Well, I didn't feel very free to leave my Baptist community, not even after they tried to send me to a conversion-therapy camp. (Rumors had spread that I was gay, which I am.)

But besides that rather big issue, I didn't even feel free to style my hair the way I wanted to style it, dress the way I chose, or even go to the movies I wanted to see. Hell, I wasn't even free to present a paper at youth group about about how Jesus drank actual wine with alcohol in it. (Because, of course he did, but my youth pastor was aghast at the very idea that someone disagree with his wilfull ignorance.)

I wasn't free to talk about how Noah's flood obviously did not literally happen.

I either toed the line, or friendships and relationships were withheld. Nobody physically assaulted me, but the coercion was nonetheless real. Baptist are some pretty terrible people — I mean to people who aren't Baptists or who think for themselves. Baptists in general are willfully ignorant, arrogant, judgmental — and socially coercive about it.

I'm sure it's easier when you're an adult to break away from that, but there's still a cost. When you're in your late teens like I was, the cost is very high indeed.

I tried to kill myself at the age of 19 because of how they were treating me. I viewed them then as a controlling cult who go out of their way to stigmatize and hurt people like me.

Which is what I meant when I said it's all a cult. Obviously, some mainstream religion in the United States isn't like that. But much mainstream religion is, especially conservative Christianity. But oddly enough, it usually seems to be conservative Christians who are so willing to point the finger at other groups as being the cultists.