I used to go to Sunday school and church, mainly at the insistence of my dad. I stopped going at age thirteen when we move to a new area. One by one the whole family realized they were actually atheists, even my dad who is now insisting, when the time comes, we have a humanist funeral for him. A few years ago I had a look on Google Street View at our old neighbourhood. The old church has been demolished and replaced with a a supermarket. Perhaps the whole congregation went the same way.
Catholic; Dad was daily-Mass and very much a believer (and a matter of long family tradition); Mom was frequent-Mass but in her case it is more of a social thing (also, a matter of rebelling against her church-burning, nun-raping father). I had to go on Sunday once I was well-behaved enough to put up with it. Also religious school and Sunday school; eventually I was allowed out of Sunday school when I pointed out that I was getting the same themes in both places, but in regular school it was more hours and involved actual grades.
I did reject the God of Guilt that my mother believed in, but I’m fine with the social and cultural aspects. I’m a lot less likely to go to Mass when I’m by myself than if I’m with family, and definitely don’t go if I’m not going to understand it unless I’m with friends or family. Sometimes when I’m in a place where I don’t understand the language or don’t even have churches which hold Communion available I’ll get a TV Mass from RTVE or RAI.
My brother Ed and his wife are involved in neochatecumenate. They go to normal Mass on Sunday mornings but also have celebrations with their group twice a week; these are very long and begin at 9pm. My nephews have both received First Communion, so now they have to join the adults. Given that The Niece is very much a morning person (well, more of an “if it’s after 8pm I’m unconscious” person) and that, unlike her brother, when she disagrees with orders her instinctive reaction is to ignore them, my mother’s money is on her leaving the group as soon as she can and possibly with a sonic boom.
Dad was Catholic (active) and mom was Congregationalist (active). As was the custom at the time, mom had to agree to raise any children of the marriage as Catholic, even though she was not forced to convert. Although I went through all the Catholic ceremonies -communion, confirmation, etc. - I was told that when I became a teenager, I would be allowed to choose whatever faith I most identified with. I was routinely taken to churches of other faiths to learn about them, which made for a long Sunday as I was required to also attend a Catholic service each Sunday. I did ultimately appreciate all the faith sampling, as when I chose to remain Catholic, I did so knowing what else was available.
I remain a practicing Catholic today, although my sons are not religious as adults, nor are they exposing their children to any religion of any denomination, which I admit makes me sad. Both my sons were taken to Catholic services by me and Lutheran services by their dad, in much the same way I was raised, but they found no connection with either, or showed any curiosity about anything spiritual.
OTT militantly Catholic mother. Forced me to church with her every week, although this requirement was not made of my siblings nor my nephew when he lived with us (he is three years younger than I am).
I learned very quickly as a kiddie never, ever to accept invitations from friends to stay overnight at their houses on Saturday nights – my mother would phone up their parents and demand that they take me to church, whether they were Catholic or not, which was humiliating as fuck. I cannot believe how many of them actually did so, including a Girl Scout leader, who forced me to go to church on the Sunday that my troop was camping out at Grove Point, MD. No one else in the troop had to go; the leader wasn’t Catholic, herself. She berated me the entire way there, and was furious with me when I kept insisting it was my mother’s madness, not mine (I was 14 or 15 at the time).
Forced into CCD (Catholic Sunday school) til age 9, then my mom yanked me out of a public school where I was doing very well and made me go to a nasty Catholic school so out of touch that effectively I was put back a year due to the curriculum being so far behind. Bullied by nuns and the kids there, awesome.
She had it in her head that I would let her know when the holy spirit moved me to request first communion and first penance; subsequently the time came and went (got made fun of at that school because I couldn’t participate in that stuff, either, having not officially done the sacraments; she had to scramble and bring me up to code fairly quickly).
Off to a Catholic high school that had, up til I believe the War, offered boarding, as it stood next to a giant convent of the order. She attempted to leave me there several times, demanding to the nuns that they allow me to board with them because 1. she wanted me to see how they lived and be inspired to become a nun 2. the commute was inconvienent for her to come and fetch me back and forth every day (she didn’t want me to carpool). The nuns, quite happy to live in their convent and no longer have to put up with *Life with Mother Superior * shit from their student body, rightly told my mom to fuck off.
She also tried to get me to go to an all-girls’ Catholic university, but thank fuck I managed to get a scholarship to the local state university about 5 miles from the house. Once I turned 18 she told me that my faith was my responsibility. I haven’t been to Mass since.
