If you intentionally changed religions, why?

Great Debates
1

Perhaps not really a debate, but I was just interested in hearing from folks who intentionally chose to belong to a specific faith system. Strikes me as most folk I encounter practice the religion of their childhood, or a closely related brand due to social or geographic reasons. Just curious in hearing the reasons folk chose their particular faith, and the process whereby they arrived at that decision.

I was raised Roman Catholic - which was the standard on the NW side of Chicago in the 60s and 70s. My 3 sisters remain RC. I realized early on that I did not believe in God/gods. Maybe 15 years ago when my kids were young, we began attending Unitarian Universalist churches. Just about the only game in town for a non-believer. And they provided “comparative religion” RE of the type we felt desireable for our kids. Plus, attending a church - any church - provided some insulation/defense against the rabid fundamentalists we happened to find ourselves living among at the time.

Somewhat interestingly to me, I was turned on to UU by a very conservative friend who was searching for an alternative to his family’s Lutheran church. He studiously examined a broad range of protestant faiths, and concluded Methodism suited him best. Briefly looking into UU he quickly realized it was too “liberal” for his tastes, but he thought it might have some appeal to me.

2

I was raised in one of the more rabid Southern Baptist sects. I started internally questioning it when I was a child, during one of the mission fund drives when it was repeatedly drummed into my young mind that the benevolent God I worshiped would send children to Hell simply because they had never heard of Him.

I still can’t get over that one. Send to Hell - forever - not for rejecting Him, but for not accepting Him when they never had a chance to. Seemed like He really didn’t play fair.

I have always loved to read, and reading the Bible was a acceptable excuse for not paying attention to the hellfire and brimstone being spewed forth from the pulpit. I saw lots of contradictions; but when I would question what I read I was punished. It isn’t the place of a female to question a preacher.

I drifted away and for many years I was a “seeker” - I wanted and needed a spiritual home, but there was so much hypocrisy in the churches I attended I just gave it up.

I am now a happy, spiritually content Pagan.

3

I was raised … some sort of generic secular Christian, for the most part. (My mother is a self-described “recovering Catholic”, my father some sort of lapsed Episcopalian.) I am told by my parents that at one point the neighbours expressed some concern that I was being raised to be “a little heathen”, which I find extremely funny these days; I was asked if I wanted to attend church. There were three churches in the area; I wound up, after some, y’know, seven-year-old’s comparison shopping, attending the Methodist one and wound up being moderately active in that church’s community.

I was the sort of strange kid who actually listened to the sermons. (And the pastor at the church I attended gave some pretty good sermons.) And those and the scriptural readings left me with this vague sense of, “Okay, this god they’re on about is personally interested in all these people. Is He personally interested in me? … doesn’t seem so.” I had vaguely numinous experiences – I still find choral music transcendent, and as everyone knows, Methodists have the best tunes – but nothing personal.

So I sort of wandered off into a vague theistic agnosticism before puberty. My perception was that there was something, I had no idea if it was a god or gods, it didn’t seem to care particularly about me, and I was holding out for something that did hit a more personal note.

When I was in my teens, I got in on the first wave of pop cultural books about Wicca – basically, when there were still some reasonably substantial things on the market, before it was drowned out by fluff. That was closer to what I was looking for (to the extent that I was looking), so I embraced it for a while, but found that the stuff that it called for was spiritually empty to me, without even hitting the stuff that Methodist services tickled with the music. I kept some of the trappings, and considered myself some vague sort of non-practicing pagan for the next decade or so without thinking about it overmuch.

My actual conversion experience was precipitated by a book I was reading on pagan spirituality and tattoos. The book was … to be honest, the sort of thing that one might read and say, “Oh, that’s interesting, I should do some research to make sure the author isn’t pulling it all out of her ass” to. So I’m reading through some of these lists of symbols and resonances, and I get a very clear image, just a picture – I’m a bit of an artist, so I’m used to having sudden ‘Oh, that’s pretty’ visuals – associated with the discussion of the goddess Bast. And I basically said, “Well, that’s cool – I should do some research to make sure the author isn’t pulling it all out of her ass.” So I started researching Egyptian symbology. (The connection the author made is a bit tenuous for my taste, by the way, but within the realms of sound.)

