Ex theists: what did you believe?

[vorlon13]

I received some mixed messages. My mom was pretty devout Methodist, dad much less so, in fact as a kid, my dad attended a church that was alternately Methodist and Presbyterian every week. The pastors rode horses, and could only make it to one church each Sunday, but each pastor had been assigned 2 churches by the home office. So they alternated. This made my dad pretty irreligious, as the Methodist pastor usually preached about the horror that was Presbyterianism, and vice versa.
Early on in my Sunday schooling I received a pretty fundamentalist take on things, but since it was the 60s, as the decade went by the church was rapidly liberalizing.
In high school, we visited other churches on a field trip. That included a synagog and a JW franchise among others. I think this taste of ecumenism started something with me.
So in regards to basic beliefs, it was somewhat of a moving target.  Starting out, all other faiths weren't doing it right, but Methodists were, but that was tempered with the ecumenism later on.
Mom worried incessantly what 'other people' would think of us, but looking back, I think our family was the one other families should have worried what we were thinking.
Mom was very concerned with folks promising at baptism to see to their child's religious up bringing.  If she was aware a family in our congregation was getting lax about sending their kid(s) to Sunday school, she was on a committee at church that sent reminder letters to those parents.
Also, marriage vows were inviolate to her. [period]  Divorce was super bad, but if there was a chance the couple could be wheedled, cajoled, or browbeaten back together, she was on board with that.  I had a cousin that divorced in the mid 60s and mom and others were brutal about grinding on both of them to get back together.  And they remarried, and it was even worse, and they went on to an extremely bitter second divorce.  They also used their son as a pawn in their terror campaigns against each other, and to this day, 50 years later, he is one of the most fucked up people I have ever encountered.
Being gay and going off to college where I found other gays that were actively hostile (reciprocally) with pretty much all things Christian (this was 1975) was a very liberating thing for me in regards to religion.