Going to Church on Sundays

[EdithSimcox]

Question for Christians obviously: How important is it to you to be able to go to church on Sunday?

I have recently refound faith after an absence of 25 years. My DP is finding it impossible to accept. I've been trying to find ways of being as unobtrusive as possible about it - including going to church near the office on a weekday lunchtime so as not to disrupt our family weekends. But I do want to go to church on Sundays sometimes - I want a 'home' church, to be part of a regular congregation, to sing hymns, to feel part of a church family (DP would really shudder at that one). In the last 8 weeks I've managed to go twice. I wasn't going today anyway because I knew 2 weeks in a row would really tip her over the edge. But this morning she asked me to agree never to go on Sundays. I said it was too big an ask to try and bounce me into and she had a sort of panic attack (I don't know if that's a technical thing, but it's definitely a physical panic/pain response she has - which she is having therapy to deal with but she thinks may never go away)

I do want to put her and the DC first, and I am prepared to compromise, but I was thinking more like going once or twice a month, not never. But she says I can pray anywhere and go to church in the week, so it's not a big thing to ask at all.

As a compromise I'm think I'm going to agree not to go until September, but that won't be enough I'm sure.

What do you think?

hFEA- possibly. What's the alternative?

Not sure!!! Maybe in this situation someone could say "my beliefs make it difficult for me to accept your faith. Keep talking to me and I will try and keep an open mind."

And I was puzzled as to why Bolognese thought that someone deciding they believed in God would become a totally different person. For 90% of my acquaintances I don't even know what their religious beliefs are, if any, and for those I do there doesn't seem to be any huge gap between the theistically inclined and the atheists.

"And I was puzzled as to why Bolognese thought that someone deciding they believed in God would become a totally different person. "
Of course they would. They would become a person who is prepared to accept something on no evidence. That is a different person to the one they were before.

Edith, just wanted to say that I think of you, your wife and your family very often, and that you're in my prayers.

She is bvu to try and control you like this. The country is full of women and men raising an eyebrow at their partners hobbies and interests, but by and large a healthy relationship doesn't have one person try to control the other person like this, not for just an hour a week (or in your case an hour a month!). It's just wrong!

It's pretty shallow for someone to say they would want to walk out of a relationship if someone changes their belief over time. Good grief, we all change every decade! The point is that you love the person and sometimes have to agree to disagree with their view on something. It's still them!

You should be free to do what you want. If you don't, resentments build and unhealthy control develops.

This isn't about stopping someones human right to worship any religion they choose. I am not even saying two people with different belief systems cant be happy together.

This is about two people who are married with certain 'understandings' of what the other is like. Then one of them changes and finds a religion. We are not talking about liking a different food which doesn't impact their partner at all. This can change how they live their lives, what decisions they make, what is right and wrong, how they raise children. And those changes will affect both partners.

So how can the other partner accept these changes that they obviously believe are wrong. This is not a small gradual change over time, this is a massive change in beliefs overnight, which could affect their whole lives.

I fell in love with my partner because of who they are but if their political, social or moral beliefs where to change significantly in a short period then I dont see how I could be with them anymore, they wouldn't be the person I fell in love with.

But it seems a bit naive to think they will be the same people over time because time and circumstances change people!

If you really think about it, none of us are he same person we were 20 years ago. Or even 10. That's how life goes!

Of course people change over time.

But the fundamental mind set change required to change from a person who has an evidence based view of the world to a faith based view is not like starting to enjoy Casualty or Stilton............

If someone came home and said "I've found God and now I'll be paying ten times a day and our lives will completely change" then of course that would affect things!!
But imagine your partner comes and says " I know you think this is completely mad but I want to go to the local C of E every Sunday and I'll never pressure you to do the same, I'm not even sure if there is a God but I just like being there" then it just seems strange to me that someone would leave a good relationship for this!! Although in reality I know I have given two extremes here.
Oddly, I do have some experience of this as I discovered my own partner was giving a monthly sum to his old school, now independent but then state grammar. Nothing wrong in itself (he can afford it) but having just assumed we shared the same lefty views on everything it was weird to think that he didn't.
Maybe we'll all have to agree to disagree on this - at least we're having a civilized discussion about it! I can't believe no one's mentioned celestial teapots yet!

Actually the celestial teapots thing is interesting. If somebody came home and said that they now believed in said celestial teapot, would people be saying that their partner shoudn't feel differently about them?

Well, I would be surprised but if it led to him making me more cups of tea I suppose it could have benefits!
There is an interesting book by Andrew Sims -Is Faith Delusion? which looks at this from a psychatric perspective. Basically, whilst people who have a diagnosed psychiatric delusion have no doubts about such things as celestial teapots or being possessed by aliens most religious people, certainly in the mainstream Christian churches, either have doubts themselves or recognise completely why others would do.

As Bertrand said this is a "fundamental mind set change". For two friends it probably wouldn't be a big deal, even within an interfaith marriage it probably wouldn't be as big a deal. For an atheist its a deal breaker.

When you base your life on what you can be confident is true, to have your husband or wife come home and say "you know what I have decided to start having faith in things I have no evidence for".... it would end my marriage.

