When did you learn the basics of Christianity?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A couple years ago, a member of my church said that he brought a guest to the annual Christmas play. I don’t remember which precise play, we do a different one each year, but it was the traditional nativity musical.

After the play was over, he said his guest had never heard the story before, that is was really all new to her.

This story was told to us as an example of how the Christmas play was, in fact, an evangelical outreach in line with the church’s general mission, part of the “Great Commission”.

Without debating the truthfulness of the biblical story, I’m wondering at what age you learned about Christianity - whether you believe it or not. I’m just astounded that it’s the least bit possible that anybody can grow up in America (or the greater western world) and not have heard the basics of Christianity, whether your family raised you within the Christian church or not.

Is it really possible to reach adulthood in America or the western world and not at least know the basis of Christianity?

*By the basics, I mean just the Christian high-points (again, not debating the truthfulness of the claims):

Jesus was conceived by the vigin Mary and born in a manger in Bethlehem. Three kings came and gave him gifts. (The basic nativity story that supposedly the woman above had never heard). Jesus had a ministry in which he performed miracles, claimed to be the son of God, and was crucified by the Romans. He died on the cross and rose again three days later and ascended into heaven.
*

2

I don’t remember for myself when I learned these things, since I was raised in a religious home. But I do think it’s entirely possible to grow up American and know nothing about the basics of Christianity.

When I was in college (at a major brainy university, and everyone was smarter than me, so it’s not like they were clueless dolts or anything), I took a couple of medieval literature courses. The prof. was pretty new to the school and had been at Oxford before. A couple of weeks into each of the courses–but one in particular–she had to stop the course and teach the basics of the Bible/Christanity/Catholicism/Judaism to senior literature majors–most of the class in fact.

Because the students had managed to get that far without a clue as to the actual content of those beliefs (as opposed to a small bundle of fuzzy assumptions and stereotypes), and did not know when their medieval texts were re-telling actual Bible stories (almost never) and when they were making stuff up from a scriptural base (usually). They didn’t recognize a Mass/Communion or a Passover, they didn’t know anything about Moses, none of it. They simply hadn’t been raised with any of it, and had never learned it at all. It was a serious handicap, really; it’s hard to understand most English literature if you don’t know anything about Christianity and don’t even realize you’re missing basic information about the bedrock assumptions of the writers.

So yes, it’s entirely possible. Someone can easily grow up driving by Nativity scenes at Christmas time but never actually knowing what they’re about. (Heck, it’s a bit of a struggle getting the story into the heads of kids at church; ask any 4-yo at a church what Christmas is about, and she’ll answer “Santa!!” And then you remind her for the 50th time that Santa is nice, but really Christmas is about when baby Jesus was born, and she goes, “Oh, yeah. Baby Jesus! But Santa brings me presents!” This is why religious folks get frustrated. :slight_smile: )

3

Well, they tried to raise me as a Christian, so I heard the story from before I can remember. We had bibles, kid’s bible story books and all that stuff. So, I had those basics before I ever went to Sunday School. One detail, though, is that I don’t really remember much emphasis on who crucified Jesus…it was more along the lines of ‘Jesus was crucified’. I guess if I thought about who did it, I must have figured it was The Man, man…

4

I remember having a kids’ version of the bible when I was a kid. And I’m pretty sure I remember most of it – I remember the somewhat less famous bible stories (like Absalom and the destruction of Jericho – not obscure, but not “Jesus sacked out in a manger” famous, either) in addition to the main life-of-Christ narrative. So I don’t really remember not knowing the basics, even though my parents weren’t themselves especially religious. (They believed, but they weren’t zealous about it even at home.)

Oddly enough, I’ve been an agnostic or atheist for almost as long as I can remember, as well, so apparently the kids’ bible didn’t take.

On the other hand, I didn’t read “Song of Solomon” until I was a lot older.

5

I’m a cradle Catholic, so I’m not a good data point. However I clearly remember my college roommate having to give a complete Christianity overview to a fellow student who had grown up in soviet Russia. The prof in their world civ class glazed over it since he assumed everyone had at least a basic familiarity. She remains the only person I’ve met who didn’t have at least a basic idea of Christian belief.

6

That much since early childhood, can’t remember a time when any of those notions would have been unfamiliar. (The fact that the Romans were involved was probably the last of the above to have been absorbed).

That Jesus was also literally God, not just “the Son of God”, also from as far back as I can remember.

That you have to believe the above and “accept Jesus into your heard as your personal Lord ans Savior” in order to be saved, only since the age of 13 or so. The very emphatic emphasis on John 3:16, with a single & very widespread interpretation.

Communion as something important and something other than “it’s the 1st Sunday of the month, time to ‘do this in rememberance of me’ and celebrate being Christian by eating together ritually”, probably also around the age of 13. Raised Protestant in case that didn’t just become obvious. (“Huh? It’s literally supposed to be eating him? What do you mean, ‘not as literally for us as it is for Catholics but sort of anyway’?”)

