Move over Alcoholics Anonymous. Now there’s a recovery group for people who want to escape their religious addiction and live a life free of gods, demons, sin, and the constant threat of an eternity in hell fires.

Founded in March of this year by Darrel Ray, a psychologist and author of The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture, the group, which is called Recovering Religionists (RR), now has chapters in almost a dozen places, including Raleigh, North Carolina; Conroe, Texas; Kansas City, Kansas; Atlanta, Georgia; Joplin, Missouri; and New York City.

Ray may be onto something big. A 2007 PEW study found that 16% of Americans no longer belong to any specific religion, making them one of the country’s largest minorities. And the number is still growing, in fact, faster than any religious organization. Which should make it any easier for people to admit that they’re non-believers. It doesn’t. The stigma is too great.

Ray, who was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church and spent time with the Quakers and the Presbyterians, told the Kansas City Star, “It is almost easier to come out of the closet as gay than as an atheist, especially in the Midwest. My hope for RR is that when people are ready to leave religion they have a group for support.”

Eleven people showed up for Ray’s first meeting, which he organized, as many of us do these days, through the internet. The stories he heard are all-too-familiar to many of us who have left religious upbringings to declare ourselves atheists, agnostics, humanists or plain old nonbelievers.

David Summerly, who lives in Kansas City, was previously a Mormon. He said that when he was part of that religion, “I had this huge network. Wherever I went I could find other Mormons. Once I left, I didn’t have that anymore. I had to slowly build up friends.”

The hardest part for Summerly was throwing off the many things that had been drilled into his head as part of his religious training: “I remember drinking a Dr. Pepper and feeling guilty because we (Mormons) weren’t supposed to have caffeine,” he said. “Then I thought that was silly. So I went out and bought a 12-pack, and drank all of it.”

Loey Lockerby, also of Kansas City, explained one of her reasons for doubting the religion she was raised in: “Most religions set up these impossibly high standards, so you’re set up to fail. Everything that’s human is a sin.”

Her mother, Kay Huddleston, who leads the group in Wyandotte County, Kansas, agreed. “I’m amazed at how much happier I am now that I’m not walking around with all that guilt.”

It’s all good.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is co-editor of Avanti Popolo: Italians Sailing Beyond Columbus, and editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, which has just been published by City Lights Books. His website: www.avicollimecca.com