Family ties

[Az]

Poll question: Family ties

Who here has the same basic religious belief as their parents?

[trotsky]

1. Other

My mom was a moderate Lutheran; my dad was a non-churchgoer, although I suspect he believed in "something." Religion just wasn't a priority in his life.

[Bronco69]

2. My mother is a Baptist.

My dad wasn't a religious man. My dad died a couple of weeks ago and the service was held at my mom's church. I went to the service out of respect for my dad, but the preacher's performance bordered on embarrassing. All of the screaming and shouting and drooling are a bit much to take. Many people there felt the same way as I do, but they were polite and didn't say anything. Those people need serious help.

[sybylla]

3. Other - parents had religion and left it

I never picked one up. My family left the Catholic church when I was seven.

I grew up with a slight contempt for formal religion that my family developed, but I own my atheism.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Raised as a Lutheran preacher's kid

(in what later became the ELCA). Had a conversion experience at age 22. Decided after several years of indecision that I was really an Episcopalian emotionally, intellectually, and culturally.

[Selwynn]

5. Other:

My beliefs are radically different from the beliefs with which I was raised, and I have influenced my parents. In fact I rejected and torn down everything with which I had grown up. From that blank slate I have slowly began forming my own beliefs, which are grounding in no external authority, only my own pursuit of what I believe most accurately and truthfully encapsulates my experience of existing in the world. I reject all paths, but my own.

My parents beliefs have changed too largely because of my own spiritual evolution.


"Having no Way as Way; Having no limitation as limitaion."

[Az]

6. In a general population

This poll would be terribly skewed to similar or same religion as parents. But being a left/liberal web site I suspect the majority are going to be wildly different than their parents.

[Selwynn]

7. The reason I said "other"

... the "other" comes from the fact that I didn't just "break" with the traditions I was rasied with. My parents have told me that my own influence on their life moved them to break with those traditions too (though not to a break with faith, but to a new articulation) which I'm not sure is typical.

My parents and I now both have similar worldviews, but we all rejected a great deal of what I (and they) were raised with.

[seventythree]

8. mom was eclectic in her beliefs

and it wasn't until I was older and found Unitarianism, that I realized that was where she would have felt at home. Alas, in a small community, like the one she lived in, there are no Unitarian Universalists. Generally, you need a larger and more educated community to find them.

[Az]

9. I think UU's get their own category

There are so many walking around that are UUs and don't even know it.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

10. Superficially different-inside the same

my mother was raised a Methodist, became a UU, and is currently going to a Methodist church with my brother and his family. I left the Methodist church at age 38 to become a Sufi initiate. These may seem to be very different paths. But my mother always taught me that all paths lead to God, and that is what Sufis believe as well.

[SlackJawedYokel]

11. "Raised" Roman Catholic.

But it was in small town Louisiana so it didn't really count.
Hard to find any decent role models when everyone you know is drinking, drugging and f*cking Fridays/Saturdays and then showing up Sunday for mass...
I learned the definition of "hypocrite" by observation before I read it in the dictionary.

Parents weren't particularly religious and I suspect my dad is agnostic/atheist but won't really talk about it.
Mom sings in the choir and used it as a form of social interaction and a way to hang onto tradition, but the rest of her family(5 siblings) are only barely observant except for her younger sister who re-discovered her religion after she decided to stay a single mother and not date/remarry.
I'm not sure they find much actual comfort, but it gives them something to do.

One of the most important things going to a Catholic Elementary school did was expose me to the more irrational aspects of the bible coupled with the overbearing authoritarian attitudes of the nuns and monks and the only logical direction was to become a liberal atheist... the hard way.

Cletus