RE: Ex-Evangelical
June 15, 2014 at 1:14 pm
(This post was last modified: June 15, 2014 at 1:14 pm by Jenny A.)
Welcome Aleighus,
I grew up in a Presbyterian/Lutheran home. My father had two years of seminary and occasionally gave sermons. My parents had weekend prayer groups until the wee hours of the morning. We kids played hid-and-go-seek and fell asleep in heaps. I have fond memories of the church and church people, but I never believed.
The hardest thing for me was coming out to family. No one disowned me or anything, but it's been forty years now and they're still not happy about it. Neither of the churches my family belonged to was hell fire and brimstone, but they do believe in hell, and the fate of my soul troubles them. Sometimes they forget I'm atheist and hope it's gone away. (Faith leads to denial I guess). My brother is also atheist which helps.
That their grandchildren are growing up atheist bothers my parents more. I've let all the Bible books in the house, even sent the kids to a carefully chosen Bible school for a few summers. But that's because to be really culturally literate in this country (U.S.A.) you should know something about the predominate religion and to read classic literature it helps to know the Bible. Both girls have played with the idea of Christianity and then decided not. That's healthy.
Good luck. Should you need a support group to substitute for the church, the Unitarian Universalists are a pretty good choice.
I grew up in a Presbyterian/Lutheran home. My father had two years of seminary and occasionally gave sermons. My parents had weekend prayer groups until the wee hours of the morning. We kids played hid-and-go-seek and fell asleep in heaps. I have fond memories of the church and church people, but I never believed.
The hardest thing for me was coming out to family. No one disowned me or anything, but it's been forty years now and they're still not happy about it. Neither of the churches my family belonged to was hell fire and brimstone, but they do believe in hell, and the fate of my soul troubles them. Sometimes they forget I'm atheist and hope it's gone away. (Faith leads to denial I guess). My brother is also atheist which helps.
That their grandchildren are growing up atheist bothers my parents more. I've let all the Bible books in the house, even sent the kids to a carefully chosen Bible school for a few summers. But that's because to be really culturally literate in this country (U.S.A.) you should know something about the predominate religion and to read classic literature it helps to know the Bible. Both girls have played with the idea of Christianity and then decided not. That's healthy.
Good luck. Should you need a support group to substitute for the church, the Unitarian Universalists are a pretty good choice.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
