Kicked out of Sunday School?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is a survey.

After a very animated discussion on religion, some of my friends and family have said that I am an aberration and the one that gives life to urban legends.

I was kicked out of Sunday school when I was in the third grade. Only it wasn’t on Sunday and it wasn’t called school. It was Religious Instructions and it was always on Wednesday. But that’s beside the point.

Even though I was a model student-- I was well behaved and pleasant and I learned my lessons and didn’t sass the nuns-- I ask many questions:

Who did Cain and Abel marry? Where’d she come from? The East? Who were her parents?

Why was God so mean to Job? He didn’t do anything, did he? Why would God be so mean to someone who loved him so much?

And the one that had the instructor asking my grandmother to please not bring me to his class anymore: You don’t get to go to heaven if you’re stillborn?!!? Because of something that somebody else did a million years ago? So, not only do you get to be born dead, but you get to hang out in limbo, wishing for heaven? How is that fair? Why would God punish unborn babies that way?

Not only did I get kicked out of Religious Instructions, but I left thinking that God was one mean SOB.

O.K. now, about the survey. The people I was having this discussion with last night were a mixed group of Catholics, Protestants and Jews. All of them said that people don’t really get kicked out of Sunday School for asking questions. When I said I had-- well, I’m strange and Catholic so I didn’t count. I figured here at this board is the most diverse group of people I’ll ever encounter gathered in one spot and here would be a good place to find out how prevalent this supposed aversion to questioning is.

Did you go to your religion’s equivelant of Sunday School?
Did you ask questions about your faith?
Were you discouraged or encouraged in your questioning?
What is your religion?
If you were kicked out, why?

2

That’s a real shame, Biggirl. You should never be kicked out of a religious school for asking questions. There is nothing wrong with a priest/rabbi/minister/imam/pick-the-clergyperson-I-missed answering “I don’t know, I need to do some research and get back to you” for an answer. And, if, afterwards, they still can’t tell you whom Cain and Abel married (hint: sister and no one) then that still doesn’t make the whole foundation of the religion collapse. I don’t blame you for feeling bitter.

**

I went to a full time yeshiva for preschool, elementary and high school, as well as for a few years post-high school.

**

Yes.

**

Generally neither. If a question was asked, then it was answered, but students weren’t actively encouraged to question the roots of the religion. OTOH, students were actively encouraged to ask questions regarding the Jewish legal system and laws (and have been doing so for thousands of years – see the Talmud).

Of course, there were some exceptions on both sides (some very close minded ones who refused to entertain any such questions and others who would say “Good question, Zev…”)

**

Judaism.

Nope, but came close several times. The high school I went to was far more “fundamental” in it’s outlook than I was. As a result, I has several “philosophical clashes” with the administration. But, in the end, I graduated.

Zev Steinhardt

3

Did you go to your religion’s equivelant of Sunday School?
Sure did. At that time I was attending a church which catered to non-denominational Christianity. Service every Sunday for adults, concurrent Sunday school for the kiddies.

Did you ask questions about your faith?
Quite a few really. It was a mix of genuine curiosity and preteen angst at that point. You know, a little “who is this Big Sky Daddy?” and a little “I’m really not sure I want to be here at all.”

Were you discouraged or encouraged in your questioning?
I was not actively discouraged from asking questions. Rather, the youth minister- having far greater experience in the field of religious debate than me, an under-read little kid- would either quote a passage from the Bible that presumably answered my question (they never seemed to) or just obfuscate the point entirely. I was encouraged to ask questions at a point in the session that would lead the conversation onto next point the youth minister wanted to make.

What is your religion?
As stated above, at the time it was non-denominational Christianity. Currently, I’m an atheist who studies world religions as a matter of philosophy. I have a particular interest in Taoism.

If you were kicked out, why?
I was once asked to leave a “youth group” meeting during the course of a particularly heated debate over the nature of free will in which both I, and the youth minister acted innapropriately. (we had never seen eye-to-eye and this had just been waiting for an excuse to happen)

4

I bet I was the only boy ever kicked out of Sunday School

–Waylon Jennings, Littlefield

Here’s someone else.

