Can reason, morality, and public good stand without God?
Allison Leonhardt once thought so. An atheist from her teens, she was convinced religion was outdated, the Bible unreliable, and morality explainable through modern thought and politics. With The God Delusion in hand, she challenged religious teachers and built her worldview around science, social justice, and self-made meaning.
But when the pandemic forced her into isolation in a foreign country, and a friend casually invited her to watch an online church service, something unexpected happened. Curiosity gave way to conviction, not through pressure or platitudes, but through Scripture that spoke directly to her experience.
Guest Bio:
Allison Leonhardt is a Senior Communications Advisor in the housing industry. Her career has taken her around the world as she spent several years working in finance and management in the United Kingdom. She is a sought-after Campaign Manager for all three levels of government in Canada, most recently having run a campaign in the 2025 Federal Election. She has a diploma in Public Relations from the University of Victoria. Allison has recently been announced as one of the 2025 Cardus NextGen Fellows.
Resources Mentioned:
- Alpha Course – A safe space for exploring the basics of Christianity: https://alpha.org
- Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis – Introductory apologetics from a former atheist
- Return of the God Hypothesis, Stephen Meyer
- The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel – Investigative journey of a skeptical journalist
- John Rylands Library – Home of the oldest known fragment of the Gospel of John: https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-leonhardt-7a75b377/
Connect with eX-skeptic:
Website: https://exskeptic.org/
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Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/exskeptic
Twitter: http://x.com/exskeptic
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@exskeptic
Email info: info@exskeptic.org
Ep. 126 Transcript – Allison Leonhardt
August 29, 2025
Allison Leonhardt
00:00 – 00:30
One of the most difficult things about looking back on my time as an atheist is that it’s really exhausting trying to be this kind of moral arbiter of yourself, like coming up with your own moral framework, determining what’s good and what’s bad, and then constantly having to reevaluate that, you know, as a Christian, you turn to God for that. You turn to Jesus for that. Jesus, you know, lays out for us, you know, his two, his two commandments, which is to, you know, to love and fear God and to love your neighbor as yourself.
Jana Harmon
00:37 – 02:39
Hi, I’m Jana Harmon from the Ex Skeptic podcast. Have you walked away from Christianity, or you’re questioning whether or not it was even true to begin with? Maybe you’re asking if truth even exists or if it’s arrogant to say that one faith is right. These questions are more common than you might think. We’ve Talked with over 120 former skeptics and atheists who’ve shared similar doubts and questions. That’s why we’ve created nine themed playlists on YouTube drawn from personal stories of former skeptics who’ve wrestled with these same issues, among others. Go to exskeptic on YouTube and find our playlist Is it Possible to believe Again? Or what about other religions among others? Once you’ve found them, you might want to share these themed playlists with others who might have their own unique questions about faith. Hello and welcome to X Skeptic, the podcast where we explore unlikely stories of belief, the unexpected journeys of those who once resisted belief in God, but who found themselves transformed by the very faith they once dismissed. I’m your host, Jana Harmon. In today’s episode, we meet Alison Leonhardt, a former atheist who once was convinced that belief in God was outdated and unnecessary, and she sought meaning through politics, philosophy and music. But beneath the surface was a restlessness, a longing for something more grounded, more lasting, more true. How did her years of skepticism begin to unravel? What caused her to shift her view of God and Jesus from something that didn’t matter at all to now being the most important thing in her life? Whether you’re skeptical, curious, or quietly searching, I invite you to listen in because sometimes it’s not a dramatic moment, but a series of small, quiet ones that lead to the most extraordinary change. Well, hi, Alison. Welcome to eX-skeptic. It’s so great to have you with me today.
Allison Leonhardt
02:41 – 02:43
Well, thank you so much. I’m very excited to join you.
Jana Harmon
02:43 – 02:49
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about where you’re located the kind of work that you do, maybe a little bit about your education.
Allison Leonhardt
02:51 – 04:07
So I’m from beautiful Calgary, Alberta. It’s located just north of Montana, so just north of the United States. It’s a wonderful city. We’re close to the Rocky Mountains, close to Banff, Alberta and I like to spend most of my weekends when I can out hiking in the, in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. I grew up here but I moved away from most of my 20s. I studied public relations at university through the University of Victoria and I did online school before it was cool. I did my program at a distance so I could work full time as well. So my work is in public relations and communications and I’ve tried to focus on working for organizations that help people. So I spent several years working for the St. Albert Public Libra, moving over to England and working in management in the finance department with the national hospital system over there or the national health system over in Manchester, England before coming back to Canada and working in the housing sector, working with organizations that provide affordable housing and now also a little bit of market based housing as well. And it’s been a real blessing to get to work into that in that industry and to get to working in on an issue that’s so important in Canada right now.
Jana Harmon
04:07 – 04:46
Yes, it’s obvious to me that you do have a very other-centered people-centered view that you really have a very altruistic, very large heart that you’re using your gifts and skills for humanity. That’s very, very admirable. We’re here today to talk about your story, your individual story. And you said that you grew up in Canada, I presume in Calgary. Why don’t you give us an idea of what life was like growing up in Canada and in your own family and whether or not religion or God was any part of your family life.
