Hey friends, Alisa Childers here. Today we're going to talk with a former atheist who...

Hey friends, Alisa Childers here. Today we're going to talk with a former atheist who,

upon converting to Christianity encountered legalism and hypocrisy and judgmentalism in the church.

We're going to talk about why she still believes and the journey she's written about in her new book in just a moment.

My guest today is Mary Jo Sharp, a former atheist who came to faith in Christ and she's going to share some of that story with us today.

But today she is an assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University and she's also the founder and director of Confident Christianity Apologetics Ministry.

Now some of you may remember the Christianity Today cover story called the Unexpected Defenders, which featured some pretty serious heavyweight women apologists such as Nancy Pierci, Melissa Cain Travis and Holly Ordway.

Well also featured on that cover story was our guest today, Mary Jo Sharp. And so she's recently written a book called Why I Still Believe, a former atheist reckoning with the bad reputation Christians give a good God.

That is a great title. She lives with her husband and family in Portland, Oregon. You can connect with Mary Jo at ConfidentChristianity.com. So Mary Jo, I'm so glad you could stop by the podcast today.

Hey, thanks so much for having me on.

Well, we're seeing quite a few of what people are calling these deconversion stories and it seems just seems like every time I open up Twitter or Facebook everybody's talking about it.

And it's basically the story goes these Christians that are raised in the church raised in Christianity. And then they begin asking some difficult questions and maybe they don't realize that there are robust conversations happening surrounding some of these questions or perhaps they've encountered some hypocrisy or abuse in the church environment that they grew up in.

Maybe they grew up really sheltered and unexposed to other worldviews and ways of thinking. But you represent sort of the flip side of that story. Mary Jo, you weren't raised in a Christian home. And so I wanted to invite the listeners into your backstory a little bit. Give us some background into your story. Where did you grow up?

I know your family was non religious. What does that mean? Where your parents really strongly against religion? Or was it more of just something that wasn't really on their radar?

Yeah, so yeah, I did grow up in the Pacific Northwest. And for people who are familiar with Oregon, Washington, Idaho, these areas, they specifically organ has been quite a non religious for some.

They specifically organ has been quite a non religious for 60s, you know, already dealing with non religious nature of the people who are living up here.

And so the environment wasn't steeped in like a cultural Christianity, which I did experience when I was in the South. There were a lot more people who were Christian and you know their daddy was a preacher or their uncle or they grew up in church.

But my environment wasn't like that. I knew a whole lot more people who did not grow up in church. My family, my family did not go to church.

They were my parents actually had stopped going to church back when I was very young. So in discussing that with them, there are some various reasons. There's some hurt that happened there.

I think with my father, there was disbelief going on that he wasn't committed to the beliefs of the church. So they stopped going when I was too young to remember.

So my experience growing up was outside of church. And I, what I knew of Christianity was really what I saw on TV and in the movies.

Pretty shallow. Yeah. Pretty shallow stuff. So I didn't actually know what to think about Christianity. And I had some skepticism about organized religion in general.

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