Apparently I was never baptised!

My Catholic grandmother baptized me at home, in the sink, for fear of my soul lest something happen to me, but did not register it with Church. Family lore has it that she used some holy water her sister had sent her through the mail. (Why they were mailing holy water back and forth, and where they got it, has not been explained.) Random Catholics are only supposed to baptize in extremis, not just as illicit babysitting activity (my parents were against it). So… does that count?

My Mum was a wishy-washy sort of C of E by habit type when I was born (now a somewhat strident atheist) , Dad was, and still is, a quiet atheist. No Christening for me. I was listed as C of E on school records until I was allowed to update it to no religion myself.
I did feel a little cheated about not having godparents for a while (or at least the potential for extra presents), but they would have picked a close relative anyway, so I don’t think I even missed out on that.

Thanks for this. Didn’t know about it. Learn all sorts of stuff here. :slight_smile:

We had our son baptized, actually it was kind of fun, the ceremony brought together a small select group of friends and family we hadn’t seen since our wedding. I think it was kind of a comforting thing for us, even tough we’re not particularly religious.

I probably became an atheist before 14, but I mark that year because it was when one of my school teachers (a lay teacher at a Catholic high school, no less) was conversing with me and said: I guess that makes you an atheist. And I thought… yeah, I guess so. I hadn’t really thought about it before.

You incorporate certain practices as a child, and sometimes disassociate them from any belief you might have-- like you were thinking in Confirmation class. I still went to church every Sunday with my family until I went away to college, because that was just something you did. It, literally, could have nothing to do with your beliefs. In the same way, we could say prayers that we had memorized as children and that were nothing more than a serious of sounds we’d make, divorced from the meaning the words had. Like saying grace before meals. 100% ritual, 0% meaning.

I don’t know if that was exacerbated by the peculiarities of my family. We were outwardly rather religious, but only in the ritual sense. We went to Church, had crucifixes in our bedrooms, but never ever discussed religion at home. Never.

Did they use to do confirmations much earlier? Around here in the 80s, it was 7th and 8th graders, so ages 12-14.

My parents waited until a specific minister was available, so I was around 2 when mine was done. I notoriously admonished him, “Don’t get my pretty dress wet!”

Methodist do infant baptisms. Now maybe your parents didn’t have you baptized, but it wasn’t because the denomination prevented it.

I’ve been baptized twice. Once as an infant in the Methodist church and once when I was about ten years old in the Baptist church.

Twice, and it still didn’t take. Yeesh.