Do you come from a religious family?

I was wondering how many of atheists come from a family and how many do not.
By religious family, I mean a family where religion was considered important and was part of life in general.

Personally I come from a family where religion was never really discussed. I think my mother considered herself some kind of Christian, but she never taught her children to about those beliefs. My father was not religious as far as I know.

The fact that some people actually take the stories from those religious books as anything other than stories never occurred to me as a child.
I think this is quite common for the place I grew up (Denmark).

It was quite a shock to when I ventured out into the world and met people who were religious. I spend a year as an exchange student in Mexico where being catholic is the norm. Very strange experience

Anyway, I am wondering what the norm for atheists is.
Do most atheists come from families like mine where religion really isn't considered important, or do atheists mostly come from families where religion was considered important but they ended up deciding that those beliefs had to be wrong.

I came from a fundamentalist Protestant family whereas they and I always went to church, and now I'm a non-theistic Jew-- go figgur.

I was raised Italian-American Roman Catholic. To Italian-Americans, the church is important, but only when convenient or necessary. It is ironic because my family doesn't understand my religious affiliations, which are in flux even as we speak, though at heart I am a deist and universalist.

I am a third generation atheist. I did have a bout of god when I was younger, but fortunately, I got over it pretty fast.

I would not call my birth family religious, but they sure had a lot of beliefs which they gave too much importance, as well as a blunt way of demanding that I shared those.

Mostly, they were a fairly typical combo of Spiritisti Kardecists with nominal Catholics.

Very much so, I was the most religious among them, I went to 3 church services a week growing up, plus Sunday school or Christian youth group. I attended all religious schools and was seriously considering entering the ministry.

Then I grew up.

I come from a family of Baptist/Mennonite/Catholic background. Pretty religious, but more in the sense of personal biases than actual faith.

Gjallarhorn said:

I come from a family of Baptist/Mennonite/Catholic background. Pretty religious, but more in the sense of personal biases than actual faith.

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I think Mennonites are cool.

Thirza Fallen said:

I think Mennonites are cool.

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In theory, I'd agree.

My mom and I went to church for a few years when I was a kid, then never really went again. We meant to but just never did. My dad never went. I became a Christian in 1987 after a bad breakup with a guy. I was going to find a nice guy at church. Didn't find a guy but met a lot of friends.

I come from a family of mostly Southern Baptists; with a few Pentecostal and Non-Denominational thrown in for good measure.

I myself am seeking (again) for my path. All I know is that I'm Pan(en)Th/Deistic in nature with an interest in Archetypal Polytheism.

Religion always seemed generally of little importance to my family. No one tried to foster any sort of religious belief in me. I did go to youth group with one of my Christian friends, who helped me get "saved" as an 8 year old, and I was probably what you'd term an agnostic theist, then later just agnostic. My family never discouraged any of it. At one point I needed a bible, so my grandfather passed down the one that was passed down to him by his mother (a written note on the inside cover suggests to me this is certain). Unfortunately I didn't take great care of it, so it's not in good condition. So religion was of course tolerated and openly accepted by the most important adults in my life. We never actually talked about religion though. When I went to youth group, we would sometimes have bible study, yet no one in my family ever asked about what I learned for instance. It just wasn't talked about. My family would be more concerned about whether or not I had fun on those Wednesday nights.

When I moved away from my friend I stopped going to youth group with him. I was certainly agnostic at this point, and religion was out of my life entirely until I reached an age where I was looking for answers that I didn't feel could be addressed by education. I somehow convinced myself that God probably did exist (basically an argument from ignorance). I became a theist and began following Christianity but didn't really consider myself a Christian until I really bought into it.The reason I'm talking about all this is because this was a totally private thing for me. I didn't go to church, I didn't talk to my family about it for the whole 9 or so years of considering myself a Christian.

I think growing up the way I did made me feel that my religion just isn't really that important to anyone else. If it is, someone needs to get their priorities straight. Now that I am an atheist, I think the same way about it. I still love religion as a topic; I'm more interested in distributing/gathering information on it than arguing about beliefs.

My family was a little religious when I was a kid, but it decreased dramatically around the time I turned 13. Dad is now athist, Mom believes in god but is not religious.

I wish there was a third poll option in between the two for semi-religious, because that would have been the accurate selection for my family.

My mother had/has a liberal new age syncretic type of spirituality. So I was told about angels and healing magic and afterlives and topics like that when I was a kid. But it wasn't all the time- it was just a belief system that was present but not directly talked about every day. My father was a Roman Catholic, and we went to mass on most Sundays and he put me in Sunday school and I spent a year on the church school soccer team, but if we missed a mass it wasn't a big deal, and he didn't necessarily believe his religion was any better than what other people believe. I grew up only believing a fraction of the teachings but believed those things fairly thoroughly, and he believed in a god and afterlife but didn't really ever talk about religion.

My family are secular however as a young child still had religion around me because my primary had a mild Christian ethos.

Penumbra said:

I wish there was a third poll option in between the two for semi-religious, because that would have been the accurate selection for my family.

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I was going to say the same thing.

I come from a reform Jewish family. I went to Hebrew school at a synagogue, which was held twice per week after regular school, and attended the minimum number of weekly services per year that were necessary to getting passing grades in the Hebrew school. I had a Bar Mitzvah, but then stopped with the religious education. We celebrated the holidays - Passover was always our biggest family holiday every year. But that's about it.

I always considered myself more culturally Jewish than religiously, and eventually I even dumped that. Now I just call myself an atheist.

Raised Mormon.

No religion in my family, although both parents invoked Jesus Christ regularly.
For a long time, I thought it just mean "Ouch!".

I grew up in a family and community akin to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Billy Graham - that sort of evangelical Christianity.