If you were raised religious but left the faith...

[GazillionthNameChange]

What's your engagement with the faith now, and how does your family feel about it?

My parents raised us in a specific faith and still actively adhere to that faith. Out of us adult siblings, two are no longer practising and one has been clear that she no longer believes at all. I am still an adherent of the faith and have recently been getting a little hurt that there is zero acknowledgement of the faith celebrations/occasions we were all brought up with. I feel like just because they have chosen to leave the faith doesn't mean they can't wish the half of the family who are still practising good wishes or thoughts on these occasions and acknowledge our shared memories and traditions. People completely outside the faith who I work with will do it but my own siblings don't, which I find puzzling. They do know when these occasions are but they either don't care at all, or actively avoid any mention of religion. If I ever say anything about doing Lent (for example) they will pass right over it and they will never proactively mention anything about it or ask how it's going, even though they know it's very important to half the family.

I get that religion is an emotive topic and I know my parents have been deeply saddened by the choices of these siblings. Even so we are all adults now and I feel like they could at least try and show respect for the traditions we were brought up with by acknowledging occasions at a bare minimum, even if it's just a 'happy X'. I'm trying to understand it from their perspective - I respect whatever choices they've made and never try to preach, but maybe there's something I'm missing here? To me it feels like a constant elephant in the room and adds tension to otherwise fairly happy/routine family chats and interactions.

@Kurtanforpm

And people have said over the years that they can’t understand how I can say I believe in God but not follow a religion.

I don’t thing the two go hand in hand. Religion is about control. God isn’t.

Do you think there is a force of love which operates in the world?

Those of you who left, did you ever know one person or priest in the church who was very ok, actually, or were they all awful?

I was raised around a faith that I never felt part of somewhat because I didn't have the right beliefs or thoughts. I went to faith schools and spent my whole childhood feeling othered and like I was wrong because I couldnt make myself believe what everyone around me did.
Everything relating to the faith makes me feel uncomfortable and as if I am listening to people talk about a cult. I keep myself away from it all

@upinaballoon no, I don’t believe in any force or higher power. I believe in the God with a big white beard up in heaven who is Jesus Dad

I just don’t believe that you have to go to a church. I don’t believe Jesus wanted people to congregate around effigies of him and be made to feel terrible about themselves and to give that church money.

I’ve met some truly awful priests in my time. But the vilest, most miserable and nasty were the nuns. What’s the fucking point of living that life if you hate it so much you turn into a vile, hateful of hag?

@upinaballoon did you ever know one person or priest in the church who was very ok, actually, or were they all awful? They were just gullible pawns - they had no impact on me as individuals - it was the institution that backed them, the culture, the shame, the guilt, the blind compulsory faith - the lack of choice, the threats, using religion and God to serve personal agendas, the very boring services that felt like a form torture at times, as did the praying especially when my mother decided we had to do the Rosary every night The enforced lentern period, The "holy joes" who were nasty, judgemental gossips made to feel like somebody because they devotedly attended every service possible to attend. The whole bloody, rotten lot of them.and their pius bullshit was suffocating. And where there was a lovely priest the whole community would swarm around them like flies on shite - just to get a moment with the lovely priest - the superstar - the whole thing grated on my nerves and I had no choice but to put up with it - so do I want to be reminded of how lovely being Christian was - no!
Best bits - a drunk at midnight mass - that was always funny, a dog joining the service, being finally allowed sweets and chocolate after being put on an involuntary fast. The money you got for making your first holy communion and confirmation and the new outfit - nothing spiritual - I don't have a spiritual bone in my body!
See - that's how conversations about religion go...😂

@upinaballoon yes I've known some wonderful clergy. I noticed that a congregation with a nice/dynamic minister was harmonious and effective and a congregation with a difficult minister was much more difficult. It became rather obvious that there wasn't any supernatural involvement in either situation.

@Thewheelsfalloffthebus This is the reason why I haven't said anything to date. I have never asked them what their views are and we talk about other things. To me it does feel like we are talking around it, given that it was one of our defining features as a family and I have no idea why they chose to no longer practise the faith or how they feel about it now - but maybe this is the safest and least painful approach for everyone.

