Converts from unbelief — in their own words
Famous atheists who converted to Christianity
The commonest modern story — faith lost to reason — has an older counterpart: the return journey. Some of the fiercest public skeptics of the last two centuries — secularist lecturers, freethought editors, a scientist of Darwin's circle, and the greatest novelist alive — argued their way out of unbelief and wrote down how. If you're looking for real conversion stories from atheism to Christianity, these are the first-person accounts, free to read in the public domain and offered here as clean editions.
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1882 · Russia · The great novelist
A Confession
Leo Tolstoy · 1882
An unbeliever from his youth, at the height of his fame — Anna Karenina just finished — Tolstoy found himself unable to answer why he should live, and hid the rope from himself for fear of suicide. A Confession is his own record of the crisis and the return to faith; counted honestly, the Christianity he reached was his own radical reading of the Gospels, and it cost him excommunication.
- 2
1895 · England · Darwin's colleague
Thoughts on Religion
George John Romanes · 1895
The evolutionary biologist George Romanes — Darwin's friend and protégé — published the era's most famous case for scientific agnosticism as a young man. These posthumous notes record the painstaking, unfinished journey back: a first-rank Victorian scientist reasoning his way toward the faith he had dismantled.
- 3
1874 · England & America · Secularist lecturer
Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again
Joseph Barker · 1874
Joseph Barker went the whole way out — from Methodist preacher to one of the most active secularist lecturers of his generation, co-editing the National Reformer with Bradlaugh — and then the whole way back. Modern Skepticism is his own map of 'the land of doubt,' written by a man who had lived on both sides of the argument. (His full autobiography, The Life of Joseph Barker, is also in the library.)
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1872 · England · Chartist & platform skeptic
The Life of Thomas Cooper, Written by Himself
Thomas Cooper · 1872
A shoemaker's apprentice who taught himself Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, led the Leicester Chartists, wrote an epic poem in prison — and lectured against Christianity for years before reconverting. He spent his last decades as a walking Christian-evidence lecturer, debating the same halls he had once filled as a skeptic.
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1882 · England · Secularism's advocate
Christianity and Secularism
George Sexton · 1882
George Sexton held a doctorate, edited freethought journals, and stood among the leading platform advocates of Victorian secularism before renouncing his unbelief. This account of why he changed sides is the closest thing the movement produced to a defection document from its own front rank.
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1857 · New England · Freethought editor
The Convert; or, Leaves from My Experience
Orestes Brownson · 1857
Orestes Brownson passed through nearly every position American religion offered — Presbyterian, Universalist, freethought editor, socialist, transcendentalist — before landing, to the scandal of literary Boston, in the Catholic Church. The Convert is his own unsparing autopsy of each station on the way.
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1907 · France · Militant atheist poet
Du Diable à Dieu: Histoire d'une conversion
Adolphe Retté · 1907
The symbolist poet Adolphe Retté was, by his own and his contemporaries' account, a militant atheist and anarchist — a fixture of anticlerical Paris. Du Diable à Dieu ('From the Devil to God') is his account of the conversion that stunned it.
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1913 · Italy · Anticlerical intellectual
The Failure (Un uomo finito)
Giovanni Papini · 1913
Giovanni Papini edited journals dedicated to attacking Christianity and wrote himself to the edge of nihilism. The Failure (Un uomo finito) is the autobiography of that dead end — the conversion it set up broke publicly with his Story of Christ a few years later, one of the loudest reversals in European letters.
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1804 · England · The mocking bookseller
The Confessions of J. Lackington
James Lackington · 1804
James Lackington built London's largest bookshop and used his famous Memoirs to ridicule the Methodists of his youth. The Confessions is the retraction: the old freethinking bookseller, near the end of his life, taking it all back in print.
Questions about atheists converting to Christianity
- Who are the most famous atheists who converted to Christianity?
- From the public-domain record: Leo Tolstoy, whose A Confession records his crisis of unbelief and return to faith, and George John Romanes — Darwin's colleague and the author of the era's leading case for scientific agnosticism — who reasoned his way back before his death. In the modern era the best-known are C.S. Lewis (Surprised by Joy), the geneticist Francis Collins (The Language of God), and the journalist Lee Strobel (The Case for Christ).
- Did any famous scientists convert to Christianity?
- Yes. The outstanding historical case is George John Romanes, the evolutionary biologist who was Darwin's friend and protégé. As a young man he published A Candid Examination of Theism, the period's most respected scientific case for agnosticism; his posthumous Thoughts on Religion records his deliberate journey back toward Christian faith. In our own day, Francis Collins — director of the Human Genome Project — has told a similar story.
- Can an atheist become a Christian?
- Yes — the accounts on this page are the record of it, and several are there-and-back stories: Joseph Barker, Thomas Cooper, and George Sexton were not casual doubters but professional advocates of secularism, lecturers and editors who knew every argument against Christianity and reconverted anyway. Their testimonies engage the arguments rather than dodging them, which is what makes them worth reading.
- What convinced these skeptics to convert?
- It differs by the man, and each tells his own story: for Tolstoy it began with the failure of reason to answer why he should live at all; for Romanes, the slow scientific case that his youthful agnosticism had claimed too much; for the secularist lecturers Barker, Cooper, and Sexton, years of arguing the negative side wore through. None converted in ignorance of the objections — that is the point of reading them first-hand.
- Where can I read testimonies of atheists who became Christians for free?
- Every account on this page is in the public domain, and we link a free source on each title. Our clean editions add readable typesetting for a small price, but nothing here is paywalled — the testimony itself is free.
More reading lists
T.S. Baker — testimonies in their own words, free sources linked.