Dave Warnock, Part 1

(Editor’s Note: After over 30 years as a fundamentalist evangelical Christian minister, Dave Warnock rejected his faith in 2011 and decided he was an atheist. In February of 2019, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease). He soon created Dying Out Loud to speak about his experiences as an atheist with a terminal illness. He has partnered with Final Exit Network (FEN) and was featured in FEN’s Summer 2020 magazine. Below is the transcript from the first part of a Zoom conversation I had with Dave on December 17, 2020. The second part will be posted next week. – KTB)

Kevin: Hello, Dave. How are you doing these days?
Dave: I’m moving slower than I used to, but I’m good. I just don’t like the cold.

K: Where are you?
D: I’m in Charlotte, North Carolina.

K: Well, I’m in Minnesota, and it’s 27 degrees here, so you can’t complain about the cold.
D: Yes, I can. (Laughs) But I get it. It’s all relative. I was in Minnesota in July 2019, speaking at First Universalist Church in Minneapolis. A guy I know through The Clergy Project goes to that church and he arranged for me to speak there. It was one of the first things I did on the Dying Out Loud tour. I was traveling extensively through the first quarter of 2020. I met Mary [Ewert, FEN’s Executive Director] when I was in Madison, Wisconsin at a speaking event for the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

K: As a hospital and hospice chaplain, I’m curious about your path towards becoming an ordained minister. Were you affiliated with a particular denomination?
D: I was not what you would think of in terms of going to seminary and becoming a Presbyterian or Methodist minister or whatever. I was in the freelance version of Christianity where God calls you and ordains you, but I did become officially licensed to marry, bury, baptize and all that.

K: When you decided to leave Christianity, was it all or nothing? Did you retain any sense of religion or spirituality?
D: I wouldn’t say all or nothing. My experience of Christianity was evangelical fundamentalism, which is that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God. The Bible defines our experience with God and regulates it. I no longer have any interest in a conversation about a god who’s involved in our lives. A religion or spirituality or communion with nature or communing with the energy of the universe – those are things I have no problem with because they’re not dogmatic and they’re not trying to make others adhere to their way of thinking. Personally, I don’t have any interest in it. I don’t have any knowledge of it. When I die, my expectation is that I will cease to exist and I’m okay with that. If my energy goes back to the universe and becomes part of the collective energy in the universe again, that’s fine. Whether there’s something that connects us to the universe or nature, I don’t really know enough about that to comment on it. I don’t have any interest in exploring that because it doesn’t help me in terms of how I live my life or relate to other people and what I do on a day-to-day basis. If someone thinks that’s a benefit to them, I say go for it, just don’t try to dictate that to others or legislate or impose it on other people. That’s when I’m going to get hostile. Evangelicalism is all about converting others to your way of thinking. At its core, it says “there is only one way to God, and it’s through Jesus Christ as your lord. You have to repent and confess your sins, and you have to believe the way we do. If you don’t believe that, you’re simply wrong. It’s not your fault; you just haven’t been given the right information, and I’m here to help you with that.” That’s the idea behind evangelical fundamentalism and it hurts people. It does damage. It has an ideology that I have great difficulty with – the idea of exclusivity of faith, that there’s only one way and that everyone else is wrong. “We’re right and your wrong. Sorry. You just happen to be born in the wrong country and the wrong time. I was fortunate enough to be born into Christianity, which just so happens to be the only correct way.” The arrogance of that is mind boggling. I’m not opposed to religion or spirituality; I just don’t have a personal need for it. I’m fine just being a humanist. If it’s logical and reasonable, then I’ll take a look at it. It’s the fundamentalism and evangelicalism that I oppose.

K: Is there a relationship between your medical diagnosis and your rejection of Christianity?
D: They’re not related at all. I let go of Christianity over 10 years ago. It was a process of evaluation and discovery that started in the middle of 2009. By 2011, I no longer believed in a deity of any kind. The official diagnosis of ALS was in February of 2019, but I had symptoms for over two years prior. I was well into my atheist life by then.

K: After your diagnosis, did you have second thoughts about revisiting the idea of life after death?
D: Yeah, I had a talk with God and said, “Hey, I was just kidding about this atheist stuff. Can we revisit this whole thing?” (Laughs). No. No, I didn’t. It was such as complete demarcation for me. Once I was done, I was done. When I realized the Bible was just a man-made document, the other dominoes fell pretty quickly. I don’t need to cling to a nicer version of God or a more progressive version of Christianity. It was a fairly complete experience for me and I was comfortable with that decision. I told my family and it cost me many relationships – it cost a lot, to be totally honest. But once I came to that place it wasn’t like I danced around it for a few years. It was a done deal. The ALS never for an instance caused me to rethink that.

