Editing Robert Louis Stevenson (section)

===Rejection of church dogma===
[[File:Rsl1.jpg|left|thumb|upright|Stevenson at 35 in 1885]]
In other respects too, Stevenson was moving away from his upbringing. His dress became more [[Bohemianism|Bohemian]]; he already wore his hair long, but he now took to wearing a velveteen jacket and rarely attended parties in conventional evening dress.<ref>Furnas (1952), 69–70; Mehew (2004)</ref> Within the limits of a strict allowance, he visited cheap pubs and brothels.<ref>Furnas (1952), 53–7; Mehew (2004.</ref> More significantly, he had come to reject Christianity and declared himself an [[Atheism|atheist]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Theo Tait |date=30 January 2005 |title=Like an intelligent hare – Theo Tait reviews Robert Louis Stevenson by Claire Harman |work=The Telegraph |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3635932/Like-an-intelligent-hare.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3635932/Like-an-intelligent-hare.html |archive-date=11 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |access-date=4 August 2013 |quote=A decadent dandy who envied the manly Victorian achievements of his family, a professed atheist haunted by religious terrors, a generous and loving man who fell out with many of his friends – the Robert Louis Stevenson of Claire Harman's biography is all of these and, of course, a bed-ridden invalid who wrote some of the finest adventure stories in the language. [...] Worse still, he affected a Bohemian style, haunted the seedier parts of the Old Town, read Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, and declared himself an atheist. This caused a painful rift with his father, who damned him as a "careless infidel".}}{{cbignore}}</ref> In January 1873, when he was 22, his father came across the constitution of the LJR (Liberty, Justice, Reverence) Club, of which Stevenson and his cousin Bob were members, which began: "Disregard everything our parents have taught us". Questioning his son about his beliefs, he discovered the truth.<ref>Furnas (1952), 69 with n. 15 (on the club); 72–6</ref> Stevenson no longer believed in God and had grown tired of pretending to be something he was not: "am I to live my whole life as one falsehood?" His father professed himself devastated: "You have rendered my whole life a failure." His mother accounted the revelation "the heaviest affliction" to befall her. "O Lord, what a pleasant thing it is", Stevenson wrote to his friend Charles Baxter, "to have just damned the happiness of (probably) the only two people who care a damn about you in the world."<ref name="Stevenson letters">{{Cite book |last=Stevenson |first=Robert Loui |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h269hZQCyHoC&pg=PA29 |title=Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson |date=2001 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=0-300-09124-9 |location=New Haven, CT |page=29 |access-date=23 October 2020}}</ref>

Stevenson's rejection of the Presbyterian Church and Christian dogma, however, did not turn into lifelong atheism or agnosticism. On 15 February 1878, the 27-year-old wrote to his father and stated:<ref>Colvin, Sidney, ed. (1917). ''The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson'', Vol. 1: 1868–1880. New York: Scribner's. [https://archive.org/details/lettersofrob01stev/page/258/mode/2up pp. 259–260].</ref>

{{blockquote|Christianity is among other things, a very wise, noble and strange doctrine of life ... You see, I speak of it as a doctrine of life, and as a wisdom for this world ... I have a good heart, and believe in myself and my fellow-men and the God who made us all ... There is a fine text in the Bible, I don't know where, to the effect that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord. Strange as it may seem to you, everything has been, in one way or the other, bringing me nearer to what I think you would like me to be. 'Tis a strange world, indeed, but there is a manifest God for those who care to look for him.}}

Stevenson did not resume attending church in Scotland. However, he did teach Sunday School lessons in Samoa, and prayers he wrote in his final years were published posthumously.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.org/details/prayerswrittenat00stev|title=Prayers written at Vailima|first=Robert Louis|last=Stevenson|date=8 December 1912|publisher=New York, : C. Scribner's sons|accessdate=8 December 2022|via=Internet Archive}}</ref>