List of former atheists and agnostics

Not to be confused with List of atheists.

This is a list of notable persons who formerly identified as either atheists or agnostics, but then developed belief in a deity or deities. In some countries the percentage of those professing "no belief" is growing. A 2008 Pew Forum study reported that 3.9% of Americans were raised without religion, but later affiliated with a religious group. The same study reported that 12.7% of Americans were unaffiliated despite being raised in a particular faith.

Converts and reverts to Christianity

• Mortimer J. Adler – Philosopher who co-founded Great Books of the Western World. Agnostic convert to the Catholic Church.
• Steve Beren – Former member of the Socialist Workers Party (United States) who became a Protestant conservative politician.
• Anders Borg – Sweden's Minister for Finance.
• Paul Bourget – French author who became agnostic and positivist at 15, but returned to Catholicism at 35.
• Ferdinand Brunetière – Rationalist and freethinking writer who became a Catholic.
• Julie Burchill – British journalist and feminist.
• Kirk Cameron – An American actor best-known for his role as Mike Seaver on the television situation comedy, Growing Pains, as well as several other television and film appearances as a child actor. Today he is a Protestant Evangelical. Recently, he portrayed the lead roles in the Left Behind film series and in the 2008 drama film, Fireproof.
• Whittaker Chambers – Former Communist turned conservative writer.
• Francis Collins – Geneticist who was an atheist until age 27, but then converted to Christianity.
• Larry Darby – Holocaust denier and former member of the American Atheists.
• Joy Davidman – Poet and wife of C. S. Lewis.
• Avery Dulles – A Jesuit priest, theologian, and cardinal in the Catholic Church. He was raised Presbyterian, but was an agnostic before his conversion to Catholic Christianity.
• Dawn Eden – Rock journalist of Jewish ethnicity who went from an agnostic to a Catholic writer, who was particularly concerned with the moral values of chastity.
• André Frossard – French journalist who was atheist, but converted to the Catholic Church in 1935.
• Maggie Gallagher – Conservative activist and a founder of the National Organization for Marriage.
• Eugene D. Genovese – Historian who went from Stalinist to conservative theist.
• Bo Giertz – Atheistic in youth he became a Lutheran bishop and writer.
• Tamsin Greig – British actress.
• Nicky Gumbel – Raised atheist and became an Anglican. He is known for his work with the Alpha course.
• Keir Hardie – Raised atheist and became a Christian Socialist.
• Anna Haycraft – Raised as a member of Britain's Comtist and atheistic "Church of Humanity", but became a conservative Catholic Christian in adulthood.
• Ammon Hennacy – Initially an atheist labor activist he became a religious pacifist in the Atlanta Penitentiary.
• Peter Hitchens – Journalist who went from Trotskyism to Traditionalist conservatism, and estranged brother of outspoken anti-theist and Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens.
• Paul Jones – Musician, of Manfred Mann. Previously atheist and in 1967 he argued with Cliff Richard about religion on a TV show.
• Mary Karr – Memoirist and poet who switched from agnosticism to Catholicism in 1996.
• Ignace Lepp – French psychiatrist whose parents were freethinkers and who joined the Communist party at age fifteen. He broke with the party in 1937 and became a Catholic priest.
• Félix Leseur – Doctor turned Catholic priest. His conversion, in part, came by efforts of his wife who was declared a Servant of God by the Catholic Church.
• C. S. Lewis – Writer who became an atheist as a young man, later paradoxically describing himself as being "very angry with God for not existing". He later returned to Anglicanism and wrote many books about his faith.
• Arnold Lunn – A skier, mountaineer, and writer. As an agnostic he wrote Roman Converts, which took a critical view of Catholicism and the converts to it. He later converted to Catholicism due to debating with converts, and became an apologist for the faith, although he retained a few criticisms of the faith.
• Gabriel Marcel – A leading Christian existentialist. His upbringing was agnostic.
• Alister McGrath – Biochemist and Christian theologian. Founder of 'Scientific theology' and critic of Richard Dawkins in books like Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life and The Dawkins Delusion?
• Claude McKay – Bisexual Jamaican poet who went from Communist atheist to a devout Catholic Christian.
• Czesław Miłosz – Poet who won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature.
• Nina Karin Monsen – A Norwegian moral philosopher and author who grew up in a humanist family, but later convert to Christianity through philosophic thinking.
• Malcolm Muggeridge – British journalist and author who went from agnosticism to the Catholic Church.
• William J. Murray – Son of Madalyn Murray O'Hair who became a Born again preacher.
• Bernard Nathanson – A founder of NARAL Pro-Choice America who dubbed himself a "Jewish atheist", but later became a Pro-life activist within the Catholic Church.
• Marvin Olasky – Former Marxist turned Christian conservative, he edits the Christian World Magazine.
• Giovanni Papini – He went from pragmatic atheism to Catholicism, also a Fascist.
• Joseph Pearce – An anti-Catholic and agnostic British National Front member who became a devout Catholic writer with a series on EWTN.
• Charles Péguy – French poet, essayist, and editor. He went from agnostic humanist to a pro-Republic Catholic.
• Rosalind Picard – Director of the Affective computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab. She was raised atheist, but converted to Christianity in her teens.
• Enoch Powell – Conservative Party (UK) member who converted to Anglicanism.
• Kirsten Powers – News commentator, raised Episcopalian who drifted to atheism but eventually began to "view everyone as God's child and that means everyone deserves grace and respect."
• George R. Price – Geneticist who became an Evangelical Protestant and wrote about the New Testament. Later he moderated his evangelistic tendencies and switched from religious writing to working with the homeless.
• Gerald Priestland – News correspondent who discusses having once been the "school atheist" in Something Understood: An Autobiography. He became a Quaker after an emotional breakdown.
• Michael Reiss – British bioethicist and Anglican priest.
• Dame Cicely Saunders – Templeton Prize and Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize winning nurse known for palliative care. She converted to Christianity as a young woman.
• E. F. Schumacher – Economic thinker known for Small Is Beautiful, his A Guide for the Perplexed criticizes what he termed "materialistic scientism." He went from atheism to Buddhism to Catholicism.
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – Nobel Prize-winning dissident author who converted to Russian Orthodoxy.
• Edith Stein – Phenomenologist philosopher who converted to the Catholic Faith and became a Discalced Carmelite nun; declared a saint by John Paul II.
• Peter Steele – Lead singer of Type O Negative.
• John Lawson Stoddard – Divinity student turned "Scientific humanist" turned Catholic. His son Lothrop Stoddard remained agnostic and would be significant to Scientific racism.
• Lee Strobel – Writer, Christian apologist, a former journalist and megachurch pastor.
• Lacey Sturm – Vocalist and lyricist for alternative metal band Flyleaf.
• Allen Tate – American poet, essayist and social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
• Evelyn Waugh – British novelist who converted to Catholicism from agnosticism.
• Simone Weil – Raised by agnostic Jewish parents, and a Marxist for a time, she became a religious mystic.
• Fay Weldon – British novelist and feminist.
• A. N. Wilson – Biographer and novelist who entered the theological St Stephen's House, Oxford before proclaiming himself an atheist and writing against religion. He announced his return to Christianity in 2009.
• John C. Wright – A science fiction author and libertarian atheist who later converted to the Catholic Faith.

