From Triumphalist Atheism to Christian Apologetics

Jennifer Fulwiler, atheist-turned Catholic apologist, runs Conversion Diary , a beautifully executed and winsome blog chronicling “what it’s like to be part of an orthodox faith after a life of nonbelief.” Several weeks back, she posted an audio file of her riveting yet refreshingly unvarnished conversion story.

Another good audio byte is here , where she recounts how her cultivated pro-choice mystique was, as the saying goes, mugged by reality. Another excellent post can be found here , where Fulwiler recounts a first encounter with a “real Christian”—that is, a Christian who didn’t fit the received caricature so common in secular culture:

One evening in college some friends and I were sitting around in my dorm room, getting ready to head out to go to a party, when the phone rang. Caller ID showed that it was yet another telemarketer. Our number had been inundated with sales calls, and I was getting sick of it. We had some time to kill before we needed to leave, so I decided to have some fun with the telemarketer for my friends’ amusement.

I motioned for everyone to get quiet, clicked the speakerphone button, and answered the call. Immediately a middle-aged-sounding man began his pitch, announcing that he was with a local home services company and asking me leading questions about my carpet cleaning needs.

Doing a horrible imitation of an east Texas accent, I interrupted him to say, “I don’t believe in cleaning carpets.”

He paused. “Excuse me?”

“Sir, that kind of thing is against my religion,” I said in a lecturing voice. The idea came to me to play the role of a religious zealot, to see if I could get the telemarketer to be the first one to hang up if I launched into a hellfire and brimstone lecture about how carpet cleaners were from the devil. Boy, wouldn’t my friends think that was hilarious — me, the consummate atheist, playing the character of a religious nut!