When was the last time you went to any church

Led about 20-odd non-Christian interlopers storming out when he tried to "cure" a gay male as the thousand-odd congregation cheered.

The last time I was in one for a service was maybe five years ago, for midnight mass at Isabel's parish church at Xmas. I felt very uncomfortable and didn't enjoy it.

A few months ago: my girlfriend and I went into 2 or 3 churches around manhattan just because they are beautiful and creepy and nobody tells you to leave.

wow, months now? less than a year ago my parents and i were going on a weekly basis. now my mom goes by herself. i'm not complaining.

When: Easter Sunday.
Why: To avoid being disowned celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Chist, of course!

funeral, about 3 years ago i think.

Ditto

i went to catholic mass a couple weeks ago to honor my dad's first cousin -- it was his 50th Jubilee as a priest. since i haven't practiced religion since childhood going to church is always a nostalgia exercise.

in a word: MEH.

Christmas (or Christmas Eve?) 2006. We were driving around and noticed the Episcopal Church was having a midnight mass, so we stopped in and took the last seats in the back. I was really drunk and just in jeans/t-shirt/coat, felt pretty scruffy. "Peace be with you." "And also with you." I saw Santa Claus looking in through the side door and had to prod my boyfriend for confirmation that I wasn't seeing things. I wasn't.

funeral two years ago

Not including weddings, funerals, or the life drawing lessons in a church building that our art college had bought, Midnight Mass in about 1999.

funeral two years ago

I honestly can't remember.

Sunday.

Last week, while on holiday, I visited a multitude of churches and cathedrals. It's one of my favourite holiday pastimes, because they often have such fantastic architecture. I'm not religious though and never go to church in everyday life.

Took a short cut through St James's Piccadilly a fortnight ago.

Christmas Eve 2007

although last weekend I stood outside an ersatz wedding chapel

We avoided a church setting for my dad's funeral but because dad's idiot wife set it up, we got Lutheran officiant. I had to sit the guy down before the service and tell him Dad was if anything Anglican and basically unpick all the inappropriate widow-spin before he parroted it at service (like defusing a bomb; I've never met anyone in my whole life who does the spoiled-girl, hide behind incipient tantrum, take toy go home thing quite like this lady, bonus being she's so large there is implied threat of I'LL SIT ON YOU, BITCHEZ). Memorial wall of Dad in various party shots with kegger buddies with Cletus types and barsluts also great value, sis and I thought we'd wandered into Clampett Country by mistake (and she works at sports bar FFS).

Before that, Ed's cousin's wedding in cute Liverpool church with Eleanor Rigby gravestone.

See upthread: seven years ago for that Low gig.

Religion is a painful issue in my family (old political trauma from Ireland). Most of my family are "cafeteria Catholics" and my dad eventually came out as atheist as did his dad.

My mom loathes holy roller crap and thinks Calvinist evil has seeped into The Church. She came out as a religious "liberal" on FB and all these "friends" put her on ignore.

We're all yoked to this conservative church via marriage and hate it. So, I show up for baptisms and Christmas but I'm so sick of it I'm joining the local Lutheran church (it's a liberal congregation). I haven't gone yet but I'm watching services online to learn about Lutheranism.

Make sure to choose an ELCA chai h and not Missouri or Wisconsin Synods. my experience the most liberal Lutheran churches are the most high-church smells n’bells.

ELCA church

I was raised Catholic, meaning I took a bus every Wednesday from public school to the school associated with my church to be confused by some layperson teacher in CCD class (aka “Release Time”), and then married Catholic, but I like to tell people I am an Andy Warhol Catholic and go the the Jesuit church frequented by “theater people.”

Last time I set foot in a church was a wedding in 2012 - my friend's little sister. It was terrible, she was marrying into a charismatic family, the ceremony took forever with lots of "I promise to serve my husband as the lord commands" shit and then the reception was DRY.

She's an anti-vax homeschooler now so it all worked out just peachy.

I like reading these replies!

