The concept of patron deities in polytheism caused me a lot of trouble back in the day. I was on a polytheist mailing list and it seemed like everyone on the list had a patron deity who had approached them personally. They were also adamant that the deity approached them and not the other way around. So I thought I should have a patron deity. This left me uniquely vulnerable to what happened next.
Continue readingResources
Useful resources for getting help.
Theological questions
Readers of Changing Paths may wonder why I chose not to address theological questions like the existence of God, what happens in the afterlife, and related questions.
The first part of the book is aimed at people seeking to leave a variety of high-control traditions, which could be anything including fundamentalist Christianity, fundamentalist Islam, high-control new religions such as Scientology, and even high-control versions of Paganism.
For each of these traditions, the theological arguments are different, so rather than devote a large amount of space to them in the book, or write yet another book about why a supreme creator deity does not exist, I wanted to write about extricating yourself psychologically from harmful religious traditions.
Continue readingExvangelical podcasts
There’s a huge variety of exvangelical podcasts helping people deconstruct from toxic churches. Check out this list to discover some helpful ones.
Continue readingDe-baptism
There’s been a discussion on the internet recently about de-baptism.
Here’s an excellent article about it from John Beckett over at Patheos: Debaptism: You Probably Don’t Need It, But It Can Be Done
…you can’t unpour water. The baptism happened and we can’t pretend it didn’t.
John Beckett
But we can reverse its effects.
Further thoughts and resources on de-baptism after the jump.
Continue readingReview: Cultish
This book is an excellent overview of the languages of cults, and what attracts people to them.
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Changing Paths 