{"id":30,"date":"2010-07-16T12:02:46","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T12:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/ex-catholic-ex-evangelicals-why-did-you-leave.html"},"modified":"2010-07-16T12:02:46","modified_gmt":"2010-07-16T12:02:46","slug":"ex-catholic-ex-evangelicals-why-did-you-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/ex-catholic-ex-evangelicals-why-did-you-leave.html","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Catholic &amp; Ex-Evangelicals:  Why Did You Leave?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As part of my next book, I&#8217;m asking for stories, comments, and insights on why people have left Roman Catholicism or conservative evangelical churches (either independent ones or, most especially, the Southern Baptist Convention). &nbsp;Are you a former Roman Catholic or former conservative evangelical? &nbsp;Or are you someone who is thinking of leaving one of these faith communities? &nbsp;I&#8217;m curious: &nbsp;Why did you leave and where have you landed? &nbsp;If a survey taker asked you, &#8220;What is your religious identification?,&#8221; how would you answer?&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>For many years, I attended a Bible church in Scottsdale, Arizona. &nbsp;From there I went on to an evangelical college and seminary. &nbsp;After a time, however, I had too many life experiences that didn&#8217;t fit in the evangelical box&#8211;and too many theological questions that those communities couldn&#8217;t answer. &nbsp;I actually wrote an entire book on why I left and became an Episcopalian (called <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Strength-Journey-Pilgrimage-Faith-Community\/dp\/0787974250\/ref=pd_sim_b_7\">Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community<\/a><\/i>). &nbsp;You don&#8217;t need to write a whole book, but a few sentences would really help my project.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Tell me something of your story&#8211;I love to hear from you. &nbsp;You can also contact me through my website, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dianabutlerbass.com\/index.php?option=com_contact&amp;view=contact&amp;id=1&amp;Itemid=7\">www.dianabutlerbass.com<\/a>. &nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>And ex-mainline types, don&#8217;t worry. &nbsp;I&#8217;ll be asking you some questions in the near future!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As part of my next book, I&#8217;m asking for stories, comments, and insights on why people have left Roman Catholicism or conservative evangelical churches (either independent ones or, most especially, the Southern Baptist Convention). &nbsp;Are you a former Roman Catholic or former conservative evangelical? &nbsp;Or are you someone who is thinking of leaving one of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-religion-in-america"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ex-Catholic &amp; Ex-Evangelicals: Why Did You Leave? - Christianity for the Rest of Us<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/ex-catholic-ex-evangelicals-why-did-you-leave.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ex-Catholic &amp; Ex-Evangelicals: Why Did You Leave? - Christianity for the Rest of Us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As part of my next book, I&#8217;m asking for stories, comments, and insights on why people have left Roman Catholicism or conservative evangelical churches (either independent ones or, most especially, the Southern Baptist Convention). &nbsp;Are you a former Roman Catholic or former conservative evangelical? &nbsp;Or are you someone who is thinking of leaving one of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/ex-catholic-ex-evangelicals-why-did-you-leave.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Christianity for the Rest of Us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-16T12:02:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Diana Butler Bass\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Ex-Catholic &amp; Ex-Evangelicals: Why Did You Leave? - Christianity for the Rest of Us","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/ex-catholic-ex-evangelicals-why-did-you-leave.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Ex-Catholic &amp; Ex-Evangelicals: Why Did You Leave? - Christianity for the Rest of Us","og_description":"As part of my next book, I&#8217;m asking for stories, comments, and insights on why people have left Roman Catholicism or conservative evangelical churches (either independent ones or, most especially, the Southern Baptist Convention). &nbsp;Are you a former Roman Catholic or former conservative evangelical? &nbsp;Or are you someone who is thinking of leaving one of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/ex-catholic-ex-evangelicals-why-did-you-leave.html","og_site_name":"Christianity for the Rest of Us","article_published_time":"2010-07-16T12:02:46+00:00","author":"Diana Butler Bass","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/ex-catholic-ex-evangelicals-why-did-you-leave.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/ex-catholic-ex-evangelicals-why-did-you-leave.html","name":"Ex-Catholic &amp; Ex-Evangelicals: Why Did You Leave? 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She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of seven books including A People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s History of Christianity: the Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009) Her best-selling Christianity for the Rest of Us (2006) was named as one of the best religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Christian Century, won the Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and was featured in a cover story in USA TODAY. Diana regularly consults with religious organizations, leads conferences for religious leaders, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues. She regularly comments on religion, politics, and culture in the media including USA TODAY, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR. From 1995-2000, she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She has written widely in the religious press, including Sojourners, Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations. From 2002 to 2006, she was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment funded study of mainline Protestant vitality\u00e2\u20ac\u201da project featured in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Diana also serves on the board of directors of the Beatitudes Society. Diana has taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia. She is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/author\/dbbass"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}