Which religion, if any, were you brought up with as a child? Are you still practicing this religion now?

Catholic, and I was confirmed last year or whatever, but I don't believe in god and stuff.

None, so no. I think my parents were very stupid in sending me to Brownies.

My religious upbringing was as Jehovahs Witness. But, when I was 9 years old I attended an all girls Catholic school. The only reason I was even allowed to get into this all girls Catholic school was because my mothers sister had connections.

I'm now a non denominations Christian. Although I love attending a Southern Baptist church once in a while.

Oh here we go again with religion and I was brought up in the Episcopal Church , today I still go to the
Episcopal Church for Sunday service every week

I was brought up Baptist. I no longer practice or believe.

I was not brought up in any religion. I am still practicing that to this day.

My parents said they were Methodists but this was just words -- they didn't really practice any kind of religion -- just kind of gave lip service to it once in a while, probably cuz they thought they were supposed to. As a kid I thought it might be cool to be a Catholic cuz of all the rituals.

Some flavor of protestant. I'm not exactly sure. I gave up on it while I was still a child because even then it was clearly ridiculous.

There was none.

My mom let us go to Sunday school sometimes with the baptists next door... but only because it was fun until we got old enough that they actually tried to stick us in classrooms and teach us religion. I had a baptist friend who used to take me to her youth group when we were in middle school. It's a theme with baptists it seems, suck the kids in with fun stuff.

A neighbor lady used to tell us kids that we could ask any question and open the bible randomly and drop our finger anywhere on the page and that our question would be answered. We liked the idea of the "magic 8 ball" effect and played around with it sometimes.

My parents didn't ever tell me how they felt about any of it. I found out later in life that my dad was raised Catholic.

> None, so no. I think my parents
> were very stupid in sending
> me to Brownies.

I send Mary to brownies but only because her friends are into it, it's less expensive than a lot of groups, and she gets to do a lot of trips and crafts.. which she's in to. The only real problem I have with it is when they pray before snack time.

I was raised a christian baptist, still believe in it. James was raised a catholic, but is now an atheist. Well actually it depends on his mood. Some days he believes in God, other days he's agnostic. Most days, pretty much atheist.

Christian. I don't practice anymore.

My parents' "religion" was sort-of-practicing Catholics. Well, my dad never went to church just everyone else, sort of just for tradition, but gradually we've stopped going. It didn't help that the priest started getting political and the church kept sending mass letters guilt-tripping hitting parishioners up for money. I personally am an agnostic, more or less. Off course I believe that there exists something out there when you die, rather than that just being it, but thats about it.

In a way, my religious beliefs line up with what I was brought up, but I attribute that more to coincidence than nurture. Off course on everything else, my general philosophy and outlook on life differs considerable with my parents. Lack of strong religious beliefs is one of the very few things I can get on board with them.

I was brought up as a Methodist..but not really until 3rd grade or so did we start to go to church..I am still a Methodist to this day..All, 8 years later...
We are what my Grandmother is. And it doesn't bother me one bit.

Christian. not really. though my parents still want me to go to church

My Brownie group was pretty naff, we didn't really do that much. But we had to go to church on the first Sunday of every month. I remember coming home one day asking if I could go every Sunday .

I was raised Catholic but I don't practice anymore. I was even confirmed.

I am an butt-hole Atheist ® now.

Yeah, Mary wants to believe in all of it too.......

*Sigh* It really confused me as a kid. Are you bringing her up atheist or nothing-in-particular?

I really wish I could bring her up as Atheist. I figure.... I took the time to think it over and come to a rational conclusion without any brain washing... I could save her some time and teach her my conclusion. This isn't working.

First, she's at an age where she doesn't really believe a word I say. Second, her paternal family is extremely Southern Baptist and she spends 2-3 solid months per year with them. She wants to believe in the magic of God. I wanted that too when I was a kid.

You're right, it is confusing. She's a smart girl though... she'll get it eventually.

