# List of converts to Christianity from nontheism

This is a list of notable converts to Christianity who were not theists before their conversion. All names should be sourced and the source should indicate they had not been a theist, not merely non-churchgoing, before conversion.

## Converted to Anglicanism or Episcopalianism

* Joy Davidman – poet and wife of C. S. Lewis
* Tamsin Greig – British actress raised as an atheist; converted at 30
* Nicky Gumbel – Anglican priest known for the Alpha course; from atheism
* Peter Hitchens – journalist who went from Trotskyism to Traditionalist conservatism; brother of the anti-theist and Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens
* C. E. M. Joad – English philosopher whose arguing against Christianity, from an agnostic perspective, earned him criticism from T. S. Eliot; turned toward religion later, writing The Recovery of Belief a year before he died and returning to Christianity
* C. S. Lewis – Oxford professor and writer; well known for The Chronicles of Narnia series, and for his apologetic Mere Christianity
* Alister McGrath – biochemist and Christian theologian' founder of "scientific theology" and critic of Richard Dawkins in his book Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life
* Enoch Powell – Conservative Party (UK) member who converted to Anglicanism
* Michael Reiss – British bioethicist, educator, journalist, and Anglican priest; agnostic/secular upbringing
* Dame Cicely Saunders – Templeton Prize and Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize-winning nurse known for palliative care; converted to Christianity as a young woman
* Fay Weldon – British novelist and feminist

## Converted to Catholicism

* Mortimer J. Adler – American philosopher, educator, and popular author; converted to Catholicism from agnosticism, after decades of interest in Thomism
* G. E. M. Anscombe – analytic philosopher, Thomist, literary executor for Ludwig Wittgenstein, and author of "Modern Moral Philosophy"; converted to Catholicism as a result of her extensive reading
* Benedict Ashley – raised humanist; former Communist; became a noted theologian associated with River Forest Thomism
* Maurice Baring – English author who converted in his thirties
* Mark Bauerlein – English professor at Emory University and the author of 2008 book The Dumbest Generation, which won at the Nautilus Book Awards
* Léon Bloy – French author who led to several notable conversions and was himself a convert from agnosticism
* Paul Bourget – French author who became agnostic and positivist at 15, but returned to Catholicism at 35
* Alexis Carrel – French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912
* Salvador Dalí, Spanish painter, raised atheist by his father but later converted to Catholicism
* Alfred Döblin, German novelist, essayist and doctor, a former convert from Judaism to atheism
* Avery Dulles – Jesuit priest, theologian, and cardinal in the Catholic Church; was raised Presbyterian, but was an agnostic before his conversion to Catholic Christianity
* Alice Thomas Ellis – born Anna Haycraft, raised in Auguste Comte's atheistic "church of humanity", but became a conservative Catholic in adulthood known as Alice Thomas Ellis
* Edward Feser – Christian philosopher and author, wrote The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
* André Frossard – French journalist and essayist
* Maggie Gallagher – conservative activist and a founder of the National Organization for Marriage
* Eugene D. Genovese – historian who went from Stalinist to Catholicism
* Bill Hayden – The 21st Governor-General of Australia. In 1996 he was recognised as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. Baptized September 2018.
* Mary Karr – author of The Liars' Club; Guggenheim Fellow; once described herself as an "undiluted agnostic", but converted to a self-acknowledged "Cafeteria Catholicism" who embraces Pro-Choice views, amongst others
* Ignace Lepp – French psychiatrist whose parents were freethinkers and who joined the Communist party at age fifteen; broke with the party in 1937 and eventually became a Catholic priest
* Leah Libresco – popular (former) atheist blogger; her search for a foundation for her sense of morality led her to Christianity; she continues her blog under a new name, Unequally Yoked. Her blog readership has increased significantly since her conversion.
* Arnold Lunn – skier, mountaineer, and writer; as an agnostic he wrote Roman Converts, which took a critical view of Catholicism and the converts to it; later converted to Catholicism due to debating with converts, and became an apologist for the faith, although he retained a few criticisms of it
* Gabriel Marcel – leading Christian existentialist; his upbringing was agnostic
* Claude McKay – bisexual Jamaican poet who went from Communist-leaning atheist to an active Catholic Christian after a stroke
* Vittorio Messori – Italian journalist and writer called the "most translated Catholic writer in the world" by Sandro Magister; before his conversion in 1964 he had a "perspective as a secularist and agnostic"
* Czesław Miłosz – poet, prose writer, translator and diplomat; was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and in 1980 the Nobel Prize in Literature
* Malcolm Muggeridge – British journalist and author who went from agnosticism to the Catholic Church
* Bernard Nathanson – medical doctor who was a founding member of NARAL, later becoming an anti-abortion activist
* Fulton Oursler – writer who was raised Baptist, but spent decades as an agnostic before converting; The Greatest Story Ever Told is based on one of his works
* Giovanni Papini – went from pragmatic atheism to Catholicism, also a fascist
* Joseph Pearce – anti-Catholic and agnostic British National Front member who became a devoted Catholic writer with a series on EWTN
* Charles Péguy – French poet, essayist, and editor; went from agnostic humanist to a pro-Republic Catholic
* Sally Read – Eric Gregory Award-winning poet who converted to Catholicism
* E. F. Schumacher – economic thinker known for Small Is Beautiful; his A Guide for the Perplexed criticizes what he termed "materialistic scientism"; went from atheism to Buddhism to Catholicism
* Peter Steele – lead singer of Type O Negative
* Edith Stein – Phenomenologist philosopher who converted to Catholicism and became a Discalced Carmelite nun; declared a saint by John Paul II
* John Lawson Stoddard – divinity student who became an agnostic and "scientific humanist;" later he converted to Catholicism; his son Lothrop Stoddard remained agnostic and would be significant to scientific racism
* R. J. Stove – raised atheist, converted to Catholicism
* Allen Tate – American poet, essayist and social commentator; Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress
* Victor Turner – A British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals and rites of passage.
* Sigrid Undset – Norwegian Nobel laureate who converted to Catholicism from agnosticism
* J. D. Vance – The writer of Hillbilly Elegy.
* Evelyn Waugh – British novelist who converted to Catholicism from agnosticism
* John C. Wright – science fiction author who went from atheist to Catholic; Chapter 1 of the book Atheist to Catholic: 11 Stories of Conversion, edited by Rebecca Vitz Cherico, is by him

## Converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity

* Emir Kusturica – filmmaker, actor, and musician; although of Muslim ancestry, his father was atheist; took the name "Nemanja" on conversion in 2005
* Seraphim Rose – Hieromonk and religious writer; in early adulthood he considered non-theist ideas of God and the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche that God is dead; became Russian Orthodox in 1962
* Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – Nobel Prize-winning dissident author who converted to Russian Orthodoxy

## Converted to Protestantism

* Steve Beren – former member of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party who became a Christian conservative politician
* Kirk Cameron – actor noted for his role in Growing Pains
* Francis Collins – physician-geneticist, noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes; director of the National Human Genome Research Institute; former atheist
* Bo Giertz – Swedish Confessional Lutheran Bishop, theologian, and writer
* Simon Greenleaf – one of the main founders of Harvard Law School
* Keir Hardie – raised atheist and became a Christian Socialist
* Paul Jones – musician, of Manfred Mann; previously atheist; in 1967 he argued with Cliff Richard about religion on a TV show
* Kang Kek Iew (also known as Comrade Duch) – Cambodian director of Phnom Penh's infamous Tuol Sleng detention center
* Akiane Kramarik (and family) – American poet and child prodigy
* Jonny Lang – blues and rock singer who professed to once "hating" Christianity, before later claiming to have a supernatural encounter with Jesus Christ which led to his conversion
* Chai Ling – Chinese student leader of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989; converted to evangelical Christianity in 2009
* Josh McDowell – evangelist and Christian apologist.
* John Warwick Montgomery – renowned Christian apologist, Lutheran theologian, and barrister; as a philosophy major in college, he investigated the claims of Christianity "to preserve intellectual integrity" and converted
* William J. Murray – author and son of atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair
* Marvin Olasky – former Marxist turned Christian conservative; previously edited the Christian World magazine
* George R. Price – geneticist who became an Evangelical Christian and wrote about the New Testament; later he began to engage less in evangelism and switched from religious writing to working with the homeless
* Mira Sorvino – Academy Award-winning actress who had been on secular humanist lists
* Lee Strobel – former avowed atheist and journalist for the Chicago Tribune; was converted by his own journalistic research intended to test the veracity of scriptural claims concerning Jesus; author of such apologetic books as The Case for Faith and The Case for Christ
* Lacey Sturm – musician, former vocalist and lyricist for alternative metal band Flyleaf
* J. Warner Wallace – American homicide detective

## Converted to the Quaker faith

* Whittaker Chambers – former Communist turned conservative writer
* Gerald Priestland – news correspondent who discusses having once been the "school atheist" in Something Understood: An Autobiography; became a Quaker after an emotional breakdown

## Unspecified or other

* Ayaan Hirsi Ali – activist and author (former Muslim-turned-atheist)
* Peter Baltes – former heavy metal musician, member of Accept
* Anders Borg – Sweden's former Minister for Finance
* Julie Burchill – British journalist and feminist
* Nicole Cliffe – writer and journalist who co-founded The Toast
* Bruce Cockburn – Canadian folk/rock guitarist and singer/songwriter (former agnostic)
* Karl Dallas – British music journalist, author and political activist
* Larry Darby – former Holocaust denier and former member of the American Atheists
* Robert Davidson – Australian composer and bassist. Atheist until the age of 48, when a self-described "revelation of divine love" led him to describe himself as an "ex atheist".
* Terry A. Davis – American computer programmer who created and designed an entire operating system, TempleOS, by himself. Davis grew up Catholic and was an atheist before experiencing a self-described "revelation". He described the experience as seeming "a lot like mental illness ... I felt guilty for being such a technology-advocate atheist ... It would sound polite if you said I scared myself thinking about quantum computers."
* Andrew Klavan – Jewish-American writer who went from atheist to agnostic to Christian.
* Nina Karin Monsen – Norwegian moral philosopher and author who grew up in a humanist family, but later converted to Christianity through philosophic thinking
* Rosalind Picard – director of the Affective computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab; raised atheist, but converted to Christianity in her teens
* Joseph Franklin Rutherford – American lawyer, became an atheist in c. 1891, baptized as Bible Student in 1906, later Watch Tower Society president
* Allan Sandage – prolific astronomer; converted to Christianity later in his life, stating, "I could not live a life full of cynicism. I chose to believe, and a peace of mind came over me."
* Fred Severud – American structural engineer and founder of Severud Associates
* Rodney Stark – a formerly agnostic sociologist of religion.
* František Vyskočil – Czech neuroscientist
* A. N. Wilson – biographer and novelist who entered the theological St Stephen's House, Oxford before proclaiming himself an atheist and writing against religion; announced his return to Christianity in 2009