For example your partner could now be 'in love' with an imaginary deity more than they love you. They might think you are going to hell. Their morality is now dictated by an invisible guy in the sky, do they hate gays, is abortion wrong. Are they being brainwashed, do they pray for me and ask god to forgive my sins, do they thing my son is a sinner... You can counsel all you want but how can you discus with someone who's answer is "because god says it is so".

I would rather have my husband have a real mistress than give up a rational life. So I completely get the OP's wife's reaction.

But Bolognese a person with a religious faith doesn't necessarily believe any of those things! You are just assuming that that's what they would believe. I wouldn't blame anyone for questioning their relationship under those circumstances, but why would you just jettison your partner without listening first to what they actually did think rather than you just deciding for them? Greenheart's post above puts it very well.
Incidentally, the OP is presumably either in a gay marriage (or happy for this case doesn't "hate gays"

Bolognese and Bertrand, it seems to me that your view of Christianity is dogmatic and extreme - and you impute that dogmatism and extreme views to Christians.

But it really does not have to be the case that someone with a new-found faith loves God more than their partner, think the partner is going to hell, hate gays, think abortion wrong.

As thegreenheart suggests, a good model is an interfaith marriage. (Please don't start protesting that atheism isn't a faith, because that's not the point I am making: the point is that such relationships can provide a good model of how big differences can be contained in a loving relationship.) These three useful rules of inter-faith dialogue might be a useful starting point for couples who are accomodating big changes of views within the relationship:

1. If you want to understand another religion, ask its adherents, not its enemies.
2. Don’t compare your best to their worst.
3. Leave room for “holy envy” — that is, room for discovering some aspect of another religion that you admire, while at the same time accepting that this aspect belongs not to you but to a separate faith community.

I speak from personal experience here. Since I met my husband I have become a Christian and my faith is central to my life - so much so that I am training to become a priest. My husband is still agnostic. Our marriage has managed to survive because we are both committed to it. We have been through much more difficult things than my becoming a Christian! And I think both of us would say that our relationship is better now than it was before.

Of course there are theological issues for me. But as I found when I had children, there isn't a limited amount of love in the world. I didn't love my husband less because I loved my children - and I don't love him less because I love God. Love isn't like money: there's always more than enough to go round, and the more you do of it, the more there is.

I agree that a person with a religious faith might not believe any of those things. That is not my issue. My issue is that such a person now believes something for which there is not evidence. And which actually depends on their being no evidence. I would find it very difficult is a person I loved became a person like that. It would be different if they had always thought like that- but moving from a rational position to a non-rational one would be an issue.

"My issue is that such a person now believes something for which there is not evidence. And which actually depends on their being no evidence. "

That's a dogmatic and rigid point of view. And it certainly won't help you to understand how the world looks to another person. Purity of dogma and understanding don't go hand in hand, I'm afraid.

There is absolutely no evidence for the existence of God. Hence faith.

As I said, I know and love many people who believe in God. But a life partner moving from rational to non-rational patterns of thought would be a bit problem for me.

Well, I'm glad (possibly for that reason alone ) that you are not my life partner, and that my actual life partner - a philosopher and scientist by training - is able to be less dogmatic.

Gosh. What a very constructive contribution! Are we in Christians are beyond criticism territory again?

Eh? The person I'm talking about isn't a Christian.

No, but you are. And you are calling me dogmatic and rigid for saying that if somebody I loved went from a rationalist to a non rationalist way of thinking it would be an issue for me. What am I supposed to do- say "Yes, it's absolutely fine that your mindset and the way you view the world has completely changed- you just carry on"?

I guess I do think it is dogmatic to say that your relationship with your life partner would be irreparably damaged by their becoming a Christian. I am hugely grateful that my husband was able to be more flexible, and that our marriage has survived my becoming a Christian. But I know that other people (and most painfully, the OP) are in a different position, where my two penn'orth are, frankly, irrelevant and unwanted.

But there. I think your attitude to this question is dogmatic, and you think I am irrational for believing in God. I'd say the honours are probably even in the yah-boo stakes. Shall we stop name-calling. I'll go first: I will endeavour not to do so any more.

"I guess I do think it is dogmatic to say that your relationship with your life partner would be irreparably damaged by their becoming a Christian."

I didn't say that.

And I didn't say that people who believe in God are irrational. I said they are non rational

Very different things.

Edith sorry things are still such a struggle between you and your DW. I think if I were you, I personally, would explore more weekday church activities to see if you can find some community there. I think this might just take the pressure off a bit.

Interestingly, I disagree with Bertrand regarding being rational versus non rational. I don't think people are all one thing at all, we aren't even aware of all our subconscious biases, so how can we be purely rational?

What this means is that I think we tend to compartmentalise, in order to compensate for this. With anyone, a lot has to go in the 'not fully understood' box. Where there are differences between people there are differences in understanding because if understanding were the same they would be the same / think the same. There are always differences between people - we are individuals.

I am horrified that finding faith is being compared to the devastation of discovering the other stuff mentioned upthread. I am a Christian and my fiance is an atheist. I go to church every Sunday plus bible study on a Thursday evening and spend some hours each moth in the company of other Christian women. He looks after the kids during this time.

If he decided he didn't want this in my/our lives I would tell him to leave. As a pp said it is your basic human right to worship, and your partner's treatment of you is abuse. You will not be happy staying in this relationship.