In , the freedom was extended: four denominations Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism and Unitarianism were named as accepted denominations, while other denominations such as the Orthodox Churches, Sabbatarians and Anabaptists were tolerated churches, which meant that they had no legislative power, but they were not persecuted. In the Union of Utrecht , freedom of conscience and private devotion and worship alongside the dominant religion was granted in the Netherlands. It allowed complete personal freedom of religion and is one of the first unlimited edicts of religious toleration.
These earliest laws guaranteed people the personal right to practice their religion of choice, and to practice or not to practice religion as they wished. Tolerance of atheism in Western Europe grew slowly through the enlightenment and modernisation. Apart from the short period of the French Revolution, change was slow and Christianity remained strong. John Locke — was one of the early developers of the thought of religious freedom, although he considered Roman Catholics unloyal in an Anglican England, and atheists a threat to national morale.
National institutions slowly loosened their ties to Christian churches. The British court of law permitted the testimony of an atheist in , and parliament accepted oaths without a Bible in Zagorin In European colonies around the world, however, laws were not, or could not be, necessarily similarly applied. The acceptance of religious freedom for individuals has varied across different Christian groups. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council adopted the concept of religious freedom in its Dignitatis humanae , but continued to oppose complete privatisation of religion and moral issues Casanova : Many Protestant and Orthodox churches also have commitments to religious freedom.
In the twentieth century, the case of state-run atheism in Eastern Europe led to a massive decline in Christianity in those countries. For the study of leaving religion this poses challenges. It falls short of voluntary leaving, but merely dismissing it as a state-forced apostasy would not be sufficient. Organised secularisation was met with a counter-reaction after the fall of the Soviet Union, as many returned to the Orthodox Church or other religions.
The politics of identity and objectification of religion led to the ethnicisation of religion, not national apostasy. For example, in Russia the Orthodox Church was a way to return to the assumed traditional Russian culture Pelkmans A similar reaction was seen, for example, in Albania, which transformed from an atheist society to a society where 88 percent said they believed in God in Endersen However, state-run atheism or communist regimes did have a more long-lasting effect in some countries and regions, such as former Czechoslovakia and East Germany.
The consequences are very visible when comparing religious belonging, for example, in former East Germany compared to former West Germany. During the communist era the situation of Christianity was characterised by an enduring persecution of religious believers by the Communist government of East Germany. A controversial debate within Christianity has been the Muslim conquest of large parts of the Mediterranean world and the degree of freedom of conversion from Christianity to Islam.
The story of forced mass conversions to Islam has prevailed, providing an explanation for why so many left Christianity. However, the conversion of entire populations was sometimes slow.
For example, Egypt maintained a Christian majority for six centuries after the change of power, and Greece remained Orthodox under Ottoman rule Hermansen In other cases, such as nineteenth-century southern Russia, Muslim culture and historical ethnicity were more appealing than colonial Christianity Kefeli Arguably, preferential taxation in favour of Muslims and other practical matters make voluntary conversion debatable in many cases.
In Muslim Spain Al-Andalus, — , large-scale conversion to Islam happened only after major changes in government, legislation and culture. Umayyad emir Abd al-Rahman ii — abandoned the egalitarian Arab style of governance in favour of the cultural sophistication of the Abbasid court in Baghdad, established new courts and state offices, and facilitated conditions for employment.
This cultural revolution and the new professions, opportunities for livelihood, that it brought led to increasing assimilation into the new Islamic culture, and eventually to conversion to Islam. The more indigenous Muslims there were, the more indigenous Christians would convert Coope ; Tieszen , 21— An important theological debate of the Reformation was the soteriological question of being saved. The Calvinist-Arminian debate in the early seventeenth century was, among other issues, a dispute over whether, once saved, a Christian can lose their salvation and become an apostate.
The debate had its precedent in a debate between Augustine of Hippo — and Pelagius — over irresistible grace versus salvation through faith alone. John Calvin — went further than Augustine, proposing that God has chosen, that is predestined, people to either salvation or damnation by his sovereignty.
