Ezenwa: Ex-Catholic Seminarian Who Renounced Christianity and Embraced Atheism

The Ex-cellence Project commends Dera Ezenwa who recently came out as an atheist. It is important that individuals exercise their right to believe or not to believe. In a video that was published online, Mr Ezenwa noted that he had renounced Christianity and no longer believed in a deity. Ezenwa was training to be a priest at a Catholic seminary, but left the training after obtaining a degree in philosophy from Seat of Wisdom Seminary in Owerri, Imo State, in southern Nigeria. In a video posted on the internet, he stated: "From becoming a priest to becoming an atheist...and yeah! Atheism feels better." Apparently he felt relieved to have become an atheist. In his chat with the Ex-cellence Project, Ezenwa said: "I’m an ex-seminarian. I left the training in 2020 because it all stopped making sense to me. I could not dedicate my entire life to cooked up and copied stories".

Wow. This statement resonated with me because I am a catholic seminarian too, and left the training and became an atheist. By "cooked up and copied stories", Ezenwa meant the stories of religions, in this case, Christianity like the story of Adam and Eve, Noah's ark, the conception of Jesus, etc When asked how religious stories stopped making sense to him, he replied: "Everything they taught in class conflicted or contradicted provisions in the Bible or the Christian doctrines. For example, the concept of nature in anthropology shatters the idea of “the fall of man” in Genesis. Humans can only do what their nature permits them to do, so we’re typically designed to misbehave. I asked the priest lecturer… “Philosophically speaking and based on the concept of nature, did man fall or was he dancing to the tunes of his nature?” This question was not answered, it rather ended the class".

He further stated: "African philosophy also made me delve into history and that opened my eyes to the bullshit and lies, knowing every culture and group of people had their religion which portrayed their culture and history. So, Christianity and Islam didn’t become the global religion because they’re correct or true but because there was a need to dominate and control".

Ezenwa made it clear that his teachers and priests could not provide answers to his questions. He recounted another incident:

"In epistemology, we were taught the concept of truth. After the presentation, I volunteered to summarize and analyze everything from ancient to contemporary philosophers. It clearly showed that truth was not absolute but evolved based on our exposure and understanding of reality. Hegel said we won’t know the truth till we get to the absolute spirit. Then I asked the rector who was our epistemology lecturer, “Having noticed how truth evolved across the centuries and how we know much better than our ancestors, what if when humans get to a greater point of knowledge and they figure out that god was nothing but human’s first mode of explaining the universe and later a coping mechanism, and not something real, won’t they laugh at us as we laugh at the mistakes of our ancestors?” He looked at me, didn’t say a word and left the class". Many exclergies have these moments like this in their lives when their questions were unanswered, ignored, or dismissed.

Ezenwa noted that as a seminarian, he queried atheists: "Also, I used to argue with atheists on Twitter then, and I used to win the arguments. But one day after a Theodicy lecture, I noticed that my arguments were flawed; and that I used to focus a lot on technicalities. And that was the reason why I won. Because I kinda knew better than my interlocutors. At some point, I started examining all the apologetic arguments of the early theologians. The day I questioned St. Augustine, I was asked "Who are you to question Augustine, common philosopher?"

Exclerics suffer these confrontations when they try to fault religious arguments. Unlike ordinary believers, clerics have more knowledge about faith including religious secrets and schemes. Exclerics preached and promoted theism and religion before they started questioning and experiencing doubts and disbelief. Many exclergies elicit strong hatred from the religious public and former followers. They suffer threats, stigmatization, and persecution for openly and publicly challenging religious authorities, for expressing their nonbelief and highlighting some religious deception and manipulation. Unlike ordinary ex religionists, exclergies face additional challenges for leaving religion, theism and the clergy work. The Ex-cellence Project exists to service this special need of ex clerics who are non theists. It promotes the notion that ex-clergies excel and can lead happy and more meaningful lives beyond the precincts of clericalism and religion.

The Ex-cellence Project wishes Ezenwa the best in his future endeavours and pursuits.

Leo Igwe co directs the Ex-cellence Project.