Video from Australian Christian Lobby
'Celebrity Deconversions' and the Journey of Faith
In the last few years there has been a handful of what might be called: celebrity Christian deconversion stories. These would include folks like Hillsong worship leader Marty Sampson, popular pastor and author Joshua Harris, and the YouTube entertainer Rhett McLaughlin (who I only know as one of the two “Bentley Brothers” from Phil Vischer’s excellent kids’ series What’s in the Bible? with Buck Denver).
As I did not grow up Evangelical Christian, my experience with childhood faith was probably very different from many of these “celebrities.” However, I did have a deconversion from my childhood Roman Catholic faith. That deconversion happened over an extended period of time starting roughly in high school, and culminated sometime after I graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1997. However, at the age of 34 I had a dramatic, religious conversion when I stepped foot into an Evangelical church for the first time in my life. I saw and heard Jesus that day, and since then I have gone on to do two Master’s Degrees in Christian Apologetics and Systematic Theology. As someone who lived an extended time both as a non-Christian, and now almost 11 years as a committed Evangelical, I resonate with adults like Sampson, and McLaughlin, but also struggle to see this as shocking a phenomena as many make it out to be.." from the article: 'Celebrity deconversions' and the journey of faith