An Atheist At Colorado Christian University in Denver

A reader emailed me about his experience as an atheist at Colorado Christian University in Denver. It made me realize it could be worse. If anyone reading this is an atheist at another Christian college, I’d love to hear from you.

“Well I didn’t stay there long. Only about two weeks. After that I couldn’t do it. It was a more fundamentalist one. Very conservative. They made you sign purity contracts and all that jazz. I understand at your college people sleep around all the time? Well, I didn’t stay for long but I would be surprised if many of these people were sleeping around. They were all very afraid of their sexuality I think. You would get removed from the college if they found out. We were required to go to brainwashing sessi–um…I mean chapel, twice a week. Listening to Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens really inspired me to come out of the closet about my Atheism. I actually first came out of the closet about it while I was there. I knew that I had to leave when I went to one of my first classes on the NT, and they told me that if I was reading the Bible from any other perspective other than it was the “word of God” that I was wrong. I couldn’t take that sort of intellectual dishonesty so I decided I wanted a real education and that I was leaving in three days and came out. Man, from that moment on everyone wanted to tell me about the wonders of Jesus Christ. I could barely get a moment alone. It’s hard debating seven or eight fundamentalists at a time. Just combating all the shit that one says is more than enough to keep a person busy. Now I am just living in KC. Have a hard time with the parents often and the rest of my family is even worse, but I am getting by. I am just trying to dismantle religion now one intelligent conversation at a time.”