Reason Why You Left the Church

parted ways with the woman I'd been going to church every Sunday for +/- 5 years. really didn't feel like going to church for a while, and longstanding problems I'd had w/doctrine & teachings started coming to the surface. still go sometimes tho

should've put an "other" box in shouldn't I?

I can't remember why I stopped going - I was a teenager - but I can't really remember why I started going either. it was entirely of my own volition.

My proper answer wd be "non serviam"

I answered "the not committing sins" thing because I was under heavy pressure to get rid of all my awesome heavy metal cds that dishonored God and I just couldn't do it.

But in reality the reason I left the church stems a lot from the reason I joined it in the first place. I was a very depressed, displaced youth at age 15/16 and I'd been bullied and tormented immensely from age 11. I had little to no self-esteem, I had friends but only a few real close ones, and I felt disconnected from the world. Joining a youth group, my mother felt would be good for me, so I did.

I never was quite sure if I believed in God - I remembered questioning the whole charade as early as age 7 when I asked my mother how we knew there was a God, and her responding honestly - "We don't". I still didn't have my head wrapped around it at 15.

One day, they took me to one of those "Conventions", and man are those things dangerous. It's easy to mistake feelings for God when you're in a room full of happy, dancing, singing Christians who are paying you attention. So I went forward and decided I wanted to become a Christian.

So the minister tried to prepare me for it and as he did I began to wonder if I even believed some of the stuff they were saying. I also began to see hypocrisy within the youth group - the pettiness, the social "cliques", and even the insults (I caught one of the girls talking behind my back, and another brutally hurt my best friend's feelings). Their minds were closed, and I found myself on the opposite end of every debate not because I was being a contrarian but because I dared to ask "what if?"

By 19, I had decided that if there was a God, he wasn't for me, and by 24 or 25 I decided there was no God. Besides, after some of the things I've done in bed with women, I don't think God would want me.

Yr line on the other thread inspired this poll btw

left CofE infant school

@Noodle: I kind of figured. I like the thread idea - I'm always curious why other people "lose" their faith.

after some of the things I've done in bed with women, I don't think God would want me.

pretty sure that as long as it was consensual, God doesn't have any beef w/ ya

anyway the answer for me is "came home from sunday school, told mum she was going to hell because she didn't observe the Lord, was asked if I really believed the Earth was created in 7 days, said 'yeah totally', was asked to engage brain, was not sent back to sunday school"

but I spent loads of time in Westminster Abbey after that coz of school commitments - pretty rad place tbh

7 days = heretical

- was persuaded by the gentle and reasonable remonstrations of richard dawkins

@acoleuthic: out of curiosity, did you ever find yourself attempting to argue that the world was 6,000 years old? serious question. my church was fundamentalist to the core and I remember arguing it with some people, them responding quickly with facts that made my argument sound retarded, and having...no response. that was another turning point.

singing Compline at 9 pm every Monday in a little candle-lit side-chapel was a really relaxing activity

@Cattle Grind, I was 8 or 9 years old, so I didn't really get my teeth into the semantics of it...for me it was a cool club with singing and friends and a nice fella called jesus who did interesting stuff we got to reenact

i wd go back today for the songs and the buildings but I'd know in my heart I was faking it

i wd go back today for the songs and the buildings but I'd know in my heart I was faking it

"welcome to the church of england"

if only they'd known that The Cure - Pornography was my favourite album

also nrq otm haha

realized that if i kept sleeping, no one was going to make me go

voted "Only came in cos it was raining tbh" for my dad, tho

stopped going to catholic school, to be honest. I went through eighth grade and then went to a public high school and probably only went to church a couple of times after that. another reason was that once in high school, my parents moved back to california but never found a church locally they liked (well my mom, my dad never went to church) with people they felt comfortable with so that was that. I do think about going to the catholic church down the street a lot now. but now I'm kind of freaked by all the political stuff going on around churches, none of which ever happened when I was a kid.

I went to a Methodist church so arguably another reason wd be the clunking tunelessness of the Good News Bible

they tried that out in the catholic churches I went to as well, what lame read

Kinda like the line drawings, but yeah it's a horrible translation imo

I think half of my reason really was musical differences,.

