How secular or religious was your upbringing?

None existiant. I did have a humiliating baptism at 13 when I was 6’5”. 6 people had to hold me in the air. My grandfather did object to my dungeons and dragons books.

WAY too much! Mom was from a devote Irish catholic family and went to a all-girl Catholic school whose teachers were sisters of the Sacred Heart. I am now, happily, a devote Atheist.

To this day I do not know if my parents consider themselves to be Christian. I pretty much know my father is agnostic even if he won’t openly admit it. My mother never appeared to really buy into it either. They had us going to the methodist church for a few months on and off over the years. I suspect it was more to do with introducing us and letting us decide for ourselves. That was always their method, just let us decide and whatever we chose to believe would be ok with them. Mom was a liberal hippy to the core who always found a way to work at the university and get free tuition so she couple basically collect degrees. Dad was an engineer and a moderate republican, he had a knack about always being right about everything and I learned to listen at a young age. Parents never argued about politics the way some people do. They would give each other little jabs every now and then in good fun but that sort of thing never took the spotlight. They would usually joke that they canceled out each others vote during elections.

It’s a toss and complicated. My mother was raised a Southern Baptist and as a teen saw clearly how disfunctional that religion was. She married a man who had been raised in a devoutly Catholic home. They both came from the underclasses, one rural, the other urban and had a strong hunger to be post-WWII, middle class suburbanites. They wanted a piece of the American Pie and that did not include a whole lotta religiosity.

She had to convert to Catholicism to marry my father and keep peace in his side of the family, but she never bought into it. I don’t think her father really gave much of a shit, although he had done some SB preaching in Texas as a young man, even wrote a hymn they still sing in their churches. But I seriously don’t think he was a real believer, or he may have lost his faith when he lost his land in the Dust Bowl and had to migrate to California to pick fruit and start over at 57 years old. But for a time as a young man, he was one of many Jack-boot preacher traveling rural Texas trying to put food in his family’s mouth during hard times.

My father insisted that we all attend Catholic schools and brought many of the rituals into the house, but he lived a practical, secular life. There was a definite lack of crippling guilt there for sure. I think it was more about raising his kids to get a good education with some familiar moral guidelines and to maintain the historical and cultural aspects of his strong Catholic lineage.

The schools we attended were the suburbanite California parochial schools of post-WWII, what I call “Catholic Lite”, No fire and brimstone like the Catholics from the East whom I’ve met since.

So, I would say the outcome has been that we’ve taken on some of the better Catholic values that we were taught—social values common to almost all religions—and all of their seven children became what is called irreligious. I mean, really. The some of the rituals, history and traditions are nice, but a lot of catechism is just plain voodoo. Some of us believe there is a higher power, some of us are agnostic, some are athiests and some really don’t give a shit, like myself.

My mother was devoutly Roman Catholic, while my father more or less tolerated her predilection in order to “keep the peace” We were thus indoctrinated in a typical Catholic grade school “education”. Of the 4 of us, not a single one acquired the slavish devotion to our religion instilled in our mother. Curious.

I grew up in a religious family. It included celebrating the patron day (a local custom; each family has a protector saint. On the date dedicated to this saint, the family makes up a feast. It’s a Slavic tradition mixed with Christian rituals.) and going to the religion class in school.
My mother is sometimes cult-ish when it comes to religion, but my father doesn’t mention it much. I still got the sharp look from him when I didn’t react with enthusiasm to the brand new wooden cross they brought from the monastery once. Mom showed it to me with shiny eyes and I was just like “yeah, it’s nice” and moved on eating.
I think they are defensive of religion, rather than actually being religious. It has influenced their views on some things. Keep in mind that religion here is a matter of national and cultural identity; there are legit people who firmly believe that a true Serbian cannot be of any other faith than Orthodox Christian. Church and religion has shaped our culture in all kinds of ways. Some ultra nationalists would say that “no real Serb is a Catholic/Musilm/ anything else” and that those Serbs that claim they are Catholics “are actually Croats, just pretending to be Serbs”.

