Christian band vocalist admits to not being Christian anymore

Metalcore band The Order of Elijah had transitioned from being Christian to being atheist, and vocalist Shannon Low had narrated his own experience of finally accepting that he "had shed [his] faith like a cocooon."

"It was scary yet liberating, it confusing yet simple, I felt at peace yet completely shaken, I pretty much had to reprogram my way of thinking about the world," Low wrote on Facebook. "Not only that, I felt I had lived a lie for half my life. I read books, tried meditating, hell sometimes I'd even try to talk to god."

In his post recently, Low described his life as a Christian, having been baptized at 20 and joining a church he liked after years of struggling with sex and drugs. While he subsequently became part of the Sunday worship team as a guitarist and became a youth group leader, and while he was passionate about Christ and the ministry, it all eventually fell apart. A year after his daughter was born, his and his wife's divorce began, and he went back to alcohol.

"I decided to return to church in search of inner solace again," he wrote. "I was welcomed with open arms."

However, Low was disturbed when he heard a sermon talking about the biblical prophet Elisha, in which kids teased him for being bald. The prophet cursed them in the name of god, and they were ripped apart by two bears. When he bagan asking people about this, he "found each person had a different apologetic answer for this story."

Having overlooked this story when he read the whole bible, he decided to look for other stories and found many cruel ones. Still, he thought that maybe Jesus came to correct this, a kind of thinking that Low's Christian friends said was blasphemous because Jesus quoted the Old Testament many times.

"I still stuck to my guns but received a lot of flak by my spiritual peers for not understanding why the OT god was so racist, ethnic cleansing, jealous as an insecure girlfriend, cruel and power hungry," he wrote.

Eventually, he researched the history of the bible, which raised a lot of questions. He then read the book "The God Delusion" by biologist Richard Dawkins, which provided the clarification he needed, and "it answered so many questions that my Christian friends would literally get furious for me to even address."

"I stopped trying to pray my alcoholism away and began combating it with real methods," Low wrote. "I began confronting my problems head on rather than 'giving them to god'."

Low eventually gave up drinking, became healthier for it, and even enrolled in college.

"Look, I love you guys and I'm sorry I'm not a Christian anymore," Low concluded, addressing his fans. "I'm not looking to debate anyone in the comments or anything. I understand that apostasy is highly shunned upon, you guys just deserve to know the whole truth."

According to an article on Friendly Atheist, the change in the band started last year when they switched from a Christian record label to one that is secular. Most of the members reportedly began to shed their Christian faith quietly.

The Order of Elijah will be having their "God's Unwanted Tour" starting June 10 in Joplin.