I gotta say, when I occasionally go to Catholic church with Mrs V, I don't enjoy any of the hymns. I grew up on Charles Motherfuckin' Wesley tho so I'm kinda spoiled for modern shit

too much small talk was expected, hate the shaking hands with strangers I'm not gonna get to know part

if only they'd known that The Cure - Pornography was my favourite album

our youth group leader pressured a girl in the group to break her Marilyn Manson cd, then took the pieces and put it inside a baggie for what I suppose were "demonstrative purposes".

also nothing secular was allowed on the youth group radio so we had to listen to shit like Audio Adrenaline, DC Talk, and Third Day. my friend was a big Ministry fan and he started playing them and tried to convince the youth group leader that they were Christian because of the name. He got away with it for about 5 minutes but people suspected tehy weren't Christian because they "sounded unhappy"

Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden was probably my second-favourite album when I was 9, and I'd imagine they'd have turned a blind eye to that one. Or maybe not. One of the tracks is called 'Desire' after all

i got away with playing Kansas due to "Dust in the Wind". although Kerry Livgren made it real clear at one of the conventions he spoke at that that song definitely was about an alternative religion.

None of the answers really fit for me, my main reason was just that I found mass extremely tedious. At the bare bones of it that transcends any beliefs I do or don't have, mass is immensely fucking dull, 40 minutes in an uncomfortable seat shifting around, in a room with horrible air, listening to an invariably dreadful public speaker. I don't see how the process is of any value to anyone.

Later and as I get older I have lots of other reasons to dislike the Catholic church, and when I go at Christmas I feel very negative about being told what to do or talked at by a priest.

I find it sad that people say things like "lord I am not worthy to receive you but say the word and I shall be healed." etc etc, and are forced to kneel every few minutes.

If there is a god I like to imagine he'd want people to feel good about themselves and not kneel before him.

Local Garda OTM

http://www.discogs.com/image/R-182740-001.jpg

I remember before my first communion in 2nd grade the nuns telling us about the transubstantiation and how we were now eating the literal body of Christ and it did not make logical sense at all as it was clearly still a bread wafer.

That was the beginning of the end, I never really believed fully after that and couldn't except "because Jesus made it so" as the only explanation for things that didn't make sense. I stopped going to mass when my parents no longer made me go, sometime during my senior year of high school, and haven't been to any church service probably 15 years now.

I remember before my first communion in 2nd grade the nuns telling us about the transubstantiation and how we were now eating the literal body of Christ

bonus points if you stood up and shouted "that makes us cannibals!" and stormed out....

i almost wish I had said musical differences now, because i remember being at a Rebecca St. James concert where she advised us to throw out any cd we had that dishonored god and I sat there thinking I couldn't bear to part with Pantera's Far Beyond Driven which I'd just gotten and featured the immortal lyric "I'm born again with snakes eyes/becoming God-sized".

xpost

If I remember correctly the nuns actually did have some "here's why this isn't cannibalism" bullet points for us.

Did they have another set of bullet points for "here's why it isn't necrophilia"?

ronan got 40 minute masses? lucky him. If we got out after 50 mins here we were lucky. I hate sermons. If they limited a sermon to 3 mins A) more people would take it in and not switch off (i dont think i ever heard a sermon after the 1st 10 seconds. B) more people might go.

I stopped going about 15 years ago.
Ronan also pretty much otm with what he said.

i only went because of my mum tbh.

Left Bicester, couldn't find another Elim church that wasn't racially awkward.

I don't really get the wafer hate - lots of other aspects of church are clearly some bollocks but its clearly more than a wafer.

I dunno, transubstantiation is a weird one to get yr head round. I think it's indicative of something that the Prods dropped the idea quick sharp.

It does make for a great bit in Tale of a Tub tho

this one dude I used to know disarmed someone who asked if he had the blood of Jesus Christ in him by asking if it was sexually transmitted

thought it was a bit fishy all along, tbh.

stopped being forced to go to mass at about 14.

asked my dad when i was about 6 why he didn't have to go to church. he told me he'd "finished" years ago, like it was school or something.

you are henry plainview and i claim my £5

Voted for sinning. I realized I didn't believe in God at about age 5. Got my big break at age 16, with a morning shift washing dishes at Friendly's.

Never really believed in God but was forced to attend church and go to an all girls Catholic High School where I realized that I pretty much disagreed with everything I was being taught and decided I was agnostic. Did the agnostic thing for a while because of the "what ifs" but consider myself an Atheist now. No question.

After someone told me the "Jesus had a big dick... he was well hung" joke and I laughed a bit too hard at it, I felt I could never set foot in a church again.