I’ve never truly believed. I went to the religion class, but I was kinda pushed into it. When it came to primary school, parents put me in there in first grade. In highschool, I signed it in the first year, but I later wanted to go to the second class. You could choose between religion class and “citizen education”, which included sociology. When I got the actual sociology subject in fourth year, I kinda realized I missed out a lot.
We never really learnt anything in religion class. I starred there, because I was mildly interested and sang the religious songs, was good at analyzing the verses and whatnot, but all in all, we never really learnt anything. It was real boring. Everyone thinks I’m religious because of this; the local priest was my teacher and he always praises me and mentions how “active” I was in his class.
Later in life, I kinda came to a conclusion that I was never a believer. I dread church and priests, (at younger age I was simply disinterested in going to church or the liturgy) and I go there only if I have to (in case of a cousin wedding and other stuff like that). My mother always tried to indirectly make me interested, but it never caught on.
I told her about it once and she didn’t believe. “I raised you, there’s no way you could be an atheist”.

I think people here would go nuts and bombard me with whys and whens and try to argue with me if I ever openly told people I’m not a believer. It’s all a tradition; to some, denying your religion, or simply changing it, is like pissing on your culture and ancestors. Like i said, it’s a big part of national identity here.

My friend seems to get it, though, even though she is very religious.

We’re Protestant. We never prayed at home or before a meal, except maybe a special occasion like Thanksgiving someone would say grace. I used to go to church when I was little, either with my mom or usually with friends. We could walk to church in those days. Now, at that age, the parent would probably get arrested for neglect for a young child walking or children walking without an adult.

Protestants don’t believe in mortal sin, are not brought up to fear a lot of things like Catholics are.

I was raised Catholic (Byzantine) but my parents, my father especially, encouraged learning about many religions and there were always different religious texts on the bookshelves at home. I was expected to go to church and Sunday school until first communion and after that it was pretty much up to me whether I wanted to continue going. I was 12 or 13 when I started to lose my faith, but up until that point my heart was fully in it. I was a curious kid and I didn’t like that I got in trouble for asking difficult questions in Sunday school, my teachers would get frustrated with me or refuse to call on me after a while. When I was 14, my sister died, and I tried to look to God for comfort and found none. Over time, I read more about other religions and spiritualities, I tried a few out and ultimately came to settle in atheism.

I was raised a Jewish atheist. Religion never came up. We celebrated Chanukah and got together with family for Passover Seder, but I had not really heard of a God that you pray to and who can perform miracles until I was a teenager. You would think from reading the Haggadah at Passover that I would have put together God and religion, but nope.

I knew my friends were varying religions, but to me, when I was little, that just meant they had a Christmas tree and I didn’t.

In my early teen years I learned more about God and that was just fine that some people believed. I still didn’t really think about it. I didn’t question what I believed.

In my late teens I started to understand that people in other religions actually thought they were the only ones right. Even worse, I found out Christians believed if you weren’t Christian you were going to hell. I thought that was really screwed up. See, I thought other people were like me, they called themselves a religion, but that was it. I didn’t know all the varying beliefs, things to fear, praying, and tgatvreligions hated each other or felt in competition.

I also learned my dad had decided religion sucked when he was a teenager and the family distanced themselves from his uncle who had married a Catholic girl. He liked his uncle and his wife, and had very little family, and had been rather neglected.

I was fairly apathetic to my Judaism until I realized in my late teens that no matter what the world saw me as Jewish, especially the antisemites. I learned more about Judaism over time and decided I liked a lot of things about it. All of that caused me to have a stringer Jewish identity, but still never religious.

Started fairly secular. Dad was a former Catholic, practicing Buddhist. I was taught about Catholicism, as my grandmother was Catholic, but was never christened and never did catechism or confession. My mother’s family was vaguely Christian but not nuts about it. My Nan adopted a Jewish kid back in the 70s, so I do have a practicing Jewish uncle.

