I understand the fundamentalist. Even now, I know what my former brethren think when they look at me and listen to my denial of all things holy. I know how I would have reacted to someone like me, a believer who has fallen away. I am the one the Scripture says has returned like a dog to his vomit, a newly cleansed pig who has gone back to the mud and mire of the world to wallow in it. I am now an apostate, but how did it happen? Why did I set down the cross I had once so eagerly shouldered?

I was 18 when I embraced fundamentalist Christianity as the only truth. I had the untapped zeal of youth, ready to attach to any worthwhile cause. I was young and in love, in love with God much more than I was with my husband. I believed everything I read in the Bible, accepted everything other believers told me about God, and stopped any analytical or reflective thoughts in their tracks. I gulped dogma and opened my mouth for more. I felt so safe, so secure, so infinitely sure of who I was and what my future held. I dressed modestly and evangelized every chance I had. "The church," I told strangers, "is the bride of Christ. And he's coming back any day now to claim us."

But he didn't show, and that was just the beginning of the disappointments I would tally through the next 20 years. Unanswered prayer, tragedies that could not be properly explained, events that made my loving God look cruel and heartless. Leaders in my church who were lecherous beneath the surface, a glance across a church pew that stripped me of clothes. I read Christian publications that were militant and ignorant, calling women to keep their hair long and their heads covered out of respect to their men and to wear long skirts, no slacks, ever. An elder in our church paddled my infant for not lying still during a diaper change. He left bruises on her legs. A couple got divorced and we all whispered our disdain. One morning I sat with Bible on my lap and found my mind wandering. I tried to make myself read, to learn, to be cleansed, but I was thinking of going to the library instead. My prayers grew perfunctory. I sang the hymns on Sunday morning less enthusiastically. I began to listen to our talk at our church suppers. We, the whole lot of us, were arrogant, smug and intolerant for any way of life but our own.

Finally I slipped my hand from God's. We had been walking hand in hand for a long time, but one day I just let go. I saw his back in front of me, and some part of me said to hurry, catch him before he's completely out of sight, but I did not. I just watched him until he disappeared. God had become a demanding husband, an aloof one. He was a hot and cold lover who would withdraw without explanation. No matter how much I strove to please him, it was obvious of how far I had to go, how frustratingly unattainable my goal of holiness. My love for him faded, and with that love went my submission, my unquestioning acceptance of everything I was taught. I looked at other believers and marveled that they continued to persevere. They were cheerful in the face of disaster, assuring everyone else that God would bring something good out of their brain tumors, lost jobs, missing children.

Extricating myself from the church was the most difficult thing I have ever done. I didn't know how I could admit to anyone that I had stopped believing in the word of God. My children bowed their heads in prayer at the dinner table and asked me questions about the devil and God and who was stronger and I realized that I had raised them to be followers of something that wasn't real. When I read the Bible, I saw contradictions and a bloody religion that had arisen from myth. My husband became an elder in the church and I went to college. He went to prayer meetings and I went to poetry readings. One year into graduate school, I knew what I had to do. I was terrified to make it official, to pull out, to deny, to be a Judas, but I had to. I left it all behind: my marriage, God and the simple answers catalogued and filed inside my head.

During the next few years, I went to Europe several times. Always, I felt compelled to visit the cathedrals. I lit candles but said no prayers. It was so cold in those churches. I was always glad to leave and feel the sun on my face, to see the world clearly and not through stained glass.

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