I was supposed to play the part of Jesus in a Sunday School communion play in second grade or so. In rehearsal, I got to the part about "this is my body, broken for you." Another kid told me that he was gonna eat my butt. I was so appalled that I quit acting.

never went in in the first place, so never really left i guess

so raining option best i suppose

I find it sad that people say things like "lord I am not worthy to receive you but say the word and I shall be healed." etc etc, and are forced to kneel every few minutes.

cannot relate to people who do not take pleasure in kneeling and saying "I am not worthy to receive you" tbh

that whole part of the Mass is win-win

My brother, the one two years younger than me, is still very much a strong practicing Mormon & he asked me the other day why I left the church. He was v respectful about it & said I didn't have to tell him. But I did tell him. I had seven main points and I spelled each of them out in detail (I just remember it was seven because I was numbering them as a way to organize my thoughts as I spoke). He listened without arguing, interrupting, or rebutting. I'd never really told anyone in my family the reasons except the sister of mine who also left the church. By the end of it we were both crying v hard. V v hard. Just a couple minutes with tears and no words. I wished I was there in person so I could have given him a hug. I think he understood & he said that he could tell I made the right decision for myself. It made me feel really good to hear that. I don't really know how to explain all the complicated emotions of this moment.

I think other brother, ten years younger, is trying to leave the church himself. I think he has deliberately been taking extra shitty care of his diabetes to get out of going on a mission. He also made a suicide attempt the other day over it after my parents threatened to kick him out before he graduated if he didn't agree to go on a mission. A p believable threat bcz they kicked my sister out of the house at 16 when she said she didn't believe in it anymore. I think it scared my parents enough to get them to say he doesn't have to go on a mission.

i was lucky i guess - i knew pretty much from the time i was in middle school that i didn't believe in god and mass and most of that catholic stuff was kind of silly. eventually my mom got the picture and stopped making me go to church, it's not like i was a bad kid or anything. i've never told her i don't believe in god or anything but i assume she gets it. she still guilts me into going to midnight mass each christmas with her, though.

my Mom still doesn't know I'm atheist. I don't think I'll ever tell her, cuz it would probably break her heart. she's not crazy religious but she always has followed the faith, so as of now she likely thinks I'm Agnostic, or just 'not practicing'.

she does know I don't go to church though, so it's probably one of those "know but don't know" things.

the last paragraph of abbbottt's hits home for me because one of my best friends (from a mormon family) killed himself during our senior year in high school, a few months before we graduated. he wasn't into the mormon thing at all, and i always wondered what role the mandatory mission played in his decision.

10 year anniversary of that is on Tuesday, actually. god

Oh Z S, that is so heartbreaking.

He listened without arguing, interrupting, or rebutting.

Dude may deserve Brother of the Decade Award just for that.

you are OTM!

i went to a jewish preschool because it was a block away. then i went to a catholic elementary school because it was reputed to be "good." i went to mass on wednesday during school---otherwise we were strictly C&E catholics. stopped going to mass on xmas eve about ten years ago maybe, and we only ever went for the pageantry or whatever. pretty sure both my parents are atheist/agnostic, and only felt compelled to go on the big two holidays because my mom is 'ethnically catholic'. liiiiiiiiike catholicism (esp irish-catholicism) for a lot of ppl is like being a secular jew these days, imo.

anyway i'm still always surprised to hear ppl's experiences with losing (or finding) faith just because the concept has always been alien to me---i was an agnostic from the moment i knew what the word meant, and my dad's favorite little aphorism was something like "to know the how and why of god is presumptuous, to know the if of god is a gift".

anyway i'm still always surprised to hear ppl's experiences with losing (or finding) faith just because the concept has always been alien to me---i was an agnostic from the moment i knew what the word meant

This is otm for me too. I was raised Catholic and for most of my childhood we went to church most Sundays. I was also in religious ed each year and made my communion and confirmation but I can't ever actually remember believing any of it. I went to a Catholic HS but stopped taking Communion in junior year and would just sit out while everybody else did. I don't think I ever had a moment where I lost my faith. It's more like it was never there to begin with and one day I realized that I didn't have to do certain things anymore just because everyone else was.

Also, became an atheist pretty soon thereafter and so far it's just been something I've never really questioned and have been really comfortable with. What I mean is, I don't struggle with it. At all.

my exp mirrors yrs e

Sometimes I do wonder why this wasn't that hard for me or why I never believed despite being pretty immersed in church culture but I guess it wasn't really talked about that much at home and I sort of always saw it as just something we did. Also, my dad isn't Catholic so he was never a part of any of this. Maybe seeing him abstain and not really get into any of it helped me realize that I didn't have too. *shrug*

err to

Never belonged to a church, so never had to leave one, thank god. I don't guess my wife will ever get over her ultra-fundie-upbringing trauma.

my dad used to handle the money stuff for this (methodist) church "out in the country" that he went to as a kid. then he only went when it was raining, then he stopped going altogether.

my mom was periodically involved with the presbyterian church on our block. i went there for sunday school and summer bible camp when i was a kid. the old testament has some pretty good stories in it, so that was cool.

neither of my parents have been to church in probably 20 years and have in fact grown rather intolerant of organized religion, largely because of its outsized role in current american politics.

