I was raised Christian but by 13 I was mostly atheist and my parents were fine with letting me skip out on most religious activities. I was pretty apolitical and irreligious for most of my teens and early adulthood.

I threw myself into leftist political organizing around the 2016 election (I had just graduated HS). I embedded myself in the local Democratic Socialists of America but after a few years I became very disillusioned with it. Members viewed it as college social club and would have the pettiest squabbles over identity politics. I recall the founders being driven out over grammar they used to refer to Black people. Eventually COVID “radicalized me to centrism” and I find my current politics pretty neutral at the moment.

That sideline to politics is to say, I’m familiar with faulty organizations and I can spot when people aren’t genuine and more interested in a social club.

After my employment changed in about 2022 I started attending church with my parents again and was baptized in 2023. My conversion was driven by reading the Bible, as one would expect, doing a lot of research online (The atheists I embraced in my teenage years would often argue in bad faith I found.) but also by engaging with the church. It was made of people from many different walks of life and different outlooks but they were all unified by a belief in Jesus Christ and a mission to serve their wider community.