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About two years ago I was a member of a fundamentalist Christian church. I had been there for about 4 years, had a group of very close friends, was a part of the youth leadership team, everything was peachy keen. I was a "perfect" Christian. Then something horrible happened to me. I was blamed, even though there was nothing I could have done about it. The entire church turned it's back on me, including my "friends." The church continued to destroy my life by "warning" ALL the other churches in the area about me. They said I would destroy the lives of their children and everything they held as holy. I finally went to my grandfather's church, but some of the leadership there knew, and treated me...weird. I was very well known. People avoided me in public places (no, I am not being paranoid or exaggerating). I holed myself up and didn't venture out of the house much, sticking with the few friends I had outside of church. I went to therapy, and the therapist told me to invision what happened to me, but this time to imagine that Jesus was there. Well, needless to say, I no longer believe in Jesus. I would have prefered to have been forsaken, thank you. Not knowing where to go, I turned to the pagan community, and they took me in, even though I had no bloody clue what I believed. I still don't. The church kept hounding us, and eventually my mum and I had to move out of the state.

No, this isn't a sob story. I just want to know if anyone else has been here. If anyone else has gone through hell because of a fundamentalist religious group. It helps to know you aren't the only one, I guess.

My last note, here's how you can tell that catholics and other christians are hypocrites, they allow excommunication, which is the banishing of a person from all catholic/christian things. (If you took offense to that, Im sorry, but sometimes the truth hurts).

And that makes them hypocrites how? Let me point out that in Catholicism, excommunication due to even the gravest sin can be absolved by the bishops of a place, or even authorized priests. There is no sin the Church is not willing to forgive, but if someone does not properly and honestly repent of something it's considered terribly wrong, should it not have the right to withhold certain parts of itself from that person?

That is an awful experience... Mine was kind of similar, but lacked the magnitude... I was born into a very Christian family and when I turned out to be a non-bleiver the family was furious and most of them do not know about it. Well, why should they, really, it is my business. The ones who do, are really upset about it though. I keep hearing about how much they pray for my soul etc. It is awful. I know that such is their creed and all religions are fundamentalistic at heart, but...

i'm sure in their eyes they'd see this comment like:
Now, the [hospital] can make no judgment on how [unhealthy] I am about a [cigarette] that I have [smoked] for two reasons:
1. They are not me, so they do not know if their judgment is right.
2. They are not god, and again, they do not know if their judgment is right.
The [hospital] is an institution headed by man, right. Therefore, they are imperfect, and should not withhold anything based on their judgment of how [unhealthy] I am for a certain [action]. So, in other words, no, it makes absolutely no sense, and is completely asinine, for the [hospital] to be able to withhold something because of how I may or may not be [unhealthy] for a certain act.

the church sees itself as the authority of morality as a hospital would see itself as the authority of health. one can believe or not believe whether a religious institution is the authority on morality or not, just and one can believe that a hospital is not an authority on health. now that i look over what you were saying, i guess that was your point, you don't feel the church is an authority and thus should not judge.