Following this logic, there are no apostates since a person leaving Christianity was not chosen to be a Christian in the first place. Jacobus Arminius — , however, excluded determinism from salvation. For him, salvation is conditional upon living a Christian life, and can be lost. Contrary to the Reformed views, Martin Luther — laid the foundation for the Protestant approach, which sees people as drawn to evil, and saveable only by God.
This implies that salvation is solely the work of God, and apostasy is caused by the human nature to be drawn to evil Demarest ; Calvin ; Luther However, in Eastern Orthodoxy salvation is considered a free relationship, and therefore people have the capability to reject God Carlton Two important areas of controversy in Christianity in modern times have been liberalism and secularisation. Both have been affected by the enlightenment, and scientific, cultural and social developments in the Western world.
The enlightenment was not simply an anti-religious programme, but, among other things, it was also a development towards a rational and intellectual approach to religion. However, the age of reason resulted in both secular humanism and religious liberalism.
Many early philosophers of the enlightenment were born Christians but became critics or apostates of Christianity. For William Godwin — , the key figure of modern anarchism and famous atheist of his time, moral and intellectual autonomy defined human beings.
He was influenced by the rational Dissenters, who insisted that just as nature could be rationally explained, so, too, God had to be explained through human reasoning alone. The rational approach to religion and society was furthermore a criticism of the monopoly of power of the Church of England. Godwin further reasoned that man should not surrender to government or religion Weston The secularisation debate is closely related to the issue of state—church systems and their dismantling in Europe.
However, while the former state churches, in particular, have lost members in Europe, Christianity in other parts of the world remains relatively attractive. However, it is important to point out that the major drivers behind this development are age distribution and fertility, not church leaving per se. In Europe, the Christian population is relatively old.
Pew ; However, Christian churches are also the group that is expected to experience most switching out worldwide: during a five-year period between — a total of 13 million people are expected to leave Christianity, most of them ending up religiously unaffiliated, particularly in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand Pew Following this development, rather than disappearing, the former state churches Europe and mainline denominations US are losing their positions of power, and becoming more equal advocates in the religious, social, and political markets Berger et al.
These developments may be challenged by cases such as restoration of Church status in Poland, and possible reinterpretations of nationalism and Christian roots, as seen, for example, in Russia.
In Great Britain, the decline in Anglican attendance and membership rates and the increase in the number of people identifying as non-religious in national census has prompted debate in Britain and beyond on the role of religion and religious categorisation. People tend to define their relationship towards religion more independently than before, which poses the challenge of defining who is a Christian, compared to popular traditional definitions.
This means that religion is also increasingly regarded as something that cannot be interpreted merely by studying and analysing using traditional means and measures. Another perspective on why many people, in this case in Sweden, are no longer identifying as Christians was given by David Thurfjell. He concluded that the case is not so much one of declining religiosity, but a process of narrowing the definition and meaning of being a Christian.
According to Thurfjell, the previous broad definition has been replaced with a stricter definition, favoured by revivalist groups and individuals. While the Lutheran Church traditionally considers all baptised Christians, the revivalists including Pentecostals expect a personal and active vocation of faith.
This stricter understanding has alienated many cultural Christians away from Christianity and from the Church of Sweden Thurfjell Contemporary controversies often revolve around areas of sexuality and gender. The ordination of women to the ministry and changing attitudes and laws towards sexual minorities have caused a schism between liberals and conservatives, alienating people from both sides.
These have been regarded among the biggest transformations in Christianity in the twentieth century adoption of female ministry and in the twenty-first century increasing acceptance of same-sex relationships , and have also resulted in disaffiliation from Christianity. For example, in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Finland, the majority of the biggest peaks in church leaving from the former state Church have taken place alongside the debates regarding the ordination of women and the registration or marriage of same-sex couples.
Apostasy and falling away from Christian faith are mentioned in the Bible mainly in a few concentrated passages of the New Testament. According to this understanding, Christianity begins with Jesus Christ and the old scriptures are applied in the light of the New Testament.
According to the Bible, Jesus was aware that some of his followers would not last, but fall away. The Apostolic letters have been used as the foundation for organising church life and social conduct.
