I always felt my parents Save-the-whalism was an religion. It had all the signs of it. We had to listen to sermons (mostly disguised as nature documentaries or political essays) about how the world was going to hell in a handbasket and it was somehow our unaware consumerism that caused it.
We had to listen to high brow Culture. We had to be Good. Left wing politics good, right wing politics BAD, mmm’kay? Blah blah blah.
I still favour animal rights, am rather strongly environmentally conscious, but I ditched the fanatism, the guilt trips, and the feeling I am responsible for all the misery in the Third World.
My parents are Episcopalian, I am atheist. Even as a little kid I didn’t buy into the story. I hated nothing more than being dragged to church every Sunday - the weekend was only two days long, after all, and there I was being forced to waste half of one of those days!
When I was about 15 I finally put my foot down and said I wasn’t going anymore. They agreed, as long as I would still go on Easter and Christmas Eve. Fine, whatever, I can put up with it two days a year, I guess. :rolleyes: That lasted until I turned 18.
They aren’t thumpers or anything, they go to church but don’t really practice the religion otherwise. I think they thought I’d eventually learn to like it or something… heh. I still hate broccoli, too.
When my Catholic father married my Lutheran mother, there was scandal. Several churches refused to marry them. My paternal grandmother would gather with her sisters to have crying prayer sessions over my father’s soul. Everyone eventually got over it by the time I came on to the scene, ten years into their marriage.
My sisters and I were raised Lutheran, while my father remained devout Catholic.
Today, I am more spiritual than religious, but still observe the traditional Protestant holidays out of habit and fondness. My sisters and mother, however, remain devoted Lutherans and are unsettled by me forgoing weekly church visits to sleep in or go to yoga class. (My mother was not impressed by me telling her that I could pray whilst in the corpse position.)
Seriously though, after too many false prophesies of “The world will end on (insert month/day/year)” I gave up hope that it would happen soon, or even in my lifetime.
Also, I’m not as eager for it end as I was when I was a kid.
I was raised in an Evangelical/Charismatic church (Calvary Chapel, called itself “non-denominational” at the time, though after all these years I figure it’s pretty much its own denomination). When my family moved to a new city that had no Calvary Chapel, we began to attend the local Foursquare church. My only real religious “rebellion” came at age 19, when I switched to the Church of the Nazarene, which was still “evangelical”, but much more traditional. One of my biggest reasons was the music. I was a serious musician, and while I liked the idea of “contemporary praise & worship” music, I was extremely dissatisfied with the execution at the time. Specifically, songs that were 4-8 lines long repeated a dozen times. Bleh. I found the traditional hymns much more satisfying.
After I turned 21, I discovered alcohol (had really never drank before 21), and boy did it discover me. That, combined with a job that had me working Sundays, soon led to my abandoning church, and I was away for several years. I eventually quit drinking and got myself back to regular church attendance, and I’ve been back at the Foursquare church ever since.
I had no earthly idea what my mother believed. She never discussed religion at all with me. I assumed she was atheist, but who knows? She never went to church, but she was raised United Methodist. I don’t know what happened and she died before I could ask.
When I saw this thread I decided to call my big brother and ask him. He said she was a lot like me, that she didn’t really believe any religion had it right. That there may be some sort of divinity but she just felt no bond or need to believe.
Hearing this was really cool because I had no idea we had the same beliefs despite never talking about religion at all.
So thank you for coming up with this topic. Talking to my brother about my mother really made my day.
My dad is a Christian who’s been attending Presbyterian churches for the last twenty years or so although he seems to have been baptized in a Catholic church and also once attended a Baptist church.
My mother’s a Buddhist (we’re Korean-Americans thus it ain’t too odd)-Mahayana to be exact.
And my religious beliefs are Protestant Christian thus I guess I kept my father’s religous beliefs.
I marked Yes and No for if I have the same beliefs as my parents. My mom grew up Catholic, but hasn’t been in a Catholic church in ages. I think she’s atheist, because since the divorce she hasn’t been churchy at all. My dad is a deacon in his church, I’m not sure which denomination he is, but it’s some Protestant flavor. I’m atheist now, and have no problems with other people having their beliefs, no matter how silly I think they may be privately.
