Grew up in an institutionalized formal Catholic family. That is, attended the church each and every sunday. Went to catholic grade school and catholic high school. Even eventually graduated from a catholic university. But if we weren’t in the public eye, attending a ceremony of religiosity… we didn’t talk about religion at home and would sometimes act counter to religious (or heck, moral or ethical) teachings if it concerned money or business dealings.
That has since changed. We have one kid. He is not even baptised to make the grandparents happy. However, when he was little (16 now) I would answer each and every question he had, at length, about whatever, including religion. If asked about Jesus, etc, I’d reply that lots of people think Jesus is god, some people think he was a prophet, others think he was a really good guy but not necessarily any more god-like than any of us. And on and on. He’d usually fall asleep before I finished. Do we have issues with our 16 y.o. acting up a bit , yeah, a few. He doesn’t do his homework and gets terrible marks because of it… though testing says he’s quite bright. Other than that, he is a great kid. Well mannered (except to us 'rents) and so on.
Sometimes I am almost envious of the extreme religious. It would be kind of like a vacation to turn off the brain every now and again and just accept something non-critically.
Sorry for this minor hijack, but it really couldn’t. There just isn’t any practicing to be done. It’s not like I get up and chant “There is no God” every morning or tithe to the ACLU or get together with my atheist community and celebrate the rational harmony of the universe.
My own upbringing was half-irreligious. My parents were divorced and had shared custody through most of my childhood. I dutifully went to church every Sunday with my dad, but didn’t with my mom. Since I was always either bored or contrary in church, I was quite happy not to go. When I got involved in the youth group that many of my friends were in, Mom started to go to that church just so she’d be involved with the community and meet my friends’ parents. But she stopped once I graduated from high school and no longer was part of the group. Since moving out of my dad’s house, I have gone to church a dozen or so times with friends or family because I knew they’d apprecite my being there, but I have no interest in either the community or the ritual of going to church.
No, it absolutely couldn’t. Not to make a GD out of this.
My household growing up was what I would call “average NY Jewish:” parents went to temple maybe three or four times a year, we went to Sunday school (on Saturdays and one night a week, I think?) and got bored. Most holidays were just family dinners, sometimes with extended family, with presents when appropriate. So the question doesn’t apply to me, but I’ll say this much: whatever you are, be honest about it with your kids. When I gave up on religion at 13/14, my parents were fairly hard on me. My mother admitted a few years later that she didn’t really believe in god either, as such, and just enjoyed the community. Fine for her, but irrelevant for me. So from the time I was 13 to 18, we had the patently absurd state of affairs where she was telling me (and to a lesser extent, my middle brother, who is also an atheist) that I’d come back to religion when I got older, when she herself had obviously not done so. If she’d been honest about it, it would’ve saved everybody some discomfort.
Something that actually does relate to the topic: my best friend, her older brother, and her parents are all atheists. They were raised Ethical Humanists - not particularly different in substance from Unitarian Universalists, really. They had a community and they enjoy that. My friend is still involved with the church; she was President of her youth group-thing and has taught a few Sunday school classes. They’re all absolutely ethical people. It’s really a question of what you need as an individual. I’m as ethical as they are and I had no interest in having a religious or spiritual or whatever community.
This is very similar to how I was raised, and I liked it very much. We went to all different kinds of churches & synagogues & sunday schools; read the Bible and the Torah; got books from the library about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Confucianism; and had access to religious people from all different walks - a Wiccan aunt, Unitarian grandparents, family friends including a Muslim family, a rabbi, and a few agnostics and atheists. It was never shoved down our throats, and we were able to learn and explore at our own pace, but with guidance and encouragement.