When I left my religion of 35 years, the religion I had been born into, I ended a 10 year stint as an in closet atheist. And started a year of attending 52 different religious services.

The genesis of my leaving the Latter-Day Saint (LDS, aka Mormon) church really started around a decade or so ago. I was the most Mormony Mormon you could imagine. Wife, kids, known as the "nice clean" guy at work. I was the guy in Sunday School that if someone wanted to know what scripture talked about what subject, I was the guy to ask.

That was probably my first problem: I actually read the scriptures. Most Mormons are encouraged to read them, especially the Book of Mormon. There's even a 4 year class most LDS teenagers take at 5 AM in the morning to study the Old and New Testament, the Book of Mormon, and LDS church history called "Seminary", and I had the highest marks. I read writings by prominent LDS thinkers like James E. Talmage who wrote a book called "Jesus the Christ" that I devoured, or "The Miracle of Forgiveness."

The problem is, the more I read, the more  I couldn't reconcile any kind of logic. Not just with the Mormon faith, but with religion in general. What kind of a God orders genocide and the rape of virgins as described in the Old Testament? How was it that slavery was legal even through the New Testament era, when it violated every tenant of the "do unto others as you would have others do unto you"?  What was up with the battles described in the Book of Mormon that had no archeological evidence?

Copernicus realized that rather than using epicycles upon epicycles upon epicycles to track the planets in the sky, if you put the Sun in the center of the solar system everything just - worked. The planet's orbits were tracked exactly as they'd appear in the sky, with even greater accuracy than before. Yes, it meant you had to ignore what the religious authorities preached, but - it worked.

I reached my own Copernican discovery when I was finally faced with the idea that if I removed God from the equation, then everything fit.  The genocide ordered by Moses and his successors were simply the same kinds of mass slaughter performed by every other Bronze age civilization in the name of their god. I no longer had to reconcile evolutionary evidence with the Garden of Eden and trying to figure out if God stopped death to form the garden after millions of years of evolution, or if science had it all wrong, or some other mysterious proposition. Without a god, the reasons why prophecies were so vague and twisted hundreds of different ways to predict events that only after their occurance could be proclaimed as fulfillment of prophecy made sense: they were just guesses and vague writings of men.

So what did I do with this newfound knowledge? Kept my trap shut about it.  My family, my children, my lovely wife, friends in my community - these were people Ifeared would be hurt if I proclaimed myself "an atheist." After all, I knew the stories of atheists in the Book of Mormon. Usually, they died terribly after professing they were actually agents of Satan.

Just because I didn't believe in Satan didn't mean I wanted my friends and loved ones to think I was acting on his behalf. I mean - Satan bad, you know?

Last year, though, things finally came to a head.  I was sitting in church in January of 2008. By now, I knew I gave off signals that I was "different" to the other members of the LDS church. I was aDemocratic Mormon -nearly an oxymoron (though, obviously they exist - Hi, Congressperson Reid!). I was pro-choice, but justified it with the 11th Article of Faith:

We claim the priviledge of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same priviledge, let them worship how, where, or wht they may.

Based on that, I could not deny someone else the choice to get an abortion, or whether or not to get married based on their sexual preferences. My religious beliefs should not impare theirs.

I was sitting in church, next to my lovely wife, when it was announced that a member from the local district leadership (called a stake) would address the congregation. In order to pitch  Proposition 2, which would make gay marriage illegal.

The stake representative assured everyone this was not "a political issue, but a moral issue." That the church speaking out about this issue didn't promote a political view, but their religious one.

And then the stake representative and the local church leadership started moving through the rows to pass out ballot slips for Proposition 2 for the members to fill out. Under their own free will, of course - nobody was forcing them. Just the eyes of all of their peers, their family, their church leaders around them.

When they came to my row, I refused, and said point blank that I found this to be a violation of the seperation of church and state, and the 11th article of faith. I turned to my wife. "You are free to do what you wish." I turned back to the stake representative. "But I will have nothing to do with it."

He paused, then moved on. Inside, I was shaking. With anger, with sorrow, with the worry that I had embarassed my wife. But I couldn't do it.

Over the course of that year, I realized that I could no longer remain in the church. I remember one man talking about his children. "They go to school, and they're taught they should be tolerant to everyone. Then they come home and ask why they're not suppose to be tolerant to gay people, and I have to explain to them that homosexuality is wrong."

