Jennshark, when you said “Mormon Fundamentalist,” I was thinking FLDS/UEP/Colorado City/Polygamist. But I know enough about Mormon culture to appreciate what it means to have your family go back to the New York days. Being shunned from your Utah community must have been a horrible experience.
Uh… this wouldn’t happen to be a small western suburb known for its tearing down of houses and putting up huge tract mansions in their place, would it? Because I’ve been eyeing a UCC church there, and would be sad to hear that it’s not a nice one. You can E-mail me (see profile) if you want.
Might as well add my story - I wasn’t raised exactly fundamentalist, but it felt close at times. I grew up in Wisconsin, and my parents went to a Dutch Reformed Church (Calvinist, Reformed Church of America) probably just because their parents had and that was what they knew. I don’t think they totally accepted it all, either, but that was subtle and hard to figure out from the perspective of a kid being taken to church by their parents. My sister and I grew uncomfortable with the teachings, and I struggled through my pre-teen and teenage years with the conflicts I had, at times being no longer able to accept what I was being taught was the truth, and at other times tormented by guilt and sure that my “thought crimes” (my term for it, after reading 1984) were condemning me to hell or something similar.
In particular, I was really distressed over the emphasis on predestination. The idea was, at least as it was conveyed, is that basically from the beginning of everything your life’s path was already set, God knew what you were going to do and whether you’d go to heaven or hell, and so essentially, in one way it didn’t matter what you did because that was your destiny regardless, or so it seemed to my thoughts. I was also distressed because that meant that, in a way, God created people who were destined for hell from the very beginning of time and existence, and that hardly seemed good. The pastor insisted we also had free will, but with all the emphasis on predestination, that seemed like a minor issue in comparison. Because I couldn’t resolve the two in my mind, I felt horribly guilty.
I also felt the usual torment over those sinful sexual urges, vascillating between wanting desperately to experience sex, and feeling awful and rejecting the thought of doing that. I think that led me to some bad choices once I did start sexual activity.
Finally, my sister and I could no longer stand the emphasis on the male being the head of the family, the woman having to submit to the man, and so on. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day sermons were the worst here. Between mysterious Sunday morning illnesses and reading the Bible (especially that racy Old Testament - I think I’ve read through the whole book - not straight through - several times, skipping the “begats” however) instead of paying attention, I made it through until my late teens, when finally we began just refusing and saying how much we hated it.
In the meantime, I’d been going on occasional summer field trips with friends from a local United Church of Christ church, who I knew through school. We did cool stuff like go to Chicago and see the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute museum, looking at the artifacts from the “Old Testament region” of the world and learning the history, then visiting the absolutely gorgeous Ba’hai Temple in the suburbs. So when I suggested that church, to my surprise, my parents said sure.
What an eye opener. My old church had a huge uproar over the very suggestion that perhaps women ought to be allowed to be deacons (not even elders); this church, I found out, not only ordained women as priests, but also openly gay or lesbian priests. One hymn mentioned evolution as one of God’s works. People were friendly and kind. My parents became involved in Habitat for Humanity through the church, and we enjoyed attending.
I grew up in the church - literally. Small town Presbyterian. Father was a minister and mother further on the regilous right. I went to chuch before I was a week old, and pretty much never missed a sunday until I turned 18, moved out to college, and probably have been back inside a santuary less than 5 times since then.
To answer the OP, I read a lot. I knew I would leave for University. Around 15 I got into sex and drugs and rock n roll (it was the late 70’s). I put on my game face and went to church, everything else was my own life.
Maybe one reason I studied Chinese so hard and have lived in Asia for the past 25 years was to get away. I don’t know.
Heck, I enjoy seeing the churches in my neighborhood, I just have no desire to go in. As for God, the day she puts her big black hand on my shoulder, maybe I’ll listen. …
Like the OP, I grew up in a COGIC church. Most of the congregration were of the “anoited and sanctified” crowd. Our church services put the James Brown sermon in Blues Brothers to shame. Revival was the craziest time of all. I always considered myself lucky that my parents–who are very devout–never got “happy” in church. They might clap their hands and sway to the “get the holy ghost” music, but that would be about it. But they were and still are very active in their church. Both hold leadership positions (my mom’s a minister) and made sure that their kids participated in church services, whether we wanted to or not. I don’t consider them fundies, though. They don’t accept a literal interpretation of the Bible and are politically liberal (my mother is a self-described radical left-winger).