5

Sunday School is for children under age 12; there was little interactive discussion involved. Mostly singing, treats, presentations with tongue depressor puppets, etc. LDS high school students go to Seminary for an hour a day during the week. They study the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants, one subject every year of high school.

Internally, I was a bubbling cauldron of questioning and doubt. In Seminary, I mostly slept, flirted, looked bored, refused to participate, and ditched class. Passive-aggressiveness is my middle name. I mostly refused to go to Sunday School; instead I hid out in the library, “helping.” My teachers didn’t miss me apparently, as they never came to fetch me back to Sunday School.

Non-conformity was forcefully discouraged. Some of the lessons were so laughable (no offense intended to LDS’s) that I couldn’t help smirking or rolling my eyes, but I never tried to engage my teachers in a deep philosophical conversation, as it was evident disbelief/questioning was beyond their comprehension from the answers to the questions I did ask. I learned very early to just keep my mouth shut.

LDS, aka Mormons. Now an atheist.

My Seminary teacher called me into her office, started crying, and told me she had tried desperately to reach me (Ha!). She told me that my group of friends were being broken up (as we were disrupting the class) and two of us were to be sent to another teacher’s class (it was a large Seminary, 4 teachers a semester). That teacher was much more tolerant of napping/ditching. I did graduate all 4 years with the help of my old Bishop’s wife (she was the Seminary secretary) who excused all of my many absences, as a favor to my grandmother. I’m very ashamed of my behavior, especially making that poor woman cry (even though it was blatantly manipulative); looking back, I should have just refused to go.

6

Did you go to your religion’s equivelant of Sunday School?

Yup, until I was 12.

Did you ask questions about your faith?

Yeah. My mom says that when I was in 4th grade, I begged her to teach Sunday School. When she finally agreed, I absolutely mortified her by announcing to the class on the very first day that I didn’t believe in God. :slight_smile: Amusingly, at the time, I didn’t think that not believing in God was any reason not to go to Sunday School, so I was happy to continue attending.

Were you discouraged or encouraged in your questioning?

Depended strongly on the teacher. The teachers were mostly just parents and other interested adult-type laypersons. Some of them were willing to stray a bit from the lesson plan, but most of them just deflected questions. A lot of the discouragement actually came from my ‘peers.’ We were with the same kids, year after year, and they were mostly stuck up little snots, and they got pretty sick of me (for asking questions, but mostly for my inherent geekiness) and they hassled me all the time for acting like a tool.

We only got instruction from the pastors in preparation for First Communion and Confirmation. My recollections are pretty fuzzy, but mostly I remember that they’d dodge the question or give a pat, unsatisfying answer, and quickly move on. I eventually made a bargain with my mom that if I behaved myself and got through Confirmation, I could do whatever I wanted, so at some point I wised up, shut up, and memorized my Catechism, which was good enough to get me Confirmed.

I doubt very much that anybody thought I was a believing Christian at that point, and I’m a little disturbed that they happily marched me through the Confirmation ceremony knowing that I was an atheist. I guess they thought it wasn’t really any of their business. I love Lutherans. :slight_smile:

What is your religion?

I was raised Lutheran (ELCA). Currently, I am a vile, wicked atheist.

If you were kicked out, why?

Never got kicked out. I was annoying in the know-it-all little kid way, but never disruptive enough to be asked to leave the class. I was still a total nerd, after all, so I was always the teacher’s pet–all the while questioning the bedrock of the faith that we were supposed to be being indoctrinated with.

When I was an adolescent, my obnoxiousness on the subject knew no bounds, but one of the Signs of my Emerging Maturity was realizing that I should stop browbeating my family about atheism. Funny thing is, my mom and I have had some weird discussions about church and religion lately, and I’m starting to wonder if she’s turning into an agnostic.

7

We weren’t active in any religion for long periods of time when I was a child.

