How were you raised?

[rug]

[Warpy]

1. Hard to answer that one

My mother was an Irish Catholic agnostic with a firm belief in reincarnation.

[rug]

2. Yeah, I don't know how to fit that.

Probably agnostic.

[aquart]

5. My mom is an adamant atheist Jew.

For years we used a Haggadah at Passover with every mention of God edited out.

[The_Commonist]

3. I was raised as a member of the...

...American Christmas Religion, with the deities Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

[rug]

4. I'll put you down as Outre.

[aquart]

6. Religions with presents are my favorite.

[obxhead]

8. ditto.

[Webster Green]

7. Catholic until the age of reason. (n/t)

[Laura902]

17. same here n/t

[jdlh8894]

9. All of the above

I was allowed to see all beliefs and was able to decide which one I wanted to follow.To this day,(@57)still haven't made up my mind!

[LiberalEsto]

10. Bored spitless

We attended Estonian Lutheran Church services from time to time. Services were sometimes 4 hours long. I gave that up when I was in my late teens, and became a Unitarian Universalist when I had kids. I have to say that UUs are seldom boring.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. By wolves.

[rug]

12. I'll put you down as Roman.

[onager]

28. By my family, when the wolves abandoned me.

n/t

[ZombieHorde]

13. I was raised Roman Catholic.

I was punished when I came out as an atheist.

I was eventually able to get out of Confirmation, and therefor Sunday School, when I vowed to swear my allegiance to Satan before the Priest.

I hated Sunday School. I don't think my instructors liked me very much. I would openly scoff at the bizarre things they would tell us, such as people literally living for hundreds of years.

I occasionally cheeked Christ's flesh during Holy Communion, asked to use the bathroom, spat His flesh into the urinal, and then pissed on it as an act of religious freedom.

My poor mother did not know what to do with me.

[Odin2005]

26. EPIC WIN "I vowed to swear my allegiance to Satan before the Priest."

:rofl:

[madmom]

14. When I was a kid, I went to the methodist church down the street, because it was

close and we could walk = parents, could sleep in. When I was older young teen we went to a church clear on the other side of town (don't even remember what kind) because someone picked us up and took us. Mom went to this one dad slept in. Now I belong to no church and really prefer it that way. I think we went as kids because of the peer pressure my folks got about religion and church because I really think my parents are atheists, or at least agnostic. It's just never a subject that we've discussed.

[darkstar3]

15. Southern Clusterf...

Oops, sorry, it was actually "Non-Denominational."

How do you get a "Non-Denominational" church? Well, you start with a base of Southern Baptist, then add a heaping helping of Assembly of God, season gingerly with Church of Christ, then add just a pinch of Methodism for that good old "somber" flavor. Present carefully as a "good-ole-fashioned, back-to-basics, bible-believin' Church-a-Gawd", and always remember to avoid the books of Leviticus and Malachi when reading the OT from the pulpit.

[struggle4progress]

16. I really wanted to voted "By elevator shoes" but it wasn't an option

[ZombieHorde]

19. Funny. nt

[OffWithTheirHeads]

18. I was raised as a Christian. It took me about 10 years to figure out

that it was all Bullshit. The crowning moment was when some Catholic nun told me that God was only available in the Catholic church. Come on! I figured out that this was bullshit when I was 10! Now I'm 60. Do you think my attitude has changed?

[Iggo]

20. Catholic.

It didn't take.

[vixengrl]

21. I put "Agnostic" but it's pretty variegated.

My mom is basically deist but often says things like, "in my next life I hope I'm taller" or displays a belief in precog (I think her sharp intuition is just a really high EQ) and she encouraged my spirituality--in a strictly ethical sense. She encouraged me to think about what my actions would mean for others--to think about morality in a "big picture way." But God was never mentioned. Ever. It was cool with her if I read comparative mythology, or if I had friends take me to their churches. At the end of the day, what mattered was whether or not I was trying to be a good person.

My dad is almost anti-theist. His Marine dog-tags said "No preference". He told me several irreverent stories about how he saw organized religion as kind of a scam--he is very practical. His own parents were both professed Lutherans--but his father left home as a very young man and during the depression, when he had no money, consented to be baptised several times just to have the buffet after. His mother was of mixed up-bringing--her Irish father was a blasphemous Catholic, her mom and the off-the-boat German grandparent who raides her were Lutherans--she sang in either church. She was like my mom--be good and hang out with good people, was the important thing.

My parents understand my atheism as my honest expression of a rejection of faith and superstition-based answers for why we're here and what we're doing. They don't really discuss it with me though they are aware of it since I'm a little vocal about it. To get an idea of our situation--I come down on Saturdays to visit with them and my brother and the dog. When Bill Maher's show is on, we watch a VHS recording of it. (How old school!--but HBO doesn't have the on-demand up that soon!) And we go on about politics a little and sometimes about the religious right. If my parents were more computer-oriented, I think they'd like DU! And when there's no Real Time we talk about what's on CNN. Or the advance copy of the Sunday Inquirer.

Very rarely I suppose that "Democrat" is the actual religion I was raised in. I've had more political conversation with my folks about economic justice, unions, energy policy, etc, than we ever talked about religion. We go on about foreign policy--does any family do that?

