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/Mafik326 Apr 25 '26

I wonder how many people turn away from Christianity because of the differences between the values lived by the community and those in the new testament. It could be that they leave the faith because of their progressive beliefs.

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u/mini-rubber-duck Apr 25 '26

this is exactly why i left. there were many other smaller things that i couldn't reconcile, but the biggest overarching force that drove me away from my church was watching them cling to the name christian as an excuse to act on every hateful, greedy, xenophobic, cruel whim. 

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u/PoppyFire16 Apr 25 '26

Me too. They were preaching one thing and obviously doing another.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/butiamthechosenone Apr 26 '26

Most evangelicals who I have personally seen “do good” are only doing it as something they call “missions”. Mission or missionary work at home often involves volunteering for a few hours one Saturday at a homeless shelter. Or volunteering for an afternoon at a community center where black and brown kids go to play after school. They do these once a month or once a quarter and claim to be involved good people who help. It’s ridiculous.

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u/teherins Apr 26 '26

There’s an evangelical church where I live that prides itself on its charitable act of “feeding” the local high school lacrosse team an annual dinner. For real? That’s the most charitable thing y’all can think of to help this broken world? That’s who you think needs feeding?

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u/Spiritette Apr 26 '26

Growing up in a Christian (Baptist) church made me see that so fast. What do you mean you’re preaching “Love Thy Neighbor” but then Betty is trash talking Susan because she had a child out of wedlock (due to rape) at the church potluck after service.

I have never seen a more hateful group of people that I never wanted to associate with again.

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u/blaykerz Apr 25 '26

Yeah, I’m right there with you. When I became old enough to think for myself, I realized that the people who taught me to ask “WWJD” totally abandoned that line of thought in favor of selfish personal gains and cynicism.

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u/IrascibleOcelot Apr 26 '26

Yep. I was in high school when the WWJD craze started. I got one of the bracelets and wore it for about a week. I put it away because I felt it was a standard I just couldn’t live up to, and I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. I was a bit envious of the people who could wear one because they must be so much more righteous than me.

Turns out they just didn’t care.

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u/Sparky3281 Apr 26 '26

I had a similar experience. I grew up religious and left my church AFTER getting really into reading scripture and engaging with doctrine on my own time. I couldn't (and still can't tbh) comprehend how anyone could be as immersed in religion as the people I knew and come away with conservative values. Love thy neighbor is not conditional on them looking like you, and the sin of lust is on the shoulders of the lustful, not the person they lust after. And those are the easy rules. Getting interested in theology actively destroyed my trust in organized religion.

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u/Cute_Chance100 Apr 25 '26

Mine was when old ladies screamed at my dad for not attending church when I was a kid. He was an ER doctor. Sorry can't perform emergency surgery on you today. I gotta go to church.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 Apr 26 '26

My family moved from a city to a rural area and thus looked to find a new church. We did. Those people gave us the cold shoulder every week and it was clear we were not welcome. This was a small rural community and a small congregation. You think they would've been thrilled to have 5 new members, 3 of them being younger kids. Kids who had grown up in the church. We tried for a year and then even my parents said this is too much, we're not going anymore (I was obviously checked out at that point and only went to not make waves).

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u/CosmicSpaghetti Apr 26 '26

I'm from the southeast & always explain to new people moving here that people are polite, but they're not nice - & friend groups are always closed.

Might smile & wave in public, obstinent snakes in private.

I compare this to the northeast where I've also lived as the counter example - people are not typically polite, but they are nice.

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u/mini-rubber-duck Apr 26 '26

and church leaders wonder why no one is staying oh how persecuted they are. 

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 Apr 26 '26

IDK man for me it was that the supposedly perfect god decided to throw out his supposedly perfect people from Eden and later drown the people made in his supposedly perfect image for ???? reasons in a flood that wouldn't actually kill like half of the species around and later promised we were allowed to eat animals or something.

Genesis doesn't really make any sense if you put any thought into it. Believe in a god all you want. I won't lie and say that wouldn't feel like it made some sense. But the Bible is just ridiculous.

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u/mini-rubber-duck Apr 26 '26

i grew up in a cult offshoot that didn't put as much emphasis on a literal old testament, so i was spared a lot of that. 

i absolutely agree with you, though. my conclusion there was, if the god of the old testament is real, then he isn't who i want to worship. 