While I was researching the symbology, I came across a couple of Egyptian reconstructionist groups. (Reconstructionist paganism is a submovement of neopaganism that attempts to use archaeological and historical information to revive and modernise the practices of specific ancient cultures.) And I said, “Hmm, that’s interesting” and poked around them for a while, started reading a few boards, and so on. I found that in the information we have about this particular ancient religion, there are a lot of things that are articulations of the moral philosophies I’d had independently, verbalisations for ways of working with the world that I shared, and so on. I had a pretty strong conversion experience, the whole ‘coming home, blessed with the spirit’ feel, because this was personal to me – it was a framework for expressing and contemplating things that I had consistently held to be true in some way, but didn’t have a way of talking about.

4

Mr. Lissar and I are currently going through the formal process of conversion in the Catholic Church. We were Anglican- I was raised Anglican, and Mr. Lissar was raised agnostic, and became Christian about seven years ago. Our conversion story can be found here, at post #22.

5

Hey, hey, hey!!! Lumpy is NOT the enemy! What’s up with that?!

I’m taking my phaser off stun. :wink:

Err… . umm, back to the OP. Sorry about that.

I was brought up non-religious, so if I want a religion, I’d have to choose one. Of course, if I wanted to remain non-religious, I could easily do that, but generally that means having looked at a religion and decided against it, not just not having one. So lately, I’ve been delving into looking at religions. I haven’t picked one, largely because I don’t like labels and find them too confining, but I have more definite ideas about what I don’t believe than before. What I’ve found surprising is the people who say they hold a certain religion and know very little about it.

6

Born: atheist. (My father insisted that I attend Sunday school at a Conservative Jewish synagogue from ages 6 to 9, but he didn’t believe any Jewish doctrine and didn’t really want us to either.)

Currently: Christian. (My current church is Methodist, though my beliefs on doctrine might be closest to the Catholic Church.)

I first considered conversion at age 22, two years ago. At the time I was struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts. I noticed that the Christians I met were generally happier and better at making long-term plans, and they didn’t ruin their lives with alcoholism or drugs as so many other people did. That was the beginning. I only converted April of this year, after reading some of the great Christian authors, particularly St. Thomas. I have not yet been baptized.

7

I was raised Reform Jewish. At the age of 6 or 7, we were taught in Sunday School that Abraham was the first monotheist, the first person who believed in only one God, as opposed to many Gods. I remember asking the teacher: “What if Abraham was wrong? What if someday we discover that there really are many Gods?” (The possibility of “no God” hadn’t occurred to me yet.) The teacher responded by saying “Well, ***we ***believe that there’s only ***one ***God.” Needless to say, that wasn’t exactly an adequate answer to my question.

It wasn’t until the age of about 13 or 14 that I realized that one’s view of reality didn’t necessitate belief in a Supreme Being. I then spend way too much time in high school and college, debating on the side of atheism.

That was many decades ago. Now, I don’t even bother with the God question. I’ve coined the word “Shrugnostic,” meaning that the existence/nonexistence of a supreme being has no relevance to my life, and I’m no longer interested in debating the point.

8

Thanks for the responses, folks. I find it quite interesting, the various manners in which persons go from one “belief system” (if you will) to another, and how different people go about choosing their “congregations/communities.”

9

Tell me about it. For awhile after my quasi-transformation episode I was looking
into paganism and druidry, and even joined a newsletter there for awhile. Sadly
none of the materials they sent me had not so much as a hint as to what kind of
transformative path one should take (even in a vague sense)-it was all trappings
and no depth.

Interesting you should mention Bast, as my experience dealt with Horus, and all
the death/rebirth symbolism which truly fit with my life at the time, tho I never got
into Egyptian themes in any substantial way. Now I guess you could call me a
lapsed Catholic who has a nature-loving/Taoist/Zen sort of viewpoint now, after a
mid-teens to late twenties soul-searching period. Gregorian chants still get my
blood moving tho.

10

I read through your conversion story Lissla and you told us WHAT you did but not actually WHY you did it ,what theological point(s) ,or "message to the heart"determined your belief changing to another faith ?

I am genuinlly curious!

11

This is not facetions - it’s a genuine question that has always fascinated me and I guess this thread is a good place to ask it:

I understand liking a new congregation and choosing to join up with them, but I have problems comprehending how someone can actually start believing in something new (absent a “miraculous” revelation)?

I went from being a vague believer to going “hang on a minute, this is bullshit” - the religion in which I was raised, and by extension, other religions - and have been an atheist ever since. I can’t comprehend going “hang on a minute, this one is bullshit, but this one makes a lot more sense”. Is there a big intellectual leap one has to make to believe something entirely new and possibly contradictory? Did you start out just spending time with the congregation and eventually believing? Or did it come in one fell swoop?

