Deconverting from Sectarianism: Breaking Free from an Ideological Bubble

The full import of the Chinese philosopher 莊子 Zhuāngzǐ's words as quoted above came to me only when my deconversion from Fundamentalist Christianity began.

I realized that all those years of indoctrination in church had confined me to an ideological well.  Back then, I only knew the fetid water in that little man-made hole, oblivious to the fact that there are springs, lakes, brooks, waterfalls, rivers, and oceans out there where other creatures frolicked; I was a well-frog who knew only the sky directly above that pit, failing to appreciate the vastness of the sky and the worlds beyond ours.  Following the other metaphor, I was a theological insect that naively thought my "Old-Time religion" was all I needed to experience and that the our version of reality was all that mattered.  But oh, how mistaken I was to even think that the summer of my Evangelical faith could encompass all the seasons of our lived experience and the creative possibilities of our entire existence!

Looking back 16 years on, I can confidently say that bursting out of that theological bubble was one the most satisfying decisions I have ever made in my life so far.  Sure, the emotional pain and the intellectual turmoil were intensely unsettling just as the process was excruciatingly slow, but it was worth all the trouble. I have no regrets about leaving the Church and there is no going back.

Initially, it was quite a struggle to convince myself that I did not actually need my religious crutches and that I could walk on my own just fine. It was like setting myself free from the dark dungeon of self-imposed slavery and climbing out onto the fertile fields of freedom.

What started out as a private, long-held secret struggle slowly became a publicly shared statement which eventually led to conversations with other individuals here and abroad who have/had faced their own unique crises of faith. 

At first, my disillusionment with organized religion bred bitterness. I had often found myself struck with revulsion at the mere mention of certain names, events and issues associated with my former church.

I avoided getting in touch with most of my former churchmates, including any religious person who spouted bigotry or whose arrogance was matched only by his ignorance. I tried effacing memories of my preaching days, even the hundreds of texts I usually rattled off during a religious discussion or speech.

I felt ashamed that I had convinced a few friends to quit school or work to do evangelistic work full time only to quit the ministry later and start their careers all over again.

I railed at having apparently wasted some of the best years of my life advocating a sectarian cause instead of taking a career path that would have made me a more capable, productive individual.

Fortunately, that festering hatred was kept in check by the lingering pleasant memories from my religious experience which helped me to still appreciate the transformative power of religion.

More mature religious and non-religious friends whose kindness and broadmindedness also  reminded me not to paint Christians or religious people with a broad brush.

I eventually realized that, as a wise and highly accomplished linguist-friend told wrote me recently, "Every experience we have in life prepares us (in sometimes unexpected ways) for our future". In his case, he started out in a Bible school and did evangelistic work as a circuit preacher, took up Linguistics, worked as a missionary-linguist for the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in the hinterlands of northern Philippines, then quit the organization after realizing that the Bible translation work he was doing back then would just divide the community he was serving.  Nevertheless, that entire experience molded him into becoming an authority on Austronesian linguistics.

Non-Religious, Not Anti-Religion

I no longer consider myself religious. Despite my skepticism about absolutist religious claims, however, I wouldn't say that "Anti-Religion" is my middle name.

I'd rather say that I see religion as a human-designed tool that can be used for good or evil. It can make a person's life more fruitful and meaningful, or it can make that same life stunted and insignificant. It can mold a child into a well-rounded person, or it can encase a child's brain into a mental mold and turn him into a bigot. It can turn a habitual criminal into a harmless individual, or it can also transform a truly amiable person into the most unpleasant character.

I have known enough of the Christian experience to appreciate the psycho-social function of religion: preachers and churches can provide the felt needs of people seeking emotional stability and a sense of community which, in some ways, ex-believers like me cannot offer.

I may regard many of their sacred stories as fiction, but I am aware of the power of myths to structure lives and to create patterns in a universe ruled by randomness. I have visited mosques, temples and cathedrals and stood in awe at the height of faith-inspired human accomplishments. I have been invited to attend christenings and have gone to wakes in chapels and, although I would often joke about burning up at the entrance, found myself perfectly able not only to sincerely celebrate or mourn with my friends, but also to understand quite well how their rituals provide meaning to their lives.

