Over the years, I’ve been asked about my experience in Christadelphia, leaving it and moving on with life after. Here’s a compilation of questions and answers. I will probably edit and add more as time goes on. Feel free to ask more in the comments.
Do you ever regret your decision to leave the Christadelphians?
Nope! Not at all. As soon as I was out, I knew I’d made the right choice.
What was it that opened your eyes and drove you out?
Looking back almost twenty years later, I think a lot of it really had to do with me just coming into adulthood and seeing all that the world had to offer that I had been shielded from in my youth.
There wasn’t one thing that made me go, “That’s it, I’m done!” It was really a culmination of a lot of things. In no particular order:
- The incessant dissecting of bible verses and attempts at gleaning meaning from every single word in the original Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic or whatever.
- Trying to apply rules, laws and cultural expectations from 2500-year-old shepherd tribes to modern life.
- The culture of everyone judging each other for every stupid thing.
- The constant feeling that I was NEVER good enough (see above point).
- The misogyny, homophobia and transphobia went against my own personal values.
- The stifling feeling of being a young woman whose only purpose was to find a suitable mate to marry and then produce children.
- The long narrow road that lay ahead in which I would perpetually be teaching Sunday school/ playing the organ / making food for the potluck luncheons and bible class refreshments, and then cleaning up after it all.
- The lack of interest in any kind of charity or public services outside of the Christo bubble.
- The lack of interest in the environment – why bother, if Jesus was supposed to return any moment and magically clean up the earth?
- Perhaps biggest of all was that I just couldn’t believe any of it anymore.
I go into it all in detail in the series I wrote called Losing My Religion:
Losing My Religion – Part 1
Losing My Religion – Part 2
Losing my Religion – Part 3
Losing My Religion – Part 4
Losing My Religion – Part 5, The Bitter End
Keep in mind, I wrote a lot of this as sort of a therapeutic experience, so it probably is longer and more detailed than it needs to be, but getting it all off my chest was immensely helpful in making me feel better and less like I was crazy!
Do you keep in touch with any current Christadelphians?
Not really.
I have some family who are still Christadelphian, but I haven’t seen them in a decade. I keep in touch with a cousin by liking and sometimes commenting on her Instagram posts, but that’s about it.
Sometimes, I hope a former friend or acquaintance will leave the Christos and come to me for support, but they all seem to have stuck with it.
Do you miss your Christadelphian friends?
I missed Debbie something terrible after she gave me her friendship ultimatum. I truly felt like someone had cut off my arm. I couldn’t imagine life without her in it. I went through all the stages of grief – anger, denial, depression, straight-up rage, and finally, acceptance. But it literally took me YEARS to accept it. She did reach out years later, and we had a few awkward attempts to reconnect, but ultimately, too much water had gone under the bridge, and I was not comfortable being around her.
I missed the social aspect of my Christo life for a long time. At first, adjusting from having a large social group to having none was hard. I still occasionally think about how cool it was to go to a bible school or a different ecclesia and see people who knew my grandparents or even great-grandparents, or to have someone approach and tell me that they were a distant cousin.
I still miss a couple of friends today. I wonder how they are doing, and I’ve thought about reaching out to them to catch up. I don’t live that far away from them, yet I’m also not close enough to accidentally run into them at the store or anything. But then I remember that without the shared interests in Bible study and fantasizing about the Kingdom to come, it would likely be a short-lived reunion. I’d love to be proven wrong, though.
I tend to assume that anyone I was friends with back in the day has written me off as an outcast and a sinner, which makes me feel sad but also makes me not want to reach out, you know?
So, are you an atheist now or what? What do you believe?
When I first left the Christos I took a hard dive into atheism. I read Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and was pretty much “screw all religions!” for a bit. I think it was part of my healing process. Kind of like declaring, “I’m done with dating men!” after a bad breakup.
After a while, a friend at work mentioned that Oprah and Deepak Chopra were doing 21-day meditation challenges. I had wanted to try mediation for a while but couldn’t really picture myself going to an ashram or a retreat or anything to learn it for real. So I started doing the Oprah/Deepak sessions. It was just 15-20 minutes each day, and I really liked it. It helped me open up to the idea of there being a higher power that was something other than the Christadelphian god I’d been brought up with.
The Oprah meditations led me to Eckhart Tolle, who opened me up further to this realm of spiritual-but-not-religious. It felt really comfortable to me to chill the eff down, sit back and just observe. Observe the world around me, my reactions to it, and what’s happening inside me.
I also started going to therapy about 5 years after I left the Christadelphians. (In hindsight, I wish I’d started before I left – it would have been helpful in the transition!) My therapist at the time was pretty new-age and encouraged me to keep exploring meditation and Eastern philosophies.
In the years since, my interest in spirituality has waxed and waned. Sometimes I meditate, sometimes I talk to my higher self or my spirit guides, and sometimes I feel elated and deeply connected when being present in nature. Other times I don’t feel any of that, but I am content to just be myself and know I am a kind, loving, nurturing person.
