You know, I keep forgetting what "ecumenical" _means_.

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1718152]

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Where's the check-mark for "very involved in a religious community, but one considered somewhat irreligious/liberal by orthodox/conservative co-religionists"?

[andrewducker]

If there was religion in it every day, multiple times per day, and all decisions were tinged with said religion, then that's probably "very", even if said religion didn't involve foaming at the mouth and harrassing people in the street to convert.

But I've deliberately left it up to people to decide themselves how religious they feel their upbringing was. Polls are too simple to do much more than that.

(And comments are always good.)

[andrewducker]

I _did_ used to believe in the soul, because I believed in Free Will, and felt that therefore there had to be a soul in order for that to work.

And then I realised that this was inverted logic, and that it made far more sense to throw out Free Will (which has ceased to actually mean anything to me as a concept), than to invent a "soul", which I couldn't actually define anything coherent about anyway, in order to defend it.

And that's as close as I've ever got to active belief in anything supernatural. Except at three am when I go to the toilet, when I am completely convinced by the belief that there are zombies _right behind me_.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I similarly believe many horrible, supernatural things in the dead of night that I find laughable in the day. It's just evolutionary programming to make you have .

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

My stepmom is a staunch catholic and my dad is an episcopalian who as far as I can tell is completely indifferent to religion.

Personally, these days, I mostly believe in the Greek/Roman gods because the more I learn about the world the more it seems likely that different personalities were involved in creating it/managing it.

I'm also not convinced the gods are particularly interested in us. We were probably fun to play with at first, but more likely than not they have some new toys to play with someplace else in the universe by now.

[andrewducker]

Oh, and my parents weren't at all religious, but my school was a Church of England school. Although that didn't actually make it very religious itself - we got a brief reading each morning that was frequently more "moral" than religious, and RE lessons covered all sorts of religions.

[kmusser]

Raised Catholic by my mother and switched to Neo-Paganism in college - my mother and I continue to be active in our respective religious communities.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

My grandmother quoted to me on several different occasions that religion was the opiate of the masses, and that some people needed it, and that was okay. However I got a daily dose of religion at school, which continued into secondary school. In hindsight, I actually really resent being forced to endure prayer time. Singing is nice, and the stories are interesting, but talking to a random being which may or may not exist?! Bah!

I tried being more religious in school, but I just couldn't manage it. I couldn't wind my brain around the concept of god and the holy spirit and souls.

I studied dualism and the issue of the mind and body, I'm sure there was some mention of the soul at some point but my brain has failed to remember that information. Although, I do like Jung's collective unconscious as an enjoyable mental game.

I think the most religiousness I experience now, is a greater awareness and acceptance that we are all "connected". This also manifests in my wish that the inequality gap would narrow, as it leads to better healthcare and education and quality of life for all.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

I feel slightly better about praying since I've realised that - for many religious people, at least - it's really for the benefit of the prayer, not the prayee.. who, after all, presumably knows everything you want already.

Not that it's something I'm inclined to spend any time doing myself, but it seems a bit less insane to me now, at least.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I note the considerable gap between "very" and "a little", and point out the yawning gulf between religion and faith.

I also mention the inability to tick both "as religious as my parents" and "something more complex".

The yawning gulf between religion and faith

[0olong.livejournal.com]

I wonder if you'd be up for saying a bit more about that?

[khoth.livejournal.com]

My dad is Christian and my mum atheist. Religion was never discussed at home, but I went to church/sunday school every week until age, umm, twelvish I think, when I'd stopped believing it and started annoying people there.

[andabusers.livejournal.com]

Went to Church schools when I was growing up but parents consider themselves atheists although they also hold some religious/spiritual/weird beliefs.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

I've ticked boxes but it is all rather more complicated than that suggestions. My father is an atheist but my mother is an agnostic cultural Christian, who brought me up to believe that being a good Christian was about how you treated people, and I went to a CofE school. As a young teenager I went to Church for about a year and then decided it didn't fit with my beliefs, which in hindsight have been pagan for most of my life. At university, I found out about paganism but I've never been active in the community and since then have wavered between some practice and basically none at all (if we accept religious practice to be the bells and whistles rather than living your everyday life according to your principle and beliefs) but I do intend to have a pagan wedding.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I was Christened as a child too, at my grandmother's church.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

Between the ages of 7 and 11, I went to a C of E boarding school, with prayers before and after every meal, at assembly and 2 hours of church on Sunday. None of it meant anything to me, it just felt silly, and I was an atheist from as early as I can remember. When I came to university, I was brought along with some of my friends to the Christian Union, but again I found no connection whatsoever, and I gave up trying after about a year. I was also put off by what felt like brainwashing, and the anti-evolution propaganda that's rife.

Later on I found that pagan activities felt considerably more natural, and 'appropriate'. I'm still an atheist (with occasional feelings of connectedness that I put down to brain chemistry), but I'm now involved in the pagan community considerably more.

