Here, we take a close look at a dozen high-profile people who were once fully Evangelical in their outlook, and active in Christian leadership … with far more theological training and ministry experience than the average believer … and who found their Fundamentalist Christian faith increasingly didn’t make sense or was deeply disturbing. Although they tried for years to contain the cognitive dissonance, to continue to put on an outward appearance of committed belief, and “still wanted to believe,” they eventually found they had to give it up.

They didn’t just fade into the background and disappear. Instead, they publicly declared their rejection of their once deeply held faith, and have even become very vocal against those Fundamentalist beliefs, still reaching and influencing millions of people with the reasons why they felt they had to give it up.

They all describe this as a very personally upsetting experience, a decision not taken lightly, but one motivated by just wanting to pursue truth and to be real, honest, inquisitive, and open.

There are many others just like them, hundreds of influential speakers and writers whose stories we don’t have time to tell, and thousands (millions?) of others who do not have a high public profile … but who all also found the reasons to not believe outweighed the reasons to “just believe.”

The response from the church typically has been to quickly cut these people off, saying “they were never really one of us … they must have never believed.” This, despite the personal sacrifices: years of serving in ministry … thousands of dollars spent on theological training … careers abandoned, or promising career paths never taken, in order to devote their lives to furthering the Kingdom.

Can we learn something from their stories? Has the Church failed them?

Is there something about Evangelicalism that sets people up for their faith to fail? That will be the subject of part III.

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