Allison Leonhardt
04:46 – 05:46
So growing up I went to Catholic school. My dad’s a non-practicing Catholic and my mom is a non-practicing United, so she wanted us to have a religious education but there wasn’t a lot of context behind it growing up. So I never knew the Lord growing up or really understood religion. It was just another subject that we had at school and never really felt a connection with God or Jesus growing up. I think a lot of that came from, too, it’s just, you know, my parents weren’t particularly healthy people. They didn’t have very healthy relationships with their children. And so at the age of 17 I had actually made the decision to leave and go move in with friends and to get away from that. So I think, so, you know, it was around that time that I had decided that I was an atheist. And I think a lot of that came from an anger at God. I don’t think I saw how there could be a God after what had kind of happened in my childhood.
Jana Harmon
05:46 – 06:02
So how did you perceive God? Or what were your perceptions of God and religion? And why did you reject him or God or belief?
Allison Leonhardt
06:04 – 07:30
That’s a fantastic question. I think it changed, you know, I’d say as a teenager. I just don’t think I understood it. I just I don’t think I understood how there could be a God, the point of God, the value of God. I was quite rebellious too. So I used to show up to religion class in high school with my copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and I’d sit in the front of the classroom and read it. So I think I really held to, like, a scientific kind of worldview, thinking that, you know, well, the Earth is this many years old and, you know, I just didn’t see a place for God in that. And then I think as I got older, into my 20s, like, you know, I cared about helping people since I was a teenager. I think a big thing for me is, you know, I just, I saw the hurt and brokenness in my life and I wanted it to end there. I didn’t want other people to struggle with things that I struggled with. And so I believed very strongly in helping people. But I also knew you needed a moral framework. And so I used to read a lot of books on different types of, like, political philosophy and books on philosophy and things that, you know, almost tried to be the Bible but aren’t. I liked, you know, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. So in my 20s, I understood the need for, you know, objective moral truth, but I don’t think I actually kind of knew where to look. And so I turned to what I think a lot of other people turn to, which is politics.
Jana Harmon
07:31 – 08:33
You were in a place in your life where you, you were recognizing that you wanted to help humanity, and that was a very good thing, but you didn’t have a moral grounding or framework for it. Now you’re telling me also that you had been reading Richard Dawkins in the God Delusion and in other places where he read there is no such good thing is good or evil. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference if you’re an atheist. So you’re having these seeming tensions about wanting to do something good and calling it good and feeling like it’s good, but yet you have a worldview that didn’t seem to support it. So I’m wondering, as an atheist, did you feel comfortable with this place that naturalism gives you, that Richard Dawkins was proclaiming that there is no such thing as good and evil, yet you had rejected God because he didn’t seem to be good?
Allison Leonhardt
08:35 – 10:02
That’s a fantastic question. I didn’t have a logically consistent answer to that in terms of things being objectively good or objectively bad. And I also don’t think terms like that would have entered my language. I focused a lot on in terms of defining what was right and wrong based on kind of what was modern by modern standards, considered to be acceptable and also my own moral framework, which might not have always been consistent. That was one thing I really struggled with. I moved over to England for two and a half years when I was in my late twenties. And I found that I could justify, you know, lying to myself, lying to others, because I could rationalize it, and I knew what I was doing that was wrong. I knew you say lying was wrong, and I understood my reasons for it. So I’d say, oh, this is okay. But I also knew that that was wrong. And I think I spent a lot of time in that gray area, but I also don’t think I was comfortable in it. It produced a lot of anxiety. I remember having a lot of sleepless nights. Even a big change I’ve noticed, you know, in my life since becoming a Christian is that, you know, I used to be really afraid of dying. It was just, you know, one of those things that would creep into my mind every so often and fill me with dread and fear. And it’s not something that I worry about or even frequently think about.
Jana Harmon
10:02 – 10:25
Now, were there other issues besides death that were disconcerting to you and the fact that you weren’t able to maybe ground these concepts of good and evil? What else did life look like as an atheist? Was it fairly satisfying, or were there other issues that gave you pause? Maybe atheism isn’t exactly what I thought it would be.
Allison Leonhardt
10:28 – 11:56
I felt a lot more underlying anxiety than I do now. Just a lot of worry about a lot of things, you know, even worry about, like, what do people think about me? Because in that worldview, the moment matters a lot more than it does when you have Jesus. Because if you believe that this life is all you have, what’s happening in this moment is of a lot of importance because it’s, you know, this is the only moment that you have. So I think, you know, I tried to find a lot of grounding in, you know, music. I used to DJ. I was involved in the music scene. I dated a guy who was in a band. My weekends were filled, you know, going out to, to see bands play. And I think I found a lot of like, meaning in the moment in, you know, having those kind of short term experiences with friends where you’re, you know, at a concert and stuff. And it’s not that, you know, music isn’t good and important still, you know, I think, you know, there’s a lot of value in, you know, creating beautiful things and especially beautiful things for God. But I think sometimes there’s a bit of a disconnect when you place your identity in that. And so for me, in my 20s, you know, I place my identity in, you know, I was into a lot of 60s British music, so in the mod subculture and in the punk subculture, and I found my identity in those things. And I think that’s where there’s more of a problem.
Jana Harmon
11:57 – 11:59
Why is there more of a problem?