That it is regarded (at least by more Christians than not, let’s say) as having been a GOOD thing that Jesus was crucified, because a sacrifice was important/necessary in order for God to remove the taint of original sin, or something to that effect, only since the age of 20 or so. That is to say, the notion that, had the other people involved come to their senses and declined to put a man to death for the things that Jesus of Nazareth did, it would have meant something terribly important would have failed to happen.

7

I remember having a children’s bible story book when I was little (5-6 y.o., maybe?) but I don’t think I really thought of it as being about a religion; they were just stories. The only thing I really remember about it is the picture of the lion that Daniel (?) fought… see, I didn’t learn much from it!

Apart from that; I remember learning the Lord’s Prayer and the Story of Christmas (Jesus version) in younger years at school. I don’t know if that school (English school in Québec) had a “religion” class/period, but we did learn some of the basic stories, but again, I remember thinking they were just stories. I remember in grade 4 (Ontario curriculum, army base in Germany), we actually had a dedicated time per week for “religion”, and the teacher talked about Noah’s ark and about how it was a TRUE story, and I thought he was a weird and creepy man, because the story didn’t make any sense (well, he was creepy already, but the discomfort I felt with that story remains a very vivid memory).

My parents allowed us to learn about religions, but weren’t religious themselves (I think they have some sort of “Christian” beliefs about God and Jesus, but it really is a personal thing and doesn’t show up in anything they do). The only times I went to church, other than visiting the medieval ones in Europe, was when I slept over at a friend’s house on Saturdays and I’d go to Sunday School with her and my parents would pick me up there. I remember disliking it, just feeling that it was weird and a waste of a good Sunday morning! The one thing I liked about the churches we visited was lighting candles at the entrance, but my mom never let me light them all… I honestly don’t know what those candles are for, but I love fire and apparently that was true when I was young, too!

I learned about other religions in… grade 8, maybe? Maybe grade 7. I thought it was interesting to learn about the cultures and their traditions, and I never felt the same discomfort as I did with Christianity, most likely because I didn’t know anyone that acted upon these other beliefs. I admit that I still feel uncomfortable with Christianity, and that is strongly attached to my childhood emotions of it. Personally, I just find “religion” to be… unnecessary.

Apparently I’ve never been comfortable with the concept of religion, or at least Christianity, since that was “religion” as I was exposed to it! No one, to my recollection, ever spoke negatively of it, I just didn’t feel it was something I needed to know/do.
On preview; that’s more info than you asked for, but what the hell, it’s already typed out!

8

I was raised in a functionally atheist household, but was fascinated from a young age with religions of all types. My mother let me choose my own books from the library as soon as I was old enough to express an opinion, and I read lots of stories about orthodox Jews, the Amish, a few (rare in my day) on Buddhism…pretty much anything I could find that was in fiction form on any seriously religious person I could find. In addition, I’d grill my two best friends when they came home from CCD (Catholic Sunday school) and get as much information as I could from them. A few times I even convinced other kids’ parents to take me to church with them, and I introduced myself to the pastor/priest/preacher and got a tour of the place, with some explanations of what things were and how things worked.

In high school, I joined a “Christian” youth group (which was great until the leader got a teenaged member of our group pregnant :rolleyes: ), and continued going to any churches/synagogues that I could talk people into taking me to. (The scariest one was a Southern Baptist one where the sermon was about how much to beat your wife and children and with what size stick.) Finally, after college, I found Western Esoterics, then Wicca and then finally eclectic neopaganism, which is where I’m happiest.

So my answer is that as a kid, I learned a whole lot about Christian stuff, but very little of it was through the expected Christian channels or proselytizing. Most of it was through works of fiction, and the rest through my own badgering of adults who were reluctant to share information with me, since my own parents weren’t members of the church. As an adult now, I totally understand that; I wouldn’t teach anyone under 18 without their parent’s explicit consent.

9

I was also raised as a Catholic and attended Catholic elementary school, so I probably started getting the basics before I could read.

My wife’s story might be more interesting to the OP. She is ethnically Indian but was born and raised in the US. Her parents are Hindu, and she went to a public school. The three wise men and manger story she probably knew before we met. She also probably knew that he’d gone around preaching and had been crucified. But until we met (age 26), I don’t think she knew the virgin birth part, didn’t know much about the miracles (at least not any specifics - she couldn’t have told you that he was supposed to have raised Lazarus), and she didn’t know the rising-after-three-days part. I recall explaining those things to her. She is a fantastically smart person, very highly educated, but Christianity just wasn’t a part of her life.

10

I first read this as “electric neopaganism” which could be a very interesting religion.

11

My brother & I were raised with Bible stories & prayer from the start. Oddly, the first religious movie I remember watching wasn’t any Bible story BUT “The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima”, the account of which still baffles me. However, we were very casual Catholic church-goers (C’mas & Easter if the weather was good), until I was in 3rd/4th grade & Bro in 1st/2nd when Grandmom & Mom started taking us to a Christian & Missionary Alliance, where I really got into the Faith. (Dad still considered himself Catholic but didn’t care where we went.)