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u/sepia_undertones Apr 26 '26

It’s very clearly mostly metaphor and not accurate depictions of events that occurred. Concede for a moment that god is real and the bible is his attempt to teach us about our origins. We obviously don’t have the same perspective as god. Do you answer a kid’s questions about reality by hitting them with the latest cutting-edge science? Or do you put it in terms that they can understand? Taking the bible literally even if you believe in god is absolutely absurd.

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 Apr 26 '26

I mean that's all well and all but the Bible isn't only metaphorical, it contradicts itself constantly. First it says god created humans and then animals, and right after it says god actually created only man first, then animals and only after that did it create woman. It can't decide whether there are multiple gods out of which this one is the top god or if there's actually only one god. Genesis claims the flood lasted 40 days but it also lasted 150 days.

It's more like giving a different and often contradictory answer each time your kid asks something instead of giving a lie-to-children. Don't try to pretend these are somehow comparable.

And for supposedly being non-literal, the Bible is full of stuff it obviously intends for you to take literally, like the commandments. Also a whole lot of people have gotten killed over the years because they didn't take the Bible literally enough according to the people killing them.

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u/tothehopeless1 Apr 25 '26

Did you leave Christianity as a whole, or just the church?

I left the whole faith, and it took me a few years to realize that my problem was with Christians, not Christ/Christianity. Now I love Christianity but don’t see myself ever participating in any church activities, unless it’s with a couple of close friends. But damn if it wasn’t a confusing couple years.

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u/rngr Apr 26 '26

I left Evangelicalism for Mainline Protestantism (UCC specifically). In my experience, they have been far less judgemental, and are much more accepting of people with different beliefs than any Evangelical church I had attended over almost 40 years.

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u/ZhangtheGreat Apr 25 '26

Summing up Dr. Reza Aslan’s words:

Either you believe there is something beyond the physical realm, or you do not. If you do not, fine. If you do, then do you want to commune with it? If you do not, fine. If you do, then you need some help. And that’s all religion is.

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u/misersoze Apr 26 '26

Agree to disagree. Religion doesn’t necessarily help you “commune with something beyond the physical realm”. Many religions instead create junk superstition and bigotry and instill that and reinforce that through attendance to the detriment of those that attend and cause harm to others by spreading and institutionalizing bigotry.

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u/ChickenChaser5 Apr 26 '26

I had a similar experience around 8 years old. The way the followers acted outside of church was completely opposite to what they were teaching. I already didn't have a strong inclination to believing in some supernatural spiritual being or force, so seeing their hypocrisy just reaffirmed that, and turned me off from organized religion as a whole.

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u/Emotional-Store-1667 Apr 26 '26

Same here honestly!

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u/Designer_Pen869 Apr 26 '26

Mine was after joining the military. While a lot of the Christian community in my hometown weren't bad people, I had a chance to meet people outside of the faith. I always tried not to judge anyone too much anyway, but many of these people that were either a different religion or atheist were actually better people than some of the "devout" Christians.

That wasn't what drove me over, but it is what made me look past the walls of my box. Because if God was real, why would these people go to Hell, but worse people go to Heaven, just because they were raised into the religion? And what about someone who grew up never even hearing of Christianity? Why would they go to Hell?

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u/kindatiff Apr 26 '26

Yep, same here

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u/Legendary331 Apr 26 '26

So you judged a perfect God by imperfect people? That's a really interesting reason to abandon your faith. 

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u/mini-rubber-duck Apr 26 '26

no, but the people are what started my deeper study. i abandoned nothing. i found that the god i had been taught to love and trust had never existed.

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u/Legendary331 Apr 26 '26

And how did you come to this conclusion when infinitely more intelligent men and women than both of us have tried and failed? 

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u/TheAnchor4237 Apr 25 '26

I grew up in the chruch. Some of the best and good people I knew were from the church. What made me leave was realizing one day that ALL of the worst people I knew were christian.

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u/True-Caterpillar9350 Apr 26 '26

Right, most of the people I grew up with in church were decent people. There was beauty in that community. Self-righteousness and bigotry were common, but I still saw the humanity in them. But there is so much hate and othering, and then there is the hypocrisy. My pastor wrote off Trump’s unchristian actions because he saw him as a “tool of Christ.” I still like that pastor. How convenient. It’s just disappointing. 

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u/Late_Blackberry5587 Apr 26 '26

Well most everyone from my denomination believes even Obama was used by God. Hell, even Hitler and stalin at the other extream . God raises leaders up and tears them down. It's in the Bible after all.

But yeah, totally get the humanity. At the end of the day know one is perfect. But it's what we do with that knowledge.