In the letters, leavers are depicted as being deceived by sin, and warnings of falling away are constant. In the Letter to the Hebrews —19; —8; —31 , the author warns of unbelief, which would deny a person of their salvation. The Apostolic letters were the first official formulations of group membership and norms of social conduct for a Christian community. One passage by Paul 1 Corinthians —5 has been later used as an example of excommunication.
In Ephesians we are told that Christians are already positionally seated in heaven. This statement that means true Christians are already sitting in heaven, as far as God is concerned. We can think of it as a reservation in heaven. God has made the room reservation and paid for the room in advance of our arrival. Philippians teaches that God, who began the good work in a Christian, will complete the work.
He will not fail. Both Christ and the Father promise to protect a Christian and keep them saved. The clear teaching of Scripture is that someone who leaves Christ was never a Christian. Christ will not raise them up on the last day. God was not protecting them.
God did not begin a work in their lives and He was not working in their lives. The fact that they left Christianity means that they were never real Christians. Jesus is the only way! He is the only way to life with God.
So if someone rejects Jesus for something else he believes is true, how can he expect to go to heaven? God created a plan that enables our sins to be forgiven. The question is, can anything we do, even losing belief or doing wrong, remove a permanent mark that God has made?
Secondly, he also changed our relationship to himself. The Bible says that those who have accepted Jesus have become 'heirs' Romans 8. This adoption, it says in verse 24, is the hope in which we are 'saved'. Again, this has important implications for our question because adoption is a permanent change that is based on the actions of the parent — once one has adopted a child, the adoption cannot be revoked, but the legal change is permanent.
Furthermore, when we profess belief in Jesus, the Bible describes a transformation of our nature into something new, as the Bible says we become 'new creations' 2 Corinthians 5. By ourselves, we have a sinful nature Psalm Hence, being a new creation enables us to be 'reconciled' with God and receive salvation. Again, this implies that a permanent change is made, as 'the old is gone, and the new has come'.
Personally, I believe the Bible teaches that salvation is conceived of as a permanent and transformative change, effected by God at the moment a person chooses to believe — and so we can conclude that there is nothing a person can do that can change what God has changed.
And then a couple of things happened, that in my mind, I refer to as the "nails in the coffin. We all know this post is long enough already The first "nail" that happened was that I volunteered at a weekend youth retreat that I volunteer at every year, and for the first time in a tremendously long time, deeply related with what the speaker had to say.
The people who organize the event who are also good friends of mine and the organizers of the year-long missions program I went on had invited a speaker they had seen at an earlier event, and his message was very clear, and very simple: It is OK to doubt your faith. In fact, doubting your faith and questioning it helps your faith to grow. Also a person's actions are a reflection of what they believe. If, in my actions or inactions, I am supporting systems or institutions that enable oppression, this is what I believe in.
I loved his message. His message resonated deeply with me, and for the first time in this dark night of the soul I was experiencing, I felt a glimmer of light, and a chance for encouragement.
I could doubt my faith, and that was OK. However, I was one of only a few people who resounded with what he had to say. Many, many people at the event thought his ideas were "heretical" "un-biblical" and couldn't believe that this "non-Christian" was speaking at their event.
People were walking out on talks, arguments were taking place all over the grounds this event was held at, and the poor speaker was getting harassed everywhere he went. People were telling him they needed to pray for him to receive Jesus into his life, saying he was a heretic, and looking for opportunities to argue him at every turn. The hardest part for me, in the midst of witnessing this insanity, was that a lot of the people who disagreed so strongly with him were people I knew personally.
People whose churches I had visited, or people I had lived with or worked with or spent extended time with. And they were saying that it's not OK to doubt your faith. In fact you are not allowed to doubt your faith, and if you're doing so, you're not a Christian. This broke my heart, and I realized that these people I had known for years were not safe people, or kind accepting people that I could be open with my struggles about.
I need to offer a disclaimer: not all of my friends, including my friends who organized the event, hated what he had to say. A lot of people related to him the same way I did, and that meant a lot to me. After the event, I knew the organizers would receive piles upon piles of angry emails, and I made an attempt to curve the anger away from them by writing a Facebook note, and circulating it on social media.