Was there anything good about being a Christadelphian?
Actually, yes! A while ago, I wrote about growing up Christadelphian and what I liked about it. The main good thing was having a solid community to belong to, where I made my first friends. I felt secure in the knowledge that we had this worldwide community of Christadelphians and that I would be safe and loved by any of them. (This was my childhood perspective, at least.)
I also feel like believing in God and feeling that I could pray to him or to Jesus when I was scared about having surgery, or recovering from surgery, or worrying about a test at school or whatever, was very comforting to me.
That being said, I think those same things could have been achieved if my parents hadn’t been religious but had just been involved in our local community and had taught me about mindfulness meditation and better managing my emotions. That would have been a more ideal situation, but it was the 1980s, and my parents were not on that wavelength.
Is there anything that would convince you to return to Christadelphian life?
I have no desire to be part of any organized religion. I’m even wary of organized spiritual activities or anything that attracts a cult-like following. I think spirituality is so personal, and no one else should tell you what to believe. You have to come to it on your own after lots of personal experience, reading a variety of other people’s work, and deep conversations with other seekers.
Aren’t you worried about the consequences of being an unbeliever?
Nope. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, or the kingdom of god on earth, or any of those rewards or punishments.
What keeps you from murdering and raping and pillaging if you don’t have religion?
I have never had any desire to hurt anyone else. I don’t need the idea of an invisible man in the sky watching my every move to keep me from misbehaving.
Do you hate religious people?
No, I respect that people have different beliefs. We all have different life experiences, cultural influences, family backgrounds, etc. If your religion makes you feel good, keeps you happy, and makes your life worth living, then you do you, honey!
What I do hate is when people try to push their religious beliefs on others because they are convinced that THEY are right, and everyone else is wrong. That attitude has caused an immense amount of pain and suffering for millennia.
I think that’s all for now! I do have some thoughts to share about the trauma of religion, but will do that in another post and link it here whenever that happens.
Uncommon Heather 
Very proud of you Heather. It took a very strong person to leave Christo’s. They are in mind a cult. I was only subjected to it in my very early years….till I was about six. Veery fortunate for me. Keep on your track and you will be okay.
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Thanks Jan. I’m glad you got out when you were a wee lass!
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Perhaps you have a restricted idea of what a cult is, not according to the dictionary nor legal regulations. The Christadelphians are not a cult, because everybody is free to come and go, and no money is asked to be part of them. They also do not have a twisted teaching, but one based upon the Bible, which brings naturally certain requirements for the Church and people who may or may not agree with them. It is up to each individual either to decide whether to accept the religion its exposition and to chose which way to go.
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What was it that opened your eyes and drove you out?
Good for you though – deprogramming is incredibly difficult (just look at that Q folk)
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Thanks! Good question- I will add it to the post after I think about it a bit.
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I updated it! It’s the 2nd question in the post now. Thanks for the question, it did make me go back and think about it. Turns out I had an arm-length list of reasons. 😀
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They couldnt wait to get me out of the door 😆😆😆
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I’m 55 now and was blackmailed by my parents aged 16 to be baptised because of a sin, (nothing terrible, a love bite) my parents told me it was the only way god would wipe the slate clean. The ball rolled and gathered momentum and suddenly I was at a members house in their swimming pool being ducked under. Nothing felt right about it. A few years later I ran away from home and suddenly all the single men in the ecclesia were writing to my parents asking for my hand in marriage in a bid to keep me in the fold. I shudder when I look back. My parents no longer have that hold over me. They still study but are elderly and frail now. It stuns me that now that they are unable to go to the meetings anymore weds Friday and Sunday, NOBODY from the meeting visits them to see if they are ok. It’s a very very strange sect and one I’m well rid of.
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Thanks for your comment! I’m glad you got out of the cult and didn’t end up in an arranged marriage to boot! That is sad that nobody from the meeting visits your parents. I guess the ‘brotherhood’ isn’t as strong as people would like to think.
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Yep. When my parents could no longer go, they were quickly forgotten. In their last years, they were left at home alone to rot. They used to ask, “Where is everyone?” It broke my heart. Whatever my failures, I was there for them.
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That is so sad. I’m glad you were still there for them though.
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Yep, it was a closed, internalized, supportive community…..kind of like you would find in a prison.
I went back one or two times for various reasons. Within ten or fifteen minutes of listening to their stale droning, I’d be ready to draw a razor across my own throat.
They have no “Truth.” They have no joy that I could detect. What they have is a trap, for people who have chosen to defer their lives.
THANK YOU, for this EXCELLENT and powerful blog.
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Thanks for your comment, Trent! I can’t imagine going back and sitting through a lecture, or the monotone droning of hymns. It seems so depressing to even think about.
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Sorry to hear you felt trapped by a select conservative group. A pity you did not go out to see how things are in other ecclesiae. Be sure there are much more open minded Christadelphians you and the podcaster want other people to believe.