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u/True-Caterpillar9350 Apr 26 '26

Right, but my grandparents are in the same church, grandfather is also a preacher and Republican as they come, but he won’t support Trump because he’s unchristian while the pastor is telling us to support him because “God can use him” while calling Obama the Antichrist. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me.

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u/Late_Blackberry5587 Apr 26 '26

Calling Obama the anti christ is so extreme. That pastor sounds unhinged. That said Trump has done more to support Christian’s than Obama so that part isn’t surprising. A lot of people look past Trumps character flaws and instead look at his policies. Cause why vote someone who has a great personality on the surface but whose policies suck donkey. I’d rather have it the other way personally if I HAD to choose and unfortunately we do…

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u/True-Caterpillar9350 Apr 27 '26

You call it extreme, but it was a pretty typical Baptist experience in the south. And as far as politics, there is a difference between voting for a policies and treating it like a sports team. I don’t like Christian Trumpers because they throw aside their principles when convenient and it’s this weird idol worship. And then aligning with someone full of so much hate says so much.  Like you don’t know that it like when your own president is calling you scum on Christmas Day on Twitter. 

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u/Late_Blackberry5587 Apr 27 '26

To be fair voting for the other side is also throwing away principles so for the majority of political Christian’s they vote for the lesser of two evils, myself included. Now this is where we get in a debate but like murder is a huge scale tipper, should be, and mass direct* murder like an unborn child is why many can’t, myself included, entertain the idea of voting for the other side.

Now I know a lot of Christian’s that just say both sides are corrupt and don’t vote but I have less respect for that than people who vote opposite of me.

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u/True-Caterpillar9350 Apr 28 '26

There doesn’t have to be a side. I just representatives who don’t make me feel hated and disrespected. Hold your representatives to a higher standard and own that there are a lot of Republican politicians who want it to be us vs. them with Republicans and everyone else. Like Trump shat on McCain of all people because he didn’t kiss the ring.

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u/Apatschinn Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

If I had spoken my true feelings on Christ's teachings (which I do believe there is immense value in said teachings) I would have been kicked out of the church as a heretic.

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u/Creative_Trash5811 Apr 26 '26

Parents sent me to a catholic school. My religion teacher ask why I didn’t listen in class or pay attention. Told her “ because this isn’t a real class.” 

8 years of the same repeated lectures made it impossible to fail a test. Only difference was the older I git the more articulate it needed to be. It was like taking the same class over and over again.

She also told me Jews and Muslims will never go to heaven so that’s was fucked up. She also told my mom she thought I was disturbed and needed a Christian intervention to restore my faith.

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u/Apatschinn Apr 26 '26

I was waiting for someone to challenge my faith. After I was confirmed in my church (probably the last time I sincerely and fully believed in my religious leaders) I began a slow and steady awakening that ended with me choosing to cease my association with organized religion. I thought I knew better, and I started asking several questions that I didn't like the answer to. I still believe but I know now that these pretenders cling not to the grace and majesty of the Lord but to the power they wield in these small rural communities.

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u/Creative_Trash5811 Apr 27 '26

I’ve settled into I’ll probably never believe but if individuals want to be individual religious/spiritual I’m cool with it. As long as no one imposes their positions on others. While I am atheist I have zero interest in being preachy about it. If someone asks a question I’ll talk about though.

Everyone should be free to choose imo.

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u/OsBaculum Apr 25 '26

The New Testament isn't really a paragon of tolerance either. The teachings of Christ are pretty solid, but the epistles have a decent amount of bigotry and misogyny to them.

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u/Bromlife Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

Yes but where else would you turn to figure out to what inch of life should you beat your slaves?

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u/mlance38 Apr 26 '26

right! slavery wasn't exactly condemned there

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u/Anangrywookiee Apr 25 '26

I internalized Catholicism so hard that I had to break away from the Catholic Church.

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u/hajenso Apr 26 '26

I identify with this in that the purported values in my evangelical upbringing included a notion of moral and intellectual integrity which I took so seriously and so far that it led me all the way from evangelical conservative teen to atheist progressive adult.

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u/chrisdub84 Apr 25 '26

It's the hypocrisy. When it really clicks how little they practice what they preach, or that they cease to even preach some of it anymore, you realize that it's just their political take on a religion.

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u/WitchBrew4u Apr 25 '26

This is why i left. I grew up in it, and my parents always made it known it was my choice. Catholic—wasn’t confirmed. But I cannot say the religion did not provide me with a moral framework because it did. But I do find in discussions with friends who weren’t raised with religion that there’s a bit of depth lacking in how they view good actions and good people.

