I was prompted by something Commonmass said in his most recent diary.
I have a suggestion here. It comes from the "coming out" process we do as gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered and queer/questioning folks: if you're an atheist and are an atheist because you were deeply harmed by religion, tell your story. Tell it here. Tell it on Anglican Kossacks, tell it far and wide.
I think that is an important idea and I want to encourage all of us who have stories of our Christian childhood abuse to take Commonmass up on that. The only change I would make is that some of us are not atheists. Some of us are even still Christian but we have found an emotionally safe church.
I started a blog called I was Harmed by Christianity. I have read many horrible stories on this site alone when it comes to early childhood abuse in Christian families. We all have the right to be raised in emotionally safe situations. Not all of us are so lucky as to have that experience.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I have tons of rage towards Christianity because of the way I was raised. For the past several years I have worked with several really decent Christians and told them the harm I suffered at the hands of fellow Christians. It has been a healing experience for me, and they have been so generous and welcoming and honestly horrified at what I went through in the name of Christ. I hope and really believe that for them it has made them better advocates for their vision of Christianity. It is one thing to be able to say, "well, not all Christians are like that, stop lumping me in with them." But it is a different thing to hear about the abuse and to say instead, "I would be full of rage too."
If you have a story of how you were deeply harmed by an experience with Christianity, I would love to have you write it up for my blog. You can write anonymously or not. I would prefer that you write the painful parts along with your anger so that people can understand where your anger is coming from. I hope that this can be healing for you. I hope that it can help Christians understand why we are so angry. But I'm mainly doing this for the kids who are currently being raised in emotionally abusive situations because someone thinks their Christianity expects it of them. I believe we have the power to change our cultural acceptance of emotional abuse in the name of religion by telling our stories.