Video
Leaving God - Why I left God and why so many others are too
Top Documentary Films
The fastest growing religion in the United States seems to be no religion at all. A 2016 study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute found...
🎬 Videos(20)
Video
Gayle Jordan: Decrease the Suffering, Increase the Joy
TheThinkingAtheist
Video of Gayle Jordan, RfR Executive Director
Video
You Are Not Alone
Recovering from Religion
Video - RfR community members and volunteers discuss walking away from their faith, discovering a new way to live, and the role RfR played in their journey.
Video
Ex-Mormon Recalls Learning about Joseph Smith's 14 Year Old Wife
Do This With Your Life Podcast
Former Mormon recalls why she left the church
Video
RfRx - A Better Life with author Chris Johnson
Recovering from Religion
There is no God. Now what? If this is the only life we have, how does that affect how we live our lives, how we treat each other, and cope with our own mortality. Award winning filmmaker and photographer photographer Chris Johnson created the coffee table photography book and documentary A Better Life in response to these questions and more.
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RfRx - California Raisin': Growing Up Fundamentalist & Leaving It All Behind w/Alexis Arralynn
Recovering from Religion
Aired 11/22/2021 Growing up in fundamentalist religious households, the trauma that children experience due to the belief systems of their parents can last a lifetime and be very difficult to work through. Alexis will talk about how she got herself out of the fundamentalist belief system and the path she took to discovering her own identity.
Video
What was it like to leave Evangelical Christianity as a married couple?
Genetically Modified Skeptic
video
Video
Mike Aus: A Pastor's Journey to Atheism
The Clergy Project
May 2012. Mike Aus discusses his progression from believing Lutheran pastor to spokesperson for freethought. This hour-plus video, including a long Q&A segment, was taped during a meeting of the Humanists of Houston, in the very city where Mike had most recently been pastor of a progressive, nondenominational church.
Video
Baph and Mel Recover from Religion
The Burning Eden Podcast With Baph and Mel
We have the absolute pleasure of chatting with Gayle Jordan, the Executive Director of Recovering from Religion. RfR is a non-profit organization that provides healing and support to those who are doubting and deconstructing their religious beliefs. Gayle shares her personal story of deconstruction and how she became a happy and healthy heathen.
Video
Leaving My Father's Faith
Matt Dean Films
Feature Length Documentary From Director John Wright and Executive Producer Matt Dean: International best selling author and pastor Tony Campolo is devastated when his 50 year old son Bart announces that he no longer believes in God. Having worked together for decades in Christian ministry, the two must now find a way reconcile their personal understandings of Christianity and Humanism before a rift separates them indefinitely.
Video
Girl v Church: The Documentary
Gabrielle Lee
A queer Latina woman faces her past of religious abuse in the Church and sticks up for her friends.
📄 Articles(12)
Article
ExCommunications
Recovering from Religion
Stories from people who have questioned their beliefs, left their faith, navigated doubt, and changed their minds about religion. Some are atheists, some agnostic, and some embrace a different kind of belief. All of them are recovering from religion.
Article
It's Okay To Go
It's Okay To Go
"It's Okay To Go" is a project documenting those that have chosen to leave organized religion and the challenges they faced after making that decision. Did they make the right choice to leave religion behind? Who are they without their former religions? What happened to relationships with friends, family and community when they decided to go? Those that have left organized religion form a vast and diverse community, each with a unique story and yet bound by a similar emotional journey, because there's one powerful feeling we all share: "it's okay to go."
Article
Apocalyptic upbringing: how I recovered from my terrifying evangelical childhood
Josiah Hesse
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Article
Strange Negotiations
David Bazan
After renouncing his long-held Christian beliefs and walking away from his critically-acclaimed band, Pedro the Lion, musician David Bazan retreated into a solitary life of touring solo, struggling to rebuild his worldview and career from the ground-up, and to support his family of four. Strange Negotiations finds David a decade into his journey, during which he has become a sort of reluctant prophet to Americans reeling from their country's own crisis of faith highlighted during the 2016 presidential election.