I've had friends though who have stayed away from me like I got leprosy, novel coronavirus, or some other dreaded disease because I have become an "unbeliever" with whom they should not be "unequally yoked."

I don't know, but it seems to me like those who are quick to "unfriend" you offline or online simply because you no longer have the faith you once shared in common with them are the very same people who are ever-willing to shed off their humanity so they could put on their imagined (or imaginary) extra-terrestrial religious garb.

But I have got many other church-going friends too who understand like I do that religion -- or ethnicity, class and gender -- is not a prerequisite to establishing and maintaining genuine friendship. They further understand that engaging in dialogues with ex-converts can offer a healthy means of self-reflection.

Finally, as religious deconversion was for me traumatic, I needed a means of catharsis. And I found this emotional release in writing about my thoughts on the Christian experience and religion in general.

This series is part of that body of writings. Here I shall share my experiences with and my critique of sectarianism in the Christian faith.

Different Readers

The once self-assured and active but now confused and/or disillusioned believers may find here a sense of encouragement in their continued quest for meaning.

Like me, they may have daily grappled with the same existential questions, and have striven to transcend the canopy of historical accidents that has veiled their vision or somehow walled their world for a time.

Christians in other religious traditions may discover in this series how they are so different from yet so similar to those I was associated with. For as William Carl Ketcherside, one of my best-liked Christian scholars (and an ex- "wing commander of a narrow sect," as he liked to put it), wrote:

...there is a kinship in our state which makes what is said about one fragmented movement relevant to all of the others. We may not all be in the same boat but we are all in the same ocean....
Even though the doctrinal disagreements in one party have little relationship to those in another, at the center of our faith all of us are closer than we sometimes admit. It is as the spokes get farther from the hub that they tend to become farther apart.

William Carl Ketcherside, The Twisted Scriptures (DeFuniak Springs, FL: Diversity Press, 1992), 71.

Some former churchmates may have begun to suspect that it is unfair to just say that church members who left the faith did so just because they did not have “simple faith” (Ayaw kasing makuntento sa ‘Thus saith the Lord’), were just offended (Nagdaramdam...Nasaktan kasi...), are hopelessly worldly (Gustong-gusto lang kasing magkasala), too learned or intelligent (Masyado kasing matalino e), were never true Christians in the first place (Hindi naman talaga siya totoong naborn-again), or are now living miserable lives (Hindi sila masaya dahil wala silang Diyos). You may have begun thinking that your former churchmates whom you now call "apostates" or "unbelievers" may really have some truthful things to say and should be heard. Well, this is for you. I’d like you to consider the possibility that we who have became devangelized had...

• a genuine conversion experience and sincerely served the church as best as we could.

• to confront and were repulsed by the widespread hypocrisy in the church where a lot of people take pride in their religiosity or spirituality but treat their own relatives, colleagues or employees horribly and are consumed by materialism — and so are no different, or even worse, than those they brand as sinners and unbelievers.

• tried but failed to justify scandals among church leaders who condemn the unrighteous from the pulpit but commit unspeakable crimes in the privacy of their offices and homes.

• seen how preachers themselves have questioned their own beliefs but for fear of condemnation or losing their source of income, they have chosen to keep silent or talk about their doubts only in private conversations with their trusted friends.

• noticed that "What the Bible says" actually means what the pastor or preacher's interpretation is of the Scriptures; that the doctrinal infighting among preachers and churches plainly shows how truly human Biblical interpretation really is; that while preachers denounce "human wisdom," their teachings have actually come from other people's ideas.

• discerned that “simple faith” can actually mean simplistic thinking; that it is all right to question whether “the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints” has always been culturally and historically determined, not immutable nor universally true.

• recognized the fact that deconversion is really not much about whether you are intelligent or not, but more about whether you are honest enough to truly examine evidences that can contradict or even refute your beliefs and, upon seeing that you are wrong, to let go of those beliefs.