But from when I was a baby on--not a lot of god-talk.

[ironbark]

22. By the extremely diverse family/community influences of

Agnostic/Atheist, Christian Socialists and Aboriginal belief…who exposed me to literature, members and influence of even more diverse beliefs- Jewish, Moslem, Theosophists and Hindu.

The “raising” is not finished.

[Vampire Knight]

23. Hard to figure.

When I was really little, we went to a Baptist church. It was my mom's upbringing. One time, we were late to church. I was about 4 or 5. I was trying to be unobtrusive about being late because naturally when you walk into places like this even the slightest bit late, everyone has to crane their neck around to watch disapprovingly your every move toward your appointed pew. I found this understandably discomfiting. So later when I and my younger sister were in the children's church or whatever, the preacher himself came over to excoriate me for "acting ashamed of the Lord". I never forgot that. We left a few years later and did not go to church again for a while.

The next time my parents decided to go to church, I was in middle school. For no really apparent reason, they decided to go to a Methodist church. The only thing I can figure was that it was the prettiest one in town, and thus the most attractive. It was also where all the influential townies went. You know the set: elite, Republican, rich, hypocrites. Even though we went every Sunday, my sisters and I played music and sang in the choir and went to youth events; we were still made to feel like second class citizens. The other women envied my mom because my sisters and I did not go nuts and get drunk and have sex like their children did. Eventually, it became abundantly clear that we were unwelcome, and one by one, we stopped going. Nevertheless, and I'll never understand why, my mom and my youngest sister still consider themselves Methodists, even though they have not set foot in a Methodist church in over a decade.

I don't consider myself either. I'm a Christian, but I'm not a "brand-name Christian". Some people rebel against their upbringing by becoming less religious than their parents. But my parents were never really, truly that into it anyway. I rebelled by becoming far more devoted; not to a particular denomination, but to God Himself, undiluted by human religion.

[PassingFair]

24. Half Breed.

Mom is Episcopalian, Dad "preferred to worship privately".

I miss my Dad.

:cry:

[Odin2005]

25. ECLA Lutheran. Now an Atheist.

[BurtWorm]

27. Other: Non-religious.

Not really atheist or agnostic. Not really any defined religion either. We were unchurched early and not really encouraged or discouraged in any kind of belief or non-belief.

[JerseygirlCT]

29. Raised Roman Catholic

(of the Irish type...), now Episcopalian.

Married to an agnostic Jew.

[iris27]

30. Beer-swilling, wannabe-German, middle-finger-to-the-Catholics LCMS Lutheran.

My path away started with questioning their stance on gender (women weren't allowed to vote at church meetings until I was a teen, no female pastors, really no women anywhere in the front of the church unless they were singing, etc). It ended with the inability to accept "free will" as an answer to why a loving God would ever even allow such a thing as hell to exist.

[Jokerman]

31. I was born an Atheist and my parents never tried to change that.

I wasn't raised specifically as an Atheist but I see that as the default position. I received no religious indoctrination whatsoever from my parents.

[raccoon]

32. Raised Methodist. Thank goodness, my mother wasn't a fundie. nt

[mycatfred]

33. I put myself as Buddhist

Because My parents were everything. Well. . . Everything and not.
I have really-high-up-and-even-written-about-in-the-book-of-Mormon ancestry on my mom's side, along with being largely Blackfoot Native-American. On my dad's side I have staunch but uncaring Catholic relatives that date back to when we they still lived in Ireland and Germany in the 1700s.
My mother is a Buddhist/ Spiritual (as in Native-American ceremony and practice) and my dad is a "I hate Christians, God, and I really hope I get reincarnated into a cat owned by me in my next life" Type of religion.
I guess you could say we were rather Agnostic, but I was open to try every religion I wanted too. When I was little it was all about Native-American things (Sweat lodges, drumming, vision quest, breath work), as I grew slightly older, I became interested in Southern Baptist because my neighbor friends were. That lasted a little while until they told me my wonderful, kind-hearted-non-sinning grandparents were going to Hell because they were Catholic, then I dropped them as friends and Southern Baptist as a religion option. Then I went onto Catholicism. I liked it, in mass we got to sing a lot, but there was so much hypocrisy behind it that I kind of drifted away. And wound up in the hands of a few extremely nice Mormon girls and a Mormon boy that I was convinced I was in love with. So, of course, I decided to try being LDS. But, I think I knew all along that I didn't really want to be any kind of Christian religion. I'd always had my eye on Buddhism, it always seemed to be so real and peaceful, and my mom had always wanted to try it out for herself.
My very best friend is a Mormon, and we have much in common, just usually not politics. We even have some religion topics we agree with, and ideals, but we are different and she knows it and she has never tried to convert me.

Sorry if I rambled.

[hyphenate]

34. Catholics don't consider themselves

"Christian." There are Catholics, and there are Protestants.

I grew up Catholic, and lapsed in my teens. Couldn't take the hypocrisy anymore.

[trotsky]

35. Encouraging.

Polls that ask about current belief are dominated by atheists & other non-believers. Yet this poll shows the vast majority of us started out as believers. Good to see that religion is losing its followers so drastically.