Have faith. Or don’t. We can’t tell you what to believe.

Religion: Redefining Belief

My first years of life were spent in America’s Bible Belt, brimming with Sunday church attenders, potlucks and new dresses on Easter. My mom got a new job at a church in Maryland when I was 7, so we packed our bags to drive to Maryland for our new Northern life. The Baptist church we attended and loved lost its luster when it was found that the pastor, a close friend of ours, had been involved in shady financial arrangements. So once again, we had to find a new community of Christians.

Not far from where we lived, there was a church my mom had heard talked about—Covenant Life Church. On our first visit, there was no chance we could miss it—it was huge, like a shopping mall. We were greeted at the door by friendly faces, ushered in to partake in freshly brewed coffee and taken to our seats in the auditorium with staggered seating. The music was top quality, as if we were at a concert. The pastor speaking gave an impassioned sermon, derived from the words of the Bible. And people enthusiastically introduced themselves to us when we stood up to acknowledge we were first-timers.

We were hooked. Covenant Life Church, part of Sovereign Grace Churches, became our church just as I was turning 14. We got involved in children’s ministry, home group, youth club and even attended a member’s class to learn about the core beliefs of the church. We were welcomed in, accepted and part of a sort of extended family. We belonged, and that made me feel safe, covered by an umbrella to keep me protected from the outside world.

I Found Community in the Church—but I Didn’t Always Agree With Them

At the time, none of us had concerns about the church. I didn’t like that I couldn’t wear short shorts—they weren’t modest enough. Or that I couldn’t date boys—purity culture was praised and dating would surely cause one to “stumble.” Or that we home-schooled—it was better if we weren’t influenced by the worldliness of public schools. Or that I felt like the odd one out being from a single-parent home—marriage was upheld as sacred at all costs. But it wasn’t a traumatic experience at all.

During those years, I read apologetic books to learn to defend my faith, prayed with friends about school exams and was taught how to read the Bible as God’s word. I remember going to Panera Bread with friends when I learned to drive and reading Christian books about femininity together. At sleepovers, we talked about how to apply what we learned from Sunday sermons to avoid gossip, immodesty or disrespect of our parents.

Once high school finished, I went to college at the University of Maryland but stayed plugged into Covenant Life, as it was only a half-an-hour drive away from the campus. During one of my summers, I traveled to the U.K., met the man I would eventually marry and life turned upside down. After finishing college, I moved across the Atlantic to settle down with my husband.

Joe, my husband, worked at a church in the U.K. that was part of Sovereign Grace Churches. He preached occasionally, led the worship band, hosted a home group and ran a drop-in for the street community. We were entrenched in the church.

Not long after I moved to the U.K., I received news that there were many reports of covered sexual abuses at Covenant Life Church—shattering my trust in the community I had so loved and helping me to see with clarity the church I had been a part of for eight years.

I Didn’t Realize the Church Was a Cult Until I Left

A cult is defined as “a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.” It wasn’t until I was out of the Covenant Life bubble that I realized it was indeed a cult. We were devoted to our leaders, our pastors—they felt godlike. If they said something was true, it was true. If they said to dress a certain way, speak a certain way, host a certain way, worship a certain way, work a certain way—we did it. We had to conform to be accepted. Since I always conformed, I was always accepted. But there were those who didn’t conform.

Acquaintances who drank alcohol, had sex, went to public schools—they weren’t revered like the kids who abstained, kids like me. One of my friends was thrown into a disciplinary process when she started dating a guy who wasn’t a professing Christian—she was 18 by that point. At the time, I just thought she had “gone off the deep end” and abandoned the faith. I didn’t see the control she was being subjected to. Looking back, I regret I stood by and said nothing—I was complicit while she endured a traumatic experience.

Jump back to life in the U.K.—I had one child, with a second on the way. As I was hearing about the drama happening at my old church, my husband was dismissed from his duties by the pastors at our new church; more or less, he was fired. They sprang it on him only two weeks before my due date, with no warning it was coming. They felt he was “too proud.” That was the reason given for his dismissal.

