Is it more common for a person raised in a non-religious home to become

[LaraMN]

religious, or for a person raised with religion to become non-religious? Neither apply to me personally and I have no idea which scenario occurs more frequently; I'm just curious.

[huskerlaw]

1. I can only speak from personal experience...

I was raised in a very religious household, but the conservative nature of the church caused me to rebel to such a degree that I refused to go to church (except when forced, for holidays, etc.) for nearly 10 years.

I'm just now starting to look at religion on my own terms. That is, I've started going to a progressive church, hoping that if I can at least agree with the fundamental beliefs of the church I can begin to deal with the religious part.

So...my personal experience would say that people who are raised in a religion they don't agree with are more likely to become non-religious. At least until they can investigate for themselves.

How's that for being completely not helpful? ;)

[LaraMN]

2. It's interesting to me, though.

I was not raised in a religious home, I'm not religious now, and I recently found out that one of my best friends has walked away from the beliefs she was raised with. I don't know many other Agnostics or Atheists irl, so I don't have much of a base for comparison.

[pink-o]

3. Personally, I was raised in a secular home

with an Agnostic mother and a lapsed Orthodox Jewish father. I ended up culturally Jewish and spiritually Agnostic...hmmmmmm....

But it took me a long time to get to where I was. I believed in a Creator most of my life; it's just been the last 10 years I've really learned to think for myself. So my conclusion? Spirituality (or lack thereof)is ever-evolving. Some people start out Atheists and end their lives very religious. I seem to have gone backwards.

[SOteric]

4. I dunno, I've never seen stats, -but

empirically, I can say I've seen about an equal amount of both. :shrug:

[LaraMN]

5. That's really the only kind of evidence I'm fishing for.

I think your observation is about what I would guess, as well.

[gollygee]

6. My family was pretty agnostic

I'm still that way, but my brother and sister are both "born again".

I also know a lot of people who were religious but not aren't.

I agree that it seems to be about equal to me.

[jpgray]

7. About equal in those terms--"religious" covers a lot of ground

Outlandishly controlling or strict parents who are straight out of the Qin dynasty when it comes to punishing any deviation usually cause their kids to rebel, religious or not. Parents who are more casual and accepting toward differing views in their kids usually don't cause the same reflexive rebellion--again, religious or not. But there's no accounting for human behavior really, so why did you even start this thread? Just wasting our time? Another known unknown for us all to ponder.

Craziest party I went to in high school was one thrown by the private Catholic school kids, though.

[SharonRB]

8. Speaking for myself, I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish

home and I totally rebelled and am not religious at all now. I'm certainly Jewish and consider myself so, but I'm not observant at all. My sister and brother (who passed away recently), on the other hand, moved to Israel and became more religious than my folks. Of course, I went to public school and they went to parochial school, which probably had a lot to do with it. I didn't like being "different" than everyone else.

[pink-o]

26. We have that dilemma, don't we?

Being Jewish is a culture and an ethnicity as well as a religion. But when I tell people I'm Jewish (Kinda like saying you're Italian) they instantly assume it's about the Old Testament.

We hafta come up with another, more secular way to describe our roots.

[RebelOne]

9. I was raised in a religious home and forced to attend

Sunday school and church throughout my childhood. Finally, when I reached my 30s, I threw off all the religious shackles. I have been an atheist since then.

[Oeditpus Rex]

10. I think it's tied up in degrees of belief

There's "religious," and there's "religious." My mom was Methodist and believed in god and all that, but as far as church-goin'... well, it was a good place to be seen, y'know?

So whatever belief I had wasn't very strong, and when I started gettin' my own brain I realized that going to church wasn't the same as believing in anything. But I hadn't yet learned that not all "religious" people were like that, so I reasoned that all belief is shit.

Who knows? If my mom would've been more of a believer, I might have turned out that way, too. Or, I might've gone the other way — which I did anyway.

Perhaps ironically, I was president of my church youth group. But it was more about hooking up than getting "saved."

[LaraMN]

11. Lol!

I find it interesting, since my husband and I were raised in polar-opposite types of homes. To this

day, he doesn't believe in evolution :wow: and he's STAUNCHLY anti-abortion :wow: :wow: He and I could

hardly be more different, and we're both pretty immovable in our religious/non religious beliefs.