See also: List of people who converted to Christianity from agnosticism or atheism

Converts and reverts to Hinduism

• Annie Besant - In 1887 she wrote "Why I don't believe in God", but later became a leading theosophist and worked with Hindu movements.
• John Dobson - Atheist who joined the Hindu Vedanta Society.
• Sita Ram Goel - Marxist and militant atheist in early adulthood, later returned to Hinduism.

See also: List of converts to Hinduism from non-religious backgrounds

Converts and reverts to Islam

• A. R. Rahman (Initially raised Hindu, but was atheist as a teenager until conversion to Islam) - Indian music composer.
• Charles le Gai Eaton - British diplomat and writer.
• Silma Ihram - An Australian educator, author, and racial tolerance campaigner. After an agnostic upbringing she became "born again Christian" and then Muslim.
• Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) - British musician and singer (had a nominally Christian upbringing, but never was a believer).
• Martin Lings - A widely acclaimed British scholar. He was raised as a Protestant, became an atheist, and later converted to Islam.
• Nursultan Nazarbayev - President of Kazakhstan.
• Ilich Ramírez Sánchez "Carlos the Jackal" - Marxist who was convicted of terrorism and converted to Islam.

See also: List of converts to Islam from Atheism

Converts and reverts to Judaism

• Christian B. Anfinsen, Nobel prize-winning chemist who converted from "orthodox agnosticism" to Orthodox Judaism.
• David P. Goldman "Spengler" - A columnist and former member of the LaRouche movement who embraced Judaism in the 1990s.
• Will Herberg - A posthumous collection of his writing is From Marxism to Judaism.
• Benny Lévy - Philosopher and last personal secretary of Jean-Paul Sartre.
• Hilary Putnam - Philosopher raised in a Jewish-atheist home.
• Eliyahu Rips - Member of the Department of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Rips received the Erdős prize from the Israel Mathematical Society in 1979 and was a sectional speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1994.
• Mary Doria Russell - An author who'd been baptized Catholic before being atheist for 20 years.
• Mare Winningham - Actress raised Catholic but atheistic before converting to Judaism.
• David Wolpe - A leading rabbi in Conservative Judaism and former atheist.

See also: List of converts to Judaism From Atheism or Agnosticism

Converts and reverts to Bahai

• Zhang Xin - Chinese businesswoman.
• David Kelly - Former employee of the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD).
• Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff - Fantasy and science fiction author in short story and longer formats.

Other ex-atheists

• Gabrielle Carey - Australian author of Puberty Blues who was raised atheist but converted to Catholicism and then explored other theologies.
• Antony Flew - Philosopher and one of the most respected atheist thinkers of the 20th century, became a deist.
• Moses Hess - Socialist philosopher and Left Hegelian who first influenced Karl Marx in his criticism of religion, but who later tried to combine the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza with Hegelianism.
• Anne Rice - Best-selling American author of Gothic and religious-themed books. She returned to Catholicism, and remained as such for many years, but has since announced that although she still believes in Christ she no longer considers herself a Christian.
• J. Neil Schulman - Libertarian science fiction writer who states he met, or experienced, God and that this ended his atheism. The first such experience would have occurred when he was 35. That stated he remains skeptical of "the church" and does not belong to any religion.
• Dave Sim - Comics writer and anti-feminist. He converted to, or created, his own mixture of Abrahamic religions.
• Ted Turner - Media mogul who stated that he is no longer an atheist or an agnostic. He has not embraced any specific religion.

See also

• List of atheists
• List of former Jews
• List of former Muslims
• List of former Protestants
• List of former Roman Catholics
• List of former Latter Day Saints
• List of former Christians