She still cries about where did she go wrong, and why did I turn my back on my faith. Never had any – just never interested in it, to be honest, and all of my associations with it are negative. So, meh. I’m not an atheist; I just have no interest or belief in any of it. She refuses to believe this, but that’s her problem.
Consequently, I have been written out of the will, and my half of the inheritance is being left to the Church. Whatever, and no surprises, as she’s been an easy mark for unscrupulous parishes and priests for as long as I can remember. She’s 88 now, and been living with my brother for the past 5 or 6 years; he had to take over her bank account as he couldn’t figure out how, with $2K monthly in combined pensions and SS (hers and my dad’s) and the $30 or $40 or so K income from close to $1M in investments she inherited from my dad’s estate, she never had any money. Turns out she’s been writing cheques and giving cash away hand over fist as it rolls in, and the parasites from her old parish phone her up and hit her up for cash.
The other consequence of sorts – oddly enough, I find the history of the church and that interesting, but when I lecture on the early Christians (as little as possible, considering my field), I always do it from the Roman perspective which is far more interesting.
Oh! and according to my mom, I’ve never been married, because both marriages were in a courthouse rather than with a priest. All righty,then.
The three most terrifying words ever uttered to me as a kid were “vacation bible school/”
As a child non-attendance was not an option. I didn’t even think about it being an option, going to church is what one did on Sunday morning, and I was curious about the lives of people I could see didn’t go.
I am the oldest of three sisters. My youngest is married and attends a denomination different that what we grew up in. My middle sister is married and hasn’t attended church since she left home, is a self declared atheist.
I’m unmarried(divorced) and I am a devout church goer. Although again, not in the same denomination as I grew up in. And it’s not the same one as my younger sister goes to.
So, three of us and two go to church, one doesn’t. But none of us go to the denomination we were raised in.
My parents didn’t either; we were celebrating the birth of Christ and gifts to each other reflect His gifts to us.
I was forced to go to church (Methodist) pretty frequently all the way through high school, via threats of loss of privileges. I resented it because I wanted to sleep in. My mother found meaning in the liberal mainline Protestant values that she wanted to transmit to us. Current result: my brother is some variety of atheist/agnostic/Buddhist, and I’m an Orthodox Jew. So it didn’t really work.
By the definitions usually used here, I was “forced” to go to church three times a week. But, other than the Sunday night service, all of them had fun activities for kids, so in no way was I unhappy. And while the preaching was boring in that Sunday night service, I absolutely loved to sing, and I loved rolling around under the pews during the altar call, navigating the maze of where there weren’t any people to run into.
By the time I was old enough not to have the kids stuff, I enjoyed it enough to go on my own. I got to hang around with my friends, give hugs, go out and eat with everyone, and all that stuff. The sermons, for a while, were applicable rather than feeling like platitudes that I’d heard over and over. And I got to sing and play keyboard in front of people on a regular basis.
The only reason I started not going was when my drug withdrawal made my anxiety too high to go on a regular basis. My Christianity has evolved, but I still wanted to be with my friends. But since the majority of people there don’t know me, I’m free to look for a church that agrees with my beliefs more completely. Especially now that my pastor has retired–I love him so much, and he was just such a great soul. He came to be with me in that heart-attack scare and everything.
The new guy apparently talks bad about gay people. So I don’t really want to go there now. I’m also less for dogmatic thinking about Christianity than I used to be. And while my church was one of the better ones on that, I think I can do better than one that allows homophobia. Plus a lot of those people voted for Trump, proving they weren’t listening to God.
I don’t know that I would used the word “forced,” as it never occurred to me to resist, but I was directed into Sunday school, church services, the church youth group, and while in high school had to teach Sunday School to 1st graders, as a team effort with both my parents.
While I disagree with many of the ways my parents raised me, I can’t get particularly outraged about this. I came to atheism gradually (I was probably 18 or 19 when I thought things through clearly enough to realize it) and having had that much religious upbringing gave me insight into what I was rejecting.
Also, while I considered it a fairly painless chore rather than anything I actively enjoyed, our Sunday school class was awesome for the kids who attended. We all had well-defined roles that together made for a fun class: my dad was “Mr. Storyteller,” and gathered the kids round, sitting on cushions on the floor, to hear bible stories, which he embellished in hilarious fashion. My mother was the organizer/teacher who provided structure and made sure the curricular materials were all addressed. I was the artist, who invented fun arts-n-crafts activities related to the bible-lesson-du-jour. The kids loved it and their parents told us how much they looked forward to Sunday, and cried when they had to move on to the 2nd grade Sunday school class.
