abusive and in h...

This week's guest is Ben Reed. Ben grew up in the Church of Christ with a cappella music, no clapping, no raised hands, no prophecies, no miracles, but also no demons. "Compared to the more charismatic denominations, the Church of Christ is pretty boring…I think that's kind of why I stayed so long because it wasn't that exhausting." Ben's years in the church were good—no co...

This week's guest is Shifra Lowen. Shifra grew up in a small, well-controlled Hasidic community in Canada. As a girl, Shifra wanted to do everything according to the rules of their village. At the same, she desperately wanted forbidden things, like a kitten or a pet bird. At 17, her marriage was arranged to someone she knew and even liked, and Shifra was on Cloud 9 for a while, though suspicio...

This week's guest is comedian and writer, Holly Laurent. See her full bio and work here . Holly tells a bit of her story, growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical household. From the fear of demons to eternal conscious torment, Holly is still dismantling the indoctrination. In comedy, she's found a way to express her "voice that always got [her] in trouble" as well as an acceptin...

This week's guest is Josh de Keijzer, PhD. Josh writes at After God's End: Fragments of a Post-Christian narrative Josh grew up in an evangelical home in the Netherlands. He knew his family was "set apart," different from the mainstream Dutch culture. "I realized…I had been brought up as an evangelical…We were always part of a minority." As a teenager, Josh took his faith s...

This week's guest is author Jo Lloyd Johnson. Jo grew up in a "non-denominational charismatic commune". She spent her adolescence in various churches, but they weren't as "Spirit-filled" as she was taught they could be. She married young and the first years of marriage were difficult. There was alcohol abuse, church shopping, and the difficulties that come with having young...

This week's guest is Cat Delmar. Cat grew up in a nominally Seventh-day Adventist family. The SDA churches, however, were anything but nominal. They had all the rules, from no caffeine to no pierced ears. "There's a lot of control of the body [in Seventh-Day Adventism]." At sixteen, Cat took ownership of her faith and started going to church on her own, but she never quite fit in....

This week's guest is Stephanie, a Deconversion Anonymous group member. Stephanie grew up in the Assemblies of God church as a Missionary Kid for most of her childhood. Her younger years held all the trappings of white American evangelicalism, from conservative Christian school curricula to a paralyzing fear of going to hell forever. "The 'hell belief'? It's a sticky one." S...

This week's guest is Kelly. Kelly was raised as a daughter in a traditional evangelical household, "indoctrinated from diaperhood." They grew up perfectionistic, depressed, timid, and anxious, given Christian cliches about 'God always being with them' through their depression. Who they really needed were queer, whole, mentally healthy adult mentors. "There was a dizzying ar...

This week's guest is Bart D. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His new book is Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End . Is the book of Revelation a prophecy of future catastrophe? Is it a book of hope? Or is it a book of violence and wrath? In Armageddon, Bart delves into the most misunderstood—and possibly the m...

TW: sexual violence; intimate partner violence; postpartum PTSD This week's guest is Grace. Grace was fortunate not to grow up in the church, but when she became a Christian in high school, she—in her own words—"quickly became the quintessential insufferable Christian teenager." Grace was a zealous believer for years, and it wasn't until she had her first child that the questions b...

This week's guest bares his whole heart. "My story—at the moment—doesn't end really well, but there's hope for the future." This week's guest is Matt. Matt grew up in a Methodist family and after partying through high school, Matt chose to attend a Christian college and became serious about his faith. As an adult, Matt did everything he could to be all things to all people—...

This week's guest is David Hayward, also known as The Naked Pastor . David is "a pastor turned artist painting, drawing, and thinking about what it takes to be free to be you." For over a decade, David has been creating online spaces for anyone "interested in deconstruction, spiritual journeying, freedom of thought, or looking for your authentic self." His personal story and th...

This week we are celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Graceful Atheist Podcast! In this episode, you'll meet everyone who works alongside David on the podcast, the website or the online community. Joining David are Arline, Mike T, Jimmy, Colin and Daniel. They discuss some of their favorite movies, shows and books highlighting deconversion or secular grace . It's a great conversation...

This week's guest is Jennifer Michael Hecht, bestselling author of Doubt: a History plus many other works. Her latest book, The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives comes out this week! Jennifer is a poet and historian and in this interview, she makes a solid case for the important place that poetry—and other art forms—can have in our lives. "It&...

This week's guest is Stacie, the creative mind behind the @apostacie on Instagram and the co-host of @skeptichaven on Youtube. Stacie grew up in charismatic churches, believing what she learned about and experienced at church was normal—from speaking in tongues to full-on demonic oppression. It wasn't until Stacie was an adult that she began to seriously question her upbringing. After watc...

This week's guest is Anne. Anne grew up in an English family whose Christian history goes back generations. As a young child, Anne and her twin took their beliefs seriously, even the damaging ones. Her parents' divorce shook her up. Her family had been " that Christian family," and it felt like her parents had become strangers. Still, she clung to her faith throughout her teens and...