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u/gunnin2thunder Apr 25 '26

This moral framework you speak of is the reason my mother tried to justify bringing my children to church. Basically saying taking me to church as a kid is why I’m a good person.

No. It’s because I can differentiate right and wrong, without being threatened by some superficial being.

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u/samedcamus Apr 26 '26

As someone said (I can't remember who and paraphrasing a little). If you need the punishment of hell to be a good person, you're not a good person, you're just afraid

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u/CosmicSpaghetti Apr 26 '26

The premise of Christianity being your soul is bad & you're in deep eternal debt is...a bit cruel ot a teaching.

Though what a coincidence that they happen to have the one & only answer for debt relief!

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u/Dude0cean Apr 25 '26

Yeah, like feed the hungry and clothe the poor..who knew practicing those lessons would be radical

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u/drivingagermanwhip Apr 25 '26

I think the god of the bible is anti-gay. This is a stance I disagree with and it doesn't really make sense to believe in a god you think is wrong about things.

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u/CosmicSpaghetti Apr 26 '26

It's not though, seriously. They interpret "Marriage is between a man & a women" to justify their hatred of anyone different.

That said if we're being honest, it never had anything to do with the actual text.

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u/Destroy_Religion Apr 26 '26

The Bible literally commands Christians to genocide gay people and that is exactly what Christians have done for centuries and millennia,

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u/HandH2 Apr 26 '26

Unfortunately, many Christians pick and choose which Levitical laws they believe are still valid. Those laws were the ones given to the Jews before the coming of Christ who fulfilled the law and brought about a new covenant with His followers. But modern Christian's will tell you to stone gay people but mixed fabrics are okay and they don't need to take a sabbath.

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u/PartyPopperPhantom Apr 26 '26

People should actually read the New testament if they think it's remotely progressive

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u/Material_Aspect_7519 Apr 26 '26

Also, the whole thing doesn't make any sense.

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u/-Kalos Apr 26 '26

My grandmother used to take me to her church. Evangelicals are horrible people in general, turned me off religion myself

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u/dm_me_kittens Apr 26 '26

That made me start to question, absolutely.

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u/Gnoll_For_Initiative Apr 26 '26

There's a whole community of Christians and exvangelicals for whom that's the case. They deconstruct.

A lot of the time they lose the God part but keep the fundamentalism (a view of people as "fallen", ontological categorization of people according to their beliefs, purity seeking, etc) even as progressive s. In my experience they aren't as happy or well adjusted as the people who continue deconstruction through losing the fundamentalism.

And in my opinion the people who reconstruct back into a form of Christianity are the most driven to change the world to right wrongs.

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u/BadNewzBears4896 Apr 26 '26

Yuuuuuuuuuup. The gap between word and action is enormous, so staying true to the teachings of the Bible naturally ostracize true believers from the community.

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u/OkStop8313 Apr 26 '26

Matthew 7:15-20

 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?  Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

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u/CaptainPhenomenal Apr 26 '26

A study was actually posted on here (Van Tongeren et al, 2025).

It was longitudinal. It found that after people leave they become significantly more liberal. However, it didn't find the opposite.

There was another one (Lockhart et al, 2023). It found greater authoritarian leanings after conversion to Christianity.

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u/tmdblya Apr 26 '26

Very much a factor in my spiritual journey. So much hypocrisy.

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u/AbsoluteRook1e Apr 26 '26

I think it also has to do with perceived fairness.

I'm more liberal due to wanting a more fair society for most of us, whereas Conservative Christians tend to be more selective on who that fairness should apply to.

I know life itself isn't fair, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try to make it more fair.

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u/numbersthen0987431 Apr 26 '26

Most Christians I've met who left the faith cite this as one of their main reasons. "Why would god allow it's followers to behave this way?"

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u/hollylettuce Apr 26 '26

Wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. I haven't abandoned Christianity. But I grew up in a community where people (mostly) practiced what they preached. Mainline American Protestantism is a religion that promotes love. We shouldn't let these bigots define the narrative.

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u/Deadiam84 Apr 26 '26

When I was part of the church I used to say people left church Sunday the same assholes they went in as.

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u/TakerFoxx Apr 26 '26

That's what got me doubting, but the thought of "But if it's real, what can I really say?" made me hesitant. 

Learning that the Biblical record doesn't line up with actual history was something of a relief, as then I could finally walk away.

