Christian Owner of Faithbox, Willie Morris, Used to Be an Atheist Until Letters Moved Him
A few years ago, Willie Morris, who turns 32 on Sunday, was an atheist turned off by Christianity. Last year, however, he launched a subscription service called Faithbox, which promises to help Christians grow their faith and impact the world.
Faithbox, he explains in a promotional video, is a "subscription service that delivers Christian inspiration to your doorstep every single month. We want to help fellow Christians grow in their faith and positively impact the world."
Through the service, subscribers can get boxes containing a combination of weekly cards with reflections or actionable items as well as carefully selected socially conscious products at costs ranging from of $25 to $100, according to the Faithbox website.
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Finding himself in this position, however, took him by surprise.
"Four years ago I was an atheist in Florida running a design agency called The Pancake Movement. If you had told me that I would refer to myself as a Christian, I would have laughed at you," Morris explained in a post on the company website last fall.
"A year ago, I wouldn't have believed that I'd be comfortable speaking outwardly about my own beliefs and faith, and, never in a millions years would I have imagined running a faith-based startup," he said.
So how did Morris get here? In a recent interview on the Church Boys podcast, Morris, who was raised Catholic, said he gave up on Christianity after attending Auburn University and witnessing "heavy-handedness" in the faith and variations of Christianity colliding in one place.
"Instead of kind of exploring and really going deep in it, I kind of slowly phased out going to church and phased out God in my life," Morris explained. "Before I knew it, I was just really a person without any faith or without Christ in my life."
He also discussed that change on Faithbox.
"As I was finishing up college and spending hours upon hours in a genetics lab, the easiest solution was to dismiss every notion of religion. To be fair, Jesus, himself, could have been there to answer my questions and I wouldn't have listened," he wrote.
Following graduation, Morris began working with a design firm. While at that firm he worked with a nonprofit disaster relief organization which was helping people affected by the 2011 Joplin tornado.