It would not be bad you had some look at some Christadelphian websites.
Concerning charity, you are totally wrong that we would restrict our help only to Christadelphians. The Christadelphians as Brothers in Christ, have different charity organisations all over the world. Numerous individual ecclesiae help homeless and other people in need. We here in Belgium for example provide meals and sleeping bags a. o. to those in need. We even hand out telephones and tablets to homeless people so they can be in contact with their family abroad.
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A living death. My God, they’re like horses with broken legs, needing to be shot.
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Is it too late to leave at 70? It all just seems too hard now I’m senior and should I just stay for the remainder of my days?
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I can’t answer that for you. If it were me, I’d weigh my options. Do you have friends or family who aren’t Christadelphian who can support you? Do you have the energy to start your life over at this point? Depending on your health, you could have 30 more years of life. How do you want to spend it?
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Exactly the things I’ve been pondering. A few family ‘outside’ and almost no ‘outside’ friends so it would be starting over. And quite honestly I don’t have the energy. On the other hand it would be a freer and more authentic life.
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I have an uncle about your age who lost his husband suddenly a few years ago. He ended up selling the house and moving into a nice retirement home where he has made friends easily. He also travels several times a year with a company called Roads Scholar, which has given him a new lease on life. If you can afford to do something like that, it would be a great way to spend your post-CD life!
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Thank you for your post. I was in the Christadelphian community from 2016-2022 and in my late 20’s. I was introduced to “The Truth” by my now ex-husband who was also a recruited member. I dove deep into the beliefs and was nearly obsessed with studying the Bible.
After I found the courage to escape him I was completely abandoned by all “Brothers and Sisters”. I was incredibly heart broken and was feeling discarded by the eclesia (my only safe haven at the time) during a very scary time in my life.
I was now left without any support system because I completely cut myself off from my own family in fear I wouldn’t make into the kingdom from being “unequally yolked”.
Knowing that I deeply believed the teachings and thought I was going to spend eternity with these people is the most devastating aspect for me to still fully process. I would not have subjected myself to 5 long years of marriage with a malicious man with a cluster b personality disorder. It was pure hell and I still can’t yet completely comprehend what I went through. Knowing that I only stayed in the situation because I thought I wouldn’t make it into the kingdom is honestly still sickening. I was being physcologially abused and triangulated between an abusive husband, the Bible, and the christadelphian community.
I was a member and very active in North Houston community and regularly attended Sunday school, meeting, potlucks, weekend studies, constant readings at various houses, and then giving what little of had left to loving and caring for the “body of christ”.Hardly anyone reached out to me after he announced that I left him. No telling what he actually told him. The few that contacted me only wanted to “preach” their version of the Bible and try to encourage me to go back to my abuser. It was incredibly damaging to try to gaslight me with the Bible and encourage me back into a nightmare of a marriage that I had finally escaped after years of being held hostage by him. An entire ecclesia supported a person who was a complete imposter and only dove into the beliefs because it was just a tool for him to control me.
I gave up my entire life, who I was, my sense of well being/peace, and mental freedom to be devoted to this community and they removed me from the Ecclesia. At the time, it was the only safe haven that I knew.
I woke up a few months ago and a wave of reality went over me. It came out of know where. I somehow woke up for the fever dream that has been my life enslaved to Christianity’s demented god. I am finally developing discernment and can see right through everything, and everyone.
The universe began guiding me towards eastern philosophy. It has now been 5 months of healing and recovering from of all religious dogma that was pressed into me from childhood into adulthood.
I have never felt so much love radiating from my soul. For the first time in my life I finally know what true love is.
I first discovered Bill Donahue’s lectures. I appreciate his boldness and interesting humor with trying to open your eyes to why we would have ever believe the way any religion teaches the Bible. It’s damaging and a truly deadly tool when used for religious practices.
Thank you for mentioning Eckhart Tolle. I just started reading his material!
I truly admire that you shared your experience, it helped me so much. I was still feeling so alone and misunderstood from the what I went through and didn’t have anyone to open up to and share what I went through.
I have finally been freed from the system and look forward to remembering who I am, and what will be to come in the next life.
Best wishes Heather ❤
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Hi Tracy,
Thanks so much for sharing your story! Good for you for having the courage to get out of an abusive marriage, and frankly, and abusive religious community. I feel like the CDs are a haven for people (men especially) with abusive tendencies, and for narcissists. It’s sad and awful how the community treated you after you left, although it’s not surprising. That is how they roll!
I am happy hear you’ve had an epiphany that has led you to eastern philosophy. What a wonderful feeling, and it sounds like a leap in your recovery too! I felt similarly free and full of love when I started meditating and learning about eastern philosophy as well. I haven’t heard of Bill Donahue – I will have to look him up.
If you want to chat more, please reach out to my email and I can share my phone number.
As Rumi says – Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
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