Ep. 48 - Jerry DeWitt, Pentecostal Preacher Turned Outspoken Atheist

Friendly Atheist Podcast

Religion & Spirituality, News Commentary, Politics, News

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2015

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jerry DeWitt was a Pentecostal preacher from Louisiana whose faith began cracking a few years ago. At first, he battled with his doubts internally, but he soon realized he no longer believed what he had been saying from the pulpit for nearly 25 years. When he finally declared -- publicly -- that he was an atheist, his life began to fall apart. He wrote about his deconversion in his book Hope After Faith. You may have also seen him in the recent CNN special "Atheists: Inside the World of Non-Believers." Hemant spoke with Jerry recently about what led him to initially doubt his religious beliefs, his journey through the Clergy Project, and how he can still get himself into "preacher mode" when speaking. (Jessica will return to the show in a couple of weeks!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Hemmant Mehta and you're listening to the podcast for Friendly Atheist.
0:08.9	You can now listen to all of our episodes and see show notes at friendly atheist podcast.com.
0:19.0	I'm here with Jerry DeWitt.
0:21.0	Jerry is a former pastor who has since become an atheist and his story is just
0:27.2	incredible so I'm not going to get into all the biographical information
0:30.0	right now I'll let him tell that part of the story, but Jerry, thanks for being with me.
0:34.3	My pleasure.
0:35.3	Thanks for having me.
0:36.3	So explain to the people who may not have heard of you, because I've read a little bit about
0:41.4	your story and everything i've heard it
0:43.4	but what five years ago you were still preaching
0:47.5	like in the south that's right actually uh... i preached my last Christian message,
0:53.4	I have to clarify now because things have gotten complicated.
0:56.2	You preach a very different message now.
0:57.6	Yeah, that's right.
0:58.3	So my last Christian message was actually in April of 2011.
1:05.0	So I joined the clergy project in May of 2011
1:09.4	and then attended my first free thought convention
1:12.2	in Houston, Texas in October 2011 and then
1:15.7	was outed at the end of October and was fired from my very secular job
1:21.3	December the Decemberst, 2011, and spoke at my first presentation to the secular
1:29.0	movement like December the 7th, 2011, and we haven't stopped since.
	...

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