Yeah, we did. We went to a Methodist church, and us kids figured out at very early ages that it was something my mother did to impress the neighbors. :rolleyes: Around the time that we became old enough to protest, and have our voices heard, we got a new pastor who was very unpopular, and stopped going.
My sibs are not religious; my dad went to a Unitarian congregation for a while but AFAIK hasn’t for a very long time. I, however, went on a long journey that in the end has me attending an Episcopal church.
I should add that after church, my father would basically run for the hills all afternoon, and my mother would take off her dress and run around the house in her underwear for the next few hours, screaming at us and smacking us around for being the worst behaved kids there, and why couldn’t we act more like the kids from Family X or Family Y instead of Family A? At the time we stopped going, I vaguely remember being told that the reason was because the other parents had a meeting and told our parents that we (the kids) were no longer welcome because of our behavior. I don’t remember any incidents where we were, for instance, asked to leave a service (I have seen that as an adult) because of our behavior. So, no wonder my sibs aren’t interested in religion.
I grew up in a Methodist church as well. I was never really forced to go. It was just something we did with my mother every Sunday while my father stayed in bed. Our Methodist church was where the college educated people, especially teachers like my mother, in my tiny home-town went to congregate. It was about as bland Protestant as it gets with very few controversial ideas. They basically just emphasized being a decent person and making good decisions.
I liked Sunday school because my friends were there. Sunday afternoons and some evenings were spent at UMYF (United Methodist Youth Fellowship). You just went back to church in the afternoon to play all sorts of games, watch movies, do community outreach and have fun. We went on camping trips during the summer. It was like co-ed Boy Scouts basically and I still think it is a great idea.
However, the actual church services bored the piss out of me. If I only had an hour to live, that is where I would choose to spend it because it seemed like an eternity every single week and nothing has changed since then. I actually had the bright idea of replacing the pews with recliners so that people could sleep better. I know that some of the older people would be secretly with me on that even though they would never admit it. The drool and head wobbles tell the real story.
I stopped going when I got my first teenage job in a supermarket. It was hard for them to get help on Sunday mornings because it was a highly religious town but I was all over that. Oops momma, I would love to go to church but they keep scheduling me to work during church for some odd reason.
Yes, forced to attend on a weekly basis up until I left home at 19.
But I didn’t mind; we were UCC, a small congregation in a small town, and the people were like family to me. I attended “Services” during my time in the Army, almost entirely in Basic, as it was the only way to get at least a half-day off.
Since then, I only go to church for wedding and funerals. I’m an agnostic/borderline atheist.
Raised Methodist, forced to go to Sunday School each week until I turned 15. Moving 1400 miles and not knowing anything about churches in the area had a part in that.
I’m now a Pantheist and one of the last times I talked to my dad, I learned that he became an atheist.
Just recalled spending a lot of my summer days in the other Methodist church in town and stopping at some point before turning 11. Sort of a in-church God camp but that may have been voluntary.
Went weekly (Methodist) until my mid-teens and then, thoroughly bored by it all, began ramping up the resistance until my mother gave up. Still remain bored by it all, albeit maybe slightly amused. I don’t think there are many religious folk in my extended family now, nor in my wife’s.
My parents made me go until I was about 12 or so. I finally had enough and one Sunday just told them that I wasn’t interested any more and to go without me. Caused some problems for a while, then it was no big deal.
I don’t know if “forced” is the right word. My family went to Mass every week. It was routine, and I didn’t think to question it as a child.
I remain a practicing Catholic.
Now… I always brought my son to Mass every week. He’s now 13 and doesn’t want to go any more. He’s not sure what he actually believes (he’s not an atheist; rather, he seems to believe in a hodgepodge of things).
Do I make him go to Mass? No. I hope he’ll want to return one day, but regardless, he is now at a point where he will never again believe ANYTHING simply because I tell him it’s true.
My mom intermittently attended church. Both my parents did when I was very young - they were Baptists, and of course I got dragged along. I didn’t care much for it. Later on, my dad stopped going and my mom switched to Pentecostal. She dragged me along a few times as a young teen, but I liked it even less and eventually just told her I didn’t want to go anymore. It was way too weird and demonstrative for me, with everybody muttering “Yes, Jesus!” and “Thank you, Jesus!” under their breath while the preacher preached. Creepy.