However, I was kicked out of Sunday School when I was 2 or 3 years old. Not for asking questions, but for calling my Sunday School teacher a b*tch. Hey! My Dad was in the Navy, and I learned from him at a very young age what you call people when you’re mad at them! :smiley:

I’m now LDS (Mormon), and have taught Sunday School off and on for years. I frankly welcome questions from my class members, because I like to know that they’re actually thinking about the things that we’re discussing.

8

Did you go to your religion’s equivelant of Sunday School?

Every Sunday until the age of 16.

Did you ask questions about your faith?

None whatsoever. Everything that I was told I took as fact. I would have taken the following statements to be equally factual:

  1. 3+4=7.
  2. Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations.
  3. The only way to eternal life was through believing that Jesus Christ shed his blood on a cross and was raised to life on the third day to save mankind from sin and entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Were you discouraged or encouraged in your questioning?

This doesn’t really apply, as I didn’t understand that what I was taught was anything but factual. Even though I knew that people believed different things and went to different churches, I didn’t make the connection that they didn’t all really believe that the Bible was inerrant and totally true. I don’t think I could have fathomed the idea of people actually not believing in any sort of higher power at all.

What is your religion?

Consider it conservative Protestant Christianity.

If you were kicked out, why?

Never kicked out. If I had been, it wouldn’t have been for questioning at any rate.

9

As soon as I read “Wednesday Sunday School,” I figured the OP had to be Catholic. I’m Catholic, and went to a Catholic grammar school and a Catholic high school. On Wednesdays, we got out an hour early (always liked that!), precisely so Catholic students attending public schools could come by for religious education.

I have to admit, though, I was VERY surprised by the topics she says they covered in her classes. In my day, religious education in Catholic schools rarely included the Bible, and when we studied Bible passages, we NEVER got to books like Job (Noah’s Ark, David & Goliath, etc. were about as advanced as we got). In fact, not until I started attending a Jesuit high school did we do much Scripture reading.

I’m 41, and got all the last of the old-school nuns, just before they retired. To give you some idea how things changed in the Church during my childhood: when I entered kindergarten, almost all the teachers at my grammar school were nuns. By the time I graduated, there were only 4 in the whole school, if you count the principal.

Fact remains, I don’t have any “Sister Mary Ignatius” horror stories! For the most part, the nuns who taught me were decent people. In any event, when I had a question or dilemma regarding Scripture or anything else, I usually turned to my parents, who usually told me a lot MORE than I wanted to know about any subject I brought up.

I’m curious, if the OP doesn’t mind answering… how old is she? Around what year was she kicked out of class, and where was this? Was the teacher who kicked her out a priest, nun, brother, or lay person?

I can offer ONLY conjecture, of course, because I wasn’t there and don’t know the details. But what MAY have happened is this: an underequipped, underinformed person got rooked into teaching religious education. “Don’t worry if you don’t know too much,” the poor teacher was probably told, “these are little kids, they’ll just accept what you tell them.” So, poor Teacher comes in, ready to read watered-down Bible stories to the kiddies… never dreaming that the kiddies were smart enough to understand the readings, to be disturbed by some of them, and to ask questions about them.

So, you ask Teacher a bunch of questions he/she’d never thought about and wasn’t qualified to answer… Teacher got totally flustered, and decided it was easier to get rid of the one Wisenheimer in the class than to try to figure out the right answers.

In the grammar school religious education classes we had, questions were always tolerated and answered as fully as possible, though they weren’t encouraged or solicited. In my Jesuit high school, of course, our teachers frowned on students who took Scripture too seriously or literally!

10

Yes, until I was 14

Yes, plenty. Although, from some of the answers it was pretty clear that the teachers had never questioned their faith.

Depended on who was teaching.

[Quote}What is your religion? [/Quote]

At the time, Southern Baptist.

I was never kicked out, but was refered to the adult decipleship program, which I took and still had questions that no one had answered.

11

Did you go to your religion’s equivelant of Sunday School?
No, I got lucky- my parents were never really religious

Did you ask questions about your faith?
I ask questions about everyone’s faith- in fact, I enjoy finding the holes in some of the stories that no one else notices.

