Tag: Faith

I Never Stopped Being a Christian

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ Leave a comment


A mother once wrote to C.S. Lewis on behalf of her concerned son, who was worried that he loved Aslan, the lion Christ figure from Lewis’s children’s series, more than Jesus himself. Lewis wrote back with this consolation:

Laurence can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that’s what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before.

Lewis obviously meant this literally: Jesus is a real, living, breathing, present being, and the third person of the Trinity. But, even if we don’t take a literal view of the Christ myth, there is truth in Lewis’s words, if only at a cultural and psychological level. Imagine my bewilderment in realizing that I, a 35-year-old secular atheist, am the little boy Lewis was writing to.

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Can I Return to Christianity?

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I sometimes think doctrinal Christianity is like drug addiction. After growing up in the magisterial order of Christianity, glimpsing the vastness of a triune God and the revolutionary beauty of a self-sacrificing god-man, the secular world is a pale place by comparison. I feel a raging maw in the center of my core nothing else fills. No matter how good my life is — and my life is very good — there is an insatiable restlessness.

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Why I Am Not a Christian: The Gift of Unbelief

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Note: I have moved to Substack! Please subscribe to my work there.

This is the finale of my Why I Am Not a Christian series.

In part one, I explored why I came to doubt claims of the miraculous, thereby undermining my core Christian convictions. In part two, I explain why I came to doubt the veracity of inner experiences of God. In part three, I describe how my fear of a godless universe kept me from accepting nontheism, and how I came to understand that my fear of such a universe was no argument against it.

I could cover quite a bit more: why I came to doubt the historical claims of Christianity, for example, or why I no longer believe the Christ story is unique. I could also tell of how my near conversion to Roman Catholicism permanently hobbled my faith. Perhaps I will, at some point, tell those stories.

But, for now, I will bring this series to a close. I want to circle back to where I started, and the podcast conversation that launched this series.

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How To Be a Border-Stalker | Jon Ward

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In this episode of Sacred Tension, I’m joined by Jon Ward to discuss his new book Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation. We discuss his role as a border-stalker between cultural and religious boundaries, why the Evangelical movement struggles with understanding minority experience, his own religious journey after leaving Evangelicalism, and much more. 

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Sacred Tension: Losing Faith With Jon Steingard

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 2 Comments

In this episode I speak with Jon Steingard, former frontman of the Christian band Hawk Nelson. Jon made waves in 2020 by announcing his departure from Christian faith, and I invited him onto the  show to talk about his journey. Along the way we discussed philosophy, growing up Christian, the Christian music industry, Satanism, how we relate to Christians as non-believers, and much more. You can find Jon Steingard here.

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Sacred Tension: Love and Quasars, feat. Paul Wallace

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 3 Comments

In this episode of Sacred Tension, I speak with pastor, author, and astrophysicist Paul Wallace about his journey as an astrophysicist who can’t shake his faith in God. We discuss Galileo, quantum physics, the interactions between faith and science, why I personally don’t believe in God, and much more.

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I Don’t Care What you Think About My Satanism

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 12 Comments

I have a track record of alienating my fans, and I think we are in the middle of another mass departure. Over the past 2 weeks, there has been an alarmingly high number of unsubscribes from my work, and many people who were once vocal supporters have now withdrawn. Where once there was standing ovation for my work on LGBT equality in the church, there are now crickets.

For those of you who are still with me, thank you. For those of you who have just discovered my work by way of atheism, Satanism, and the occult, I’m delighted to have you along for the ride. And for those of you have have decided to opt out, I hold no ill will towards you. I thank you for your time with me, and I wish you all the best.

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When Doubt is Terminal

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 6 Comments

When I was deep in the Evangelical fold, doubt was sometimes discussed as a temporary and seasonal necessity. Doubt was talked about as a period of testing, in which we just had to lean in to prayer and trust, even in the face of an insurmountable void of evidence. Inevitably, they said, this season would come to an end, the winter would turn to spring, and you would know without a doubt that God is real. In other words, doubt was understood as a sort of spiritual flu — a seasonal disruption that builds our immune systems.

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