The nonprofit that helps people recover from religion and religious abuse, providing hotlines, support groups, and secular therapy referrals—Recovering from Religion—is experiencing such demand that it needs to launch as a professional operation with paid staff, starting with a resource director, whose job will be to secure more funding in a steadier way for the organization’s operation.
This is how any group needs to start out if it wants to make a larger impact. Check out their case for this, and if you think it’s a good idea, provide them with some donor support. RfR’s executive director Sarah Morehead has a neat deal worked out with Neil Carter to make this happen.
And (or at the very least!) spread the word, so more people can have the chance to consider helping this happen!
I think it’s something that needs to happen, and the world would be a better place if it did. So give it a lookover and some thought.
Already did! I hosted them last Saturday in Portland to meet some of my authors. I think their hotline project fills a real void. Thanks for posting.
On the subject of leaving religion. This has been going on for quite some time and skeptic, atheist, humanist and freethought groups are attempting to sort of replace the role that religion has played in the lives of a majority of the population.
It is my contention, that they are failing in replacing the warm sense of belonging that churches offer, the main reason being; what religion promises, it does not deliver. The secular position is one of honesty, which is, when all is considered, “not much”. Life is indeed, a “shit sandwich”,
It seems to me that RR is falling into that trap. “That trap” being false promises. The various religions make all sorts of promises, RR is also promising happiness through leaving your religion.
I remain to be convinced of that, but then again happiness may not really be the quest eh?
That isn’t what they do.
They do a far more practical thing: provide escapees people to talk to, from people who have been through what they have, to people with actual professional certifications if needed, so one can find help with how to cope with any of the things they are going through or struggling with, which range far wider than existential questions about death or loss or cosmic justice. Even things not related to religion—if you have ordinary problems you need therapy for, but can’t find a therapist who isn’t selling Jesus but understands and respects secular approaches to mental health, their secular therapist referral system is the place to start.