I was born into a mildly christian (CofE) family. Began sunday school as soon as i was able, unfortunately my inability to read was the brunt of many jokes. But i stuck it out, made some god friends and generally enjoyed learning about Jesus and before.
Age 11, i was formally allowed to attend church. I was so proud to be there with the adults, enthralled by the vicars sermon.
Each Sunday one of the youngsters would be chosen to learn a passage from the bible that they had to read out from the pulpit the following Sunday.
Being dyslexic and a bashful adolescent didn't prevent me being chosen. First i tried, asking my mother to read and reread the passage until i knew it by heart. But the exposure of pulpit made the words fly away leaving be mumbling and lost.
Still they said i must read from the bible and began to ridicule my inability. Over a few years the ridicule turned to open mockery.
Until eventually i got sick of it, walked out of church and never returned for a service since.
And hence began my path to atheism.
Does anyone else have a story of how church has impacted and chsnged their lives, either positively or negatively?
I grew up mostly apathetic to religion.
My grandmother went to her (Baptist) church every Sunday, but my grandmother was also the only person I knew who wore a fur coat, played the autoharp, etc., so as a little kid, the fact that she was doing something wasn't a signal to me that I should do it, too.
I had a "Bible Stories for Children" book, but I was also into Greek mythology, so I saw the Bible stories in the same light (though the Bible stories generally much more boring and often confusing).
I remember being in grade 7 and encountering other kids my age who were Christians and sincerely believed; I was genuinely surprised. It hadn't occurred to me that someone my age would do that.
To me, religion was something that people
used to do, except for "old people" holdovers like my grandmother or - according to movie tropes at the time - backward small towns in the US that try to outlaw dancing.
A year or two later - right around grade 9, I think - I started to see how wrong my assumption about religion being a thing of the past was. The family two doors down from them turned their house into a pilgrimage site, effectively.
The family claimed that the large painting of the Virgin Mary in their living room would "miraculously" sweat. They also claimed that the painting would speak to their youngest daughter. Apparently, the "Miracle House" became a big thing in the Catholic Filipino community in Toronto. They started getting visitors... lots of them.
Every weekend, our little street would be filled with cars parked while people visited the "Miracle House." A few times, we would have to wait to get home while they unloaded people with walkers and wheelchairs from a tour bus that was blocking our street. This was still going on a few years later when I left for university.
Then, a couple of things happened within a couple of years:
- my grandmother passed away of cancer. A few days before she died, she had people come in to visit her one at a time to tell them her final wishes and advice. For me, she told me how much her religious upbringing had meant to her, and asked me to seriously consider giving any kids I might have a religious upbringing.
- I met - and then married - a Catholic woman. She started getting more and more distressed at the idea of her unbaptized heathen husband ending up in Hell.
... so for those two reasons, I started looking into religion, especially the Catholic Church, to see if it was something I could accept for myself or for my (future) children.
That's actually what brought me to RF: I had lots of questions that my wife (now ex-wife) either couldn't or wouldn't answer that were deal-breakers for me, so I came here - and to a couple of Catholic-specific forums - to try and find answers.
In the end, I found that the more I researched and reflected, and the more I attended church and read the Bible, the further I got from ever accepting Christianity as true.
I looked a bit into the Quakers and the UUs as well, but it became obvious that neither of those options were going to satisfy my wife and they didn't draw me to them enough to keep up with them despite this.
I eventually recognized that I wasn't going to ever become any sort of Christian, which allowed me to have - IMO - a healthier attitude toward it. When my mindset was all about the question "why can't I accept this for myself?" I was very focused on the problems and issues in the religion. Now that I've stepped back from that, it's easier for me to see the positives in it.
] and also was a model. But she acted and talked like a little girl when out socially, probably because very smart beautiful women often intimidate men. 