How did I cope? Well, I can’t say I was rebellious in anything other than a passive-aggressive way. I remember praying that my mother would forget to set the clock on Day Light Savings Time so that we would oversleep on Sunday morning. When I got older, I would claim that I had bad cramps so I could get out of going to church (it rarely worked). Sometimes my sister and I would be bad during Sunday School by asking too many questions (like why dinosaurs aren’t in the bible). But I wasn’t bold enough to do anything worse than that. The truth was that I wanted to be a good little Christian. I hated church but I thought I loved the Lord.
Now, I’m not too sure.
Well, not a fundie, but an episcopalian. Almost as bad.
I believed, bigtime. I bought the whole nine yards and nearly wore my knees out praying. but I was confused on some things and couldn’t get reliable answers, so I started looking for the answers for myself. And I found out the whole organized religion this is nothing more than a giant scam and a lie from start to finish.
The first Sunday that I refused to go to church was not a pretty sight. I was 13 and told my parents I had better things to do. I was threatened with whipping, grounding, etc., to which I replied that it was their choice: I could stay home or they could make me go and halfway through the sermon, I would stand up and call the preacher a liar to his face.
I stayed home. When my parents got back, my father was going to take a belt to me until I asked him if he believed that whipping me would prove the existance of god. He and I were much farther apart after that and it stayed that way for over 20 years.
Hmm. Burr Ridge/Hinsdale? I know that church!
My friends and I glued together the tamborene cymbals belonging to one of the more, er, fervent amd vocal women who liked to “make a joyful noise”. That got us in a lot of trouble.
Then as soon as I was old enough, I ran far, far away from the church. It was ten years before I could attend a church service without having flashbacks, and now I’m a very content Easter-and-Christmas Methodist 
Your story is almost the exact opposite of mine.
I set foot in a church 3 times as a child. The neighbour’s kids went to Sunday school (I think it was Anglican) and I thought I might be missing out on something, so I convinced my atheist father that I SHOULD go, 3 times was enough to convince me that I wasn’t missing anything.
NZ has ‘Bible in school’ (not all schools, it is an opt in or opt out thing) when I was at primary school my father wouldn’t allow my brother and I to attend. We spent that half hour a week in the library with the kids from the only other family who didn’t attend. When my child started school I let him attend 'Bible in school" until we had this conversation.
Child “Did you know god made the world?”
Me “Yes lots of people think that”
Child “Do you think that?”
Me “No, but many many people do”
Child “You are wrong”
I wasn’t prepared to have my 5 yr old tell me I was wrong BECAUSE other people told him I was so I withdrew him. He enjoyed his half hour in the library.
Fast forward, my child (at the age of 7) decides he wants to go to “kids club” at a local church. It seemed to be mostly about making things out of ice block sticks and it meant I got 2 hours peace on a Friday night (and it only cost $2) so I was quite happy. He is now 14 (next week) and still attends the church thingy.
Last year they went on camp, I was conflicted. It was a camp with his mates but it was a CHURCH camp (eek). I even started a thread about it. In the end I let him go. He had an awesome time but reported the “bible bit” was boring. This years camp was last weekend, I didn’t give a second thought to him going. If the church don’t care that he has never attended a Sunday service and has never been baptised and are still willing to involve him in camp fun good for them.
Though they won’t convince me anytime soon, a church as inclusive as that is more likely to win friends.
Very few people hold sets of beliefs that are consistent and logical. It’s not just religion… I’ve got a leftwing friend who believes we’re all headed down the tubes within the next 3 years, we’ll become a third world nation, inflation will kill us all, capitalism is evil, yadda yadda… yet he works 80 hours a week just for the fun of it, often brings his work home just for the fun of it, and always makes investments that would collapse if he actually believed in his own doomsday predictions.
An easy way to get a fundie to collapse is to force them to explain the Trinity, especially in the light of verses in Hebrews and Revelation that clearly treat Jesus & God as two separate entities. It always comes down to “it’s all a mystery and we can’t comprehend it.” Yeah, we can’t comprehend it… because it is not only illogical, but outright impossible that Jesus and God are 100% the same and yet 100% separate. I’d rather have a God that is a God of logic and rationality… and to date I’ve not found one.
What abot Mister Spock?
What, he’s not real? Stop looking at me like that.