12

Personally I am an Agnostic veering towards existentilism.
I cant believe in any established religion not because I dont want to or because I get some sort of intellectual “arrogance trip” out of it ;but because all of the “evidence” offerd by religionists ,the writings ,the logic etc. is frankly so riddled with factual errors and contradictions as to be ,without intending to be offensive ,laughable.

I actually envy the comfort it must bring true believers but I could no more lie to myself about religion then I could bring myself to believe in werewolves or elves on the same strength of proof.

I think that if there is a god then world religions diminish him/her/it and inflate the importance of humanity .
In an absaloutly COLOSSAL universe,possibly infinite ,where even light itself can take thousands of years to traverse the abyss,where suns explode destroying whole solar systems (and very likely whole eco systems and civilisations),where galaxies composed of BILLIONS of suns like our own are in collision(and these are not guesses ,these are hard ,proven scientific facts) our religions down grade God into an old man with a beard whos main concerns are about an insignificant species ,in an insignificant solar system.(my! aren’t we important!)

And this supreme point of all powers concerns with this insignificant little species are that they must follow this or that rite before they procreate ,that they shouldn’t do this at certain times but that they must do that at certain other times .
Oh and they mustn’t ingest this or that food or drink!

And finally I think that the greatest insult to God if he/her/it exists is the diminishing of a universe BILLIONS of years old to something that is a few thousand years old because that is what some illinformed goat herders in primitive times believed ,eventually wrote down when writing was invented and still had people choosing to accept this belief several thousands of years later inspite of huge amounts of hard scientific factual proof to the contrary.

And these people claim to honour God…!

Remember ,if God exists then God created Space/Time the laws of physics,of bio-science (including evolutionary science) infact ALL scientific laws ,the very laws that fundamentalists try to undermine as part of their campaign to supposedly bolster belief in God !

Well it certainly doesn’t work for me.

13

Well no congregation in my case, but I can explain how I made the transformaton.

I was raised Protestant Christian: Mother Fundamentalist, Father Anglican. I accepted it readily enough when I was young, especially the concept that there was a God. However I could never see the point of Christianity. There were too many obvious questions that nobody could answer. Evene the most fundamental questions like “Why did an all powerful God allow his son to suffer” never got an adequate answer by the time I was 11 or 12. So I was religious but never really felt any deep connection to the concept of Christianity. I was Christian by default.

I was introduced to Bhuddism by the people at a martial arts school where I was studying in my mid twenties. I liked the concept and it certainly had more answers than Christainity. Adherents could actually answer quetsions without having to say “You just need to have faith”. I later melded Bhuddism with various New Age beliefs into somehting that works for me.

I fell into my current religious position by degrees. There was no big intellectual leap. I already accepted that there was a higher power of some sort, I had accpeted that all my life. However the Christianity I was raised with simply didn’t make any sense. So when I found somehting that did make sense I silply slid into it.

In many ways it’s no different to finding a new scientiifc or logical position. You know already that something occurs or exists and none of the theories you’ve heard adequately explains it. When you find something that does explain it in a way that makes sense it is natural to reject the old theory and adopt the new. It’s not a huge intellectual leap, after all you always knew the phenomenon existed. It’s the explanation that you doubted.

I can understand why so many peope like you simply say “this is bullshit” and walk away. In these cases I suspect that you found that the whole concept of a higher power was bullshit. But imagine if you had experienced the higher power already. Would you then still conclude that it is bulshit and reject it out of hand. Or would you reject the explanation of your experience once you found somehting that better fit your observations?

14

You are correct. Thank you for that explanation; you’ve couched it in terms I understand. It’s like the “we’re all climbing up the side of the same mountain” thing? (BTW, many of the teachings of Buddhism makes a lot of sense to me too, even in the absence of my belief in a higher power.)

15

Not neccesarily. I don’t personally believe that many Christian sects are climbing anything at all. To pick the obvious example it’s hard to believe that Jack Chick is anything but a twisted and small minded psychopath writhing in a spiritual cesspit of his own making. If that man’s climbing any mountain I’d be glad it’s not one that I’m on.

However I think it’s possible for someone to be raised and indoctrinated in such a faith and come to know “God” despite that. I won’t pretend that the faith that I was raised in was anyhting like Chick’s brand of insanity but there was some similarity simply because of fundamentalist intrusions. I simply accepted the concept of a higher power, compassion etc. and pushed the rest to the side of the plate.