Allison Leonhardt
12:01 – 12:33
Because you’re not placing your identity in Christ. But most of all, you know, you’re placing your identity in something that’s temporary. It’s not something that offers a moral framework. It’s also not something that, that matters that much. I mean, for someone that was into, you know, going to concerts and stuff, when you’re, when you’re putting your value in, you know, I’ve got this vintage dress and I look great on it, great in it, and I got a lot of likes on Instagram. That’s not a very good way of, you know, quantifying your value or worth. You know, I think as humans we’re worth a lot more than that.
Jana Harmon
12:34 – 13:19
You’re right. And, I think obviously it is hard to place your identity in something so fleeting. Right? And so you were working in England, which is a beautiful place, fascinating place, and you were living your, what you thought your best life is to find meaning and purpose value. Did you have a community of those who were fairly like-minded as atheists, who had a similar worldview and/or did you ever have any Christians in your world growing up or even in England that intersected your life in any point that gave you a picture of something different than what you were living and believing?
Allison Leonhardt
13:21 – 14:54
That’s a great question. When I lived in Canada, I didn’t know any Christians and even when I came back to Canada as a Christian, I didn’t know who to reach out to because it just wasn’t something that existed in my world in the music scene, in the left wing political scene, there just wasn’t any overlap. In England, my friends were mostly people similar to me. You know, I wouldn’t say that it was interesting. I moved there and I felt like my kind of atheism softened. My friends there, I’d say they were more agnostic. They just, if you ask them, they just, they didn’t know and they didn’t really have an opinion on God or Jesus. Whereas I’d say I’m in Canada because we have a lot more kind of Christian education. And in Alberta, our second largest school system is the Catholic school system. So I think a lot more people get introduced to the concept of God. They might not get to know Jesus, but they get introduced to the concept. Whereas in England, the school system is a lot more secularized. And so for a country that had, you know, such a great Christian history at one point, I think a lot of that is unfortunately being lost. But my friends that I met over there were pretty similar to me. We would go see bands, play on weekends, you know, go over to each other’s houses for drinks, go on trips, and that was kind of what our world revolved around. I was a little bit different because I did a little bit of volunteering with the Labour Party over there. So I liked politics. And that’s where I think I really looked for a lot of, kind of my grounding and value.
Jana Harmon
14:55 – 15:16
I wonder, as someone who was an atheist at the time, what was your perception of what the Bible was, what religion is or was, what Christianity is or was? What were your thoughts about how you perceived those peoples and institutions and ways of thinking?
Allison Leonhardt
15:19 – 16:04
I think not just like the New Atheism movement, but some of the things that kind of came out in the mid 2000s, really damaged kind of my potential faith at the time. And the Da Vinci Code was really big when I was in junior high and high school. And so I didn’t believe that the Bible was accurate. I thought it was a book, but I thought that it had been written by humans. And it. I didn’t actually really know what it said, so I didn’t see it as something that could be accurate. But I saw, you know, humans as being so valuable that the Bible as well would be. And so I never really engaged with it. And even though, yeah, I just, I never read it and I didn’t engage with it. Yeah.
Jana Harmon
16:05 – 16:37
So it was easy to just dismiss based upon the idea that it was some kind of man-made document that was corrupted over time by biased men or, and Dan Brown has an interesting take, but through the Da Vinci Code. So I can see where it would be easy to get a distorted view of what the Bible is. But anyway, so religion at that time, you just, I would imagine, would have taken a bit of a Dawkins view that religion is not good.
Allison Leonhardt
16:38 – 17:43
Yeah, I think I just saw it as outdated. I think I saw that we’d moved past it and I mean, it’s such a sad thing to think about now, but I just, I didn’t see a value in it. I didn’t see a value in, in God, in the objectivity of, in right and wrong, in the community it brings, in the salvation that Jesus brings. It just didn’t, it didn’t click with me. And I think too like, you know, I watched, you know, I’d watch movies like Spotlight as well too. And so I saw a lot of the like corruptions and abuse that had happened, particularly in the Catholic Church. And I just thought what, you know, what does this offer? But as well too, you know, I didn’t even engage with like historical Christian figures. Someone I met, you know, a huge fan of now and write a lot about Israeli and World War 4 and just the role that him and his Christian faith played in abolishing the slave trade and how incredible that is. But, you know, figures like that aren’t taught about in our schools, which is such a shame because I feel like we’re missing such an important part of Western history.
Jana Harmon
17:44 – 18:22
So you had rejected Christianity as a, as a belief system, the Bible was corrupted. And so you were living in this world in England and you had some anxiety, a little bit of issue with trying to figure out how to ground, you know, your strong impulses of morality. Walk us on from there. Talk to us about what happened in your life. What made you stop and think, well, maybe there is something to this, to Christianity, to Jesus, to the Bible, all of that. What caused you to move in a different direction?