My parents divorced, and my mother moved us from NY to Florida and remarried. Her new husband’s family was extremely fundamentalist Christian. My mother was married in the church that Kim Davis attends, actually.

I attended and participated in an Apostolic Pentecostal church from the age of about ten until I was 22.

My parents were staunch Catholics, although from the liberal St Francis/Jesuitical side. My parents were Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, a Papal Order, and often hung out with Bishops and Cardinals.

But they were liberal in how we were raised, too. We stopped going to Catholic schools once we got to a town where the public schools were better. And they did not give us grief as long as we went to Mass on Sunday.

My father was the oldest son of a Priest of the RLDS, a Reorganized version of the Mormon Church, now know as Community of Christ. I was raised in the church, with Wednesday prayer meeting, Sunday morning worship, Sunday afternoon teen activities and all my relatives involved. Most of our life revolved around church activities. I have many happy memories of summer camps, gatherings called reunions, and much more.
I had a lot of personal, emotional trouble because I could not accept the teachings on “faith” and I eventually accepted that I am atheist.

You know which question I find the most difficult to answer when a foreigner ask about my country? “How do people practice religion”. You need to know some background information before I can answer your question because it is very complicated to explain. My country is generally secular, but we are deeply rooted in tradition. We have our own gods that rule over various things, and they are way too many. Sometimes people don’t even know their names, so they just call them “god”. We have our own belief and tradition to support that belief, but much of the belief and tradition are heavily inspired by Buddhism. Buddhism’s influence is so strong that many foreigners mistakenly believe that we are a Buddhist country. I need to clarify: no, we are in no way a Buddhist country, but we borrow way too many ideas from Buddhism, like we are creating a rip-off version of Buddhism. But Buddhism at least knows which god is which, while our “religion” just call every supernatural object “god”. So, the closest that I can say about my country is that we are somewhat supertitious. Because of this complicated issue, even some people in my country believe that the “religion” they follow is a legitimate religion. People who claim to follow no religion is bound to this religion one way or another, because it is taught to them ever since they were children.

My family is a typical one when it comes to religion. In fact, “religion” isn’t a word at all. My family doesn’t identify themselves as any religious follower, but I was taught a lot of belief and tradition stated before. When I was young I never thought of it as a religion, I just thought it was some sort of old wise belief from my ancestors. When I was about 15 mom started to practice eating vegetarian food on the 15th of every month according to the Chinese calendar. This is something a bit more Buddhist than the typical tradition. She also seems to be a little more devoted to Buddhism since but not to the point of cutting off hair and eating vegetables for a lifetime. Everyone respects her choice and makes no comment, but no one tries the same thing.

As for me, I have no belief whatsoever, not for Buddhism or any kind of old belief. But I mostly keep it to myself. I learned not to say anything about it the hard way after giving some hints to my friends that I don’t believe in any kind of religion and hearing them saying “you are just too naive for the truth”. People just aren’t ready for someone who have utterly no belief in the supernatural at least the way they do anyway.

We were raised to be religious Jews who did not believe in God.

Not very,

Mom was Catlic, Dad was Proddy. Neither church approved of the marriage (1954) or the other partner solely based on their religion so my folks told them to screw themselves basically. We were raised to understand right and wrong but not to believe that the knowledge and actions required any specific religious doctrine to live by it.

My grandmother on my mothers side and most of her family were pretty devout and remained that way. My fathers family was never known as great churchgoers to begin with.

It looks cool to me. But I think all ice skaters should go nude. It would cut down on the waiting time.

Oops Wrong question

I was raised in a completely secular way by my parents, but had a best friend whose family was extremely Christian. They were always trying to drag me to church and it was very uncomfortable. The only church my parents ever brought me into was a Unitarian Universalist church, but they only did that when I was very young and I don’t remember my experiences there. My four years older sister remembers going.