I guess my feeling is that some people are inherently attuned to a spiritual side. How that initially manifests will depend on the religion they are born into. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all religions are paths to the same destination. To me many religions seem more like straightjackets than paths. But people will tend to instinctively latch onto the little wisdom that can be gleaned from even the most corrupt religions. If we’re lucky we find a better source of informaton that can build on what we’ve already got.

But that doesn’t mean that the starting point was an alternative path. It’s more like medieval medicine hitting in a few good points despite being 99% quackery. It wasn’t some equally valid alternative path to healing the sick, it was quackery. But those who wanted to be healed could find a few worthwhile points there despite that.

And of course that’s one of the great points of most Buddhism. It’s a pragmatic philosophy that you can use purely for the mundane world if you wish.

16

I was raised Roman Catholic. I am now Protestant. I accept the teaching of the Catholic Church that Jesus Christ is the Savior and the Son of God the Father. However, the mariolatry and the hagiolatry in Catholicism make me uncomfortable, as does the use of statues in churches. I particularly dislike the Catholic emphasis on the intercessionary role of the priest when a penitent is seeking God’s forgiveness - I don’t need an intermediary when I’m speaking to my Creator.

So it’s off to find a Protestant congregation. Haven’t found the right denomination yet, though. I’ve tried several churches in my town and they all seem to emphasize social work above theology. Now, I admire social outreach programs and think they do a lot of good. I contribute to charity and ring a bell for the Salvation Army every weekend during December. It’s just that the churches hereabouts seem to think that talking about the plight of the [insert disadvantaged group here] takes precedence over talking about God. I want a church that puts primary emphasis on helping its members develop a personal relationship with their Savior. Once I join a church, of course I’ll help out with the [insert cause here]; but I want to pray and talk about God most of all. The congregations here put Him on the back burner. It’s frustrating.

17

I was raised fundamentalist Christian. The family had roots in Quakerism and Presybterianism, even had preachers in the family a few generations ago.

I always felt “odd” in any church service. (Reminds me of gay friends who tell me they felt “odd” in the wrong body, but I’m not sure that analogy holds up.) Starting in teen years, I actively pursued “finding the right one” and went to different churches. I occasionally attended inspirational seminars with friends – you know, where some charismatic personality gives a lecture on how to get rich using his principles, books and cassettes. I was also dragged to Mormon, Scientology and Nichiren Shoshu (Buddhist chanting) meetings by enthusiastic friends. The psychology behind all of these reminded me of preachers in churches and the combined groups took on an air that now I ascribe to Nigerian scams, or phoney. Phooey, says I.

I always thought that the source doctrine of any religion/cult would be important. How can you be part of an extensive belief system if its origin is built on shaky ground? So when I had an opportunity to investigate the backgrounds and literature of religions, especially the Christian one, I dived in. I can’t claim to be a biblical scholar, but I learned much about religious history.

I saw a parallel between religions, even disparite ones. All claim they are the one true religion and all the others are false. That defies logic, and ignores the obvious – they can’t all be true, but maybe they ALL are false.

Then I studied some more about how people are fooled; everything from magic tricks to flim-flam scams like the pigeon drop. The more I learned, the more Jesus’ “miracles” looked like clever party tricks anyone could do with a little skill, some good public relations and a lot of wishful thinking.

I wouldn’t buy a car or house without serious investigation, why would I join a religion without serious study?

So I studied some anthropology and history, and realized just how speculative many sacred texts are and I suspected reports of supernatural events written down 2000 years ago are unlikely to be true. Yet these are the basis for so many religious beliefs.

It didn’t stand to reason.

In short, I began thinking for myself even though I had been indoctrinated in religion. It wasn’t easy.

It also didn’t stand to reason that many things that I grew up learning were evil and should be avoided, like Buddy Holly, Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell, and pleasures such as the theatre, dancing and sex. The only philosophy that made any logic at all was atheisim (or agnosticism, but let’s not open that up).

So that’s where I am today. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

18

I was raised Methodist. My was was raised Roman Catholic. I never had much problem with the Methodist part but my wife confided that our marriage would be one way for her to get out of being Catholic. We didn’t go to church the first few years we were married and meanwhile the Boston sex scandal hit and that sealed the deal that she would never be Catholic again. My mother asked my wife what she liked and she liked the ritual and some of the symbolism. The Episcopal (the American part worldwide Anglican community) church seemed a good sit and we first went to a local one when my wife got pregnant with our first child and all we new at that time was that we need Christening services somewhere. The place was a big hit on all accounts and our female priest is Scottish who used to be a high-powered Washington DC attorney. We (my wife especially) found all of this fascinating especially after we found out that we were going to have a daughter.