Although I was baptized at five because of cancer and superstitious parents, we did not join the Episcopal church (or any other) because of tithing - my mom shuns any intersection of religion and money, and my dad was just cheap. My mom spent 10 years of her childhood pretending to be a Jehovah's Witness (long story told elsewhere on ILX) and let us free-range as far as going to church or temple with friends to 'see what it was all about' but when we came back from a friend's Evangelical Free Church group with instructions not to watch The Exorcist on TV for all the usual SATAN reasons, she gleefully switched it on the night of the broadcast and there was a tacit understanding ("next, we'll do 'I Married A Witch' and 'Bell, Book and Candle'") that we weren't going back there. My posh grandmother's family had gone Christian Scientist when she was little, so I investigated that via Sunday school for a year or so until I fundamentally disagreed with the whole attitude to medicine (an 11 year old pro-doctors cancer survivor is v. cat amongst pigeons in that setting).

Ludicrously, my mom accused me of setting religion up to fail with all this visiting of various doctrines only to come up against known deal-breakers. Me: "I think it sets itself up to fail with, y'know, MUMBO-JUMBO." The only church I actually liked was my primary-school best friend's Presbyterian because they did a very minimalist and abstract Maundy Thursday service.

http://blog.ascentis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/The_More_You_Know.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maundy_Thursday#Derivation_of_the_name_.22Maundy.22

It's more like it was never there to begin with and one day I realized that I didn't have to do certain things anymore just because everyone else was.

my family never talked about religion or practiced it except going to church and the requisite things connected to it (sunday school, some youth group stuff, fund-raising type events), and i really hated going to church from a young age and always looked for ways to avoid it (sleeping in late on sunday, lingering in the church bathroom so that i could hide out and miss the service, doing anything to 'help out' that involved my not being in the sanctuary during the service). i don't know when, but once it occurred to me to reflect on the meaning of what we were doing, i realized that i didn't believe in any of it and moreover was not all that willing to go through the motions just because i was supposed to.

but that wasn't enough to get me out of being confirmed, and i still had to go to church up through my teens until my parents switched churches (without ever really discussing it with me) and gradually acquiesced to my not going as various excuses made it more and more possible to skip (going to my own church, no transportation, got a job working on sundays, etc.). with a bit of conflict, but not really because that would have required talking about it.

And the reward, for the servitude, devotion, and unwavering faith in a time of crisis was that the child died, never coming out of an induced coma. Through all of it, my friend remained positive and unwavering.

A couple of random-ish things I've read over the past couple years have led me to feel that faith is clearly beyond the realm of rationalism -- it's something you feel at deeply emotional/instinctual/etc. level that is alogical (i.e. neither logical or illogical). Some people feel grace, and others don't, and to each their own... and if the observant can find solace and comfort in something as tragic as a dying child, then it's a boon, and deserves its own respect.

that's what I said, no?

I mean I was saying this was my feeling about it and that I didn't want to steer my friend away from faith if it worked for him.

Yeah, you did, I just wanted to be able to contribute as someone who grew up completely outside of any religious institutions.

gotcha.

I moved to an area that has an old-fashioned church so I started going again. I mean, REAL hymns, decent pastors, the sermon is worth listening to. The church is old and has statues and people with doilies on their heads saying the rosary and all of that.

I was turned off by religion because of places like my brother's church where they have jumbotrons and the hymns are really bad pop music. It's like they don't really care about religion, how can they when their music sucks so much.

catholics don't really say "hymns" or "pastors" and priests are notoriously bad at sermons compared to protestant clergy

we say hymns!

pernicious church of ireland influence

both of those guys really set the agenda for y'all

which guys?

lol why is this?

