Some Christians find Kenneth Daniels’ story of apostasy, Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary, particularly disturbing because he was a former missionary. The disillusionment of a Sunday pew sitter who leaves the Faith is not nearly so appalling as when a committed former missionary departs the Faith. Without anger or bitterness Daniels tries to honestly explain why he departed.
One should hesitate to buy the book since there is nothing new under the sun here. I as a former missionary have known (and know) missionary kids who have left the fold. Some have left the Faith altogether. Fundamentalist Christianity played almost always a part in these departures. I can’t fault many of them for leaving what I consider overly religious Christianity with a definite anti-intellectual bent. It is most unfortunate that they identify some form of fundamentalism with true Christianity. While they may have experienced “a warm community” certainly not all of them had such an experience. And at its very base this kind of fundamentalist theology is more a version of western philosophy in Christian clothing than anything else. Sure, it sounds biblical because they use biblical terminology but their concept of God, for instance, is more akin to the god of the Greek philosophers than the God of the Old and New Testaments. Their confession of salvation by faith alone in a God of grace is so often lived out in highly legalistic communities that are out of touch with the modern world, sometimes even to the point of being dysfunctional.
“There is no sugarcoating the reality that secularists in general do not enjoy the same benefits of a warm community that committed believers typically do…” It is this “warm community” that keeps a lot of fundamentalists in the fold, not the theology per se. Daniels is right that the secular world has little to offer in this department. Daniels himself is reluctant to leave this community even if he has opted out of the belief system. He might do well to search a little deeper and find out what produced this “warm community”.
I cannot disagree with Daniels that “the world would be a better place if fundamentalist Christians could frankly acknowledge the good, the bad, and the ugly in their own scriptural tradition, whether or not they end up abandoning their faith outright." What he might not appreciate is that the bad and the ugly are so pervasive that fundamentalist Christianity might have to abandon a great deal of their belief system. While warm communities and basic, proven traditional understandings of doctrine should remain, their misconceptions about God and those annoying legalistic religious practices would have to go.
The saddest mistake made by Ken Daniels is revealed in his sort of offhand “confession”: “It might be that I have not sought God sufficiently”. This is exactly his shortcoming. He has equated a form of fundamentalism with true Christianity. Daniels denies the divine origin of all Christianity based on one person’s (his) experience of a narrow form of fundamentalism. He has, in my opinion, “not sought God sufficiently.” And if he will hear my argument then there is hope for him. Perhaps before he gets too attached to the applauding of secular atheists he will question their “faith” and reconsider a more thorough search of Christianity, at least one that reaches beyond his personal experience of fundamentalism. If he did leave “in pursuit of truth,” as he writes, then we should expect to see him return to the Faith someday.
Daniels writes, “I invite Christian readers to consider the possibility that my apostasy is a result not of divine or diabolical deception…” No matter how polite, how caring, how intellectual, how honest, or how much Daniels presents himself as a seeker of truth he is wrong in his assessment that his apostasy is unrelated to “diabolical deception.”
If you want to know why young people struggle with the Faith, even leave the Faith, buy David Kinnaman’s book, You Lost Me, a much more thorough approach to the topic. But Daniels’ book would be great for a discussion group - unless you are a fundamentalist!
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