Poll for the Spiritual and/or Religious

As a child I went to a Luthern Church for a while, but don’t remember much of it. My parents took me there. I went to a Baptist church because it was right across the street from our house(I don’t think Dad was too discriminating on denomination as long as it was Christian). Because of that, I got really religious for a couple years, but my parents had little to do with it. I actually became a fudementalist for a while, that is, until I started reading revelation a bit too much and got really depressed because I thought I was going to hell.

After that, I mellowed out a bit. I can’t remember when I stopped going to church. I still consider myself christian, but no longer feel that the bible is to be taken literally(at least much of it). tend to avoid groups and people that feel like they have to tell me what I’m doing wrong in that regard(Athiest and Religious). I also feel strongely that there’s special place in hell reserved for people like Fred Phelps and Jerry Farewell.

Dad went to an “Assembly of God” for a while, but has sinced stopped. I attended once or twice because a friend invited me, but I never got into it. He’d sometimes call me a pagan, but he’s stopped once I started correcting him by telling him just what “pagan” means. Other then that, he doesn’t bother me about it.

I used to call myself a “non-denomitional Protestant Christian” but eventually decided to drop that in favor of “Christian Heretic” due to my views on certain Theological issues. I’ve thought about atheism or agnostism, but just because I have issues with Christanity doesn’t mean I’m ready to believe there is no God.

Now if only I could find a “Christian Heretic” singles group, I’d be set.

I had a fairly secular upbringing (or at least as close to it as was possible in 1970s Britain) - I remember my parents sending me to Sunday school once with a neighbour; I remember them giving very noncommital, vague answers on questions regarding God etc.

In my late teens, I had a series of profound personal experiences that eventually brought me to faith (Christianity, rather unsurprisingly), and it was at this point that the ‘guiding’/indoctrination happened - not by my parents (they were bemused and a little stand-off-ish about it), but by members of a fairly conservative church that I happened to fall in with.

Since that time, I feel that I’ve sort of climbed out (or started to) of the hole that the fundies wanted me to live in. I’m sure it would be quite impossible to claim that my parents (and indeed, or more so, the prevailing culture of my country of birth) had no influence at all on my faith, but no; I’m not a Christian because my parents made me that way; I (sort of) chose it later.