We tried to stick around the church and humbly accept the decision made for him, for us. But trust had been broken. We were broken. Eventually, we stopped going.

The church community had been a vital part of my religion for so long—and without it, I felt lost. To compensate for the lack of sermons and Bible studies, I started listening to podcasts about different aspects of faith and began questioning the basis for all my beliefs about truth. In the past, whenever I had doubted my faith or asked a question regarding its validity, I was given a memorized answer that I could quote to myself and others, when asked. But now, alone without someone to guide me, I had to rely on my mind to think and reason.

I’m Still a Christian, but My Faith Looks Different Now

In the midst of this deconstruction, I never totally abandoned my Christian faith. It’s as if I was doing a house renovation while continuing to live in the house. Some may say that isn’t a good way of actually finding out what you believe and think—that you need to start at square one to get anywhere. But I couldn’t bring myself to abandon encounters I have had with the divine, and I was still inspired by and believed the words and promises of Jesus.

Five years on and I confidently call myself someone who believes and follows the words and teachings of Jesus—a Christian. Not because I think my mind is superior to anyone else’s but because it is the worldview that makes the most sense to me. I have experienced and witnessed God and can’t deny or convince myself otherwise.

Yet, my faith today looks different than it did even five years ago— it’s rugged, prodded and pliable. Churches disappointed me in the past, but I won’t let them define my future of faith.

The church told us what to wear, what to say and how to worship, and if you didn’t conform, you weren’t accepted.

I Grew Up in a Christian Cult

Belonging to all three monotheistic religions is a bit of a mess. Islam and Judaism are constantly opposed and presented on either side of a great divide that would make us believe they have nothing in common. Of course, geopolitical issues don’t help, confusing matters of state with matters of religion.

As the child of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father, I found myself squarely in the middle of a tug of war mainly played out in the media. On France’s historically Christian soil, both are feared and despised. But when it came down to the personal level, it was not as complicated or as problematic as people would believe. I was in the middle, both and neither at the same time, and I picked, without anyone really caring either way.

My Interfaith Family Introduced Me to Religion

Religion is a complicated topic in my family. My mother had the privilege of going to Sunday school and of taking Communion, and the fact that she was Jewish didn’t seem to factor into the equation. She grew up with her grandmother, who had left Germany after her father was killed in WWI and served at a nunnery. She was treated like a glorified slave and beaten, turning her into a firm believer in Jesus, even if she articulated some of these beliefs in Yiddish.

My father’s Islam, on the other hand, was never really discussed. As a Muslim man, he still believed in some West African spirits, and incredibly, these beliefs were never seen as mutually exclusive.

Being born half-Jewish and half-Muslim in a Catholic country could have led to a lot of confusion. But neither of my parents were religious, and I don’t believe the topic of what I would become ever came up. My parents may have discussed religion when they first started going out, but by the time I was born, it had become a non-issue. If I had been a boy, I would have been named Noah, who’s in the Torah, the Bible and the Quran. As a girl, my name was chosen for also being in all three books.

Religion Was More Cultural Than Spiritual To Us

Growing up in France, I never went to the synagogue or the mosque. I also didn’t go to church, unless it was a holiday and there was something pretty to look at inside. The question of whether we would celebrate Christmas never came up. Neither did Easter. It was just simply something we did.

Religion in my family was never anything more than a footnote. It was a joke that my aunt wasn’t named Sylvie, as her initials would have been SS, and that would not do—“for a Jewish family” was left unsaid.

My grandfather had a picture of the pope in his kitchen, but he also refused to enter a church, refused to take his hat off when he was forced to go in and had a famous saying after the Six-Day War in Israel: “If you go to the desert, you can still see the Arabs running.” This was extremely satisfactory, apparently.

I remember asking about religion and where we stood as a family. My parents, both good intellectuals, answered by giving me the three books. “You pick,” they said. Of course, I didn’t read all of them. It was clearly just a phase.