K: Are you still estranged from family members?
D: At various levels I am. I’ve had a bit of a reconnection with one of my daughters. My two daughters essentially shunned me, and it led to the end of my marriage. Some of that has rebuilt over time but not what I would call a relationship. I have a mostly conservative evangelical family, including a brother who’s an evangelical fundamentalist pastor in Texas. I have a good relationship with my son, who is quite liberal. He doesn’t embrace Christianity any longer either. There’s just not a lot of connection with the others. If I texted or called my mom and just asked how’s she doing, she would be fine with that. It’s not that we don’t communicate at all, just that there’s no real relationship.

K: Did anyone in your family blame you for your son’s decision?
D: I don’t think they know about it. He learned from his dad to not talk too much so family doesn’t really know what he thinks. I know that he and his wife have a sense of spirituality but no connection to anything evangelical. When I say he learned it from his dad, it’s because I talked too much about it and he saw that.

K: Navigating those relationships can be tricky. I was raised Missouri Synod Lutheran, which is pretty fundamentalist. I still have family members who follow that doctrine, but others who don’t. Holidays get to be interesting.
D: Yeah, they were for me for a while when I was still married. I’ve been divorced four years, but when I was still married my wife remained a believer and was in the same mindset that we had always been in for thirty-something years. When we got together with other family members, I was the black sheep who was clearly out of sync with everyone else. It was uncomfortable for everyone, but we just didn’t talk about it.

K: Did you also lose any business relationships?
D: I was in the insurance business from when I left ministry in 2009 until 2019. I was always an independent agent, but I worked for the same manager for a few years, and I was abruptly demoted. I didn’t know why and none of the other agents seemed to know either. It was quite puzzling. But just last year, another agent who is also no longer with that company told me that my manager came into the office one day and said, “Did you know that Dave Warnock is an atheist and a liberal? He’s not one of us!” It was shortly after that when I was demoted. It cost me a lot of money.

K: When you go out to speak and talk about your journey, are you finding people converting because of your story or getting angry? What are some of the more notable responses?
D: Keep in my mind, the places I speak are Unitarian Universalist churches or secular groups. I don’t get a lot of resistance in those meetings. Where I’m more likely to get it is online, after a podcast or YouTube show. I’ve done some panel discussions on death and dying with Christians who object strenuously to taking matters into your own hands. A couple of months ago, two Christian women were strongly opposed to the notion that I have the right to end life on my own terms given my situation. Their argument, as it is with most people who object, was that it’s God’s choice, not mine. God gives life and only God can take it. My response is simply, “Well, then I’m assuming you will never go to the doctor or have surgery or take medicine, because every time you do that you’re taking matters into your own hands.” As it turns out, these particular women said they don’t go to the doctor or anything like that. So, I said, “Do you think the Earth is flat? Are we that far down the tunnel with you?” I was incredulous. Most people aren’t that crazy but they do have a hard time with the idea that someone like me might use a mechanism that gives me control when I’ve decided that enough is enough. I’ve come to see over the last year and a half through Dying Out Loud that Christians are by and large afraid of death and they’re by and large in denial of death. That’s dumbfounding to me. They should be the ones in a hurry to go be with Jesus, but they’re not.

K: I completely agree. Anyone who grew up with a Christian framework should not only welcome death, they should think of it as winning the lottery. It doesn’t make sense to me that any Christian would be afraid of death.
D: I think I understand why Christians are afraid of death, and it’s based on my understanding of what the Bible says and what I taught for years. In the Christian viewpoint, it’s really not death. It’s just a little bit of a pause, then you’re born again into your new life. Even Jesus. He didn’t die, he just had a bad weekend and then went to heaven. The idea of death being a finality or terminal is something they can’t stomach because it’s been presented to them for their whole lives that death is not real, it’s just a pause.

K: What is their rationale for not helping that process along?
D: It’s mainly that they get very uncomfortable with the terminology. There’s a scripture that says the final enemy that shall be defeated is death, and death is presented as an enemy. It’s something negative, something dark, something bad. To present a Christian with the terminology is something they really can’t get their head around.

K: That’s a good point about the terminology, but I’m still intrigued by the question. If you know that death is just a door to go through, then why is there fear in opening that door?
D: It doesn’t make sense. I found pretty quickly once I got my diagnosis that my Christian family and friends had a harder time with it than atheists did. They had a harder time knowing what to do, how to talk to me, and what to do with me as an atheist facing a terminal illness. Whereas my atheist friends just embraced it. They said it sucks and we hate this, but we’re here for you and we’re here with you. I had several friends tell me point blank, “We want to be there at the end with you. That’s friendship.

K: I have a theory that the reason Christians are afraid of death is that the church has convinced them that they might not go to heaven. They’re not as afraid of death as they are of going to hell.
D: Yeah, there’s some of that hanging around the fringes. I think you’re right.

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