When I was a teen, I was quite “evangelistic” :rolleyes: to neighborhood kids, and I did have some encounters with astonishing levels of ignorance- teen kids wanting to know about Jesus’ quilt (I did realize they meant The Shroud) and a movie where they saw a “Cow from Hell” (a week later it occurred to me they were talking about the Golden Calf scene from THE TEN COMMANDMENTS).

I didn’t make any converts, of course, but at least I didn’t push anyone farther away.

12

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know them. I went through Sunday school (with obligatory flannel cut-out stories) from birth through grade eight. I was raised Anglican.
But in high school, last year’s English, our teacher had us read a short story which referenced Jacob’s vision of the angels ascending and descending, and he found that my boyfriend and I were the only ones in the class who even knew who Jacob was, let alone knew the specific story. My highschool boyfriend was Baptist. I remember wondering how you could read and understand English literature without some background in Bible stories.

13

I don’t remember not knowing them. I consider myself an agnostic now, but I was raised in the church with religious parents. I was always the speaking angel (is it definitely Gabriel in scripture?) because I could read and be relied on to remember my lines, but I always WANTED to be the Virgin Mary.

14

It’s hard to remember, but I would say I had the Cliff’s Notes by age four. By the age of maybe eight I probably knew more Bible stories than most of my peers. By the age of ten I knew some good details about the Passion. (I also had a great love of Ian Gilliam.) Probably by the age of twelve or thirteen I was functionally an atheist.

15

My parents went to church every Sunday (inoffensive Protestant sect), and so I would thus go with them. I attended Sunday school too, where we had Bible stories when I was small, and Bible study as I got older. I guess this is where most of my knowledge of the basics comes from, and if I hadn’t had that, I don’t know where I would have learned it.

16

Not myself (well, I’m in the story):

When I was 21, I had a seasonal job putting up the Christmas lights at the Mormon temple in Washington DC. It was a two-month job putting up the hundreds of thousands of lights that festooned the trees and shrubs around the enormous grounds. Anyway, one of my co-workers was Roye, who was from Israel, born and raised. On our lunch breaks, we would go into the temple’s Visitors’ Center (Roye, as a non-Mormon, couldn’t enter the temple itself) and watch Church films in the viewing rooms. One of the more popular films of the season was Luke 2, an LDS-produced short film re-enacting the Nativity story as recorded in that chapter of the Bible. In the interests of realism, all of the film’s dialogue, of which there was little, was in Hebrew.

As we watched the film, I became aware that Roye was completely unfamiliar with the Nativity story. Not only was he unfamiliar with the story, he wasn’t even aware that it was common knowledge and that I would be familiar with it. So, like the helpful fellow he was, he decided to translate the dialogue for me, you know, so that I could follow along. Example:

“That man just told him that there’s no room at the inn.”
“Umm…thanks, Roye.” :stuck_out_tongue:

17

Me and my two older brothers went to Sunday School when I was a toddler. Now when I reflect back, it was probably only so that mum and dad could have some peace and quiet on a Sunday morning…

18

I suppose you might say I became a Christian when I was baptized, at thirty days of age. I started Sunday School when I was four, before I can really remember, and learned the Bible and it’s stories that way. I’ve continued my religious education with adult classes that delve into the history of Scripture, how stories were passed on, the “literal” vs. “mythological symbolism” issues, and so on.

The first time I truly remember learning something that I can date was in the second grade. Our Sunday School class was learning about the Exodus, and the Red Sea story sounded sort of improbable to me. So I asked the teacher “If we went to be bottom of the Red Sea, would we find all those chariots and horses and soldiers?” Instead of slapping me down the teacher told me, flat out, “No, we wouldn’t” and went on to explain how after people and animals die their bodies decay, and how metal will rust away and wood fall apart, and so on. I think he realized I was looking for proof of the story, but I appreciated that he treated my question in an adult fashion, even if I didn’t get the answer I was looking for.

19

Baptized Catholic as an infant here, to parents who were converted and very up on everything. That plus Catholic school means I don’t remember ever not knowing.

This language reminds me of the gospel account. Pilate has the sign on the cross read “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”. The people say, “You should have written ‘This man claimed to be King of the Jews’”. “What I have written, I have written.” :slight_smile:

20

I wasn’t raised in a religious family at all. I kinda picked up the manager story through various Christmas things like carols, etc. but I don’t remember specifically when. I got an idea about the ministry stuff from, don’t lauch, Monty Python’s Life of Bryan. About ten years ago, I realized that not knowing some of the more popular and basic bible stories left me with a serious knowledge gap so I picked up The Story Bible by Pearl S. Buck and filled in the gaps. BTW, if anyone is interested, the book is a very well written, readable account of the events in the Bible and I highly recommend it.