I realized what staying silent was teaching my children. That if you oppose something because you think it's wrong, just shut up and don't tell anyone.

I had a plan. Originally, I was going to wait decades. Until my children were grown up, married, and then I'd finally come out of the atheist closet. Old enough that they wouldn't feel ashamed at having a father who wasn't a "worthy member" of the church who could baptize and bless them as they grew older.

I realized that I had spent 10 years as a coward, because I didn't want to rock the boat. And I was teaching my children that it was all right to be a bigot as long as it was to fit into your religious community.

One other thing happened that year. I remember being in Best Buy, buying an iMac for my family after painstakingly saving the money for a few years. I was having a conversation with the salesman about the upcoming election. I was an Obama volunteer, but I tried not to be pushy about my views.

Out of nowhere, the salesman announced "Well, I'm worried about Obama, because I don't think we should have a Muslim in the White House."

"First of all, he's not a Muslim, he's a Christian," I told him. "And secondly, what would it matter?"

"Because Muslims are suppose to kill all Americans. It's part of their religion."

"No it's not!" I blurted out. I considered cancelling my purchase right then, but I had already swiped my card through the machine. Little late now.  I was frankly shocked that someone would feel that way. It was ridiculous that someone would believe such nonsense.

Later, I realized that maybe it wasn't so strange. I remembered the questions people had asked me when I was still LDS. Like "Can Mormons dance?" Or, my favorite, "Why don't Mormons believe in Jesus Christ?"

"Do you know that the name of the church is 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints'?" I'd reply.

"Yeah, that's what I thought was kind of odd."

/facepalm

So why should I be surprised when someone has misconceptions about a religion that weren't true? That led me to wondering what kind of misconceptions *I* had about religions.

In December, I told my wife my intentions to leave the LDS church. By doing so, I was basically being excommunicated. I wasn't just "not going" and becoming "inactive" - I was officially requesting that my name be removed from LDS records, that I not be listed as a member, that the LDS church was not allowed to contact me. I listed my reasons why, including my belief that their position on gay marriage was a stand against human rights.

My wife cried a little. "I've been expecting you to do this for months now," she said. "I've seen how you've sat there in church, listening to things I know you think are wrong, and holding your tongue. And I don't want you to be miserable just because you think you're making me happy by staying."

If I have one regret, I wish I had confided my feelings to her earlier. I should have trusted her when she said she loved me no matter what when we got married, and I'm still ashamed that I doubted her.

My kids were a little harder. My daughter, 9 at the time, cried, though she didn't know why. My sons, 6 and 4, didn't really understand more than "Daddy's not going to church with you anymore because I believe they're doing things that aren't right."

 Of course, now I had all of this free time on my hands. My mind kept returning to that guy in Best Buy, who believed that Muslims have a religious belief to kill Americans. To the people I had known who asked me about the Mormon church, believing any number of things because "I had heard it somewhere."

Or even the few members of the LDS church that I had informed of my atheism, one of whom actually asked me "So does this mean you worship Satan now?"

Sometimes, the need to facepalm after hearing something like that can be very, very hard.

I sat down at home and made a list of every church I could think of. Catholic, Baptist, Mennonite, Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah's Witness, Buddhist, Humanist, Satanist - until I had a list of over 30. Then I started using Google Maps to find the closest one to my house so I could go figure out what it is they do, and what it is they actually believe in.

I resolved that I would remove any ignorance from myself, and hopefully in others as I could. I didn't have to believe what the various religions taught - but at least when someone said "Doesn't religion X believe Y?" I'd actually know, and could do my part in dispelling ignorance and fear.

I'm about 10 months into the  goal, and so far I've visited about 40-odd religions (I think 45 at this point - I'll have to check my notes). It's been an interesting time, meeting new people. Everyone has been nice - I actually don't have that much flack from ministers who discover I'm an atheist (though a few members seem more upset that I don't believe as they do). I've been invited to convert so many times I lost count, and poltely turned them all down. I'm not doing this to find a new religion, but just to understand them, even if it is in a cursory way.

This Sunday I'll be attending a Sunni Islam service. I wonder if I should swing by that Best Buy and see if that salesperson is still there.