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Why Kirk Cameron Rejected Atheism to Follow Christ

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Why Kirk Cameron Rejected Atheism to Follow Christ

By Movieguide® Contributor  

Kirk Cameron shared with TBN’s Matt and Laurie Crouch about his journey from putting God in the same “trinity” as the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy to the outspoken Christian actor and speaker he is today. 

“None of my friends were Christians, and the ones that I knew who were Christians, I thought that was pretty silly,” Cameron said. “I didn’t go to church. We never talked about God.” 

His curiosity towards Christianity began to pique around the age of 17 when a friend invited him to a church where  he didn’t know who he was at the time — Chuck Swindoll was preaching. 

“I heard a message from a preacher, and I didn’t believe what he was saying, but he did. He was speaking with passion,” he recalled. 

While Cameron didn’t leave church a believer that day, he did leave that day with “lots of questions,” so he asked his friend’s father those tough questions about science, evolution and the Bible. 

“[H]e eventually said, ‘Kirk, if you want to know if God is real, and you can’t tell by everything that’s around you, talk to Him, ask Him, but you’ve got to come to Him on His terms: humility and faith,’” the GROWING PAINS star said 

“I didn’t really have much of either one as a teen idol atheist back in the day.” 

The evangelist ultimately took his advice and spoke to God, not knowing if He would answer. 

“I was sitting in my sports car parked on the side of the road, thinking about the fact that one day I could die and find out if what that preacher said was true. And if there’s a heaven, I wouldn’t be going,” he said. “So, I remember praying for the first time, and I just said, ‘God, if you’re there, I want to know if you’re real…Would you forgive me for the wrong things that I’ve done? …Would you make me the man that you created me to be?” 

Not only did God answer that prayer, but He altered the course of the rest of Cameron’s life. 

“I had this sense when I finished that perhaps I just spoke to the God of the universe, and maybe he would answer me, and He was so kind to do more than that. He changed me on the inside, and I began going to church…and I began to follow Jesus as the Lord of my life,” Cameron continued. 

He began reading the Bible where he discovered that God wasn’t “this big bad cop up in the sky just waiting to punish people.” 

“He is a holy, just, righteous God who desires for us to turn from our sin so that we can be forgiven of our sin. It’s an amazing story of love that’s spelled out in the Bible, and that’s the God that I have fallen in love with and that I live for,” Kirk shared on BeliefNet. 

When Cameron told his parents he wanted to go to church together, his mom was eager, and it came at a time when his parents were in the middle of a separation. 

“This actually became something that brought our family closer together… And then all of a sudden, one by one, like dominoes, my family members started to get saved: my sisters, my mom and then eventually my dad, and I even had a chance to baptize my father several years later,” the 53-year-old recounted. “I’m super, super grateful the way that God worked in our family” 

The father of six has recently launched a new children’s show through Brave Books, ADVENTURES WITH IGGY AND MR. KIRK.  

“Children’s entertainment is getting darker by the minute. @Nickelodeon I’ve got a message for you, we’re taking back children’s entertainment one episode at a time and we’re doing it without a hidden agenda,” Cameron wrote on X. “Parents can trust Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk just like we trusted Mr. Rogers. Go to watchbrave.com to help fund the future of children’s television!” 

The Teddy Bear Award® winner is the latest of celebrities to move out of California as Movieguide® previously reported:

Certainly there’s the concerns of politics and crime and the economy, but…I’m finding California refugees all over Tennessee and Texas and Florida and places like this,” the GROWING PAINS actor said on Fox News on July 6. “There’s been a flood of talent and creatives who have left California. They’re frustrated that their values are not being represented in the projects that they’re working on.”  

“So they’re going out and independently creating projects that do represent their values,” Cameron explained. “In fact, Tennessee has seen an 82% increase in motion picture and television production jobs, making it the Hollywood of the South, and Nashville has become a hub for Christian projects like the ones that I’m working on with other fellow California escapees.” 

The actor also told Fox11 that he didn’t feel his family was “safe” in California. His sister, actress Candace Cameron Bure, also moved to Nashville for this reason. 

Fox11 reported, “Bure recalled that her family had ‘quite a few problems over the years’ with fans taking photos, hiding on their property and coming up to their door.” 

Cameron hasn’t discarded California completely. But for now, he knows it’s not the place to be. 


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