[Ladyhawk]

12. Fundamentalism made my brother and me flee.

I ended up atheistic and liberal. My brother ended up atheistic and Objectivist (as in Ayn Rand...ew!).

We were brought up very strictly in a fundamentalist Christian school. That school was nucking futs, but it seemed normal to me at the time. I shudder whenever I have to go near it these days. I sometimes daydream about confronting the people running it now and asking them how far the stick is rammed up their ass in comparison to their predecessors. I see the folks who peopled it around town and shudder. I dream of moving far, far away...

Anecdotal, but does that answer your question?

(A side note: my cousin was raised in a fundy Christian school, too, and she's sort of pagan, now.)

[LaraMN]

13. I wonder if the current wave of maniacal funditude will result in a new

outcropping of anti-religious rebellion in a few years, as kids raised in fundamentalist homes begin to think for themselves a bit? One can hope!

[Ladyhawk]

15. Most of the fundies I grew up with are still in the fold, however.

That's why I'm out of friends AND family.

[Mutley]

14. My immediate family

— mother, father and sister — is not religious at all, but my extended family is very devoutly Catholic. I turned out to be an atheist.

[City Lights]

16. I was raised in a religious house and no longer consider myself

a believer. The same is pretty much true for my two sisters, and my neice.

[NMMNG]

17. I knew nothing of God/religion until I was about 8

Then my mother got on a religion kick and began taking me and my sisters to church every week. Several years later she lost interest and stopped taking us. I'd go to church for a few months to a few years, then stop for a few months to a few years. Finally I lost my faith completely.


My friend Mike grew up in a house dominated by his strict Catholic father. Everything was sinful and forbidden. They couldn't watch most TV shows because they were too dirty or "too dramatic" (whatever that meant to the father). Even Little House on the Prairie would be turned off if it got "too dramatic", and Happy Days was too dirty because of all the girls Fonzie had fawning over him. Popular music was forbidden as were comics and most other things average kids take for granted. While Mike believes in God he despises organized religion.

[fizzgig]

18. i was raised in an interfaith home

i don't call my parents lapsed, but non-practicing

i am spiritual, agnostic and believe i can't define that which is bigger than us

culturally, i'm a good jewish woman with kick ass motzha ball soup who loves to cook and take care of those i love

i will say that i feel a pull toward judaism, but i can't say what that draw comes from. am i lost or lacking? i can't answer that

i light the candles on friday, but it is for the comfort of ritual, just as i put up the tree at christmas

edit: yes, there is a difference between the sabbath candles and the christmas tree, but for me, it is about tradition

[tjwmason]

19. It can go all sorts of different ways.

With a heavily religious household there is a good chance both of rebellion and of conformity.

With a moderately religious household there is the chance that it won't be perceived as anything major and thus left to lapse, or as nothing major but just kept up because it's always been there.

In my experience non-religious households have least chance of changing.

Anti-religious households (which I would view as distinct from merely non-religious) do often produce rebellion into religion (as it were), but often produce another generation with the same antipathy or even hostility to religion.

There are also many cases of rebellion within being religious. Many pagans were raised in quite conservative Christian circles. Many DUers speak of leaving the conservative religion of their parents for progressive/liberal religion; so too if one looks at the very conservative wings of religions (in this case I know Catholicism far better than any other) there are many young people who do seem to be rebelling against the liberalism of the '60s and '70s.

[wickerwoman]

20. I think probably the latter.

My grandparents had 12 kids between them. All went to Catholic school and none are now practicing Christians (although I don't know if they took the full plunge into atheism.) One of my uncles married a born again Christian and their three kids were raised in a fundie household (with my uncle away on business most of the time.) The two girls were both pregnant by sixteen and their son knocked up a girl when he was seventeen before he came out of the closet. I don't see any of them gate-crashing organized religion any time soon. My only other cousin (out of 32) who isn't an atheist or agnostic was pregnant at nineteen. So the most religious people in my family are having the most kids, but the number of atheists in the country keeps growing.