I honestly don’t think I ever really "got* religion–I just went through the motions and pretended until I finally got brave enough to say, “Hey, this is doing nothing for me. I’m not gonna pretend it is anymore.” That was a tremendous relief.
Fortunately, I didn’t get a lot of flak about it.
I think the only time I ever enjoyed anything religious was “Good News Club” when I was a little kid. Even then, though, it was just because it was fun and there were snacks.
Oddly enough, I love big, impressive cathedrals. I’ve always kind of wanted to attend a fancy Catholic mass at someplace like St. Paul’s in London.
Not in any Presbyterian church I have attended (and I am an Elder and Deacon). Christ is off of the cross now after all.
I am the flip side of the OPs question - my parents did not attend, but had no issues with me going with the neighbors to church. I was not baptized until I was in my 20s, when I joined by fiancee’s church. Something clicked for me, so I am active in our church - though often I will admit that feels like more due to it being a positive outlet for me to help serve fellow man.
This was, essentially, my experience, as well…or, at least, that’s what I grew up thinking.
I was baptized in the Catholic Church as an infant, as was my sister. We went to Mass pretty much every Sunday (though, as time went on, we started going to Saturday evening Mass more often).
I went to CCD from 1st-3rd grades, because I was actually going to a Lutheran school at that time – the Catholic school which was associated with our parish was very big (2 rooms of 30 or so kids per grade), whereas the Lutheran school a few miles away (where several of our neighbors took their kids) was much smaller, and my parents felt I could get a more individualized education there (I was a “gifted” child). In 4th grade, which was when my sister entered 1st grade, my parents moved me to the Catholic school (where they also enrolled my sister), and I went to Catholic schools from then until I graduated from high school.
What I never really thought much about, at that time, was that, while I received First Communion, at age 8, and would go up for Communion from then on, my parents didn’t go up.
By the time I left for college, I stopped going to church. I’d always done well in religion classes when I had been in school, but I think I’d treated it as just another school subject, and I never put much thought into what faith I had, if any.
Once my sister left high school, my parents finally dropped the charade; they stopped going to church entirely. What I found out, as an adult, was that my mother is an atheist, and my father is an agnostic. However, my paternal grandmother was a devout Catholic, and my parents had agreed to her that they would raise their children in the Catholic Church (I think that my grandmother, in return, may have helped to pay for our Catholic schooling).
Over the course of my college years, and, in particular, long talks with a girl whom I wound up dating for two years, I discovered my faith. I’ve been a member of three different denominations as an adult – first the Christian and Missionary Alliance (which didn’t last long, as I quickly realized that I was not nearly as conservative as they are), then I became an ELCA Lutheran when I married my wife. And, about five years ago, I joined a Methodist church, where several friends go, because I support the social mission at our church.
So, while I was “forced” to go to church as a kid, I don’t think it hindered my beliefs as an adult – however, it didn’t necessarily foster those beliefs, either.
I grudgingly went to Methodist church every Sunday when I was growing up. I can’t remember exactly when I stopped/parents stopped making me go. Sometime in High School I suppose. We were pretty involved in the church community, I went to Sunday school, received ‘Confirmation’, held hands with my girlfriend in the balcony, played the snare drum for ‘The Little Drummer Boy’, made out with same girlfriend in the Sunday School classroom, liked taking walks in the graveyard, and so on.
How it turned out is kind of mixed up. I wanted to be married by a priest even though I’m not a church-going person. Our daughters were baptized but we don’t go to church. I’m interested in and read about Jesus and what he had to say but I don’t accept him as my savior or anything like that. I find the Bible interesting, especially as a cultural and literary reference but don’t attribute any mystical qualities to it.
My dad, who grew up in depression era southern Mississippi, always jokingly called me a heathen when I whined about going to church. Heathen sounds about right. My mom, who descended from Presbyterian ministers lamented that she wished she had brought me up more Christian when I was in my druggy drinking late teens and early twenties but that was about as far as it went. The horse was out of the barn by that point. She was very active in her church until she died.
