Rachel Klinger Cain

Rachel Klinger Cain is an award-winning teacher, storyteller, and activist whose work has been featured on The Moth, OnlySky Media, NowThis, and more. Her first book, So…I’m An Atheist, was published in 2022.

Born into an evangelical household and educated in Christian schools, she was raised to be a soldier in “God’s Army” with training in theology, rhetoric, and apologetics. After deconstructing her own faith and defecting to the other side more than a decade ago, Rachel now uses that inside knowledge of fundamentalism to help other doubters deconstruct their faith.

Rachel can be found on TikTok, where in two years she has amassed more than 460,000 followers. Her experience as a classroom teacher and training in trauma-informed education informs her unique brand of logical yet compassionate deconstruction of Biblical morality, while her talent for storytelling and weakness for a so-bad-it’s-good costume has spawned her most popular series of irreverent shorts, “Atheist Sunday School.”

Rachel resides in one of the most religiously conservative counties in the country, but she is fighting back with boots-on-the-ground activism. You can keep up with Rachel’s journey to build a Vacation Humanist School in Betsy Devos’ hometown by following her on TikTok (@iblamebill).

Sunday, April 9, 9:30am – 10:15am

God Is an Asshole: Helping Others Deconstruct Faith Through Hypotheticals

As the deconstruction movement grows rapidly in the U.S., aided in part by social media platforms like TikTok, the political entrenchment of evangelicalism, and the church-free space created by the global pandemic, longstanding atheists are confronted with a new breed of “nones.” This new group trends young, female, and culturally Christian. They weren’t lifelong skeptics. Their journey didn’t start from scientific doubt. They were true believers.

But what they believed in was love.

Disenchantment with their religion is what jump-started their deconstruction, and because of that, their journey out of faith must wrestle with not just the existence of god, but with his goodness as well.

In this presentation, I will be using stories from my own deconstruction over a decade ago along with my experience on evangelical/deconstruction TikTok to highlight the best ways we can help new baby “nones” deconstruct their faith, while avoiding the traps of condescension and dismissal. With over 350k followers on TikTok, more than 88% of whom are female and more than 80% of whom are Millennials and/or Gen Z, I have a unique perspective on this new deconstruction terrain and what it takes to reach the members of it.