The church itself was essential when we were losing our middle daughter and were more important in the daily struggle even moreso than family even in the mundane and practical ways. I still like Methodism just fine but I consider myself converted even if that is minor compared to some other conversions.

19

You could look into Sufism. Me, I don’t do god, but Budhism and Sufism fit my ethics - tolerant and mostly benign.

20

Raised Methodist.

The particulars of era and specific congregation caused the Methodism to which I was exposed to read something like this:

• We teach the little kids about God and Jesus and Noah and Moses, miracles and all that stuff. It’s, umm, <cough> all true of course but in a complicated abstract theological sense that’s mostly beyond our mortal comprehension so we don’t talk about it much except to the little kids (who don’t get perplexed and ask questions as often).

• The important stuff about being a Christian is that Jesus taught us to love and forgive and share what we have, and taught us that God is like that and wants us to be like that.

• Therefore the important stuff about being a Methodist is that we have all these church projects, which is where your tithes and donations go, things like visiting the convicted folks in prison, running a college program for kids too poor to afford the tuition and fees on their own but who don’t qualify for sufficient financial aid, and of course helping anyone in our own congregation who gets hit in the face with bad luck & misfortune.
In 7th grade I first had the odd experience of being warmly accepted as “one of us” by a small cohort of self-named Christians who assumed I was one of them because I said “yes” when asked if I was a Christian (we Methodists are considered such, yes?) but their entire thing was this stuff (which by now everyone’s heard in annoyingly repetitive detail):

•The important thing about Christianity is: you’re supposed to say “I accept the Lord Jesus Christ into my heart as my Lord and Personal Saviour”. People who do that get to go to heaven; everyone else goes to hell. Doing that is called “being saved”; Also called being “born again”.

• Jesus was not a martyr whereby it is appalling and disturbing that someone who stood for love forgiveness and sharing would be killed off for disrupting and disturbing folks; rather instead, it’s great that he got nailed up because otherwise God could not forgive us, and we could not get saved, because the Blood of the Lamb was necessary, God had to have a sacrifice and the only appropriate one was His Only Begotten Son (who was actually Himself, but let’s not go there right now or it gets really confusing…)

• The other important thing about Christianity is: you’ve got to get everyone else on board. We have to save people.

• The end times they are a-coming. Jesus is coming back and he’s gonna torch the place, burn the unsaved sinners, and take us to Glory Hallelujah-land. Any Day Now.
All that stuff had me going WTF :confused: :confused: :confused: , but then it gradually got me to thinking about the theology of Methodism, as distinguished from the “trying to be good and do good things” part, which, on examination, didn’t require any of the smoke-and-magic theology.

• Was Jesus just a cool mortal hero-person who got martyred for telling us to be forgiving charitable and loving and for saying to put those things before other considerations?

• Do we need this “God” concept at all? We’ve got science to tell us how the universe came into being. That only leaves “why”… is there anything importantly true to be lost if we dispense with the sense that it was “on purpose” somehow?

• Then there’s prayer, and divine revelation, and divine intervention. If we got no God, does that mean no prayer due to no one to pray to (or at least no answers to be forthcoming, not that Methodism really pushes the notion that God Writes Back so often in the modern era, if you get my drift)? Anything importantly true to be lost if we dispense with the sense that there’s “something” on our side when we’re trying to do good in this world?

• What about other (decidedly non-Methodist, non-Christian) theologies that might knit as well or better with the emphasized “try to be a force for good in this world” thing that the Methodism I grew up with emphasized? Not to mention perspectives that don’t call themselves “religion” at all — philosophies, etc — that address the same global questions and maybe do a better job of it?

From those questions came answers that formed a perspective that isn’t quite akin to anything else specific. A lot of overlap with pagan but only in the most informal sense. (I don’t carefully take note of when Samhain is coming and I don’t have a dedicated labrys and wand and cauldron and pentacle on hand; I don’t “pray to the Horned God and the Goddess”). So it’s a “roll yer own”, an AHunter3ism, my own religious perspective drawn from my own personal revelations from God in response to my own prayers, which in turn have yielded my own understanding of what God and prayer themselves are in the first place.