Through the Years, I’ve Leaned Into Different Aspects of My Religious Identity

Then, as a teen, religion reentered my life in an unexpected way. While I grew up in a multicultural suburb with friends who were both “proper” Jewish and “proper” Muslim, being Muslim seemed cool. Where this notion came from is still a mystery to me, but I somehow started adding “inshallah” after everything I said.

I always joke if things had been the other way around, I would have been neither Jewish nor Muslim, as Judaism is "passed on" through the mum and Islam through dads. But being squarely in both camps, I had to pick. Or I could have gone on as the good little atheist I was as a child, believing in nothing, not even Santa.

As an adult, I chose Judaism. More specifically, I chose cultural Judaism. That is to say, I still don’t go to the synagogue, but I do fast for Yom Kippur, even if it’s “just in case.” I eat pork, but I try to avoid a bacon cheeseburger at Shabbat, and I enjoy a good cheese and ham board as much as the next person, even if it’s not remotely kashrut.

My idea of religion has never been—and still isn’t—very religious. I don’t pray, even if I’ll dutifully repeat whatever the rabbi says if he asks. Again, we never know.

Religion to me is about culture and community. It’s about a shared history and, unfortunately, shared trauma. Religion is about a point of view. I believe in questioning everything, in studying until you go blind. I believe in books. I believe women are the pillars of our communities. I believe in “just in case.”

The realization that Islam was not for me came when one celebrity or another—I forget who—converted to Islam. That the process would be so quick and easy made my skin crawl.

Try and convert to Judaism, even as a Jew, and if you don’t have a congregation, it will take you years. When my mother’s best friend’s daughter wanted to do her Aliyah (return to Israel as a Jew), she had to prove she was Jewish. That most of her parents’ families had died in concentration camps was not enough. After forgetting to speak to a rabbi for a couple of years, she was all of a sudden not Jewish enough.

If I ever wanted to do my Aliyah, my mother says, “They’d have a right fit.” Proving we’re Jewish would be difficult. Records have been lost. Conversions, unspoken beliefs and fear have conspired to make my mother’s family history something of a mess.

And that’s without even touching on the fact I am Muslim, whether I want to be or not. There isn’t an imam who can deny me Islam. If I could prove it with papers, which have long ago been burnt to a crisp, there wouldn’t be a rabbi who could deny me Judaism.

My Religious Identity Is Rooted in Community

Ultimately, human beings need to feel connected. Not necessarily to the divine, whatever that is, but to other human beings. Having a community where we feel like we belong is what makes us human.

And so I didn’t pick a religion. I picked a community.

A very divided community with loads of codes and hierarchy, more trouble than any religion is probably worth and a history so complicated that even learned experts—rabbis—argue about it constantly. But I am proud nonetheless to belong to the oldest monotheistic religion—the religion and beliefs that, for better or worse, started it all.

When I have to fill in an official form and I come to the religion box, I sometimes feel bad ticking “Jew.” Sometimes, I leave it blank. Sometimes, I choose the box marked “atheist.”

And so, for all the future boxes out there, I should make it very clear: Do I belong to a religion? Yes. Am I religious? No.

Religion isn’t about following all the rules or being perfect—it’s about community and culture.

I Grew Up an Atheist in an Interfaith Household

A wrought-iron gate surrounded the entrance to the neighborhood. As kids, we’d easily sneak under it and venture out into the abandoned factories, relics of communist China. The gate served a more symbolic purpose: Where would we really go? What was there to escape to, beyond an urban graveyard? I was 2 when my family moved from Virginia to Langfang, which was then a small city on the outskirts of Beijing.

Mom found Christianity as a teenager in Los Angeles. Her parents were addicts and criminals, so she sought refuge in anything that would take her away from the dysfunction of her childhood. My dad, coming from a middle-class family in Washington, was a student at UCLA when he met my mom at her church. He was a fundamentalist, avowed Reaganist and, in his words, a warrior for Christ. My mom adopted his fundamentalism as their relationship progressed—not so much out of her own personal inclinations but as a supplemented desire for stability and regiment.