Within three days of writing the note I had over comments on the note, and piles of messages in my inbox. I had angry messages, messages from people who were "concerned" about me, but I also had a couple of messages from people thanking me, for having the courage to openly express what many people were afraid to say. That also floored me more than anything -- other people out there felt the same, and that they were part of a church where their opinions weren't welcome, and felt oppressed and unable to say how they felt and where they really stood with faith.
In this regard, the church was unwelcoming. The next year at this same event, the speaker they invited was conservative, and talked about the usual stuff; how you should accept Jesus into your heart and all that. Then I realized how much a consumer culture permeates so many churches -- that my friends can't even use their authority in planning this event to challenge people in a healthy way, but that they are still held at the mercy of giving people what they want to hear.
This really disappointed me. The second "nail in the coffin" was at a summer camp I volunteered to be a counsellor at. At the camp, I was asked to give a talk. This was a Christian camp, and I asked them what they wanted me to talk about I was good friends with the organizers and they said, "Anything. We trust you. In fact, I had to give two talks, and this made me very nervous. I didn't want to lie and say something I wasn't sure I believed in, nor did I want to say what I actually thought, and draw a lot of negative attention to myself.
I had a long conversation with one of my close friends at the camp about my dilemma, and he advised me to speak what I believed in. So I wrote a letter to the church, and I spoke very honestly. For the first time in front of a group of strangers, I told them what happened to me in Vancouver, and I talked about the residual effects, and the doubt I was experiencing, and where I was presently.
And the result utterly shocked me. People were thanking me for being so open, and kids were confiding in me, and telling me their struggles, and how they were not sure of what they believed in, and why. It opened the floor for a very open and vulnerable dialogue among people who were willing to accept one another. For the second talk, I decided that, rather than present my "letter to the church" I would invite people to collectively write a letter to the church, and we could continue the conversation about where they stood with the church and how they felt about it.
A couple of people who hadn't been at the first talk came to the second talk, and one individual in particular got very upset, and started saying that I was sinning, and "demonizing the church" and how dare I say anything negative about the church.
My attempt to explain that we weren't being negative, but rather allowing a critical analysis of an institution we all cared about ended with her running away in tears, and completely derailing the conversation. I attempted to try and find her afterward and try and patch things up, but she started screaming at me, accusing me of putting her in an unsafe place, and again, being a sinner who demonizes the church and is a horrible, horrible person who is completely wrong, heretical, and evil.
I couldn't talk to her, and something about her words cut straight to me, and I ended up leaving and having a full-fledged panic attack. I realized that no matter what I do, no matter how strong my efforts and what I would say, there will always be people who think I'm against the church, or that I'm a horrible heretical person who is trying to destroy their beloved church, and that more than that, I was evil.
And in that moment, I suddenly became very, very tired of the uphill battle I felt like I had been fighting on for years, and I desperately wanted to distance myself from the institution I was once willing to give my life for. What was difficult about this was at the time, I was actually working for a church, as a youth pastor.
But I no longer believed in the work I was doing. It all seemed very silly to me, and like a big masquerade.
Every Sunday I had to perform a "children's focus" where I would sit at the front of the church and all the kids would gather round and I would give a little bible lesson. The children's focus is not about the kids, nor is it about educating kids. Rather, it is for the adults, so they can look on and say, "oh look how wonderful it is that the children are learning," when all the learning and activity was happening in the actual Sunday School.
The whole point of this stupid weekly presentation was to appease the adults, and I couldn't stand it. Once I had an individual in this church complain to the pastors that I didn't look "reverent" enough during the church service, and it really discouraged me.
Church shouldn't be about looking reverent, but it felt like everything I was doing was all for looks, and there was no substance to what was actually going on. I began to grow sick to my stomach every time I pulled up to the church and forced myself to walk in the door, and to this day, I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of churches. I eventually had a very honest conversation with my bosses when my work performance began to fail, and I decided to quit the church and ended on good terms.
Since then, I have received a lot of mixed reactions from being honest about my faith. For years, I had been terrified to tell anyone that I wasn't a Christian anymore, because I was afraid of all the relationships I would lose, and all the people that would distance themselves from me.
To me it feels like there's a tremendous stigma in a lot of Christian circles about people leaving the church, and this assumption that I'm not a good person, or a person Christians can be friends with, because my views are now so different.
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