Allison Leonhardt
18:24 – 21:28
So it was interesting when I first moved there because, you know, I had wanted to move to England my entire life since I was a child. And I loved British music, British culture, British history, the countryside. And so I had thought that by mo there I would solve my problems. I thought, you know, I wouldn’t be worried about death anymore. I wouldn’t be worried about all these things. I thought I would fit in a lot better. And I just thought it would answer a lot of my. My problems and challenges. And it was interesting because I got there and I described to the friends that I made. I was like, I feel like I’ve climbed a mountain only for there to be more mountains around me. Like I’m in this little. I’ve climbed a mountain and now I’m in a valley. And I was so confused because I thought that was going to fix everything. And I felt so alone and empty. That was a period of about two years though, where I just felt like that. Where I was so confused where. When that really started to shift. So I had made a friend at work who was. He was a Christian, wasn’t practicing very much at the time. Like went to church sometimes. I knew he was a Christian, but I didn’t know too much about it. What happened was during the start of COVID the lockdown got announced in England and my, my housemate at the time took off. Like just took off. I got home one day and everything was fine and normal. I go out to the grocery store. I was all excited. I found a grocery store that still had food because people were like rating stories there. It was pretty crazy. And in the 20 minutes I was out, like, he was like, I’m done, I can’t do this. And like fled back to his parents house. So I was really panicked and concerned because here I was in a foreign country working for the hospital system. Not front lines, but still I had to go into the hospital every day in a foreign country, not able to go back home. Canada had most closed the borders and spending. Facing the prospect of spending the pandemic by myself, I was really scared. So my friend, he actually reached out to me and he said, hey, you know what? Like this lockdown, it’s only supposed to be three weeks and why don’t you come stay on my couch for, you know, for that time and we can kind of ride this out together. And so he had a place in the English countryside in the Peak District, just outside Manchester. And so I, I went one day after work to go stay with him because it was, the rules were quite weird. So we basically went. He was like, okay, come over now before the lockdown gets announced and then it’s not like breaking quarantine rules. So I go to stay with him. And then one of the first nights I’m at his place, he says to me that he had wanted to start going back to church, but he couldn’t because of the lockdowns. And so he was thinking about watching Zoom Church. And so I thought, you know, well, I’ll be a good house guest. Like, you know, I was like, you know, I can watch church with you on Sundays. And so that first Sunday came around and we watched a Zoom Church service from his living room. And I was really surprised because it wasn’t what I thought it would be. And so I was like, huh, that was actually kind of nice.
Jana Harmon
21:31 – 21:36
What did you think it would be? What were you anticipating a church service to look like?
Allison Leonhardt
21:37 – 26:18
You know, I think I was maybe anticipating like what it was like growing up in Catholic school, you know, where you’re sitting cross legged in a row in the gymnasium watching a lot of kind of lectures that you can’t quite really hear and you’re not really sure how this relates to you, and you’re kind of thinking about anything but that. Yeah, I just, I guess I expected it to be a lot more kind of institutionalized and not as personal and so one of the things that even first struck me too is the music was really nice. I know now that they sing a lot of Phil Wickham songs. And I was like, oh, like the worship songs are really nice. This message, like, this is really nice. And I don’t even remember what the first few sermons I heard were on, just that, you know, I was like, oh, I was very surprised. I was enjoying it. And so my friend said to me after a couple weeks, he was like, well, you know, you’re really enjoying this because we talk about the sermons afterwards as well too. He said, you’re really enjoying this. Why don’t you try reading the Bible? And so I downloaded a Bible app on my phone and I started reading the Bible on my way to work in the mornings. We had a hour and a half train commute each way, so I had a fair bit of time. But yeah, so, you know, and there was one morning where I was reading Matthew 6 from the Sermon on the Mount when he says, when Jesus says to not be anxious. And when I read that, it was like Jesus was speaking to me. I never knew that Jesus could say something that spoke to me that related to me. And that just really struck me. It just, it spoke to exactly what I was feeling in that moment, what I was experiencing during COVID and, and what I’d gone through in my life. And so from that, my friend suggested, hey, you should try an Alpha course. So I did an Alpha course. And that was really good for learning some of the fundamentals of Christianity. And, you know, after that, there, you know, there’s not like a moment where I was like, oh, I became a Christian. I just know that there was a point where I started praying. I started putting my trust in Jesus. It was a really difficult time too, though, because so my right to work in England was going to be expiring. I was on youth mobility visa, and so I started applying for jobs just around the world. I had really wanted to stay in England, so I was applying for jobs there that might sponsor me. I applied for a visa to go to Sweden. And then eventually I started applying for jobs in Canada. The whole time I just. I kept praying. I said, God, send me somewhere where I can get to know you. I just kept praying that I had, you know, I’d moved up to Edmonton for a good chunk of my 20s, and I just didn’t want to go back there. I didn’t want to go back to my old friends and my old way of life. And so I wanted to go somewhere new. And what was really, you know, remarkable at that time, I’d applied for hundreds of jobs all around the world, visas to go to other countries. And in those six months, I got one job offer. And I had one day applied for a job in Calgary. I was just looking at postings and I’m like, well, I guess I should look at Calgary, and it’s the city where I’m from. So I applied for this job. And immediately afterwards, I, like, slammed the laptop in disgust and I’m like, I’m not moving back there. That’s where my family’s from. Like, nope, I’m not going to Calgary. And sure enough, in those six months, that was the one job offer I got. And at the time, I had this very exasperated prayer. I was like, Lord, why? Like, I knew I had to go. But I was like, God, really, why? Why Calgary? So getting back here wasn’t exactly easy. There was a travel ban on, so I had to wait for the travel ban to lift to be able to come back to Calgary. But, you know, I went with that, got back into the country, and from there I was like, okay, like, I need to get to know Jesus. I need to get to know other Christians. And so I had asked around for some church recommendations from my church in England. They had connected me with someone, I think, up in Edmonton who’d recommended a couple churches in Calgary. And so I decided to try Center Street Church, which is a big Evangelical church here in Calgary. And a lot of my reasoning for that was I was like, well, I was so wrong about what the Bible was, so maybe I’m wrong about what evangelicalism is as well. So I went and tried that and it’s been a real blessing. You know, I’ve been at that church for a couple years now. I got baptized there and in June of 2021, so just before I turned 30. And yeah, I’ve just been able to. To grow a lot in Christ to get to know other Christians.