After finishing his undergraduate degree, the two moved to Virginia where he was pursuing his dreams of being a lawyer at an unranked Christian law school. It was there that they had my siblings and me. My dad tried his hand at law but never succeeded and suddenly found himself with four kids, student loans and no direction. Then, on a particularly innocuous church service one Sunday morning, he found an escape route from the incessant houndings of loan collectors.

Our Trip Abroad Turned Into a State of Religious Zealotry and Fear

The mission trip was only supposed to last three months. He’d travel around rural China sharing the “good word.” As the end of the trip approached, he began to understand there was nothing left for him in the States—no glory, no adoration. All that awaited was an ocean of crushing debts. During his time there, my dad connected with a network of missionaries who ran orphanages in Langfang.

I was 2 when the rest of us moved to China to join him. There were five families, each with their own orphanage. Nearly all the homes in our residential complex were empty. It was designed in the early 2000s to mimic American suburbia, and the developers hoped to attract wealthy expats. The houses were strange, the architecture idiosyncratic—staircases leading to nowhere, cabinets that didn’t open, plastic mirrors, exposed plumbing, faux chimneys, bathrooms with no toilets and empty indoor pools. Wild ivy swiftly claimed the unoccupied homes, crawling into the shattered windows. When we were young, my brothers and I would dare each other to sneak into the empty units. Silence covered the interiors like dust, insulating the houses from the cicadas outside.

The other families were all missionaries and all harbored their own secret failures that they’d rather leave behind, along with their lives in America. Each family, in some shape, was running from something; each family was an outcast. The men in the States were overlooked as oafish zealots—but in China, they were saviors and saints and warriors for Christ. Fanaticism infiltrated every aspect of our lives, at every scale. In a gated community in rural China, they were able to censor us children from things deemed ungodly—things like Halloween, television, non-Christians, the sites and sounds of the world outside those wrought iron gates.

The community was upheld by a currency of fear. The men, acutely aware of the fragility of their egos and the dissonance between their status in the States versus China, used violence to subjugate the commune to their will. Wives were beaten. Children were beaten. Chinese help was berated. Experts in the art of gaslighting, they never failed to find a Bible verse to justify their actions.

We Escaped My Father’s Violence and Abandoned Christianity

There was a hierarchy of social classes, with the patriarchs at the top governing the wives who would rear their own children. At the bottom were the Chinese—the nannies, the help and the orphans. None of the men were qualified, and each claimed to have been led by a calling, some higher power that deemed them worthy enough to be contacted by God himself. All their stories centered their own grandeur paraded as God’s.

The men would return to the States for sermon tours at churches across America, raking in donations, telling poor Americans that they, too, could take part in the salvation of poor Chinese. During the sermons, the men were heralded, their egos pampered in compensation for their lack of adoration before moving to China.

When I was 11, my mother finally divorced my father. Together, we escaped his violence and moved back to America. In California, where we lived, I was exposed to a vastly different world of rich flavors and stimuli. Eventually, I would abandon Christianity and its dogma of colonial violence. I ran in the opposite direction of everything I was subjugated to in China. I moved to New York, embraced my queerness and became a model.

During this period, by some freak coincidence, my agent discovered Rebecca, a girl whose family were our neighbors back in Langfang. She also moved to New York and rejected her father’s indoctrination. Reconnecting through our mutual agent, we made plans to have dinner together. I took the A train to meet her in Brooklyn. We dined at a trendy vegan restaurant, drank negronis and recollected on the bizarre nature of our upbringing, in an environment diametrically opposed to it.

I will never fully compartmentalize my childhood and the ways religious violence had infiltrated my psyche. But sitting at that restaurant was the closest thing to a full circle moment I’d had found so far. Together, we expressed exasperation about the peculiarities of life in the commune and all its specific traumas. But we also found solidarity in each other. Awareness that we were not alone—that we escaped together.

My father moved our family to rural China, and his fanaticism for Christ infiltrated our entire way of life.