At least it's not like you're pushing anything on her.

No... but I argue with her about it She knows how annoyed I am by religion....

I was christened CofE following pressure from my grandparents. However, I was never forced to attend church (or even Sunday School for that matter) by my parents while I was growing.

I was brought up atheist.

> My mom let us go to Sunday school sometimes with the baptists next
> door... but only because it was fun until we got old enough that they
> actually tried to stick us in classrooms and teach us religion. I
> had a baptist friend who used to take me to her youth group when we
> were in middle school. It's a theme with baptists it seems, suck the
> kids in with fun stuff.

Mormons do that, too. I used to go to church and youth group activities with a Mormon friend in high school and it was a lot of fun. Plus, the boys were all really cute.

As for Brownies, I think it's great that Mary goes. I was in Girl Scouts from second grade all the way through high school. I never heard of any troops praying at meetings or having to go to church, although at camp we did usually sing some kind of grace before meals. But it was never approached as a religious thing. It was just a song you sang before you ate. Some of the songs might even mention god or "the lord" or something, but somehow I never felt like I was being forced to pray when we did it. I guess I didn't think about it that much. Anyway, Girl Scouts was absolutely one of the best things in my life. I learned so much, and I believe one reason that I have all the skills that I have is because of Girl Scouts. I think it was also instrumental in helping me get into a good college, since I was very active in my council and had received various leadership awards and the like. I hope Mary has a good troop and keeps going!

There was little talk of God at home when I was a child that I recall, although my mother who'd be raised in a strict Christian home used to mention Him at times. My first school was French, and therefore nominally RC, my second, military in spirit, and strongly Anglican. I was not coerced in any way to be a Christian, but churchgoing was compulsory at my second school.

I was brought up a sixth generation UU (Unitarian Universalist).

I was brought up in the Lutheran church and went to a Lutheran grade school. Once I hit high school I rarely went to church anymore.

My parents are not religious. All British state schools are required to provide a degree of religious instruction so I was certainly exposed to Church of England ideas until I was 16 (but they weren't "Church of England schools" which tend to go rather more overboard than our daily hymn singing and prayer). The influences I got at home were mostly apathetic, but as I got older, my mother became a little more vocally atheist but it seemed that was more as a response to my own exploration of the concepts than something that had been present throughout my upbringing.

My religious upbringing was as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I am still currently practicing this religion.

Nazarene, Baptist

I was taught a whole range of world religions (christianity, buddhism, hinduism, shamanism), and now integrate a whole range of religions.

I'd say I was taught to be open minded, contemplative, and scientifically observant, with an emphasis on perception, and that's still the core of my spirituality. I roughly have a comprehensive cosmology now, which I did not as a kid.

I had some psychic gifts as a kid which were vaguely nurtured, before my awakening as as adult where these gifts blew up 1000 fold.

Rather than making it a choice between atheism or Southern Baptism for her, expose her to buddhism, shamanism, hinduism. islam, paganism, and such.

She will immediately see that on the surface most of these sytems ar in minor conflict, and that it takes great discernment to find any substantial common denominators. Likely she will either dismiss them all, reserve judgement, or keep an open mind and find her own way. Either way it's better than buying into any particular faith wholesale.

It might introduce her early into the evils of religious persecution amongst her peers though, which isn't a bad thing to know about either. Actual compassion and acceptance is better than any theoretical compassion taught by a biased faith.

At the minimum, point out that 2/3 of the planet believes completely different things, and that ultimately everyone has their own unique faith anyhow.

It is an inexplicable miracle that the universe exists at all, indicating there may be some merit in attempting to find out what's behind it all.

I'm fond of my latest quote, because I believe God is infinite, I can't believe in any single universal truth. Most religious people don't actually believe God is omnipotent. Rather they conceive of God more like the president, bound by custom and physics to do things a certain way. My line of thought is more along the lines of a zillion universes; Eternity is a long time, after all, even without a zillion parallel universes.