Jana Harmon
26:18 – 28:36
Well, that’s wonderful. I do want to step back for a moment, Alison, because I’m sure there’s some listeners thinking, okay, wow, she was a atheist who really believed, you know, all that Richard Dawkins was telling her at one point and that she believed for scientific reasons and, you know, that God wasn’t good. And then all of a sudden she’s in Covid in hich lockdown, I’m sure that’s very discombobulating. It’s very disconcerting for, in many ways. So I know that a lot of people were rethinking a lot about their lives, about what’s true about reality, because that kind of large, sobering event will do that. So you find yourself with a Christian who’s inviting you to church. Essentially, it’s something different than you thought it would be. And you were open at that point to start reading the Bible. And then the next thing you know, you’re telling me, okay, and then, you know, and then Jesus. And I’m sure some listeners are going, whoa, whoa, hey, wait just a minute. It was a very bright young lady and she had justified reasons for not believing. But when you started reading the Bible, and sometimes it is just as simple as that. When you encounter Jesus like you did, you had an almost an encounter with Jesus in the scripture that he was speaking to you and to your life. How did you know that what you were accepting at that moment, it wasn’t just that it felt good or sounded good, but that it was true, that it was worthy of belief. And in Christianity, you are not only having to believe it, in a sense, you’re actually giving your life to this person, Jesus, who says that he can, you know, give me your anxiety. It’s not only give me your anxiety, it’s give me your life. So did you have any, or did you wrestle with any intellectual aspects of, wow, this sounds too good to be true. Is it?
Allison Leonhardt
28:37 – 30:13
I think there are two big things that kind of changed my view of the Bible. So one of them had been in Manchester, England, at the John Ryland’s library. They have the oldest known fragment of the Gospel of John. And I had gone to the John Rylands library one day before COVID just to see it. And I had seen, you know, I saw the, the fragment of the Gospel of John. And it’s quite small. It’s, you know, it’s maybe the size of like, you know, a couple quarters or, you know, it’s maybe an inch or two. It’s very tiny. There’s not very many characters on it. And they’ve got a few other fragments as well there that they put on display. And, you know, when I saw it, I had seen it as an atheist and hadn’t thought too much of it, but do remember being quite fascinated that what I’d read on the display is that they had said that the text had been so consistent that this little fragment of papyrus that was with just a handful of characters, they could match it as being from the Gospel of John. And, you know, it was too small to have a full phrase or anything on it, but it had just enough that they could tell it was from that. And this fragment, you know, I don’t know exactly how old it is. I think it’s from only a couple of years after, after John had wrote his Gospel. And that really struck me to think that it’s not changed. It’s, you know, humans haven’t edited it and put things into it and changed the details enough that it’s actually stayed consistent enough from when it was first written to how we read it now that you could identify that. That, that really struck me.
Jana Harmon
30:13 – 30:45
So that countered a bit of the Dan Brown thesis that you had believed that the script had been changed or corrupted over time by biased men. So I know that fragment was convincing in some way, that it was early and consistent and reliable. But there’s a lot more to textual reliability than seeing a fragment. Right?
Allison Leonhardt
30:45 – 31:37
And so another thing that really challenged me on it as well was, and I believe it’s in the Alpha course. One of the things that they talk about is the reliability of different historical texts. So you look at something like Homer is the Iliad, and we only have something like two ancient copies of it. Like, we don’t have that many. But we attribute it to Homer when we generally consider what we’re reading in the Iliad to be faithful to how it was written all those years ago. And so then they talked about just how many copies we have of the various gospels and the various texts from the Bible. And that really challenged me to think that we have so many copies to know it wasn’t, you know, changed and in the Middle ages or anything like that, like we have enough, you know, ancient texts that this book is reliable and these texts are reliable.