Co. Wicklow is the county with the highest proportion of Church of Ireland members (6.88%); Greystones Co. Wicklow has the highest proportion of any town (9.77%).

xp joke about relative decline of church of ireland but i just read it has made a small comeback

wicklow is enclave of west brit privilege iirc

Where is option like "whole scenario sounded like bullshit" ?

i can't remember how it goes down in Ireland but speaking as a kid who grew up on the Wesley Bros. virtually every song I hear in the Catholic church over here is weak fucken sauce

the songs are ok, i think, but the execution is appalling

A thomas-a-becket said ho ho ho

i've always quite enjoyed reedy, quavery out of control church sopranos, especially if the accompanying organist has bad timing and a timid touch and they've picked a key that's far too high for the rest of the congregation. i've heard things that could bring a tear to a glass eye.

or a crack

u might wanna specify a bit more there, man

to a glass eye you buffoon

hey i knew what you meant i was just protecting you from posterity

I was going to make some horribly custos bladerunner joke about scones off the padded shoulder of Olivia from Wangaratta so thank you for saving me with xposts.

posteriority

this is maybe not the thread for this but I was shooting for somewhere people who were knowledgeable would hang out. I was reading the thing about Revelations, in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago, & got to thinking about strict interpretations of & adherence to texts. afaik there are religious groups for which this is pretty standard, the kind of thing that some everyday-rituals of being an orthodox Sikh, say, are based on, like carrying the articles of faith around, &c. but I don't know enough to know whether or not this is true of any Christian groups; like when I think of ultra-observant Christians I am thinking of Creationists, & it doesn't sound unfamiliar to think of people referring to every word of the Bible being true. but are there groups that have that stance & defer to the text in all instances?, like even wrt the kinda ~weird~ stuff that's usually invoked to impugn the idea of taking the Bible literally - so, you know, shellfish, the growing crops side by side, mixed fabric garments, &c&c&c? & if not, how is this circumvented? do all readings eventually get to a stage of selectively saying "well obviously this isn't applicable anymore", or (per the revelations reinterpretation), "this wasn't actually referring to shellfish"?

i am not super well versed in this but would be curious if anyone had any info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy would be a starting point I suppose - some fascinating stuff there

thanks!, gonna save & read later. i don't even really have the vocab to pursue this stuff so appreciate the directions.

ugh. lately I'm tormented by (and I suspect it's the OCD side of my anxiety doing it) an irrational fear of being 'wrong' about my atheism. silly of course because it's not a binary choice, but it's a thought I can't get out of my head. including the whole concept of Hell. it is absurd, because it is a thought that as little as one year ago made me laugh my ass off.

and yet, every fucking moment I spent in the church, both in my younger days, and my teens, were MISERABLE. I didn't agree with anything taught there at all. my guess is I never quite rid myself fully of the brainwashing, I just kind of...ignored it for years?

Neanderthal, let me assure you that hell, in the sense of a place of eternal torment after death for the sin of failing to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ to sit at the right hand of his father, does not exist. I say this with the full weight of decades of my thinking about this in rather tedious depth. It is one of the few metaphysical truths I am qualified to state categorically.

Yes, you could be wrong about your atheism, but the result will not be an eternity in a pit of fire, or anything resembling it. That should not be a worry.

it's not even so much a serious concern other than my OCD-esque brain enjoys trolling itself all the time, on everything I believe, whether it be political, or re: entertainment or whatnot. and has since I was a kid.

thanks for pipin up though. enjoyed your posts in the other religious debate threads too.

Sounds like you are getting your eternal torments front-loaded, just like the rest of us.

weirdly this week, a FB msg thread pops up involving 20+ ex-members of the non-denominational (read: CRAZY FUNDAMENTALIST) church I went to in high school, reminiscing wistfully on those old days of youth group and retreats and how they miss them so.

Naturally, I abstained because the only response I could think of if I was being honest was "thank you for the indelible damage you did to my brain many years ago", but I also don't have it in me to be mean to them as they aren't bad people (they weren't the *gun toting, don't tread on me* right wing crowd, albeit their message and means of conveyance is probably equally dangerous to the nation in terms of brainwashing and anti-intellectualism).

It kind of got me thinking back to those days and wondering how I would have turned out if I hadn't spent four years there. Eventually I got wise to their nonsense by about junior year, but when I was young and inexperienced enough to fall for their bait, it definitely stifled my intellectual curiosity but moreso, made me more emotionally unstable than I already was. Their extremely literal translation struck a lot of fear into me and made me feel worse about myself as an individual (which is kind of the *point*, obviously, you're 'not good enough but through His mercy he redeems you anyway', etc, etc), but in a way I'm also kind of grateful because it did unintentionally shape who I am now.

I mean nothing summed up their silliness more than the night I went to a church lock-in and brought my guitar to jam and was asked by the youth group director to only play riffs that pleased the Lord. The fuck does that mean....no tritones?