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]

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_.

[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.)

[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.

[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".

[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.

[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.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.