I was raised Christian (technically first Baptist, than Lutheran, but I consider most of my parent’s beliefs to be fundamentalist), was agnostic as soon as I started reading adult books (age 11?), and atheist by the time I was 15 or so. Still am, and ever will be I expect.
My grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and all cousins but one are all still highly religious, but my two younger sisters and I are godless. I don’t know what went wrong with us. We also don’t put much value on many of the things our whole family takes very seriously (religion of course, no sex before marriage (hah!), marriage in general, a college education right after high school, a traditional career, buying a house and a car, basically being an upstanding and boring citizen and doing exactly what they did) - so far our preferred lifestyles are ‘alternative’ at least compared to that ideal (I am still very boring, but I just do it differently).
They try to blame me for bringing my sisters over to the dark side, but I moved out 4 states away when they were 14 and 12, and we still don’t get to see each other much, so I don’t think I had much to do with it.
My current agnosticism did not stem from rebellion against my parents. It came from years of studying religion from which I learned that religions of all flavors are nothing more than massive con games.
Father is half hindu half jew, raised hindu. Mom was raised catholic…and just a few years ago, found out she too was half Jewish. And her father wasn’t just run of the mill, but an uberjew - one of the first families to migrate to the Western Hemisphere. Suddenly, my grandfather not attending mass with them, being shorter than most Cuban men, curly hair, and nose suddenly “made sense”. My grandmother never told their kids they were Jewish because she is a DEVOUT catholic. She’s such a brilliant woman, but it’s all put on hold for her religious beliefs.
I was raised VERY loosely catholic and loosely hindu for most of my life. I knew I wasn’t a catholic when I pointedly asked a religion teacher to explain why only catholics went to heaven. My own dad won’t get into heaven? Must be a crappy religion then. Also, I didn’t buy animals talking and doing things in hindu mythology either.
As for being ethnically half jewish…it makes me feel a LOT better about my nose than I did as a kid. For the longest time, I wanted a rhinoplasty.
Became concretely agnostic around age 17. SO/future hubby is an agnostic, though I suspect with age will declare himself an atheist.
Both sets of my grandparents didn’t come to my parents’ wedding because…it wasn’t going to be done in their religion, and the spouse wasn’t going to convert :rolleyes:. When I (the first child) came along, all was forgiven and everyone was happy. Which is a better outcome than a lot of people experience.
It would be neat to do crosstabs of a sort to check what combinations of parent/child were most and least common…if you’re raised Catholic, say, are you more likely to be an atheist now than if you were raised Protestant?
My parents were either agnostic or atheist when I came along, no idea which (I put down agnostic), and we never attended church of any kind. I am now a Sunday school teacher and member of the church vestry. Rebellion of a different sort, perhaps. Looking at the poll stats thus far it seems that this particular trajectory isn’t shared by all that many other dopers–
My parents were raised Catholic. Agreed with many of Vatican II’s changes but felt it threw too much tradition out. Didn’t get anything out of local RCC & wanted something that my brother & I could learn from.
Dad became stay-at-home believing/non-practicing Catholic. Mom & Grandmom took brother & I to Christian & Missionary Alliance (Evangelical Protty) Church.
In late teens, I got into the Charismatic Renewal & in while in college, went from C&MA to Assembly of God. Mom joined me there a few years later (tho has not
gotten into the Charismatic/speaking-in-tongues part). Dad never minded one way or the other but while he would visit the C&MA, he never visited the AoG.
So No, in that I am a Charismatic Protestant Christian while my parents were raised Catholic Christians, but Yes in that we are all conservative Christians.
I was raised Episcopalian (the American branch of the Church of England, or Anglicanism) by two parents who were also Episcopalian. I’m still Episcopalian, as is my wife (also born and raised), and we regularly go to church with our three sons. We really like it - the people, the liturgy, the music, the preaching, the progressive sense of mission in the world, and the worship space itself - it’s all good.
We also don’t put much value on many of the things our whole family takes very seriously (religion of course, no sex before marriage (hah!), marriage in general, a college education right after high school, a traditional career, buying a house and a car, basically being an upstanding and boring citizen and doing exactly what they did) - so far our preferred lifestyles are ‘alternative’ at least compared to that ideal (I am still very boring, but I just do it differently).