My latest related thought was imagining if every orbiting electron had freewill and billions of choices, each launching a new parallel universe; now multiply that to the power of the number of electrons on the planet, and multiply again to the power of microseconds the universe has been around. That's a lot of parallel universes.

That may sound way out there, but the alternative is that each electron path is bound by the laws of physics, microgravity, and such, such that this moment in time dictates exactly what the universe will look like in a billion years, and nothing we can do or think can change one iota. There are some compromises between one fixed timeline, and anything goes, but they involve a separate plane of spirit/consciousness redirecting the micro/macro physics of the physical plane.

Don't let your daughter's choice fall merely between brimstone sermons and no mystery to life.

Any belief at all is a limitation.

I was brought up as a Mormon as my family is steeped in LDS history, heritage, culture, religion and ancestry. Once out on my own I became a religious hermit and went to many differing churches and religions. I took Catechism classes, went to Jewish Temple, Lutheran, Four Square and non-denominational services. I read the Koran and eventually came back to believing the LDS faith and then lost it (belief in God) a decade later while finishing up a biology degree in college. After the first Gulf War I met, fell in love with and promptly married a Mormon girl.

Today I more or less vacillate between agnostic and atheistic and, to keep my wife happy, attend Mormon services sporadically. To leave the church entirely would cause the loss of my wife and most of my extended family. My boys are being raised Mormon and loving it. Though mostly a religious skeptic, I still like to study and attend other faiths on occasion.

I totally agree.

I was brought up Catholic. Now I'm leaning more towards Christianity. I'm between those. I don't know exactly. There's not much of a difference to them anyways.

Protestantism and NO!!!!!!!!!

Since when did Catholics not consider themselves to be Christians?

I don't know!!!!!! I'm always told there's a big difference but there's not!!!!!!!!
GYAH!!

Just curious, were you and your wife sealed in the temple?

Perhaps it's an American thing to distinguish between Catholics and Christians. Those are considered the two major faiths here. Baptists, Evangelicals, Adventists, Jehovh's witnesses, just about everything here is lumped under the cataloguing 'Christian' except Mormons, Catholics, and New Agers who are all seen as having their own thing going, even if it is christian based.

There's reasonable cause to make such a distinction too.
For the Christians, their main man is Christ;
for the Catholics you could argue somewhat about Mary or the pope in that role (btw, the Pope just announced last week that it's ok to believe in space aliens (that's the sort of thing you don't get happening in the 'Christian' faiths));
and for your New Agers, it's self inquiry, for whom Christ was an example of our own potential.

Then you've got your Buddhists, Hindus, and such, which are seen as alternative religions, if not alternatives to religion, as far as the mainstream is concerned.

Of course my perspective on this is as an observor of national mainstream media and culture in California, living with mostly a New Age crowd. Perspective may be a bit different out in the bible belt, where possibly the whole of California are satanists. I've never been there and can barely imagine the experience.

Methodist, but I don't go to church very often.

Yup, we were married in the temple (as apposed to being married out side the temple and sealed inside later).

Southern Baptist.

It's complicated but the short answer is both Roman Catholic and Pentecostal. I am an agnostic these days.

I grew with my mother telling me that religion was brainwashing. She started telling me this from a very young age, well before I even knew what brainwashing was. I don't know why she had such strong feelings about the issue. She wasn't brought up in a strict religious environment. She just thinks religion was invented by power hungry men as a way to manipulate and control people. She hates 'bible bangers' and christian kids that appear to be in a trance with their arms in the air listening to christian music.
My dad didn't say anything about religion. I did go to church on occasion with friends and with my grandmother who played the organ. I was baptized when I was a baby into the Lutheran church. I guess my mom did it to please my grandparents. My grandparents must have the pastor because I was born out of wedlock and still got baptized.

United Church of Canada

No.

Hi everyone.
Hi
My name is cloudhugger and I am a recovering Catholic.
*applause*

Church of Christ. I do not practice.

christian...but I am cured now...