My oldest sister and her family (four kids) are Baptists in Virginia but they don’t try to push it on me anymore (although I suspect I was maneuvered into sitting in on drums for my niece’s church rock band one time). My brother in law is a real mensch. Their kids, who went to Christian schools and colleges are all in their 30s now and lead pretty interesting lives, to me, anyway.
My other (older) sister went to church occasionally but it didn’t seem to be a terribly big part of her life. She was one of the most giving people I ever knew.
I didn’t grow up in a Christian family, but on a handful of occasions I ended up attending church for whatever odd reasons—I think it was my parents just wanting to be sociable. Easy for them. They didn’t have to go; they just sent us along.
As a kid it was among the most uncomfortable and excruciating experiences of my life.
Even today I can’t imagine why people put themselves through the pain of being forced to sit in one place while someone bores you to death while trying to indoctrinate you. Ugh.
Even as a kid I never believed in my own family’s religion—Hinduism—but Hindu ceremonies are much more tolerable because if you’re bored you can get up, leave and go do something more interesting in the back of the room or outside—grab a snack, hang out with friends, whatever.
For the same reason I hate European style weddings. They’re an interminable bore. I just have to sit here and watch? Bleargh. No thanks.
My mother was raised some sort of Protestant. My father, loosely Jewish. My mother tried to raise us Jewish, but she clearly wasn’t religious, and neither was my father. Their efforts to “force” us to go to services on Saturdays failed miserably. My brother, being the oldest, gets the credit for ending the madness when I was still young (probably 5 or 6). I don’t remember much about it, except getting boxes to raise money for UNICEF at Halloween, and giving money to plant trees in Israel. There were some songs about some holidays. The memories are all pretty vague at this point.
I think I’ve been in a Temple once in the past 45 years (for a Bar Mitzvah).
I already admitted that I found the actual Methodist (and later Episcopalian) church services incredibly boring but the services themselves are only a small part of the whole idea. There are lots of other activities as well and some of them are actually fun. Episcopalians in particular are big on parties and even serve liquor (at least beer and wine) at church during some of them :eek: Fancy food spreads for after church receptions are also quite common.
However, black churches, especially Southern ones are often quite active and entertaining. I have been to a bunch of them and they are completely different from mostly white churches. People get really dressed up, the music is much better, people shout out during the middle of it and sometimes even pass out in the aisles if something especially shocking is announced.
Evangelical mega-churches hire the best speaker-preachers they can get, often have full bands and even recreational facilities like gyms and pools. None of that is really my thing but at least it is a move away from an abridged Puritan style church service that I thought would cause me to drop dead of boredom when I was 10.
"*I give you 7 laws, keep them, do your best to abide by them.
You wont be perfect, you aren’t grown up yet i know this, i made you.
Mess up? talk to me about it.
Confused, ask me and i will see that you find the wisdom.
Do your best, i will know you tried.
See you when you get here
Love God
[ul]
[li]Do not deny God.[/li][li]Do not blaspheme God.[/li][li]Do not murder.[/li][li]Do not engage in illicit sexual relations.[/li][li]Do not steal.[/li][li]Do not eat from a live animal.[/li][li]Establish courts/legal system to ensure obedience to said laws.[/li][/ul]*"
“PS
If you are a Jew, yes i know it is a lot but we made a deal, try your best, i will know.”
No, we were forced to go to school Monday through Friday. No one from the state would come to the house and drag us kids away if we missed church.
I got as much out of church as I did school - more, actually, since the church ladies could cook fried chicken right. Something the school ladies never mastered (or even tried, if I recall correctly).
You could enjoy “dinner on the grounds” if you managed to stay awake thru the sermon. That was the deal.
But that all ended when our little southern church was overrun by people from the north. People who don’t know how to cook. KFC doesn’t cut it. We stopped going.
Nor really forced. My parents did not go to church, but sent me out the door every Sunday morning with a dime for the Sunday school collection plate, assuming they would hear about it if I didn’t show up. It was a cool enough place to hang out, with other boys under the same constraints who also did not take it seriously. If anything, the experience had a reinforcing effect on my lifelong commitment to atheism.
I don’t remember any incidents where we were, for instance, asked to leave a service (I have seen that as an adult) because of our behavior. So, no wonder my sibs aren’t interested in religion.