The inexplicability of the Trinity has never bothered me, even though I can’t say I believe in it or hold belief in it, one way or the other, to be terribly important. As an adult, at least, I look at it as being like, oh, general relativity. You can summarize it in English, but it sounds absurd because you’re using the wrong language for the concepts; and God, if God exists, must be of an enormously greater scale than we can see.
Really? 
I went to so many different churches growing up, I could never keep straight what I was supposed to believe in. During my teen years they became full gospel/Pentacostal churches, and our family got kicked out of one because I asked why we believed in raising our hands during a youth group meeting.
Looking back, I think I began losing my faith in religion when I was 14 and my mom and stepdad invited a 40-year-old stranger visiting our church to stay with us for a night. It turned into two weeks during the summer when I was home alone, and you can guess where that led. When I finally confessed what had happened to them, they had a conference with our “pastor” who blamed me and refused to ban the guy from our church so he wouldn’t “step on” any toes. When they returned home, they forced me on my knees in the living room and made me repent to God for being such a little whore. Despite the fact I told them I’d asked him over and over to stop, and he’d threatened me and showed signs of a very violent temper.
Also that summer my stepdad apparently got the bright idea that he could get away with inappropriate behavior, and started watching me sleep and shower. Every time I caught him and told mom, she got mad and yelled at me for being “selfish”. He was a deacon in our church, and mom did eventually tell that pastor (a different one from the above event) what was going on. Apparently he patted my stepdad on the back and that was it.
15 years and 3 suicide attempts later, I’m on antidepressants, see a therapist as needed, and have no use for organized religion. The more I study up on the early church, the more I see how man-made religion really is. The trinity was made up by the Catholic church by changing a verse in the Bible. Sex wasn’t dirty until Constantine decided it was. Was there even a real Jesus? I can’t find any reliable secular sources to verify his existence. Is there an Og? I sure hope so. Cause otherwise, child rapists and vouyers are getting off scot-free right and left.
HA! Sure, that’s what you’d like us to believe.
Any idea what verse that was supposed to have been?
(And Paul, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and several other early Church Fathers wrote passages that looked askance at sexuality.)
I do not minimize the pain you suffered, but some of the details of your current scholarship seem to need some work.
Tom, you’re a grand fellow, a wonderful moderator, and an inspiration to all us Dopers.
But if you’re supporting the … ahem … lunacy on the Balaam’s Ass website, you have gone completely batshit insane. 
Please check yourself in to your the nearest pscych ward (where the author of that site needs to go).
You’re right about Tertullian et all, though. 'Specially the guy from Tarsus. Wow, but he really needed a blow job.
here’s some reading material on the subject of the trinity:
http://biblicalunitarian.com/html/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=147
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/otherreligions/trinity.html
and http://www.thunderministries.com/history/triad/triintro.html
the subject of sex will have to wait until tomorrow.
::sighing::
There’s just no possible way this is going to end well.
I agree. I’m dropping the subject now. I should never have said anything to begin with.
No- it’s important to you to share your experiences and for Christians to hear about the crap done in our name.
Just be careful of your sources & the validity of your info before you indict an entire faith after surviving the crimes of some who profess it.
I hate to play junior mod, but this is my thread. That’s not what it’s about. This thread is about PERSONAL EXPERIENCES, preferably from CHILDHOOD, with fundamentalist or other intolerant faith systems, hopefully presented in an amusing or amused or at least wry fashion. (Read the OP. I wrote it.) Debating the logic of the trinity wouldn’t be appropriate anywhere in this forum…try GREAT DEBATES.
I just can’t deal with the shit after the veneer has been stripped away, you know? My daughter was a loved member of this church, from the nursery, preschool and on up. But because she didn’t fall into line with her peer group–she is no longer allowed to help others within the church. The reason given is that she has not been confirmed, but I chaired the Children’s Ministry Committee, and served on Associate Pastor search committees etc–I’ve never been confirmed either. So, apparently, all my (very) hard work there is also not valued. Except as a warm body to do the damn scut work. Yeah, I’m a bit bitter about the whole thing.
It makes no sense–“church”: it’s not about personal spiritual journeys, apparently; it’s about appearing to be a body of faith. To hell with it I say. I would rather be spiritual and non-churched again than be in lock step with “feel good” crappola.
Note: Hinsdale! That’s it! (the name of the town, not the church in question-sorry I emailed Lombard to you, ferret herder.
Nope, that church(the Hinsdale one) is not the one I “belong” to.