Losing your religion, losing your tribe

From an opinion piece in The Washington Post, September 22, 2025: 

The moment I finally admitted that evolution was real didn’t feel liberating. It felt like grief. I had spent years running up against hard evidence that, despite my best efforts, I simply couldn’t refute. I was in the shower, and I cried inconsolably. Accepting evolution meant more than just accepting a scientific theory. It meant leaving my community and almost every friend I had ever known, and it was the final nail in the coffin of my arranged marriage.

This is by Ella Al-Shamahi, a former Muslim missionary, now the host of “Human,” premiering on PBS this month and now an evolutionary biologist. She says that working on this documentary about our human species made me reflect on her own evolution, "and how, when you ask people to do something simple such as 'believe the science,” you might actually be asking them to pay an almost unimaginable price.'"  

I get it.

Finally embracing my atheism was scary. I had been conditioned to believe that being an atheist was the absolutely worst thing someone could be, because I was told repeatedly that atheists have no moral compass. In admitting to myself, let alone anyone else, that I was an atheist, would I suddenly decide to regularly break the speed limit, rob a bank, or worse? In fact, none of that happened and I still get teased when I won't break a line or keep the $20 I find on the sidewalk that someone just dropped.  

But I was, and am, most definitely, out of the Fellowship. I'm from the Bible Belt, where people pray before breakfast, even if they are alone. And before football games. And before workshops on volunteer management (yes, really). When you buy burgoo or a chicken dinner, you are very likely financially supporting a church. I can live without invitations to Baptisms, but it makes me sad to think I haven't been invited to some weddings because I'm not a Christian. It doesn't bother me when everyone prays before a meal, but I still want to get to hold hands. 

I would be lying if I said I didn't miss church pot lucks. I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the community of a community of faith. I would be lying if I didn't say losing my religion didn't hurt at first, and didn't sometimes still smart. 

But I'd also be lying if I said I had any regrets.