Article
Reddit's religious de-conversion story archive
This is a subreddit for people to write out their religious de-conversion story (i.e. the path to atheism/agnosticism/deism/etc) in detail. Originally meant to go into an e-book, at minimum it serves as therapy and reassurance to those still going through such transitions in their lives. Please share your stories with everyone!
📚 Books(14)
Book
Leaving Faith Behind: The journeys and perspectives of people who have chosen to leave Islam
Fiyaz Mughal, Aliyah Saleem
book
Book
Leaving Christian Science
Lauren Hunter
Whether you're a Christian Scientist searching for answers, a former follower still struggling to let go of confusing teachings, or a friend or ministry partner hoping to better understand the grips of this false faith, this book can help you on your search for truth. In these ten intensely personal narratives, former Christian Scientists bravely recount their journey out of the religion and into authentic, biblical faith in Jesus Christ. Each chapter addresses a different theme, shining light on theological inconsistencies taught by Mary Baker Eddy in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. These themes include matter, Jesus Christ, contagion, prayer, and sin. With reflection questions, pastoral teaching, related Bible verses, and a guiding letter from the author, each story navigates common obstacles and paves the way for a deeper understanding of the Christian faith. For those yearning to find truth, there is hope to be found here.
🎙️ Podcasts(8)
Podcast
podcast
Voices of Deconversion
Atheists and agnostics share their stories of deconversion from Christianity.
Podcast
Picking up the Threads of Who We Are: Life after the Jehovah's Witnesses (with Stephen and Celine Mather)
MindShift Podcast
As an ex-JW, Stephen is uniquely qualified to shed light on this cult–and although his daughter Celine was never a part of it, as a non-JW with many family members still involved in the religion, she has a fascinating perspective to offer also.
Podcast
Heather Wells: Trustworthy
Graceful Atheist Podcast
Heather Wells married at eighteen and expected to have a similarly happy marriage as her parents, but no matter how hard she worked--both literally and metaphorically--that was not going to happen. Heather felt like a spectator, watching the men around her plan her life. It looks years of a one-sided marriage, churches refusing to help and zero answered prayers for Heather to realize she had to be her own savior. Once she had a well-paying job and more education, she no longer needed others to rescue her and her family. Heather now enjoys a life that is her own and no one else's. She is the trustworthy one. She can look to herself--her own intuition, her own knowledge and education--for what is best for her. That is a sweet gift that no one can take from her. church of christ, woman, reproductive sex
Podcast
Estrangement Purgatory
Death, Sex, and Money Podcast
Brian is on the fence. On the one hand, he no longer believes in the religion he was raised in. "It's high control," he told us, "rules on everything from what to watch on TV," and "what you do in the bedroom." On the other hand, leaving the religion would mean losing contact with his parents and wife. "If I told my mom and my dad where I was, the phone would simply go dead." In our first episode of Estrangement, we talk through the stakes--what could you gain by cutting ties, and what feels impossible to lose?
Podcast
Cat Delmar: Former Seventh Day Adventist
Graceful Atheist Podcast
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. By her twenties, she realized that the difficult questions in adulthood don't have easy "Biblical" answers. Before she knew it, she's figured out that the SDA church doesn't have the answers and that perhaps no one does. Today, Cat doesn't need solid answers. She finds peace within herself and in her connection with nature. Cat's story is one you'll want to hear!
🏢 Organizations(1)
Organization
organization
Exodus Stories
We are a part of the exodus. We are millenials who have experienced this life change first hand, who have felt the effects on our relationships, our loved ones, and ourselves. But this film isn't primarily about our personal journies, it is about the personal journies being undertaken by millions of people every day.
📁 Other Resources(3)
Channel
ExodusDoc
YouTube Channel
Short videos exploring the testimonies of Millennials leaving their religion