My uncle was a unitarian universalist preacher for a bit. I went to one or two of his services. One of them was themed “Jesus was a liberal” Still cracks me up to this day. I’m pretty sure he took the gig just to make ends meet.

I often wonder whether there’s a point to attending a UU church. Like… what do they do? What do they talk about? What’s their deal?

I suppose I could just go sometime and see… but I dunno.

From what I remember it was more of a social thing where you get a check next to went to “church.” The one nearby where I live now is where people who still hold on to christianity but are otherwise very socially liberal. Quite a few professors from the university attend. If I was forced to go to a church that is where I would pick.

My wife had a quasi-religious upbringing. Her mom was raised Methodist, converted to Catholicism while in nursing school and remains one to this day. Her father was not raised religious but the family was nominally Baptist. He converted to Catholicism when he married. Her mother was very devout and still is somewhat although old age has decreased her attendance to regular services. All their kids, including my wife, were raised Catholic and attended church on a regular basis. After all the kids were grown and out of the house her dad decided to become Baptist again and began years of regular attendance and participation in the Baptist Church but while her mom continued to remain loyal to the Catholic Church she also attended the Baptist one with her husband until his death.
Of the four kids, as I said, raised Catholic, my wife continued to attend church with our kids (and me when the whim struck or it was important to her) up until about 15 years ago when she decided she could no longer follow the doctrine that did not reflect her core beliefs. She considered attending a local Unitarian Church but never got around to going; probably due to a lack of interest on my part as much as anything. Her sister considers herself Catholic but does not belong to any particular church. She attends services on special occasions such as Christmas and Easter at whatever Catholic church is in the area; I think she may have stopped that too now. Her two brothers never attended another church service once they moved away from home and consider themselves agnostic; a source of pain to their mom.

I was raised in a rabidly fundamentalist Southern Baptist family, and it scarred me. That church raped my soul.

It took 30 years of therapy to undo. I am free and very happy now.

Religion played no part in my upbringing in any way shape or form & I am unanimous in that.

My parents were Protestant but didn’t take their religion very seriously. I have always been quite open minded about religion whether it is from the east or from the west.

I was raised Catholic in a very God fearing family. Was Baptized, Confirmed, First Communion, did the Sunday shuffle every week, Good Friday, Lent, Ash Wednesday….the whole nine yards. Even had Last Rites read to me twice as a sick kid. Last time I went to a Sunday mass was the Sunday before I left for college.

Today I am a Spiritualist and firmly believe there is a much greater force in the Universe than just a God, Buddha, Allah etc. though I know my Catholic upbringing will always be a part of me.

@Cruiser I agree. You never truly shake the mindset if they grab you when you’re a kid. The Church has a tough time reconciling the tenets of the faith with reasoning. This is a really BIG dilemma for outfits like the Jesuits who assign so much weight to logic. In the end, you are in effect forced to choose between faith and logic on so many issues critical to towing the line, that a “crisis of faith” is unavoidable.

I remember going to Sunday school a few times when I was around four or five. But I don’t remember ever going to church. I asked my mom about this and she said it was free babysiting. So I guess that should tell you all you need to know about my parents religion.

Not secular enough, but not too religious in the household. I was raised Catholic and we did have to go to mass every Sunday. Had this teacher who would punish you on Monday morning if you didn’t know what the current Gospel was each week. Which is why Ireland badly needs to give the funding to non-religous schools. Our Catholic schools are both private and state schools. Its a non-sensical system.

My parents were both atheists and didn’t have a spiritual bone in their body. I say spiritual because beliefs can come in all shapes and sizes. No one size fits all! I am not sure why, but I considered myself a spiritual person from very young. I am not even sure how I cottoned onto the idea since I never went to church nor Sunday school.
I’ve spent a very thoughtful and spiritual life all of my life despite my parents being non-spiritual. Oddly when my mother had a brain injury she became very spiritual.