• learned that the Bible is a heavily edited literary work produced in a particular culture and by a particular group of people who wanted the world to believe they are unique.

• perceived that our belief in the infallibility of the Scriptures and such other doctrines seems to have stemmed from "common sense" simply because we have been indoctrinated largely during childhood to think of these as incontrovertible facts and truths.

• seen how a supposed divine being from whom we draw our sense of morality is the same deity who has condoned and/or commanded immoral acts like genocide and slavery.

• realized that our beliefs have been greatly determined by our psychological makeup, birthplace, parents, family background, social status, social environment, or education.

• observed that evangelism is largely a money and numbers game, in a lot of ways much like doing multi-level marketing or pyramiding; that making friends for friendship’s sake is better than doing “Friendship Evangelism" where you befriend people primarily to recruit them to your sect; that doing good for goodness’ sake is better than doing good because you want to be rewarded here and in the hereafter.

• rightly decided that our hard-earned money is better spent caring for our own loved ones and directly helping others rather than funding a recruitment enterprise, promoting a set of "us-vs-them" teachings, or even sustaining a pastor's lavish lifestyle.

• genuinely agonized over all these and other issues, thought about the friendships we'd lose or the hurt feelings we may cause or the condemnation we may face, and yet finally decided to leave because we wanted to live authentic lives.

• initially felt lost at sea right after casting away our theological anchors, but later found out that we are not actually adrift -- just set free to sail in the vastness of life's sea with other voyagers.

A Personal Backgrounder

Let me now draw up a short personal background which might shed light on my possible biases, the limits of my knowledge, my method of interrogation, the scope of my discussion, and the tenor of my critique.

I belong to a clan of the Vanaw tribe, Province of Kalinga in northern Philippines which is deeply rooted in the Episcopal/Anglican faith. Proof of this was the ordination of my uncle, the late Theodore U. Saboy, as "the first Kalinga Anglican priest."

I was christened a Catholic by a family friend, a Belgian priest named Mike Haelterman, but ended up growing in a strong Baptistic/Evangelical community in Tabuk (now a city) from elementary to high school.

I was baptized at age 12 by Donald Taber, a pioneering (Fundamental) Baptist preacher to the Mountain Province and Kalinga. Then as a college freshman, I became an active member/lay preacher for a little over a year in a (1611 KJV/Benny Abante wing) Bible Baptist Church in Baguio City, the country’s summer capital.

While in college, I started reading voraciously about the so-called "American Restoration Movement" and I was persuaded to join the (amillenial/non-charismatic/a capella) Church of Christ.

I did voluntary preaching for this group immediately after my baptism. Upon earning my double degrees in secular school, I forsook my earlier plan to take up Law and instead studied at the Philippine Bible College (PBC) for my Associate in Theology (ATh) degree.

I would receive my diploma 10 years later because the college at that time was reeling from a disastrous power struggle that left it unable to offer enough subjects for a bachelor's degree, although some elders did propose that I be conferred that degree, honoris causa.

Within that decade, I zealously took part in numerous congregational and inter-congregational, local and national activities of the Churches of Christ in the Philippines ranging from pulpit preaching to church planting, Bible school teaching to missionary apprenticeship administration, medical-dental missions to evangelistic campaigns, and Local Bible Correspondence Course to World Bible School campaigns, among many others.

In my 12 years of association with this group, I found myself shuttling between full-time (about four years of intermittent ministry) and part-time preaching.

In 2005, I resigned from a permanent government position being desirous of ending my protracted struggle over whether I was truly meant for full-time preaching or not.

Shortly thereafter, my growing questions about some inconsistencies in the teachings and practices of the Church of Christ and my realization that I was not really meant for a sometimes money and numbers-driven evangelistic project led me to leave the ministry.

Following a six-month ESL teaching in China, I was forced to return to the Philippines. A few months later, I tried to reconnect with the local Church of Christ in Baguio where I again eventually taught and preached in a voluntary capacity while earning my keep as an ESL teacher elsewhere.

