How do you feel about your childhood experience of religion?

[nomorespaghetti]

Growing up in the 90s I went to a very white C of E primary, went to church & Sunday school, but we weren’t super religious at home. As a child I didn’t get a lot of comfort from Christianity, my main takeaway from the experience was that god knew everything I thought, and I should be ashamed of basically everything I did/thought, and I would go to hell if I wasn’t “good”.

When I was maybe 8 or 9 my mum mentioned that some people believe different things, and some people don’t believe in god at all. It was an absolute revelation - I never knew that was an option! It took me a while to accept that I didn’t believe (and a lot of guilt/shame), but basically I realised I was an atheist.

My kids are having a very different experience. Me and DH are both atheist. Kids school is not a faith school, and around 75% Muslim children. We’ve talked a lot about why different people observe different festivals, and DD7 knows more about Ramadan, Eid, Diwali than e.g. Easter. I’ve explained that daddy and me don’t believe in god and we don’t have a religion, lots of other people have different religions, and that they can decide when they are grownups if they want to join a religion or not. We celebrate Easter and Christmas as spring and winter festivals, not religious festivals.

I overheard DD saying to her friend last week that she doesn’t have a religion or believe in god (friend was a bit shocked and came to check with me that she’d heard right!) I’m really glad she doesn’t seem to have the guilt/shame hangups that I did as a child.

It made me think a lot about how Christianity being taught as fact to me at school as a child was really not good for me. I’m interested to know other people’s experiences of religion in childhood, and how they’ve influenced them as adults, or how you feel about those early experiences now?

I served seven years in a convent school taught by devout and educated women who'd devoted their lives to God but who the RC church didn't consider good enough to administer sacraments. A man would be parachuted in to say mass and the women would be stuck with the washing up. Everything I ever needed to know about Catholicism right there.

This was also my experience. My mother was quite religeous and dad went along to please her. She got great support and comfort from it and was very respectful and keen on learning about other faiths
My DC exactly the same. We live in an area of zero diversity and their village school was 100% white British CofE. It had a gentle family ethos with a bit of church at Christmas and harvest festival.
Both are now adults and atheist but very tolerant.

The worst of religeon is intolerance and dogmatism. That can also apply to atheists.

Went to convent schools. From an Anglican family but my mother felt the Catholic schools did more religious stuff so sent me there.
I despised it. Did get an A in GCSE RE though.

Had nightmares regularly about hell. Many of the nuns were absolutely horrendous. Mean, bullying, harsh. The head mistress nun of my primary school.was particularly horrible. Would shame anyone she hadn't seen on church the previous Sunday at Monday assembly.

I find religion oppressive, controlling, ridiculous. None of it makes sense.

Am now a confirmed atheist.

I went to a non religious school. Only white children. Religion was taught as fact in the same manner English lessons were. We had daily assemblies in which we had to sing hymns.
The story of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden was taught as fact. I spend my childhood and early adulthood believing that females were evil and lesser than males because God said they were.
I’m an atheist now. I’m quite dismissive of all religions and shut off immediately if anyone ever trys to justify themselves by quoting religion.

A bit weird, honestly.

I went to a supposedly non-denominational primary school, but we still sang hymns in assembly and went to the church for various events.

We had quite a lot of kids from other religions as it was a diverse London borough, as well as atheists of course. They didn’t really go into anything other than Christianity as an option, and the stories and songs about God were definitely taught as fact.

The exception was ONE time when a girl from a Sikh family was asked to stand up and do a ‘show and tell’ about one of her traditions. That was it. I remember even as a kid thinking kids from other cultures seemed left out.

Looking back as an adult, it was obviously the very pushy Christian headmaster!

Sorry, non-religious that should say!

I grew up a Catholic. Mass every Sunday, communion, confession, confirmation, convent schools. The lot. My brother was an altar boy, but my lack of the requisite genitalia disqualified me from that role.

When I was around 10, we were taught the story of doubting Thomas, the disciple who refused to believe in the resurrection until he saw the evidence with his own eyes. Thomas was wrong, we were told, and we shouldn’t be like him. We should believe. I thought this was nonsense, and this episode was when my own doubts about religion began. By the time I was a teenager, I realised that the creationism we were taught by priests & nuns was nothing more than fairy tales, and that some adults were not very bright, which is why they believed fairy tales.

Any residual faith I retained then fell away and I became a complete atheist who saw religion for what it really was, and the Catholic Church as the misogynistic, homophobic, abusive, corrupt institution it is. I haven’t been into a church for any reason other than weddings or funerals since. Sadly, my parents struggled to accept this, they still do, and religion remains a subject that we just cannot discuss

I grew up Catholic (went to church every Sunday and went to Catholic schools)...my main religious memories are happy ones - my grandma teaching me all the prayers in Italian (I liked the flowery langauage), the nuns at nursery who were ancient but lovely, then hymn practise at primary school where if we were good we got a tambourine.

