Growing up, my family never attended church regularly

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beneficii
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20 Apr 2015, 6:19 pm

We are nominally Protestant, but my immediate family has never attended church on a regular basis. I have never attended church on a regular basis, not even as a kid. I think my parents might have when they were growing up, but by adulthood both of them had eschewed attending any sort of regular religious service.

Who else has had such an experience?


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kraftiekortie
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20 Apr 2015, 7:08 pm

Yep...same here. Never attended church AT ALL....except maybe once or twice when I went to summer camp. And when my brother got married at age 22, and maybe a couple of other times.

I'm Jewish as well as Catholic....yet only attended Synagogue/Shul a couple of times in my life. When I went to a Jewish camp, we had services every Saturday.

My parents have a vague belief in God...but nothing else. I'm an agnostic atheist.



beneficii
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20 Apr 2015, 8:22 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
Yep...same here. Never attended church AT ALL....except maybe once or twice when I went to summer camp. And when my brother got married at age 22, and maybe a couple of other times.

I'm Jewish as well as Catholic....yet only attended Synagogue/Shul a couple of times in my life. When I went to a Jewish camp, we had services every Saturday.

My parents have a vague belief in God...but nothing else. I'm an agnostic atheist.


Wow! And you lived so much before me!

BTW, my parents have the same vague beliefs.


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Kiprobalhato
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24 Apr 2015, 12:40 am

and here's someone who has lived after you! i had my first communion aged 8, my sister had it too but we never bothered with any confirmation, we discussed it for a bit but the idea was soon forgotten. we stopped going when i was around 10 or so, and even then it was never regular. about every other week if that. once in a blue moon my dad asks us to go again but he finds himself going alone, more often than not.

his parents still attend catholic services every week.


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Jacoby
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24 Apr 2015, 1:17 am

I've mentioned it a few times on here but this was basically the case with me and my family as well. Not counting weddings and funerals, you can probably count on one hand how many times I've been to church in my life. I was baptized but that's about it. My parents were raised religious(in the ultraconservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) but they didn't raise me or my siblings that way, some of the stuff filtered in and I'm just a naturally curious person so I picked up on some of it. My parents both worked full time and there was 3 of us boys(+ a baby sister when I was 12) and we all kind of had our own special needs(my brother's both had/have very serious medical issues) so dragging us all out to a church on a Sunday morning when we could stay home and watch football or do whatever just wasn't happening. Most of childhood we would be traveling 4+ hours to my grandparent's house on the several weekends a month0, there just wasn't the time or the wherewithal to have religion in our lives.



Lazar_Kaganovich
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24 Apr 2015, 12:00 pm

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Kiprobalhato
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24 Apr 2015, 7:03 pm

so is putting on your glasses right, apparently. :mrgreen:

Jacoby wrote:
I've mentioned it a few times on here but this was basically the case with me and my family as well. Not counting weddings and funerals, you can probably count on one hand how many times I've been to church in my life. I was baptized but that's about it. My parents were raised religious(in the ultraconservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) but they didn't raise me or my siblings that way, some of the stuff filtered in and I'm just a naturally curious person so I picked up on some of it. My parents both worked full time and there was 3 of us boys(+ a baby sister when I was 12) and we all kind of had our own special needs(my brother's both had/have very serious medical issues) so dragging us all out to a church on a Sunday morning when we could stay home and watch football or do whatever just wasn't happening. Most of childhood we would be traveling 4+ hours to my grandparent's house on the several weekends a month0, there just wasn't the time or the wherewithal to have religion in our lives.


did your family (including extended) pray before meals, bed or incorporate some form of religion in the house?


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הייתי צוללת עכשיו למים
הכי, הכי עמוקים
לא לשמוע כלום
לא לדעת כלום
וזה הכל אהובי, זה הכל.


Jacoby
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24 Apr 2015, 8:02 pm

Kiprobalhato wrote:
so is putting on your glasses right, apparently. :mrgreen:

Jacoby wrote:
I've mentioned it a few times on here but this was basically the case with me and my family as well. Not counting weddings and funerals, you can probably count on one hand how many times I've been to church in my life. I was baptized but that's about it. My parents were raised religious(in the ultraconservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) but they didn't raise me or my siblings that way, some of the stuff filtered in and I'm just a naturally curious person so I picked up on some of it. My parents both worked full time and there was 3 of us boys(+ a baby sister when I was 12) and we all kind of had our own special needs(my brother's both had/have very serious medical issues) so dragging us all out to a church on a Sunday morning when we could stay home and watch football or do whatever just wasn't happening. Most of childhood we would be traveling 4+ hours to my grandparent's house on the several weekends a month0, there just wasn't the time or the wherewithal to have religion in our lives.



did your family (including extended) pray before meals, bed or incorporate some form of religion in the house?


My mom was raised very religious and moved away from it more and more over the course of my life especially now since my grandma has passed, nominally up until that point she would identify as Lutheran and I think feels kind of guilty about it. When I was really young my mom would have us pray before bed sometimes and I had a few children's books on the bible, that was about it as far as my immediate family. The only time my dad ever said anything religious was dealing with something he believed supernatural or back when he was drinking still and I think that was more because he liked watching movies like Left Behind and The Omega Code when he was drunk.

As for my extended family, some are pretty religious and active in the church and attend every week. I don't know my dad's family very well but as I mentioned my maternal grandparents were and they raised their kids that way so I have some uncles and aunts that are really into. They're not really the self righteous evangelizing types tho, it was never really a topic of discussion. Despite how conservative the theology is most of my family is pretty progressive and open minded when it comes to most things. I think we maybe prayed some times before Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner maybe when I was younger but it was always pretty casual.



RhodyStruggle
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29 Apr 2015, 1:59 pm

My mom is from a very traditional Catholic upbringing - 7th of 8 kids, she and her sister were both named Mary so they went by their middle names. (Her father was Lutheran but they raised their kids in the faith of their mother). My mom's first marriage was in the Church and when she divorced her abusive first husband, they would not give her an annulment, so when she married my dad they did it in the Episcopal church he was raised in.

I don't know how religious my father's childhood was but, I've never seen his parents in a church other than for funerals, whereas my mother's parents went to church every Sunday. I vaguely remember going to church for a sibling's baptism - I was about four and a half at the time - and we went to a few funerals. But we didn't go to church regularly unless it was even earlier than that. My mom read the Bible to us a couple times but only if one of us asked, and she read the Berenstain Bears a lot more than that.


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