Jana Harmon
31:38 – 33:54
Yes. For anybody who’s willing to look into that, we have what Dan Wallace would call ‘an embarrassment of riches,’ that we have so many copies of the text that it, we can find what actually was close to the original by 99.5% close to the originals, even though we don’t have the original documents themselves. And that’s a very different narrative than when people say I was just a man made document. That it’s not like the telephone game that’s been translated over time and over the years. But you as a former, I guess, librarian or you worked in that environment, you understand the integrity of texts and that you had studied somewhat to understand the reliability of the biblical text. So that when you were reading these things about Jesus, it didn’t, it struck you as true, not just because Jesus said them, but actually there’s, there’s documented evidence to show that there really is substance, some substantive reasons to believe that it is true. And so I guess that gave you more confidence that what you were reading actually and for the fact that actually intersected with your life. So personally, I think there’s something, when people read what the words of Christ read about the person of Christ, it’s so different than they have in their minds of who they think he is or what he might have said or what even the Bible is, that they might think it’s just a book of rules or, or something, but it’s something much different. So I presume that you read more than just Matthew and that you really read the text a little bit more broadly and to get the whole story and of who is, I’m just curious, the person of Christ. Who did you think Jesus was before you started reading the Bible? And then who did you come to find he was through reading and understanding who he was and what he claimed to be and what he said.
Allison Leonhardt
34:00 – 36:10
I really knew didn’t know who he was. I just thought that he was a man who lived at that time and had done some interesting things, but I don’t think I believed any of anything else. I know now that Jesus is the son of God. He died and he rose again. And like, I think even, you know, things apologetically that helped me a lot with my faith in that and then coming to know Jesus in that is one thing that struck me really early on is they talked in the Alpha course about other historical sources at the time, talking about, you know, something strange was happening in Israel at that time. And so actually one of the books on the shelf behind me is Josephus. He was a Jewish historian at the time who had no vested interest in Jesus. He was not a messianic Jew. And he writes in his books about, you know, a man rising from the dead and, you know, strange things happening at that time which I thought was really interesting that you have, you know, these sources that have nothing to gain from it, no vested interest, also reporting that something had happened. I also appreciate, too, Chuck Colson talks about this in his writings a lot and how, you know, in his experience with the Watergate case, you had all these guys that couldn’t keep their story straight for a week and they had a material interest in it. Whereas with Jesus you have all of these people who have no, you know, material interest in it. They’re not getting rich from being Christians, they’re not getting fancy jobs or cars or anything like that, but are willing to die to say that Jesus is Lord, that he died and rose again, and that really says something and that their stories all, you know, line up and are the same. That really says something. Said something to me as well. So, yeah, I’d say that’s where a lot of it comes from.
Jana Harmon
36:11 – 37:03
So the pieces came together for you and you found the Bible to be worthy of belief, Jesus to be worthy of belief enough for you to give your life to him. Now, you’ve spoken about your life a little bit since. Through your journeying as an atheist you spoke of issues with anxiety with regard to your life or the possibility of death with regard to you’re trying to find meaning and an identity that was worthwhile, that would be lasting. But some of those things seem to elude you as an atheist. How would you say that your life as a Christian had satisfied or met some of those, I would say deep human longings?
Allison Leonhardt
37:07 – 38:28
I have a lot less anxiety now. That’s changed substantially. I’m not afraid of death anymore either. I mean, I don’t, I obviously don’t seek it out, but I’m not, I’m not worried about it in the ways that I used to be. I have a lot more confidence, but I also have a lot more humility. I’m a lot more grounded in knowing what’s right and what’s wrong and also even knowing what I’m responsible for. I think one of the most difficult things about looking back on my time as an atheist is that it’s really exhausting trying to be this kind of moral arbiter of yourself, like coming up with your own moral framework, determining what’s good and what’s bad, and then constantly having to reevaluate that. You know, as a Christian, you turn to God for that. You turn to Jesus for that. Jesus, you know, lays out for us, you know, His two commandments, which is to, you know, to love and fear God and to love your neighbor as yourself and that takes an awful lot of pressure off. I mean, those can be hard to stick to. They can definitely be a challenge sometimes. It’s incredibly, incredibly grounding. And so that, that just helps a tremendous amount. It provides a lot more direction in your life. You know, my life is different now, and I’m just so thankful for it every day.
Jana Harmon
38:28 – 38:37
It sounds like the Alpha course also played an important part in your journey. For those who aren’t familiar with it, can you talk about what the Alpha course is?
Allison Leonhardt
38:38 – 41:01
So it’s a course that introduces you to the kind of basic, kind of questions about Christianity. It’s really accessible and it’s a lot of, you know, It’s a safe space to ask questions about Jesus, about God, to talk to other Christians, to find out what they believe, and to also learn a little bit about, you know, what’s prayer and all of that. I found for me, it was really helpful in kind of answering some questions I’d had and some misconceptions I’d had about Christianity. And it was also just a chance to kind of get to know some other Christians as well. Too early on, someone in that had recommended to me CS Lewis’s book Mere Christianity, which I’d recommend. You know, anyone that’s curious about Christianity or is new in their walk as a Christian to read that book. It’s helped me massively. A big part that’s really kind of helped me from it as well is CS Lewis says in it that, you know, when you first read the Bible, if there’s something you come across that you don’t understand, leave it and come back to it. There’s certain fundamental things, but there’s a lot of stuff, especially in the Old Testament, that can be tough to understand. And so that’s something that’s really helped me as well in my faith, knowing that, like, I’m not going to understand everything in the Bible right away. And that’s okay. But the overall story of it is worth more than whatever questions I might have about one part of it. So that’s been extremely valuable. Another thing that really helped me as well too is he gives an example of a lady who might be a little bit difficult to deal with. And, and you’re asking like, why is this person a Christian? Like, they, you know, they seem quite unpleasant, but he talks about how the work of the Holy Spirit, you know, it changes your, your character. And so this person might actually be less difficult than they were before. And it’s funny, but like, that helps me have grace with other Christians knowing that, you know, someone might have some habits that I find a little bit difficult or something like that. But it’s the work the Holy Spirit does in their lives. Like, it takes time as you’re a Christian. Like, it takes time for behaviors to change, for opinions to change, and just for the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts. You don’t wake up one day and everything’s different. It takes time.
