Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has publicly declared his Christian faith, saying the time is right to "fully and publicly" share his beliefs.
Sanger, 56, described on Wikipedia as an "American Internet project developer and philosopher," is credited with naming the site and drafting early guidelines, including the "neutral point of view" and "ignore all rules" policies that shape its editorial framework.
Sanger has now published a detailed and compelling testimony of his spiritual journey, recounting his transformation from a non-believing rationalist for more than 35 years—surrounded by atheists—to a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.
“Throughout my adult life, I have been a devotee of rationality, methodological skepticism, and a somewhat hard-nosed and no-nonsense (but always open-minded) rigor,” writes Sanger.
“I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, my training being in analytic philosophy, a field dominated by atheists and agnostics. Once, I slummed about the fringes of the Ayn Rand community [named after the objectionist novelist-philosopher], which is also heavily atheist. So, old friends and colleagues who lost touch might be surprised.
“For one thing, though I spent over 35 years as a nonbeliever, I will not try to portray myself as a converted ‘enemy of the faith.’ I never was; I was merely a skeptic.”
Sanger expresses a desire to witness about the gospel to others by telling his story.
“I especially hope to reach those who are as I once was: rational thinkers who are perhaps open to the idea, but simply not convinced,” he writes.
Sanger’s upbringing in Anchorage, Alaska, involved being influenced by the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, with his father a church elder. He asked lots of theological and philosophical questions of his parents and school friends, and was confirmed aged 12.
Unfortunately, his family then stopped attending church — his father even turning to New Age religions although he eventually returned to Christianity — and Sanger lost his faith in his teen years, finding that people disliked his questioning.
In his philosophical search, he even reached out to a church pastor but “he seemed to be brushing me off and even to treat me with contempt.” By the age of 17, he became committed to his disbelief and called himself a “methodological skeptic.”
In 1986, he chose to major in philosophy, and judged that unlike other students, “I was driven by a personal truth-seeking mission, a mission both moral and epistemological. I honestly did not understand why most people were uninterested in the questions I was asking.”
Sanger soon became influenced by the works of Ayn Rand, “a fellow unbeliever.” He agreed with her belief in objective truth and thought it could be found through rational methods.
He went to Reed College, “full of liberal unbelievers” and then graduate school, studying philosophy at Ohio State in 1992.
“In those years, I felt no pull toward God. I considered myself agnostic, i.e., I neither believed nor disbelieved in the existence of God; I ‘withheld the proposition.’”
Although Sanger had intended to pursue a profession as an academic, by the mid 1990s he changed his mind, although he did teach some philosophy at Ohio State and nearby colleges, inbetween the busyness of setting up Wikipedia in 2001.
“I rarely saw any sincere concern for truth, of the sort I had made my life’s mission,” recalls Sanger about his career change away from academia. “Contemporary academia appeared to me (and still does) largely a sterile game, with a methodology on some points incompatible with my own.”
As a “confirmed agnostic,” Sanger felt uncomfortable with both the so-called New Atheists, “crass and obnoxious” and the “ultimately intellectually dishonest” theists.
“But the atheists were—to my disappointment, because I really wanted allies—actually worse. To me, they came across as clownish, often merely mocking, and apparently incapable of addressing anything but the most simplistic versions of the arguments. They insisted strongly that anyone who merely failed to believe in the existence of any god was properly called an ‘atheist.’
"Under such a definition, I was an atheist. Yet I was not like them: I was always willing to consider seriously the possibility that God exists. They were not.”
Sanger later found himself rejecting Ayn Rand’s objectionist beliefs. He got married in 2001 with a first child in 2006 and could not align his desire to care for and protect loved ones with Rand’s “ridiculous notion that we can somehow justify our moral obligations toward other people in terms of our own self-interest, no matter how ‘enlightened.’”
“I stopped teaching philosophy in 2005 and started working full-time again on Internet projects,” recalls Sanger. “I went through many years without giving much thought to God, Jesus, or the Bible, except as cultural phenomena and as an ongoing philosophical interest.”
He found New Atheism increasingly “obnoxious” and discovered a great respect for Christian family and friends.
“Similarly, I observed Christians on social media often (though not always) behaving with maturity and grace, while their critics often acted like obnoxious trolls. Some of my favorite people were Christian, too. And some of them were extremely intelligent. Strange.”
It took time before Sanger began to question whether he had really given Christianity a “fair shake.” He began reading the Bible to his two sons, finding the books “interesting literature” but seemingly not at a profound depth to change his views.
“I know now that I simply did not understand what I was reading very well. I merely assumed there wasn’t anything terribly deep to understand.”
Following more intellectual musings, Sanger began reading the Bible for himself and felt shock at realising its coherence. He realised that his philosophical questions were not unique and others had “well-worked-out positions.”
There came a moment of realisation that he had never understood theology properly. He began talking to God too and to weigh up the arguments of Christian apologists such as Stephen Meyer about the existence of God and formation of the Universe.
Sanger found himself acknowledging that God exists, and then accepting the doctrines of Christianity —although he struggled with understanding how Jesus saved him from his sins. He began sharing his Bible reading with his family including his parents and sisters, who had a Christian faith.
At the end of February 2020, Sanger started reading the four gospels and had an internal conversation where he confessed it was time to admit he believed in God and should pray properly. He even wrote a long blog post, entitled, “God exists”, laying out the reasons for the Lord’s existence, and studied theology.
Then came the moment of surrender to Christ: “I did so, silently and eyes closed, lying in bed. I’m not saying this is what I should have done, but it is what I did. It was anti-climactic. I never had a mind-blowing conversion experience. I approached faith in God slowly and reluctantly—with great interest, yes, but filled with confusion and consternation. In fact, as late as April I was still saying I had a ‘provisional Christian belief.’”
Sanger says that his journey to orthodox Christian faith happened only with “time, study and… humble reflection.”
“I certainly did, eventually, come to better appreciate my own sinfulness and why one of our deepest obligations is to be thankful to God for adopting me into his family and forgiving my many sins.
“I thank God for what share of insight his Word and his faithful servants have given me, as I have studied them; I thank him for the gift of faith that, for most of my life, I never imagined I would have."
“By the way, by ‘faith’ I do not mean that I believe absurdities against reason," adds Sanger.
"Rather, what I accept (on, I think, quite rational grounds) is the full body of Christian doctrine as taught in the Bible; but my faith is in God, which is to say, I am loyal to him and to his Son and his Holy Spirit, who are one.”
