I took this picture last week. I saw the scene in a flash as I was driving to a photography assignment. This small, church-building like shack was being torn down. Filled to the rim with garbage, in total derelict state, with a bulldozer standing by to bring on the inevitable destruction. I felt it was a near perfect image of what happened to my faith.

I pulled over, got my camera out, and asked permission to come inside the fences. I snapped a few photo’s. For some time now I have been on the lookout for scenes that somehow convey something of what I experienced in my deconversion from christianity. This scene certainly did that.

I realise the building probably wan’t a church, but a stable or a dovecote. Still, it looks like a small chapel. The symbolism is palpable to me.

One of the most common responses I have had to my deconversion was the suggestion that I could have just ‘changed my faith a little’, or ‘not taken it quite so seriously’.

But my faith looked like this. Full of garbage, in terrible shape and beyond repair. No paint job was going to save it. I don’t think I called the demolition company, but when they came, I realise it was over and it was time to go somewhere else and start over.