Jana Harmon
41:02 – 41:32
Would you say that, has your worldview influenced the way that you see and move and in the world in terms of policy and politic and the kind of work that you’re doing now? Or do you think that it informs more and grounds more the work that you’re doing even in public policy and housing and in hospitals and all of those things?
Allison Leonhardt
41:32 – 43:06
I think a big way my faith is, has changed my worldview is it’s caused me to be, I don’t know, maybe a more open reader to kind of consider things a little bit differently. A big experience I had in England was starting to, you know, read different books. I had always considered myself very well read and I realized, you know, I had engaged with a lot of books on the left side of the spectrum looking for kind of values and meaning there. And I hadn’t really engaged with anything on the right, and I’d found that maybe on the right that there were a few more ideas about how to help people and how to order society a lot better. I think a big way my faith has changed my approach to public policy is trying to have a more kind of grounded hands up approach or hand up approach to things rather than a handout approach to things. I think a big difference between the left and right is sometimes in programs you’re focused more on a handout and more on relief. While that’s important, it can sometimes be a bit more temporary. And now I tend to appreciate programs that are more focused on a hand up. So things that are more, that help a person develop a sense of agency, that help them grow their skills and help them better their circumstance and their life and the lives of people around them. And so that’s definitely something that I’ve tried to approach in my work in the affordable housing sector. That’s been a big thing and even as well in the political engagement as well that I do now.
Jana Harmon
43:07 – 44:01
Yeah, and no, that makes sense. It is a bit of a biblical ethic. And I’m sure some people wrestle with what that means in terms of helping the poor and the oppressed and the weak. But there is something valuable about agency and responsibility and really valuing the self and others and enabling them to do things for themselves. Even so that I don’t, I can see where you, with a worldview shift that your ideas and the way that you enact those ideas might change as well. And before we, we turn the page to advice, is there anything else about your story that you think we might have missed or that you want to bring forward that we haven’t or anything?
Allison Leonhardt
44:01 – 45:10
I don’t know. It’s just, it’s hard to articulate just how wonderful it is to, to get to know Jesus, to have someone that you can pray to, to ask for help and guidance for the grounding that that brings, but also to know that he’s coming back, that he’s coming again, that this isn’t it, that that just offers so much peace and comfort and joy. It’s, you know, I find as well too dealing with stressful situations and all of that, which certainly there can be a lot of in politics, is knowing that, you know, what we’re dealing with now. This is only temporary. And God’s got a plan in it. That’s a big thing that brings me a lot of reassurances. You know, I just dealt with a very big loss with a campaign that I worked on and it was really, you know, really sad. But my friend whose campaign I ran, he’s a Christian, I’m a Christian as well. And we both know that God has a plan in it. As much as we tried our best, God’s got his hand on it. He’s got something else planned and that’s okay. And we just have to be humble and faithful and follow his lead.
Jana Harmon
45:12 – 45:41
I’m sure not only in your position, you’ve seen a lot, a lot of unfortunate social situations. You’ve seen a lot of brokenness in the world. And, and in some part you rejected God because of the brokenness that you had experienced in your own life. Now, sitting there as a Christian, how do you reconcile the goodness of God with either what you’ve experienced or what you observe even now?
Allison Leonhardt
45:42 – 47:07
So I think about, you know, in my own situation, God’s been able to bring a lot of healing into some of that brokenness. So, you know, mentioning at the start, you know, not having a great childhood, I didn’t have a relationship with my father for a long time, for about 10 years. And, one of the first things that kind of changed in that is I felt this nudge that I should reach out to my dad and see where he’s at. And so in the fall of 2020, I actually reached out to my dad when we started speaking over email while I was in England. And you know, now I have a relationship with my father. You know, I see him every few months. We talk on the phone pretty regularly. And you know, I’m so grateful that the Lord has brought healing into that. And you know, while it can be tough that I’ve dealt with a lot of hurt and brokenness, I’m grateful for the healing that the Lord has brought in that. And I think as well too, it helps me be compassionate towards others as well. So working in the housing industry, you know, I met a lot of people who’ve had backgrounds similar to mine, but, you know, maybe don’t have the most healthy coping mechanisms. And that helps me have, you know, compassion and understanding for where they’re coming from, but also spurs me on to want to help them and help them, you know, find the healing that I found as well.