"one of the most significant findings involved growth in that segment of the adult population "identifying with no religion." In 1990, 14.3 million or roughly 8% identified with this category. The new ARIS count now shows that the non-believer population has grown to 29.4 million, roughly 14.1% of the American community."

http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheist4.htm

[slide to the left]

21. I was

We grew up never going to church or anything and I was extrememly religious all during college. Well, until the middle of my junior year when I started taking anti-depressants.

[bertha katzenengel]

22. my experience is a little different

No religion was observed in the house where i grew up, but my grandmother was a Mennonite. In the absence of Mennonite churches in her area she took me to Baptist church whenever we spent the weekend with her. I embraced that religion, became "born again" at age six, and until age 23 was a fundamentalist evangelical Christian.

Now i'm agnostic/atheist. (sometimes one, sometimes the other)

:shrug:

[windlight]

24. nothing against you

but i wonder how someone could be 'born again' at age 6?... It seems someone of 6 years wouldn't have enough life experience to know what they would be shedding by being 'born again'. Again nothing against you but i wonder what those Fundy's are thinking they are gaining by telling a 6 year old they are 'born again'

:shrug:

[bertha katzenengel]

25. I understand your wondering about this; no offense taken.

The Baptists* believe that there is an "age of accountability." There is an age by which a child knows it is a sinner and requires redemption or it will go to hell when it dies. If this child dies without being saved, they teach, it will go to hell.

So they teach the kids, in sunday school and vacation bible school, about original sin (there's a bible verse that says "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God"). They ask things like "have you ever lied to your mom" and "have you ever stolen a tootsie roll at the store," and show the kids that stuff like that is sin.

Then they teach them about hell.

Then they hit 'em with the cure. Another verse: "Unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

The Baptists teach that it's just a simple prayer: "Jesus, I know I'm a sinner. I confess my sins. Thank you for dying for my sins. Please come into my heart and make me a new person. Thank you."

That's why/how I became born again at the age of six. It is brainwashing, pure and simple, in its most sinister form.

* not sure if all of the different sects within "Baptist" teach this doctrine, but probably. Baptists are among the most strident of the "Bible is the literal word of God" camp.

[clyrc]

27. I grew up Southern Baptist, and this sounds right

The churches I went to weren't quite so intent on "saving" the really young, but you did get the heavy indoctrination and I was born again at age ten.

To answer the original question, I am now a Unitarian. I wonder if I became a Unitarian just because I can't let religion go completely. I have a Friend from high school who grew up Catholic but is now a Unitarian, and I wonder the same thing about her. On the other hand, I've known people who grew up in religious homes who aren't religious now, and vice versa.

[CabalPowered]

23. I was raised in a Mormon family. I never liked church

and one weekend when I was very young, we visited Temple Square in SLC. We got into the main exhibit and I asked my parents where are the gold plates that everyone keeps talking about. They said that they didn't know. After that I stopped going altogether. Turns out that question burned in my mom's head for years and she finally came to the same conclusion. No gold plates, nothing to worship. It's all a fairy tale.

*on edit: My best friend in HS who was never religious, dropped some acid at a Dead show and swears up and down he spoke with Jesus that evening. He's been a born-again ever since. :shrug:

[ulysses]

28. I grew up in a sort-of religious home.

Church every Sunday (United Methodist), my folks sang in the choir because they love music. Mom is fairly religious although not fundie by any stretch, Dad is a lifelong agnostic becoming strident in his later years, although he hid it very well when we were growing up. I did the youth group thing in my early teens and was a Biblical literalist there for a while. I'm agnostic now.

:shrug:

[Anarcho-Socialist]

29. I was born in an areligious household

I attended a Sunday School (for social reasons)
I attended an Anglican Church Primary School (because it was nearest). I pretty much accepted what they said about Jesus was true, but became very apathetic about religion as a teenager. I attended a Unitarian Universalist Church a few years back, and then in the last year or two I've attended Quaker Meetings.

My journey has gone from Christian, to universalist, to deist, and then ending up as a strong atheist. I still attend Quaker meetings because I feel comfortable there, there are some theists and some atheists there; most of all they're very nice people.