I started disagreeing with some aspects in my teens but I met (also Catholic) DH at university and we started going to mass again regularly in our mid 20s. DC are being brought up Catholic but it'll be fine if they arent interested when they are older.

@CalistoNoSolo , I feel the same about old churches. If I had one a short walk away, like a dd does (not that she ever goes) a really lovely 14thC little village church (with a lovely old pub right opposite!) I think I’d go now and then to Evensong, for the peaceful atmosphere and the hymn singing. If I’m in dd’s garden on a Weds evening, I hear the bell ringers practising - it’s lovely.

My parents were not particularly religious but we were packed off to Sunday School every Sunday afternoon. I found it incredibly boring and was told off many a time for questioning certain things (how did the penquins get to the ark and not die from the heat? being one such example). I was an Atheist then and still am today. DD was never christened and it would not have bothered me if she had chosen to be or became a follower of any faith, but she, too, is also an Atheist.

I was brought up in an atheist household and rebelled by getting baptised as an adult! Since lapsed and don't really go much to church. I married a Catholic and my children are culturally Catholic but only one is practising at the moment.

Brought up Anglican in what I would describe as a heavily churchgoing family. It was like the church was a social club tbh, I was in the choir with my dad and went every week, my grandmother was in a group that embroidered hassocks. There was a shared language throughout the family of jokes about psalms and churchgoing generally, and a pattern through the year of festivals and prayers and church fetes and readings. The odd bit was that we never ever mentioned anything religious or theological at home, it was all about the practice not the belief

My school was allegedly secular but in fact culturally very similar, with an added edge of evangelism. We did learn about other religions and sects but as distant outsiders. The exception to me was the Society of Friends (Quakers) which my best friend's family were part of.

I grew up with some positives - the idea that you should consider the moral dimension of every decision you make is a good one tbh, plus culturally knowing the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible relatively well is something im glad about. Church and choral music are still important to me.

But I also feared hell, all the time, and my sexuality was obviously a massive problem from the start. I can't even think what it would have been like to love women exclusively in that scenario - in fact it seems I'm bisexual but it has taken me 50 years to work that out. However, my high sex drive was distorted and driven into hiding pretty early too.

The Christian thing of having to feel the right way about everything is also very damaging. No action has any worth at all unless you FEEL right. Learning about Judaism properly when I married dh was a liberation- my partial interpretation is that it focuses on doing the right things. What you feel about it is irrelevant, if you give a donation or say a prayer grudgingly or with boredom, it's fine, at least you gave! That makes much more sense to me.

Once I encountered the actual theology of Christianity as an adult I became an atheist almost overnight. It didn't help that it was mansplained to me by the awful Calvinist boys of the university Christian Union and the snobbish Catholics in three-piece tweed suits (think Rees-Mogg) for whom the physical reality of women was an annoying irrelevance. God i can still remember the pregnant wife of our chaplain being lectured about the original son of her baby by one of these twats and I just went, this is a load of old crap. And once you stop believing in original sin, the theology falls to pieces no matter how nice the candles look.

I went to a diverse Roman Catholic school where there was a mixture of religions and Catholicism was a major part of my home life, it was all I really knew. When I hit secondary school I decided that maybe religion wasn’t for me and avoided chapel etc however when I fell pregnant with my daughter the pregnancy was a dangerous one and I felt myself turning to God for comfort and starting to attend chapel again. I still attend chapel and will send my daughter to a Catholic school but I won’t push it down her throat as I feel like that does more damage than good.

Catholic upbringing from an Irish Catholic mother. Went to Catholic schools including a convent high school. Nothing but happy memories and wonderful priests and nuns. No issues at all. My mother's side of the family are religious, my dad's not.

This - 100%

Thanks for the responses, really pleased to hear of good experiences (I’m not looking for only bad experiences as PP thinks), and I’m sorry to those of you who’ve had terrible experiences

You'd get on with my DH. He decided he was no longer a Catholic when our DD was born, he said he couldn't go along with the church if it would automatically decide his wonderful daughter wasn't good enough to be the Pope. Looking at my new born I couldn't quite picture her as Pope but respected his views.

I struggle with men only deciding Catholicism is unacceptably misogynistic once they have a daughter, rather like those who start deciding sexual harassment is bad because they have one. It’s not as though they’ve never encountered any women before fathering one. Obviously it’s better than not having this epiphany at all, but the later-life revelation isn’t a luxury available to those of us who grew up Catholic girls.

And frankly, not being Pope is probably the least concerning thing about the position of women in Catholic dogma and recent historical practice.