Jana Harmon
47:08 – 49:45
That’s beautiful. That is truly a story of redemption, isn’t it? Taking the past, just recognizing it for what it is, but finding healing through Christ. It is an extraordinary thing that one can find and life in Jesus because we’re all broken. And we’ve all been susceptible to the harm from others, but yet we find a place in Christ that is a place of healing, a place of unconditional love and hope that even all things can be restored to a place of healing at some point. And he’s also someone who has suffered as we have so He’s one who understands our suffering. So it sounds like you have received a lot of healing through your faith and that is wonderful to see. Allison, there are probably a lot of people out there who are listening to your story who have been hurt by brokenness in their own lives. You’ve read Richard Dawkins and been unconvinced intellectually that religion is bad and that you don’t need to submit yourself to belief in the wishful thinking of religion, that you can be an intellectually fulfilled atheist, all of those things, but yet they may in some sense also struggle and the life as an atheist may not be all that they thought it would be or should be. And they’re looking at you as someone whose life has been transformed, as someone who used to call themselves an atheist, but now you’re sitting here as a Jesus follower, as a Christian, and it sounds like that your faith has informed all of your life and they think that that’s, you know, they look at you and wonder how perhaps they could take a step in that direction. So if someone was interested in becoming a Christian, what would you encourage them to do to figure out whether or not Christianity is true or God is real. What should they read? Mere Christianity? You recommended C.S. Lewis. What would be a good step for a skeptic to take a step forward?
Allison Leonhardt
49:45 – 50:26
I highly recommend two books, so the first one being Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I think it’s a phenomenal, foundational book, and I’d highly recommend you read that. It’s also really accessible and easy to get through. And then the second book I’d recommend would be the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. He started off as a skeptical journalist investigating Christianity, and he lays out a lot of stories about just the authenticity of the Bible and of Jesus and kind of proves it. And so he’s a really great resource as well. So his book the Case for Christ, I’d highly recommend.
Jana Harmon
50:26 – 50:52
Yeah, those are great resources, both by former atheists, CS Lewis, a former atheist as well. As a Christian, do you have any advice for us as Christians and how to help engage others with the possibility of reconsidering Christianity as something other than they thought it would be? I know you had that wonderful friend during COVID that helped introduce you.
Allison Leonhardt
50:53 – 52:13
Be really open when someone has questions and not being shy about sharing your faith, I think that’s really important. But I think also, too, there’s a challenge to us as Christians to, you know, learn more, to be able to engage with some of those questions that our friends might have. So, you know, knowing the basics of our faith, knowing a bit about church history I think as well helps a lot. And so just being able to articulate answers to friends and then also having a good, consistent open dialogue. So if someone does ask you a question and you don’t really answer, being like, you know what, that’s a great question. How about you come over for dinner next week and let’s talk about it. And I think actually that plays another big part to, or leads into another big thing we can do as well is just to practice hospitality. So, you know, being the hands and feet of Jesus. So finding opportunities to help those around us, inviting people into our homes and having them over for dinner, having barbecues. A big thing I like doing too is, you know, I’ll have barbecues, I’ll go for group hikes and stuff. And you know, my friends are a mix of Christians and non-Christians and I think that’s great for my non-Christian friends to get to make more Christian friends than just me. I think it’s really important. And so just creating those spaces for people to get to know people and get to know Christians.
Jana Harmon
52:14 – 53:52
Yes. I think that that’s huge, isn’t it? Especially in a day where people feel so isolated. Honestly, it’s amazing what a little bit of community and conversation, coffee with a friend will do to open the door to some really meaningful interaction, questions, discussion, just trust among friends to creating a safe place to be even to even have those conversations. You and I met at the Colson center for a Christian Worldview. And even there it was amplified that hospitality comes with a house key. Yeah. That we need to be very invitational with our lives so that others can come and see and know and find what we found. Allison, you are a beautiful ambassador, like I said before, of Christ. And so I’m amazed that you have only been a Christian for five years because you’re sitting there with such maturity and grace and a way of communicating about your faith that’s really so wise and so mature and so admirable. Thank you so much for coming on to tell your story and for encouraging us to, to live out loud our faith and to invite others in and to be informed. I think that’s incredibly important as well. So thank you so much for coming on.
Allison Leonhardt
53:54 – 54:17
Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. It’s been fantastic to chat with you and just to get to talk about how wonderful Jesus is. And you know, thank you as well to all the listeners and for anyone who’s questioning. I understand. I’ve been there before, you know. Thank you for listening and I hope as well that you’ll you’ll give Mere Christianity a read.
Jana Harmon
54:17 – 55:47
Thank you so much. Alison’s story reminds us that the journey from skepticism to belief is often deeply personal. It’s not just about intellectual evidence, although that matters. It’s about encountering a person, Jesus Christ, who speaks to our fears, our questions, and our deepest longings. If Allison’s journey resonates with you and you’re curious to explore more, we encourage you to check out the Alpha Course, one of the key resources that helped her rethink Christianity. Alison also recommended two powerful books by former skeptics, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. You’ll find links to those as well as her recommended resources in the show notes. Do you want more stories like Allison’s? Visit our website@xskeptic.org or our YouTube, where you can explore our playlists by topic. You can also sign up for our email list to stay connected and be the first to know about new episodes and resources. If you’d like to reach out and talk to one of our former guests with your own questions, email us@info skeptic.org we’d be honored to connect you. Ashley Kelfer is our wonderful podcast producer and we’re part of the C.S. Lewis Institute Podcast Network. Thank you for joining us. If today’s episode stirred something in you, share it with a friend, leave a review and come back next time for another unlikely story of belief.