I've tried my very best to remain open-minded and respectful of people's views and I thank everyone for sharing their views respectfully. I do think though that it's unfair to generalise about all religious people and religious institutions - we aren't some kind of monolith! The overwhelming majority of people globally adhere to some kind of faith and everyone experiences faith differently. I'm sorry to everyone who has been hurt or damaged by a faith but for me it brings something positive to my life and I'm not strongly affiliated with any particular organised institution - it is more about my individual connection with God and incorporating my faith into everything I do through practice and good character. I don't need to preach or sing it from the rooftops and I know a lot of people would hate it if I did I will be mindful of not reading too much into my siblings' silence on the topic and if I ever do broach the topic (which I might never do) I'll endure to be open to hearing whatever they have to say and respect whatever their boundaries are.

Many people who have left a religion which was imposed upon them by their family will I guess feel quite angry (or have other negative feelings).

I feel like I lost an enormous amount of time and energy as a child in the pursuit of something which was at best pointless, and in fact I think highly damaging. And when as an adult you discover that the very foundations of your life and upbringing are based on a fiction it's difficult (and arguably too late) to rebuild on a solid foundation, and that leaves a huge gap.

I certainly don't feel just neutral, ambivalent or non-committal to the religion, like I would if my parents enjoyed going to opera but it was just not really for me. It's as much as I can do not to be openly hostile about it.

My sadness is more around feeling like something that was central to our cultural identity, memories and traditions as a family, doesn't even get acknowledged now.

I think this might be what is really causing issues OP, because it means you avoid talking about parts of your shared past even when it's not directly about religion.

I think your best bet is just to ask, it could be that everyone is avoiding the topic just because they think others would be upset about it.

But not to be able to talk about things like, "hey, remember at that church picnic when the priest got the egg spoon stuck up his nose... " is really not a very positive thing for a family. It could be that everyone finds it too horribly painful to talk about even these little things, but I kind of doubt that's the case. It seems more likely that at some point it became awkward and no one knows how to move out of that.

I grew up Catholic. Mass every Sunday & holy day, communion, confession, Catholic schools where I was taught by nuns, the lot. My brother was an altar boy, but my genitalia disqualified me from that position.

By the time I was a teenager I hated church, and by 16, I had had enough. I was never particularly devout, and as I got older my faith collapsed as I became increasingly disgusted by the church’s appalling misogyny & homophobia. One Sunday morning, it came to a head when I refused to go to mass. This caused a massive family row, during which I said things which my parents and grandparents found very hurtful & upsetting. By that point, I was past caring. I was done with religion and I have only set foot in a church a handful of times, eg for weddings & funerals since.

Even now, religion is something me & my parents can’t really talk about. For many years, they thought my rejection of religion was ‘a phase’, and their lack of respect for my views only caused further resentment. These days we just agree to differ and avoid the subject.

I was raised Christian (dad is a Reverend so it was a very strictly Christian upbringing) and left the faith in my early adult years. I don't mind going to Church occasionally with my parents when I visit them, and will happily wish them happy Christmas/Easter etc. I still celebrate them as well (though in the secular way) and miss many aspects like the Church community but I am very strictly against my children being taught religion as fact (my school age child doesn't go to religious education classes in school for instance, does an ethics class instead) and so I'm much more wary of anything conversations with family that go down that line.
I do try to discourage the children from saying things like "oh my god" around my parents though, as I don't want to upset them.

My parents were seen to be very religious, we were taken to church, Sunday school, had to do the Scripture Exam every year (really!) and were expected to read our bible from choice. Every activity had to be church related.

My father would come home from
Church and lose his temper over some minor thing and physically attack us children. But he'd been to church so he was a good man.

I never go to church now, Christmas is just for presents and good food and I prefer to try to live a good life, not hypocritical like many "Christians" that I know.

@upinaballoon I've met some lovely pastors and clergy through the Railway Mission, a group of people who provide religious support to railway workers in London and the home counties. They just pop up unannounced sometimes and we have a chat...but they also provide Christian support to believers after a major incident. As I've stated, I'm an atheist...but that doesn't exclude me from having a laugh with a preacher. Similarly we once had an Imam visit and he was a lovely bloke. Although we don't have God/Allah in common we can agree on being charitable, on treating people fairly, and helping people in need.

