5 Challenges You May Face When Leaving Christianity for Spirituality (and How to Overcome Them)

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I used to be very religious. And when I was, I took my Christian faith very seriously. I would pray often, I read the Scriptures regularly, and throughout middle school, high school, and college I went to church regularly. Later, my family and I stopped attending a church, but we would continue to have our own services at home.

But then in 2017, because of a desire to join a church again, I ended up joining a very strict, conservative church. My stay there was brief, though. And after leaving, I found myself in the midst of a spiritual crisis. I didn’t know which way was up with respect to my faith. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Suddenly, the faith I had held onto so firmly for so long felt like hollow ground.

While I have since managed to pull myself out of the worst of that crisis, the journey led to me walking away from religion. I know it was challenging for me to go from being solid in my Christian faith to establishing my own belief system and living according to it. But I’ve also found it very freeing.

If you’ve been through something that has led you to either leave Christianity for spirituality or consider doing so, in this post I’m going to highlight five of the challenges you may face as you make this transition and how to overcome them.

5 Potential Challenges When Going from Christianity to Spirituality

1. Unlearning religious beliefs.

   In my experience, religion has a way of making it seem that the teachings you’re learning are absolute truth. This means there’s very little room to question them, let alone consider letting go of them.
   
   When you transition from Christianity to spirituality, you’re going to have to unlearn a lot of beliefs that don’t allow you to practice spirituality in a way that feels authentic to you. You may still be able to hold onto beliefs you learned that still resonate with you, though.
   
   For instance, even as I was transitioning from being a Christian to being spiritual, I still believed in a Higher Power. But I had to modify how I see that Power. Other beliefs I had to discard, though, like the belief that Christianity is the only true religion and Christian beliefs about the afterlife. Those kinds of beliefs were very hard to let go of. In fact, those kinds of beliefs made me wonder if it was even possible for me to stop being a Christian.
   
   The beliefs you have to unlearn will be unique to you. But you might find it challenging to release beliefs that you’ve held onto for a long time, especially if you’ve held those beliefs deeply. One key suggestion I would give for unlearning unhelpful or inauthentic religious beliefs is to take time to get clear on what you do believe, which is something I go more into in #2. But basically, when you’re clear on what you believe, it’s easier to release beliefs that aren’t in alignment with that.

2. Figuring out what you believe.

   In journal entries I wrote when I was deep in the middle of that spiritual crisis, I talk about wrestling with old and new beliefs. I had to sort through things that felt essential for me to get clear before I could really start moving forward. In this post, I talk about a six-step process you can use to get clear on what you believe when you could use that clarity, whether you’re leaving Christianity or any religion. I consider this important for regaining your spiritual bearings after leaving religion because it helps you establish a spiritual foundation you can start to build on.
   
   Just to give you a quick overview, the process involves first stating what you believe without considering whether or not those beliefs feel authentic to you. You can write either a list or a paragraph for this. Then you can go through each of those beliefs and figure out whether they resonate with you. After that, you discard beliefs that don’t resonate with you, replace discarded beliefs with new ones, modify beliefs that need modification, explore other forms of spirituality or other belief systems if you find that helpful, and then finally start living what you believe.
   
   Of all the items on that list, living what you believe is by far the hardest because it requires you to change deeply ingrained ways of thinking and behaving. But with consistency and a conscious awareness of who you want to be and what you want your spirituality to look like, I believe you can get to a place where you’re practicing a spirituality that feels authentic to you.

3. Releasing religious rituals.

   If you’ve been in the habit of performing Christian rituals like praying, going to church, and reading the Bible or the Scriptures, you might find it challenging to release some of those rituals. While you might not still be going to a physical church when you become spiritual instead of religious, you can continue to perform rituals that you find still serve you.
   
   For example, if you still find comfort or strength in praying or reading the Scriptures, there’s no reason you can’t continue with those habits. But what can happen is you find that you perform certain rituals, not because they help you, but because you feel like you have to do them.
   
   If you’re performing rituals out of habit and not because you find them comforting or uplifting, you might want to stop performing those rituals and replace them with new ones that serve you better or feel more authentic. For instance, you can try going for walks in nature instead of praying if you would like to commune with your Higher Power in a different way. Or you could take time to discover how you actually experience that Force and incorporate more of those kinds of activities into your daily life.
   