As for my parents: my mother was raised Methodist and actively rejected it; however, she had me christened in a C of E church just to annoy my grandparents! The C of E school was mostly because it was a good school, not because of the religious side. My dad never mentioned religion to me in his life, and was quite irreverent according to my mother, but apparently (according to my step-mother, of whose opinions I am rather distrustful) he converted to Christianity during the six weeks between being diagnosed with cancer and dying; he had a Christian funeral.

I think my mother is becoming more pagan (by virtue of the number of hares decorating the house), and says she wants a humanist funeral; not sure about my step-dad as he never talks about religion either.

[xipuloxx.livejournal.com]

I'd have liked an option to the first question somewhere between "very" and "a little"! As doug says, there's a considerable gap there -- actually an enormous gap, I'd say.

But I was raised in the unquestioning belief that there was a God out there who blah blah blah -- even though my parents are and were of different religions, they agree on that -- and it took me a long time to fully escape that indoctrination. Sadly, I seem to have been the only member of my family to do so. So I reckon "very" will do!

I wish children today weren't still subjected to that brainwashing, though. Constantly being told that God is (or gods are) a fact, they grow up with their ability to rationally analyse facts totally deformed. And then they become climate change denialists. ;)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

my mother is a Catholic, seems pretty much a believer, married to a Protestant and so not 'allowed' for many years to actually properly practice her religion. I don't understand the details at all, so don't ask me. Also my dad was against any of us (including Mum) having any contact with the Catholic Church. His father, my grandfather, was a Kirk elder (and high up in the Masons), but I never saw/was involved in any of that, nor was Dad, at least not in my lifetime. He himself seems, I think, to believe in God of a Christian ilk (it's hard to tell, he never talks about such things at all, maybe doesn't even think about them much) but is definitely not-at-all into any form of organised religion.

I'm anti-religion in general - whilst accepting that the community/social side of any church can be its own good thing in its own way.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I think there is too much gap between 'very' and 'a little'. I wouldn't say I was 'very', because there wasn't much overt religion in every day life - no grace before meals, no 'what would Jesus do' active religion in the family. But I did get sent to Sunday school every week, which feels more than 'a little'...

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

I learned Christianity on Sundays, and Buddhism the other six days of the week.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

It is rather complex, but I wrote an LJ entry of my own about this a few weeks back so I shan't bore the world with it all again ;-)

[strangemeetings.livejournal.com]

1. Fairly half arsed catholic upbringing thanks to my mum being lapsed, but lots of heavy religious pressure from the extended family.
2. About as religious (well, irreligious) as my mum, substantially less than my dad.
3. Having done the guilt and attempts to follow the faith, then the rebellious pagan phase, I've now happily settled on agnostic, finding the Church's stance on the predictable issues morally reprehensible, and conceding that even if I'm not religious, culturally, i'm always going to be a Catholic in some sense even if I'd prefer not to be. Can't choose your heritage...

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Raised to have almost Dawkinsite levels of anti-religious fury, now accept that other people may have good reasons for their beliefs, though I don't share them.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I accept that religious people may have reasons for their beliefs, but I've never heard any I'd describe as "good reasons". Would you mind expanding on that?

[cosmolinguist]

I ticked 'Very' for the first question, because it was, certainly by British standards but more importantly I thought it was. But it was in a very subdued kind of way. I absolutely had to be in church every week; I remember only vaguely being sick enough once to be allowed to stay home. We went to church when we were on holiday. We went before we could go trick-or-treating (the next day being one of the dreaded holy days of obligation, and my dad not able to attend church during working hours, we had to go the evening before). We prayed before meals, we had to go to CCD (like Sunday school only not on Sundays, it instead used up Wednesday evenings), and the morals of the community I grew up in clearly were influenced strongly by the fact that everybody is religious -- to the point where just last week my mom was telling me how awful it was that a baby had been born out of wedlock, despite that its parents have been co-habiting for years. But despite all this, we were not the sort of American religious caricatures you see on telly; no speaking in tongues, no blaming earthquakes on heathens or gays... though most of the people I grew up with would probably be deeply homophobic if it ever occurred to them to think about gay people at all, they are much more reserved, expecting the younger generations to absorb their conservativism through osmosis or something, it being 'common sense' after all.

I dithered between ticking 'very' and 'a little' but went with the former because it's left such a deep impact on my thinking, even if that is now in the force of overcoming the assumptions I was taught to make, and it's also a big reason there's such a gulf between my parents and I, so many things I don't want to talk about with them, because their religious worldview leaves them thinking in a way that would require them to either change their connection to either it or me if they knew some of the things they don't, and I don't think there's much else they hold as dear as me, except religion.

Which is odd for people who never ever talk about it. But there you go.

you had to go and ask, didn't you?

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this pretty much tracks with my experience and is something I would probably describe as 'religion as community' - I was brought up by my grandparents, so religion was just What We Did. We went to church twice on a Sunday for a good portion of my very young childhood - we would drive about 8 miles to the Kirk my grandfather had been attending basically since childhood (with gaps when he wasn't living in the area) because my grandparents had so many ties with the community there, and then we'd race away from that church to arrive (usually five or ten minutes late) to our local Kirk in the town where we lived. So two services, two Sunday Schools, every Sunday. Then we'd visit my grandfather's siblings down Stranraer way and this would sometimes involve a prayer meeting depending on what his crazy gospel hall lay preacher older brother was up to that day - certainly it would always involve religiously themed colouring books/reading material.