I was in a catholic church about five or six years ago to attend the funeral mass for my uncle, who was a parish priest. He had retired from that parish some years before he died, but he was extremely popular there and the place was packed on a weekday afternoon. It was a nice chance to see a few dozen of my cousins who I hadn't seen for ages.

The last time I went to church was for my father’s funeral at St. George’s, my formative church in rural NY, where as a child I received my first communion and served as an altar boy and was a total believer. Most of us children have since long ago disavowed catholicism and moved away.

When we got together for the funeral we debated about whether or not we should accept communion during the mass, since most of us hadn’t been to confession in decades and didn’t believe. My brother and his wife (the only two of us who were still catholics) convinced us that it would be the right thing to do, regardless of our beliefs, and I think in retrospect that was the right call

My niece at 10, a good kid who wasn’t raised with religion, was gobsmacked that she was expected to line up, stick her tongue out and receive communion

I was worried about what my religious relatives were going to think, since they had to know we were apostates, but they seemed to approve.

my grandfather's funeral. a close relative gave the eulogy and told the story about how my grandpa thought welfare was worse than slavery *dramatic pause, lots of eye contact with everyone, including me* and how right my grandpa was about that

*jesuswept.jpg*

Make sure to choose a place to live that is an ELCA chai h and not Missouri

had to fix that typo, sorry

I characterize my belief system as an extremely strong form of agnosticism, which usually stops just short of atheism.

Basically, I know that I don't know the nature of the divine. I am pretty sure you don't either. Like Bertrand Russell, I can neither prove nor disprove any particular conception of the divine.

But because there is exactly no useful information, I am mostly okay with Russell's conclusion.

I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.

Anyway I go to some sort of church or temple or meeting (usually Catholic but not always) every now and then, because it is a really good show. Pageantry and ritual are fun even if you don't buy into the belief system.

Went to a a Congregational church a couple of summers ago for my wife's grandfather's memorial service. It was a pretty plain little building, no AC in the middle of 90 degrees North Dakota summer. This was also the first summer anyone was vaccinated against covid so it was a bit odd that way. The pastor was a woman, which surprised me but every other thing, from the attendees to the basement refreshments and socializing afterwards, was standard upper midwest style. Congregationalists are Calvinist types iirc.

The church I want to go to is ELCA and I have been watching the services online.

I was an Andy Warhol Catholic for a long time, because my neighborhood church was this really dark cathedral-type place and a good place to brood.

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/11/nyregion/fewer-pupils-in-catechism-programs.html

They refer to the practice mostly by its proper name, Released Time, but once in a while they slip and make the Little Redd mistake of dropping the final “D” and calling it *Release Time*

There was a Supreme Court decision upholding it in 1952 written by William O. Douglas. Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and another guy dissented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorach_v._Clauson

Robert H. Jackson was the third dissenting Justice.

I end up inside churches a couple of times a year, but solely in my capacity as a big architecture nerd, with my finger on the pulse of open-house days. Recently we got a fantastic tour of Wallace Harrison's mid-century concrete-n-stained-glass "Fish Church" in Connecticut (aka the First Presbyterian Church of Stamford), from an absolutely lovely member of the congregation. We even got to ascend the belltower; the woman who's been playing th carillon there for decades gave us an up-close demonstration, which was incredibly cool.

Otherwise, I think the only times I've been "to church" in the last 20+ years have been for funerals of family members. I'm not religious (atheist/agnostic since right around the 5th grade), and none of my married friends have done church weddings. Maybe my cousin did, but I can only really remember the reception venue.

This Catholic Church my family does all of the Holy Day shit at is so megachurch and brightly lit that it doesn't even feel Catholic. The people at my local Catholic church are crabby-type old school Catholics who don't seem happy to be there.

The local ELCA is actually closer to my childhood experience in a liberal / left Catholic church.

Is a synagogue a church? Then, um, not this month but yes in December. Prayed, too.

Actually I've been inside a church more recently than that because I poked my head into a cathedral a few weeks ago when traveling. Didn't pray but others in the building were.