States of Disbelief: Non-Believers Wrestle with Life After Religion – Religion & Politics

Emily Kawasaki and Mark Horton Smith in a disused LDS church in Salt Lake City, Utah. In Mormon culture, many people feel the pandemic and general discord are signs the second coming of Jesus is nigh, even to the neglect of the science and reason behind the turmoil, Horton Smith said. To me, thats terrifying. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

Homeschooled in a strict Christian household in western Maryland, Laura Parks* would murmur to herself thank you so much, God when things went well; and help me, God when they didnt. She huddled in prayer almost every night with her parents and five siblings, and remembers peeking out during prayers to catch the eye of an equally curious brother or sister grinning back. But once she was away from home to study at Princeton, a freshman year philosophy class and a friendship with a gay classmate began to tug at the threads of her tightly wound upbringing and the worldview she had inherited.

The next summer she gathered the nerve to tell her parents she no longer believed in God, and they refused to continue paying her university tuition. She spiraled into a major depressive episode.

When I first left my religion, I felt quite isolated, she said. I started group therapy that helped me regain trust in a community. I used to gain a sense of calm from prayer and my Bible. Now I find it in other places.

*Name altered at request of subject.

The tumultuous state of the world has revealed the importance of maintaining an inner balance and sense of hope. But hope can be harder to cling to as an ex-religious person, said Parks, who volunteered at Princetons suicide hotline. Because so much of my life feels shaken loose, I try to get out of my own tangled thoughts by making a pot of tea or dancing in front of the mirror or folding laundry. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

The doldrums of isolationfeelings now well known to many in the pandemic eraare especially heavy for anyone shunned by family and friends for choosing to shed their former beliefs.

This demographic has been steadily increasing in the United States. The most recent Pew Research Center survey of religious composition reveals nearly 30 percent of the U.S. is now religiously unaffiliated, and the ranks of self-described atheists and agnostics have almost doubled to 9 percent in the past decade.

Secularizing is an unusually bumpy ride when it involves leaving behind the familiar structures of a daily life governed by rules and conformity. Dr. Marlene Winell, a psychologist whose work was inspired by her own exit from fundamentalism, described the PTSD-like emotional and mental turmoil as religious trauma syndrome.

For Pesach Eisen, it was a gradual exodus from an Orthodox sect of Hasidic Jews in Borough Park, Brooklyn, but it was no less turbulent. I left home because the person I turned into couldnt exist in that environment. I needed freedom, he said. I lost my faith in religion and God. My family threatened me and tried to make me feel guilt and shame. I struggled financially. Making friends and dating was rough because Id never spoken to a member of the opposite sex. I had to restructure my identity and moral system with therapy. Leaving an insular religious community is not for the faint of heart.

I always wondered about the saying no atheists in foxholes. Now I know there are, Eisen said. During the pandemic in New York City, not even for a second have I wished I still had religion and faith. I find myself wishing for a world where even devoutly religious folks look to science, medicine, and reason to guide their choices. In my former community, immeasurable harm and death transpired because of anti-science misinformation and conspiracies. This is not only a fundamentalist problem; its an American problem. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

The internet allowed Eisen to compare notes and bond with other people on similar journeys, and it did the same for Delissa McAdoo. Initially she went online as a convenient way to worship. As streaming church services gained popularity, McAdoo traded the crowded pews of local prosperity gospel megachurches in Fayetteville, Georgia, for the comfort of watching from home.

During this time, I started vigorously studying the Bible and other religions, she said. The more I dug in, the more I found Id been lied to and brainwashed. The silver bullet was when I realized preachers wereexploiting members for their own financial gain. This revelation made me sick. I was a member of a finance ministry teaching tithing to seniors and poor single mothers. I went into a deep depression because Id been teaching a lie to people of limited financial means.

In the heavily religious South, McAdoo, who is a small-business owner, found community and camaraderie with Black Nonbelievers, an Atlanta area non-profit founded by Mandisa Thompson for Blacks and allies living free of religion who might otherwise be shunned by family and friends. There, she met Drai Salmon, a student at Spelman University whose views were shaped by witnessing similar misdeeds. Salmon had seen her grandmother struggle financially after donating large chunks of her retirement savings toward church renovations that never materialized as promised.

In this so-called cultural consciousness environment of being woke, people cannot be truly woke if their life centers around unprovable non-historical events, biblical contradictions, and lies. Wokeness and religion cannot coexist, McAdoo said.Ive received mixed reactions upon revealing Im a staunch non-believer. While dining with a group of friends, I was cursed out. When I told my aunt, she became physically ill and lost her appetite. Ive been a victim of cancel culture with former church friends. Yet, I completely understand their actions because of the roles Ive held in the church. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

The seeds of doubt for an apostate can take root in silence for a long time before curiosity and courage finally pry open a window. Neftaly Aldana, a former Jehovahs Witness who spent nearly all his life within the border lines of the austere religion, says he always felt deep down that something wasnt right.

But it wasnt until his mid-forties, during a rough patch in his marriage and a visit with an estranged sister whod already distanced herself from the church, that he finally put his faith under a microscope.

When I got home from that trip, it was the first time I allowed myself to question my beliefs. I needed to know if what I believed was real or not. Within a week or so it all came tumbling down, he said.