We said grace before dinner with religious company and when we remembered but it wasn't a big thing and was abandoned once my sister and I got a little older - we just got out of the habit I guess.

After a Gospel Hall caravan began doing a yearly six-week Thursday night stint up the road from us, I ended up somehow signing up for postal bible lessons every week for years, where you read a passage and then you'd answer questions on it, often having to hunt around the text and search through other parts of the bible to answer the questions that were asked. This would usually involve colouring-in at some point also as an antidote to all the bible reading but I actually have pretty positive memories of my religious education - over the years the text got smaller and the questions got harder and I remember the sense of pride you got looking back at what you were doing a few years ago and seeing where you'd advanced to.

Said Gospel Hall/Bible lessons came from an east coast based evangelical (bi-polar happy clappy/WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH born-agains) organisation who also ran Christian Youth Camps and so I ended up attending several summer camps which were a mixture of immense amounts of fun playing team sports with kids who were for the most part significantly politer and easier to be around than the kids I was at school with, and borderline mental torture that I personally found myself happily immune to but which made me worry about the kids around me and what they were going to take away from this strange brainwashing to be 'saved'. These were folk who made girls wear berets to prayers, for goodness' sake.

The whole experience left me feeling that church twice on a Sunday was one thing, but there was no need to be all religious about it, and I realised that although both my grandparents most certainly believe in God and are not faking it, and I have no doubt worry for my immortal soul, they're basically pretty laid-back about the whole thing.

Anyway, after we moved to Arran we lived next to the church but only went once a Sunday, although it meant a lot more helping out at events and stuff. I went from attending Sunday School to teaching it (or really just 'helping' - I was never a lone teacher) or manning the creche, whatever it took to avoid service, then realised at around fifteen that nobody cared any more and started popping in for the first fifteen minutes up in the gallery and then sneaking out when the Sunday School did and going back home to bed or to watch telly. I never took communion, but then the Kirk isn't terribly big on communion anyway, they only do it like four times a year.

Anyway, the upshot is that I was born an atheist just the same as I was born brown-eyed and gay, and although I may have pretended otherwise now and again I was never in any personal doubt that there was no God, that religion was a combination of a strange mystical smokescreen and a giant hypocrisy machine, and that it would probably be best if I never put it quite like that to my grandparents.

And you've heard all this before of course, Andy. But you know I can't let a post on religion pass me by without some sort of overlong commentary.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

My upbringing included 10 years of Hebrew school (4 1/2 hours/week for most of it), but the family wasn't very observant otherwise.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, despite being raised by Baptist Missionaries in Israel, I've never felt more comfortable with my own spirituality as I do now that I've been free of the hypocrisy of the Churches I've been press-ganged into attending.

[innerbrat]

Where's the box for:

"I grew up in a limited theocracy, with compulsory prayer, religious ceremonies and hymn singing at my nominatively secular state school, so although my parents are staunchly anti religious, I thought we were C of E because all white people are C of E."

?

[innerbrat]

Though having said that, apparently some people growing up in England managed to do so with an actively anti-religious education, so apparently not every school in the country was as religious as mine.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Parents were/are atheists, I'm an atheist. I couldn't describe my upbringing as "actively anti-religious" but I did find and read a copy of Russell's "Why I Am Not a Christian" at an impressionable age....

[kashandara.livejournal.com]

While I've said that I'm more religious I think I should clarify that in that I believe the faith I have to be more ingrained than that of my parents, although perhaps on a parallel to my grandparents who were more responsible for the religion I experienced as a child than my parents were.

That said, it's in a completely different way and completely different religion, having been brought up High Kirk and taken to church every Sunday and regularly on other days until my Grandfather died when there was no-one to arrange the whole clan into going, and now being staunchly anti-organised religion but still believing in my own, non-Christian, things and having a faith that I mostly make up as I go along. If it's my faith then it all comes from within me anyway, so why should anyone else get an opinion about it! =)

[makyo.livejournal.com]

Father atheist, mother went to Sunday school when a child, but has rarely set foot in a church since. Was subjected to several years of the usual default CofE school assembly and bible stories in RE lessons. Joined local church¹ choir when I was about twelve or thirteen (I like singing) and decided I was a Christian. After a while it dawned on me that most of it sounded pretty implausible and I concluded that I didn't actually believe a word of it. Left choir a while later (due mainly to pressure of school work) and have been fairly devout agnostic (albeit one who is still actively interested in religion) since. From time to time, ardent theists or atheists try to convince me, often quite insistently, that I'm actually one of them, but just in denial about it. (It doesn't work, and only annoys the pig.)


¹Our erstwhile curate (Fr Andrew Burnham) was on the news a few weeks back: he ended up as a bishop and was one of the three who have just gone over to Rome to set up this Ordinariate.