We’ve got a number of threads on the Dope about people switching from religious belief to atheism, and a few about people moving from Christianity to another religious tradition. How about people who are still Christians but are not in the denomination they were raised in? What did you start out as and what are you now? And why?
I’ll bite.
Raised in Southern Baptists churches, liked that particular denonomational structure because each church is completely autonomous but the pooling of resources meant a greater overall impact. Left left for 2 reasons:
- Left the particular church because the lead pastor had become a megalomaniac and it became clear that no one else had the backbone to stand up to him
- Left the denomination because, even though the churches themselves are autonomous, the Southern Baptist Convention had become so legalistic (IMHO) in it’s views that the baggage of being associated with them was just too much. Here’s a clue-by-four folks, quit telling people what you stand against and start telling them what you stand for.
Happily attending a non-denominational church that puts it’s resources into helping the community instead of buildings, programs and politics.
I was raised as a Catholic; I’m now a Methodist, having had a few stops in between. I’ll try to summarize:
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My parents sent me to Catholic schools, and we went to Mass nearly every Sunday. What I didn’t know, at that time, was that neither of my parents were actually believers (my father was / is agnostic, my mother was / is atheist)…they did all of this to please my paternal grandmother, who was a devout Catholic. (Also, the Catholic schools were better than the public schools, and I was considered a “gifted” student back then.)
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By the time I got to college, I realized that I really didn’t have any faith to speak of; my brain had treated all of those Religion classes the same way it treated Math class or History class. After several years of sort-of-thinking about these things, I became friends with a young woman who really challenged me to examine what my beliefs were, and I eventually did decide that I was a Christian.
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I spent several years attending various conservative / fundamentalist churches (particularly a Christian and Missionary Alliance church). It fed my need, at that time, for Bible study and building my faith, but I had a lot of cognitive dissonance with the conservative churches’ views on things like rock music and Dungeons & Dragons.
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The woman whom I eventually married was / is a Lutheran (ELCA); I joined her church before we married, and we were members of several different ELCA congregations over the years. ELCA Lutheranism is fairly moderate as Protestant denominations go, and they certainly didn’t have the same cultural hang-ups that the fundamentalist churches I’d attended did. But, about a decade ago, we left our last ELCA church due to some frustration with how the church council handled a change in the church’s pastor, and we didn’t belong to a church for several years.
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I wound up attending a Methodist church (to which some of my friends belong) more and more regularly, and got drawn into that community, to the point that I finally joined the congregation last year. I very much like our congregation’s push for inclusiveness and social justice. However, my wife is a lifelong Lutheran; she can’t see herself ever leaving that denomination (and she feels that the “contemporary” service which I attend lacks the formal liturgy that she craves).
I was raised Southern Baptist, but left after high school because I didn’t subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Bible and because women weren’t allowed to be ordained. I attended a Lutheran church in college, and a Presbyterian church during grad school. During this period I attended Unitarian Universalist churches on and off. I’ve retained my identity as a Christian, but my Jewish wife, our kids, and I have been active in a UU church for many years now.
I was raised Roman Catholic-- very devout. Even considered religious life.
Art the age of 58, I converted to Judaism. Not because of marriage; in fact, my Lutheran husband converted the year after I did.
I did it because Christian theology (and I am well-educated in it-- attended Catholic high school and college) seems absurd to me. I never achieved the “personal relationship with Jesus,” although I tried for decades. I’m at heart (and mind) an argumentative seeker. That’s a good Jew, but not such a good Catholic. Even with this new Pope-- and I love him-- there are (IMHO) absurd doctrinal mountains that he cannot budge.