Were you discouraged or encouraged in your questioning?
Neither

What is your religion?
Technically Catholic, but I’m really not anything at the moment

12

I went to a Catholic elementary school, but a public high school, so I was sent to CCD classes. It didn’t last long. The teachers were college students and I don’ t think they were too well screened.

One used to read her poetry to us. It wasn’t very good, but she had a captive audience.

I finally got to quit when I told my mom that one teacher told us it was OK to masturbate. Bear in mind, this was 1969/70 time frame and our dictionary defined masturbation as “self-abuse” - I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded bad, so I told my mother. She pulled me out of the class, and I’m sure she gave the head of CCD an earful. I never had to go back again.

Later I learned that masturbation isn’t abuse at all, if you do it right… :smiley:

Anyway, I wouldn’t have questioned. Apart from being shy, I just believed whatever I was told, and if I didn’t understand, I assumed it was a miracle or something. I didn’t sweat the small stuff.

Now I’m very much lapsed - and more comfortable among Episcopalians than Catholics, church-wise.

13

Did you go to your religion’s equivelant of Sunday School?
No, but I spent 13 years in Catholic school

Did you ask questions about your faith?
Once I was older. When I was young I just did what I was told. Then I went to college and gave it up. Then I went back.

Were you discouraged or encouraged in your questioning?
Not as a high school student. I was…mocked would be the appropriate word…by the other students, and got the idea that the nuns (who taught religion) thought I was an idiot.

What is your religion? I’m a Catholic “revert”.

**If you were kicked out, why? ** N/A

14

Did you go to your religion’s equivelant of Sunday School?
I used to go to Sunday School and youth group on some Wednesdays until I was about 15. Never did like it much though, as most of the other kids were remarkably hateful. (they chased one guy off…I saw him a few years later. I wish he’d stayed because he was really nice and remembered me) I stopped going eventually because I hated it.

Did you ask questions about your faith?
I do remember asking why I couldn’t eat in heaven if I liked food so much. The teacher had no answer. Heh. But seriously questioning? No, not really.

Were you discouraged or encouraged in your questioning?
Well, questioning was certainly not encouraged. Questioning got you prayed over by troops of old women deeply concerned over the state of your immortal soul. Who wants to disappoint the nice old woman who sends you birthday cards with money and gives you candy every week by telling them you didn’t believe?

What is your religion?
I attend a Southern Baptist church every other week at the request/coercion of my dad, but I’m more of the atheist type.

jessica

15

Yep. Every Sunday until I graduated from high school.
**

Not very often (I’m quiet and shy, talking in class - even classes where you’ve known everyone for your entire life - is just not one of those things I’m likely to do.) I tended to go and read books and commentaries and scripture and figure things out that way. & I was encouraged to do that.
**

The people who did ask questions were encouraged for the most part, especially in upper grades (in elementary school, there was more likely to be a schedule, and too many questions would mean not enough time for something else)
In High School, one of our leaders had just become a Christian, so he was the one asking most of the questions (which in turn meant we had to find and figure out the answers, which obviously leads to more questions). I think it was a great experience for us.
**

Protestant, on the slightly conservative side. (It’s one of the smaller denominations)
**

Never got kicked out of Sunday School.

However, the religious education nun the one year I went to catholic school hated me. She had serious issues with being questioned on anything at all, especially questions about faith. Didn’t get kicked out, but she was also able to make my life there miserable in other ways, and contributed every time she got a chance to do so.

16

**
The OP is 37. Her grandmother was asked nicely not to bring her any to instructions any more about 1973 or 4. And the instructor wasn’t a nun or a priest. He must have been a layperson.

**

Now that you say this, I believe this is exactly what happened. I actually cried when I heard that stillborn babies don’t get to go to heaven and had other students crying right along with me. The poor guy must have been pulling his hair out.

Still, he did a very poor job in instructing me. As I said before, I left feeling as if God was mean and unjust.
At this point in my life I am just exactly as one Mod told me another Mod explained the different views on faith. I’m still looking for that pony in the pile of manure.
To be honest I was a born skeptic. I never believed in Santa Claus. My mom died when I was 5 but one of the clearest memories I have of her was the tears that trembled in the corner of her eyes when she tried to convince me that Santa could visit every house in the world and bring presents.