I also grew up a Catholic girl and I will be perfectly honest that I wasn't banking on any of my kids being priests let alone Pope. I don't think he'd focused on the role of women in the church as he had received lots of racism from the Christian Brothers who educated him. It was an all boys school so he didn't get to compare his abuse with girls. As the only black child in the school (he was born in the 40s in a very white area) he had more than his fair share of prejudice.

I had heavy religious indoctrination from primary age and through high school, both at home and very much at school. I managed to break away in my 20s and am now free of the guilt and shame that was taught, and very much an atheist. I have no doubt that religious teaching in schools is harmful and I feel angry that it is widespread and even a core part of non religious schools.

I grew up in an Islamic household and I hated it. I have so much resentment and anger. Islam was frightening, lots of talk about eternal damnation and hell fire, about sinning with your heart and mind, about 'djin' constantly around us trying to tempt or corrupt us. Vilifying other religions, making me as a female feel lesser than men (a woman's testimony is half of a man's, get less inheritance...), feel dirty (not allowed to touch the Quran during my period for example), shame about my body and sexuality.
Forced to cover up, to eat with my right hand and follow many meaningless rules. Islam is involved in everything you do, even what side you should sleep on or how to clean yourself. I hated the absolute arrogance and smugness of it and how you couldn't question because you just have to believe and that questioning it is disrespectful to Allah and is from the devil so I just must pray harder!!
It made me scared and felt that there was something wrong with me or that I was possessed by the devil or a terrible person because I just couldn't accept Islam because it made no sense to me whatsoever. I was forced to memorise Quran at school and had to have Islamic lessons several times a week.

I'm an atheist and my DC don't do religion at primary. I gave them the choice to take RE in secondary school because I feel at that age they are able to question. I think RE in schools is a waste of time and I'd rather children did more maths, music or science.

When I meet a Muslim, they assume I'm a Muslim, too. I can see the pity in their eyes when I tell them that I'm not. They think I must have misunderstood the religion or been brainwashed. Truthfully, I pity them. The only thing that I miss of having a religion is the 'community' but then I remember that the values of the Islamic community don't align with mine. It's nice to feel like you belong to a tribe, to blend nicely with everyone ... but that's not my truth and not who I am.

GreatIdeas

I am from your typical white Irish catholic family. Brought up drowning in religion, brought to mass every week, told daily about sins and brought to prayer meetings each week with my mother. I have read the bible cover to cover a few times and became agnostic in my late teens and atheist in my 30's. My mother cannot hang up the phone without saying god bless which annoys the ever living shite out of me. My dad I am not even sure believes himself these days but never mentions religion.

My kids went to primary and are now in secondary educate together schools. They would not know a prayer from a pony and have not been brainwashed into any religion at all I am pleased to say.

I had a religious upbringing - sunday school, church youth groups etc which I loved and still have a group of close friends from those days. I had great experiences of activity weeks away with the church, just so many great experiences but in early twenties drifted away from it, started to think a bit more for myself and realized I didn't actually believe in it all. My parents ( particularly mum ) were horrified as she was the type of christian who went round ' witnessing' to others to the point of alienating neighbours, family etc by her extreme views. There was also her mental illness and it was often hard to know how much of her not being able to be self aware was as a result of her MH issues or just her over zealous Christianity. I think the way she was has scarred me a bit, she would talk about the day of judgement when her and my dad would suddenly be taken up to be with Jesus and I would be left behind because I didn't believe and when this happens, could I please take care of their dog as dogs wouldn't be going up to heaven etc ! It was relentless and as I said she had no self awareness that i just didn't want preaching at. I have four kids of my own and have never pushed any kind of religion on them. Yes I do feel sad that they do not have the same kind of very full on social life that I had as a teen ( because of the church) but overall I want them to decide for themselves. My dad, brother and his wife are all very religious still. I do feel scarred by some of the stuff I was exposed to as a child- huge religious gathering in tents, people talking in tongues, healing sessions where people would collapse etc , none of which I really understood at the time.

I had a really positive experience growing up in the Church of Scotland in the 80s. We were members of a lovely, friendly, welcoming church where I felt known and valued, even as a child. We've grown up to form our our views, I'm an active Christian, my brother never goes to church, my sister is somewhere in the middle, will go occasionally but not regularly. So we've all been able to take the same childhood experiences and come to our own conclusions.

I feel such a connection with my family when I'm in church, although I've moved away and go to a different building. I feel a sense of tradition and ritual that's grounding and brings me real peace. I'm lucky.

I'd say religion was taught as fact with a light touch in our school. The local minister came to assembly once a week and did a prayer. We didn't learn about other faiths until high school. But there weren't daily prayers or bible readings or anything like that.

Again my siblings had the same school experience and cane to different conclusions with no bitterness on any side.

I was obviously lucky and I'm grateful. My faith is important to me to this day.