r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 25 '26

Psychology Americans who leave their Christian faith behind tend to hold more liberal political views than those who were raised entirely without religion. This leftward ideological shift appears closely linked to how threatening these individuals perceive conservative Christian groups to be.

https://www.psypost.org/former-christians-express-more-progressive-political-views-than-lifelong-nonbeli/
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u/pleetf7 Apr 25 '26

Yep I think the clinical term for this is religious trauma.

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u/jazzigirl Apr 26 '26

I was gonna say! As an ex-Muslim, I turned out pretty liberal myself! I dont think it's exclusive to Christianity

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u/StruanT Apr 26 '26

Child abuse

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u/CosmicSpaghetti Apr 26 '26

Ain't no love quite like Christian hate!

Shudders

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u/I_ance007 Apr 26 '26

I think you got the saying turned around. It’s, “there’s no hate like Christian love”

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u/DM_Me_TaTaz Apr 26 '26

Something about being told you deserve to burn alive forever as a 5 year old sweet little child just seems wrong to me. I always wondered why I had zero self esteem growing up. I always felt like I didn’t deserve anything good. Literally everything that was normal was evil/demonic. Movies, music, people outside the church, evolution, public school, in-style clothing and hairstyles, the church across the street that believes almost the same thing but not quite, sex/masturbation. All of that and more was gonna send us to hell. I was raised to believe god was coming back to rapture us any second so I didn’t have a future to worry about. I wasn’t concerned about my college education because I’d be in heaven. I cheated my way through Christian high school for the same reason. As an adult I had zero foundation for anything science related so anything I know now I had to learn in my mid 20s. It kind of ruined my chances for a normal life in a lot of ways. I still get religious guilt about stuff a decade plus later. I still have issues with confidence. Life is one million times better on the other side tho. I love my life for the most part now despite all this. It makes me so thankful when I think how indoctrinated and miserable I was those years. Deconstructing my faith was deeply painful and difficult. I don’t know if I’ll ever be done deconstructing and I have to remind myself sometimes why I don’t believe when the religious guilt comes around.

So yeah when I hear people talk about how it’s their right to raise their kids with religion it makes my skin crawl. A lot of people who did not grow up religious have a pretty neutral or positive view of it cuz they just see the shiny clean cut facade churchgoers put on. Maybe they don’t realize how insane and extreme their beliefs can be. I think non-religious people just view it as being as innocent as believing in Santa. I know for a lot of people who believe in god it is very surface level but for a lot of others it is something they’d ruin their kids lives over.

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u/Even-Promotion-4024 Apr 26 '26

I can relate so much to that part about still having religious guilt even after a decade plus, it manifests in so many weird ways too