Nope. Not possible, my 5 year old self told her again and again. (I grew up in the South Bronx, one of the most densely populated places on the planet. My 5 year old brain could not imagine visiting every house on my block in one night much less every house in the world).)
Thanks to everyone who posted to this thread. It’s good to know I’m not the only “strange” person out there.

17

Biggirl:

CCD kid! CCD kid! points and whispers to his friends that Biggirl was one of the kids that stole the books out of our desks

:smiley:

I went to full-blown Catholic school for 13 years. 8 years of elementary school, 4 years of high school, and 1 year of Jesuit college. I was never kicked out for asking questions, because up until I was in senior year of high school, I never really asked the questions. Not that I didn’t think them…

For English class in my senior year, I wrote an essay about why I was examining other faiths and thinking of turning my back on Catholicism. Other than making my mother cry :rolleyes: I got no reaction from any authority figure that I can remember.

I finally made my break from Catholicism at the same time I dropped out of the Jesuit school. Haven’t been back since, except for weddings and funerals.

jayjay

18

Catechism (Catholic Sunday School). The class was Friday afternoons, and required for First Communion. I was around 7-8 years old.

I don’t remember if I asked or not, but I think some kids did ask. In any case, I do remember asking the all knowledgeable person, my dad.

Neither, I think. The people in charge where laypersons, but there was a priest in charge of it. The course was not so much about the Bible, but more about the practices and rites and sacraments. I remember we discussed saints, Jesus life, and parts of the Old Testament, but not in great detail.

Cátolica apóstolica y romana :slight_smile: , Roman Catholic Church. I’m still one, although much less devout than when I was a kid.

Never got kick out, in fact received my confession (the one and only one so far! :o ) and my communion.

19

Did you go to your religion’s equivalent of Sunday School?
Anglican private school, grades 1-2; parochial school through 8th grade; prep school, then college.

Did you ask questions about your faith?
I was the classic “good girl” who had it drummed into her to never question a nun or priest. I had a laundry list of questions, both factual and faith-wise, but I was too scared to raise my hand Yep, astorian and I had the same old-line nuns, the ones who’d rap your hand with a ruler if you even dared to look at them in a questioning manner :smiley:

Were you discouraged or encouraged in your questioning?
Heheheh…see my answer to #2. Actually, I don’t remember anyone ever questioning anything. The only time when it truly irked me was in the 4th grade when our nun/teacher was explaining the concept of guardian angels, and she made us move aside in our seats so our angels could sit. It took every ounce of will power not to :rolleyes: Of course, by the time I got to high school, I declared myself agnostic because, as biggirl said, I refused to believe that God sent little kids and babies into limbo…btw, I never attended CCD, thereby breaking my mother’s heart…

What is your religion?
Technically Catholic, but I consider Catholicism as my culture rather than outright religion. I’ll attend Mass on the major holidays, but that’s it.

If you were kicked out, why?
N/A

20

*Did you go to your religion’s equivalent of Sunday School? **
Yes, every week. In fact, I still do, since we have Sunday School for grownups. I also went to Seminary, early-morning religion classes, for three out of four years of high school. I was studying abroad the other year.

*My husband teaches that class, so it’s very good, IMO. :stuck_out_tongue:

**Did you ask questions about your faith? **
Sure. I also made my opinions pretty clear, sometimes stunning the teacher thereby. (I’m still friends with that one though.)

**Were you discouraged or encouraged in your questioning? **
Encouraged. My parents in particular have always encouraged us to read, learn a lot, and discuss. I was taken to other services as a kid by my dad, too. My teachers, who I have to say were mostly less influential, never seemed too upset by it. I was usually one of the kids who knew the most, IIRC–but that probably wasn’t too hard to do. I now look back and am stunned by a) my own cluelessness and b) the amazing knowledgeableness of many of the children I’ve worked with recently.

**What is your religion? **
LDS, aka Mormon. Still hanging in there.

**If you were kicked out, why? **
Nope.