I think that's what OP should focus on, which is what she and her relatives have in common, not what divides them.

"my faith collapsed" a poster has written, and other people say that they have lost their faith. I tend to want to ask what the faith was in. Have they stopped believing, for instance, that Jesus Christ was 'the 0nly-begotten Son of God' or that a Jesus ever existed? Do they mean they were just so fed up with the rules of a church that they rebelled against the church rather than against what Jesus might have been teaching? I know someone who 'lost his faith' over a family death.

I cannot speak about other religions because I don't know enough about them.

The first thing I lost was the belief in original sin, as a young adult - a horrible Calvinist man was pontificating on this, in front of my vicar's wife, who was pregnant. It was deeply insulting to believe that she would have a sinful damned baby. A lot of Christian theology just unravels once you don't believe in that - after all, that's why God sent his son to be incarnated and to die for us. And the afterlife - I have no wish for eternal life and it's quite clear that the universe is not timeless and that eternity doesn't exist. So the big gift lost its appeal. It increasingly made no sense that Jesus was both divine and human. Why? The miracles? They're not appealing to a modern reader imo. Raising the dead? Walking on water? Producing wine for a party? Can God override physics and time now - He clearly doesn't, so either he could and doesn't, or he can't. Do we only believe if He does magic tricks?

I was still open to the idea of God for a long time. I visited a church where they spoke in tongues and then came up with 2 competing interpretations. I visited a Quaker meeting house and found the focus very much on pushing your own way into the faces of others - unexpected. And then my husband's schizophrenia began to worsen, and I haven't found any religion with adequate theology on mental illness. It's just a great big silence. He clearly didn't have free will when he was psychotic. He was in pain and fear all the time. He heard God speak only whrn in psychosis and those were some pretty odd things that He said.

In the end, it is too painful to believe that God could help us but doesn't. For a while I believed that he couldn't help us but was a presence. And then I understood that I could only have peace knowing there is no God.

I was brought up CofE (christened and confirmed) by my mum but once I got to 15/16 I stopped going to church. There was no big falling out or anything. I cant actually remember when I stopped and what conversation was had about it. I had my own DC christened but we are not regular attenders. However, I still do write "C of E' on forms for either me or them.

My faith didn't collapse. Tbh I'm not sure I actually ever had it. I now firmly don't believe in an afterlife. However, I do quite like going to church when I do go and enjoy the New Testament teachings.

I think it depends a lot on family attitudes.

Dsis pretty much stopped any observance of being Jewish after her bat mitvzah, having told our parents that was her intention and parents were fine with it and we all love her husband who isn't Jewish with whom she had a civil wedding. She will participate in Jewish family stuff and wants her son to have a sense of his Jewish identity - something she wouldn't have done if my parents had kicked up a fuss about the issue.

DNephew has done the same, only he didn't even have a bar mitzvah but he was clear he wasn't interested and his parents totally accepted that.

I don't get why some parents seem to think they can guilt or stonewall their kids into following a religion - what makes them think that will work or that any 'faith' professed after someone's had that done to them can be in any sense genuine and therefore meaningfyl?

@upinaballoon

"my faith collapsed" a poster has written, and other people say that they have lost their faith. I tend to want to ask what the faith was in. Have they stopped believing, for instance, that Jesus Christ was 'the 0nly-begotten Son of God' or that a Jesus ever existed? Do they mean they were just so fed up with the rules of a church that they rebelled against the church rather than against what Jesus might have been teaching? I know someone who 'lost his faith' over a family death.

I cannot speak about other religions because I don't know enough about them.

You are referring to my post.

I went from believing in a supernatural god, and and believing that Jesus was the son of god who performed miracles, died on the cross & was resurrected etc etc and believing that the Catholic Church was a caring, benevolent organisation to being a complete atheist who saw the church for the abusive, corrupt misogynistic organisation it really is.

That nicely sums up my experience too, @Libertaire.