My father was an atheist and my mother an agnostic by the time they died. I think teaching that class may have made us all realize, individually, exactly how religious teaching emanates from humans and is perpetuated in part because children accept what their elders tell them.
Not by my parents, but it was very strongly expected by my Pentecostal Holy Roller grandparents. When we lived in the same town as my grandparents, or when we visited them for the summer, we went. It was not optional. I laughed to myself when they spoke in tongues, and I slept through the fire and brimstone sermons. When we moved away from my grandparents’ town, my mother was interested in going to generic mainstream Protestant churches, generally Baptist, but there was a nice Methodist church we went to for a couple of years. I always looked forward to vacation bible school, because it was something structured to do during the summer for a week or so.
I came out completely agnostic (I think of atheism as just another form of religion), I’m not really sure what my youngest sister’s beliefs are. My other sister is STRONGLY Protestant, she either sent her kids to Christian schools or home schooled them herself (she has a degree in early childhood education). She passed these beliefs on to her kids. My nephew, whom I consider the most well-read, well-rounded, and liberal person I know (he fights personally for causes like clean water in the Third World) is a pastor, who runs an outreach program for undocumented aliens and ethnic minorities. His sister is a teacher who organizes youth activities for her church. I doubt if their youngest sister has any beliefs at all.
I would say more “no choice ever offered or considered” more than “forced” but it worked out fine for me. Father (priest, not Dad) may have a different view as I jumped from a very orthodox branch of Catholic to Lutheran ----------------- but it works for me.
I’d hardly say that I was forced.
My parents set the example of attending church and setting a moral standard at home. We attended church as a family.
It’s just like any other family activity. You are expected to go wherever your parents say. It might be a relative’s house, dinner at a restaurant, or maybe a family vacation. Going to church with your family is not particularly noteworthy.
Nope, although me and my brother attended Sunday School for a few years when we were very young. This, as I found out later, was purely to give my Mum and Dad some time together on a Sunday morning 
I’ve never been to a church service that wasn’t either a christening, funeral or wedding. There was never any talk of church on a Sunday and I don’t know of any friends or relatives who did either.
My parents were not overtly religious, to the point where I’m not even sure what denomination they were. I was christened CofE but as I wasn’t asked I don’t consider that it counts. We also had our kids christened in a CofE church and were married there too but that was just for the aesthetics of the location. As parents it wouldn’t occur to us to actually force my kids to go to a church service. They can make their own minds up.
Church in my family involved an entire Sunday morning – Sunday School, followed by formal church. I wanted to avoid the whole thing in the worst way, and I prayed (heh) that Mom’s alarm clock wouldn’t go off in time, and we’d be up too late to make church. That did happen sometimes, but not often enough for my taste.
This nonsense stopped when I got old enough, and big enough, to physically resist. Come to think of it, a lot of nonsense stopped about that time. How are you going to spank a kid who can spank you back, twice as hard?
I wouldn’t say “forced,” as much as I’d say, “Our family went to church, because in those days, that’s what families did on Sunday mornings.”
It was a Presbyterian church. Fairly inoffensive; no fire-and-brimstone, required Bible study, Wednesday-night services, or anything outside of Sunday-morning services. Unless you wanted to, of course; and the church offered a number of social activities for all ages: Scouts, seniors’ bridge club, teen club, and plenty of others. I think that’s why my parents always attended: because for them, belonging to that church was more a social occasion than anything.
Today? I no longer attend, mainly because I prefer my Sunday mornings to be occupied by coffee and the newspaper. Still, I have been known to attend church occasionally at the request of a local choirmaster, who needs an extra voice in his choir from time to time.
Nope, never went to any religious type service growing up, though I did tag along once with my Irish American friend to attend Sunday Mass at a Catholic church. It was interesting.
I’m a Cradle Episcopalian. I guess I was “forced” to go to Church. I must admit, I wasn’t crazy about it t, but I don’t think it warped me any. I just kind of went with things. I mean, Anglicans tend to be pretty easygoing; you know? Anyhow, about two years ago I was still attending church regularly. I actually miss going to church, and keep thinking when things calm down a bit in my life, I’ll go back.
Grew up in a strict, conservative Mormon household in Salt Lake City. My first friend who wasn’t Mormon was in sixth grade. Everything we did revolved around Mormonism, including meetings in church much of the day on Sundays as well as meetings other days of the week.
Looking back, I had doubts back in high school but couldn’t allow them to surface even to my conscious mind. Went on a mission because of expectations. It wasn’t until a couple of years after that that I was able to make my break from it.
We don’t raise our kids with any religion.