In 2008, I gave up my teaching post at the Bible college and preaching schedules at the local congregation to yield to the wishes of a few self-styled guardians of orthodoxy.

They had been agitating for my "disfellowship" due to what they perceived as my "dangerous" and "liberal" convictions and teachings (more on this in the next few articles).

At the same time, I also posted my goodbye letter to a small global online discussion group largely composed of PBC alumni.

There were some churchmates who urged me to fight it out with the "conservatives" but I realized doing so would only further fracture an already deeply divided church and was actually just a waste of my time.

Although I have distanced myself from the CoC as an institution, I still maintain good relations with some of its members here and abroad who have steered clear of or forsaken a legalistic, sectarian mindset so characteristic of many in this fellowship.

This is to say, of course, that the brand of sectarianism I am about to critique is not true to all Churches of Christ in the Philippines or elsewhere. Also, my critique shall not be limited to sectarian CoCs; other groups will be implicated in this discussion.

Comments

1. Anthony HerronApril 30, 2008 at 8:27 AMBro. Scott,
   I always enjoy reading your blog. I look forward to your continuing article regarding THE LANGUAGE OF EXCLUSIVISM. You are a man wise well above your years. I am somewhat older than you but I wish that I had the wisdom that you have. Also, I think that I have a loving, kind spirit but when I witness your loving, kind spirit -- I realize that I have a lonnnng way to go/a lot of growing/maturing to do. May God continue to bless, strengthen and guide you and your family.
   REPLY

2. scott saboyApril 30, 2008 at 4:32 PMThank you for the kind words dear brother. You are one of the few thoughtful folks who gave me much encouragement when I finally bade a sectarian cause goodbye. I know that it is difficult for people who haven't had this kind of spiritual struggle to understand what I've gone through, but I do know that you do know what it's like.
   
   I got my rough edges and I sure hope to shed off more of these in the years ahead. I sure hope too that I will become more mature enough to be able to truly love even those who have maligned or wronged me. I still have a hard time doing so. At times, I feel like the best thing to do in cases like this is to "avenge your honor" and "eviscerate someone on paper." But it's just so good that there are spiritual people around who, through the gracious way they've endured their numerous "battle scars," continue to shame me for my vengeful spirit and teach me a more noble way...
   
   Here, I remember what Edward Fudge once advised me in one of his emails:
   
   "We don’t have time to waste on revenge and bitterness, which hurts us worse than it hurts the person against whom we are bitter. It is like a poison that contaminates its container most of all."
   REPLY

3. AlvinMay 7, 2008 at 5:12 AMScott,
   
   Interesting read. I read part 2 first then read this piece. A well researched treatise.
   REPLY

4. DenisJune 6, 2008 at 10:23 AMBatchmate,
   
   Whew!! what a piece! you have really gone far in inspiring and enlightening your readers, friends and contemporaries. I couldn't imagine your strength and courage in undergoing such a leap in your life in which i know, if i were in your place, i could have not (in my honest opinion) done such efforts and sacrifices. Keep inspiring people.... it's the thing i always remember about you and i know there are a lot of people whom you have guided through the dark. Keep on going....Keep the faith.
   
   Bro, is it safe to say that sectarianism or being a sectarian is defined depending on the individual's perspective of what is acceptable and fulfilling to suit his/her way of seeing things in the christian world. (please enlighten me.. i think i scrambled my thoughts hehehe)
   REPLY

5. scott saboyJune 7, 2008 at 11:40 AMapo kapitan, chatting with you again via YM and reading your comment on this post have brought back good memories of those short but productive LGOO days. being our batch's life of the party, you made our arduous training ring with laughter. re: question, i think we got it covered over YM. thanks for dropping by...:)

You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog -- the creature of a narrow sphere; You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect -- the creature of a season.

Zhuāngzǐ (476-221 BC)

Deconversion: Theological Bubble

Deconversion: The One & Only True Church

Deconversion: A Culture of Hate

Deconversion: Liberal or Conservative

dEvangelized: Childhood Indoctrination

dEvangelized: Music