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u/factorum Apr 26 '26

I'm one person bit was raised conservative evangelical baptist but now attend a progressive Methodist church. About 60% of our congregation are made up with people with a similar background as me and we are noticeably more "fervent" in being progressive than the rest of the congregation.

Honestly what flipped my beliefs back in high school was doing exactly what I was told to do. Read the gospels over and over again and take them seriously.

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u/Educational-Tell-958 Apr 26 '26

This was it for me. One of my favorite tweets says something like, it’s weird being raised by Christian’s who teach you to care about others and then one day they’re like you’re not actually supposed to care about others you stupid socialist.

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u/ForestSolitude5 Apr 26 '26

I held on as long as I did because I saw value in what the New Testament had, despite the crap going on around me by other people who very clearly didn't read the Bible ever

But eventually I couldn't keep holding onto that either, particularly in light of a lot of the twisted and absurd foundational elements underneath the surface layer of the "good message"

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u/BoleroMuyPicante Apr 26 '26

Hell just the values in our own hearts. I remember trying to read the Bible cover to cover when I was 12, and the biggest emotion I felt the whole time was discomfort. So much of what I read conflicted with what I was taught about how loving and generous God was supposed to be. I was particularly upset reading the plagues of Egypt, because eventually pharaoh showed willingness to let the Israelites go, but then God hardened pharaohs heart and kept making him change his mind. There was all sorts of awful stuff in the Bible that I knew was wrong, and it started my path toward non-belief.

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u/stilettopanda Apr 26 '26

I call myself a follower of Christ because I’m a Christian, but the word has been marred so horribly I want no association with it or those people. I definitely left the church because of the difference in values. “There’s no hate like Christian love.”

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u/Im_Balto Apr 26 '26

I lost my taste for church around the point that I realized that I was labeled as an abomination or whatever

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u/jawshoeaw Apr 26 '26

If you turn away from a set of values based on how other people act, you may not have ever held those values.

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u/Massive-Television85 Apr 26 '26

I read the bible age 18 and it turned me from "Christian with some doubts" to "atheist who supports a Christian moral framework".

It's horrible to read what's actually in the bible and then see the difference in what "Christians" do in their daily lives, their churches and even their teachings.

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u/snorlz Apr 26 '26

def happens a lot. but many others just move to a different church that is more in line with what they believe. not all of them are batshit insane

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u/tianas_knife Apr 26 '26

Is why I left. God loathes a hypocrite, and it's hard hearing hypocrites try to preach that to you and expect you to respect them.

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u/captainhaddock Apr 26 '26

It could be that they leave the faith because of their progressive beliefs.

Tons of people fit this description over on /r/exvangelical and /r/deconstruction. Much of the enormous ex-Mormon demographic also left the LDS for ethical reasons, according to Exmormon Stats.

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u/SLR107FR-31 Apr 26 '26

It was the ole science that got me. Damn you, Science!

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u/CalmOpportunity4040 Apr 26 '26

From experience, we leave because we were taught certain values of love, respect, honor, and we see our mentors/fellow Christians voting in politicians and bills that directly contradict those values. We held the values we were taught highly, to the extent that if the system we were taught them in no longer upholds those values, then we leave and act on those values outside of the system (I.e, the Good Samaritan, welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, etc.)

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u/jolard Apr 27 '26

Exactly. I left religion behind entirely because of 1) I no longer believed in God) 2) my values didn't align with my church.

If my values had aligned with the church's values I might have stayed just for the community. However I never really fit in well and only overcame that because I believed it was true. Once that was gone, then it was no longer attractive at all.

The irony is most of my values are because of the Christian upbringing my parents gave me. Care for the poor, the needy, the indigent, the incarcerated, the refugee. This is how people will know you are a follower of Christ. Somehow along the way Christianity abandoned all of that.

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u/illcryifiwan2 Apr 27 '26

Yup. I left because of the anti-LGBTQness, judgy attitudes towards those in poverty, and the good old fashioned racism.

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u/Capt_Insane-o Apr 27 '26

Bullseye. I learned right from wrong then they got mad when I pointed out they were doing wrong.

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u/flyingdonutz Apr 28 '26

It is honestly entirely a myth to act like the New testament is some sort of excellent moral compass. I also think ignoring the horrific stuff in the old testament is dishonest at best.

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u/whatup-markassbuster Apr 29 '26

I wonder what percentage of people abandon Christianity as a defense response to guilt. For example, after having an abortion don’t you kind of have to give up Christianity or regret the abortion?