Im 45 and didnt even realize my birthday was in October because you dont celebrate those things. I will celebrate my birthday and other holidays now. Ive even donated blood twice, which was a huge sin, said Aldana, pictured in a suit he once wore to proselytize as a Jehovahs Witness in New York City. Im grateful I can think for myself and have self-determination now and can give that to my children. I look at my kids and just think if someone had talked to me about this stuff, how different my life could have been. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

Hoover Street in South Los Angeles, California, January 12, 2021. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

An afterlife of hellfire is an ever-lurking threat in many fundamentalist religions. The idea of a spiritual plane designed to maximize suffering might seem redundant when news headlines are filled with reports of mass death and sickness, climate catastrophes, toxic political polarization, gaping wealth inequality, and rampant conspiracy theories, but for someone raised under the guillotine of eternal damnation the concept is less abstract.

During Harley Hancheys teenage years in a Southern Baptist household, her fear of sinfulness was so great that intrusive thoughts and feelings of shame led to self-harm as a way to relieve the pressure.

By the time I left, I was firmly atheist, and still terrified of hell, Hanchey said. For years the terror stuck around. The fear that I would suffer and burn when I died. Even after rejecting the hypocrisy, the fear is hard to shake. It took years, but I am so content with who I am now. I feel like a good person.

Now raising three children in the rural township of Galien, Michigan, where she works as a mail-carrier, Hanchey allows her kids to choose their own beliefs, rather than prescribe them. Her youngest identifies as a Christian, while her oldest, Trent, identifies as an atheist, like her.

My kids dont believe in Santa because they asked me and I told them, she said. I love being genuine. And my kids appreciate it too. Theyve learned to be genuinely themselves. Especially with me. They know I wont lie to them and were very close. Its not always smooth sailing, but what family is?There are a lot of microaggressions and intrusions on rights involved in being an atheist in America. If youre like me and from a religious family, as a kid you lie and lie and lie and are scared a lot of the time. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

Torah Bontrager wasnt given such a choice on the midwestern Amish farms where she grew up without electricity and English was only spoken as a second language. If she hadnt escaped out a window one night as a teenager, she would likely have only received a rudimentary high school education from Amish teachers with limited educations themselves.

The Supreme Court ruled in the 1972 case Wisconsin v. Yoder that a parents freedom of religion outweighed the states interest in educating their child, opening the door for religious parents to homeschool their kids beyond the 8th grade.

Only Justice William O. Douglasan appointee of FDRwrote a dissenting opinion in the case: On this important and vital matter of education, I think the children should be entitled to be heard. The education of the child is a matter on which the child will often have decided views. He may want to be a pianist or an astronaut or an oceanographer. It is the future of the students, not the future of the parents, that is imperiled by todays decision.

Bontragers views were decided enough that she risked everything to start over as a teenager. Hungry for a serious education and new opportunities, she went on to graduate from Columbia University in New York, and now lives in Harlem, where she works to help overturn Wisconsin v. Yoder.

My lifes work is about making sure that not another American child is forced to escape in the middle of the night just for a chance to go to school, she said. Children are not property; they have inalienable rights and those rights need active protection.

The pandemic helped me realize that I need the physical presence of humans who are strangers, Bontrager said. The experience of social isolation helped me understand that humans are wired to be social in order to stay healthy. I hadnt believed that applied to me because of my negative childhood experiences. Now I see that simply by virtue of being human, I need other humans around me. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

Adjusting to life after religious disaffiliation takes resilience and patience. Today Jana Fisher works as an artist-manager in Los Angeles, but she was raised in a family of evangelical ministers and likely would have followed in their footsteps if women were allowed to become pastors in her church. After attending college and experiencing bigger cities, she immersed herself in queer communities where she finally became comfortable with her identity and found a feeling of camaraderie she had missed since leaving church.

Fisher credits the exvangelical community on Reddit and podcasts like Born Again Again for helping her break old thought patterns, but she says it was the writings of outspoken atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins that forced her to reckon with the idea of a godless world.

To my surprise, I found the prospect devastatingly lonely. I found myself driving down a highway sobbing when I realized that I was in fact completely alone, she said. But confronting the absence of God pushed me to connect more deeply with other people. I believe we are all inherently worthy and capable of great good.

Religion was the driving force of my life, and rather than being anti-religion, I am now in a place where religions role or its absence in my life is not something I think about, Fisher said. I cant imagine putting myself back in a box where I worry about what other people believe or what I should believe.

In the early 1900s, the German poet Rainier Maria Rilke veered from a Catholic upbringing and wrestled with his beliefs in various poems and letters. One of his famous lines, Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final, reads like a mantra against despair, a reminder that existence drifts onward, and time can heal.

The pandemic years have tested everyone in surprising ways, with some believers even saying it strengthened their faith. But for a growing number of American non-believers, it is the cushion of new communities, trust in evidence-based science and self-care, and confidence in their rebuilt identities that propels them to just keep going.

Elijah Hurwitz is a photographer based in Los Angeles, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, WIRED, The Atlantic, TIME, and Politico Magazine.Follow his work on Instagram and elijahsol.com.

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States of Disbelief: Non-Believers Wrestle with Life After Religion - Religion & Politics