   If, say, you consider yourself an artist, you may find yourself connecting to something greater when you create art. So, you might want to find ways to incorporate more of that into your schedule if you weren’t in the habit of doing that already.
   
   If you’re really struggling to release religious rituals, you might also find it helpful to take time alone to talk to yourself. Tell yourself that you’ve changed and how you’ve changed and that, going forward, you’re going to be doing things differently because you have new beliefs now. And talk to your Higher Power about these things, too. Your Higher Power is a friend who cares about you. And I believe that Force doesn’t want you to be performing empty rituals anymore than you want to perform them. So, just let that Power know about the changes you’re making.
   
   Then you can either stop performing the inauthentic rituals altogether or slowly stop performing them. It’s up to you whether you feel the need to replace them with new habits. But it’s very important to enter into a dialogue with yourself throughout this process so all of you is aware of the transformation you’re going through. That can make it a little easier for the more rigid parts to get on board. It can also make it more official to yourself and your Higher Power that you’re making these changes.

4. Establishing a new identity.

   If you tie your identity to your faith, you might find yourself in the middle of an identity crisis when you try to shift from Christianity to spirituality. I know that I tied my identity strongly to being Christian when I was still religious. This was to the point that I would often be drawn to people who were also religious, which could lead to some drastic moves on my part. I tell a story about that here.
   
   When I left Christianity, I had to establish a new identity. What I found helpful was to remember another group that I consider myself as belonging to. I’m into personality typing, and I identify as INFJ. It’s true that my personality type isn’t all of me. But immediately after leaving religion, I found it helpful to identify more strongly with this aspect of myself.
   
   Any parts of yourself that you consider to be especially important to who you are can serve as a new way to look at your identity. No one aspect of you is all of you. But as humans we can’t help but look for community and a sense of belonging or understanding, and identity can be strongly tied to that. That’s why, if you’re looking for a new community after leaving religion, looking at other parts of you or considering other groups you’re already part of or could become part of might be a good place to start.

5. Reclaiming authority in your life.

   One thing I’ve found that religion can do is make you feel like you have very little authority over your own life. I know that for a long time I thought that I didn’t have the authority to make big decisions for myself. Instead, I thought all I could do was wait for the plan to be revealed. This led me to take a very passive approach to life.
   
   It wasn’t until after I left religion that I started to realize that I do have authority to make my own decisions. And I don’t have to rely solely on an outside force to do things for me while I just wait to be told what to do like a helpless child. I believe that the universe, another name I use for my Higher Power, and me work together. And I believe the universe takes its cues from me, which means I have a very active role to play in my life.
   
   When transitioning from Christianity to spirituality, you’re going to have to reclaim authority in your life. That means you’re going to have to realize that you have the power to choose your own beliefs and live according to them. You can develop your own moral code and live according to that, too. You don’t have to rely on someone else telling you what’s good and bad or right and wrong anymore. You can decide those things for yourself.
   
   It can be scary to have all that responsibility, which is one reason I think people sometimes prefer the idea of choosing a religion rather than practicing their own spirituality. That would require them to make decisions both big and small about who to be and how to live. But if you’ve left Christianity for spirituality or if you’re considering doing so, I can imagine that you’re willing to reclaim that authority in your life and live according to your own beliefs.
   
   One way to start doing this is by empowering your inner voice, which is something I go into in more depth in this post. But basically, you start using the voice in your head to tell yourself the things you want or need to hear so that you feel empowered to do what’s necessary to practice your own authentic spirituality.

Final Thoughts

If you no longer find that Christianity is serving you, you might consider it both rewarding and freeing to leave Christianity for spirituality. This shift doesn’t mean you have to abandon all your beliefs, only those that don’t or that no longer feel authentic to you. But if your identity is strongly tied to your religion or if your religious beliefs are deeply held by you, you might find it challenging to make this transition. If any of the above challenges apply to you, I hope you find the suggestions about what you can do to overcome them helpful.

But if you feel that you would like more guidance or support as you make this transition, I offer spiritual coaching services that might be able to help. Simply click here to learn more.

~ Ashley C.