Welcome to Gaia! ::

My family's Jewish, so I have a fairly similar situation to you. At least, they try to be Jewish, but they're about as Jewish as Olive Garden is Italian-- that is, not much at all. They forced me to have a Bat Mitzvah, same as my brother. When I was a kid, I was actually a believer, sorta. With that also came some bigotry, unfortunately. When I was about 11, I started realizing that it made absolutely no sense. My parents at least respect my lack of a belief, but they don't particularly like it.

I was baptized Catholic when I was born, forced to go to religion classes on Saturdays went to Church like 8 or 9 times, became a Buddhist then became a Wiccan, now I'm Christian and still value my Buddhis and Wiccan beliefs.

I don't know if Christianity has been positive. I'm still opinionated, I'm pro-choice, libreal, gay rights activist, thinks the church is a pile of crap, only believes in the Ten Commandents, thinks Jesus was a stoner...etc. So It's been a month or so since I was converted. I believe in God, but I don't believe he created us. As in we didn't just magically appear out of thin air, he might've paved that way for us and watched us grow as an experiment...but that's just my weird theory.

I think Christians shouldn't really let Christianity control their lives to the point where they can't think freely or act freely. I don't and I'm perfectly fine.

My family isn't all the religious. My grandpa is but he doesn't go to church. My mum thinks she's Catholic and my dad's atheist. I'm surronded by ignorant Christians...it's sad really.

Like most religiously-molded small-town, a**-backwards dip-shits, I used "gay," as a general word for anything negative. Please, please, please understand that I left this behind over 5 years ago (though it could be more; its not as though I'm counting, though I do wish to distance myself from it).
In a way, I suppose I have allowed Christianity to shape me more after I left the faith. Leaving the faith was a gradual but inevitable result. Always one to value logic, I was very unsure about my faith, but I attended church and waited, like a good little meat puppet. I always thought that the adults must know something I don't yet understand...Surely, though, I will in time, and sure enough, I was correct. They did possess something that I did not. It was denial of fact and science in favor of blind faith. This was not enough for me.
Looking back, godhatesfags.com was probably the final, resounding deathblow to any scrap of faith that still to my being clung, but for the vast majority of my faith was already dead. This was more the sealing of the envelope, within which waited the already written letter.
As I said, earlier, I suppose I allowed Christianity to shape me more after I left it. What I mean by this is, so many religious types view our very belief as immoral, thus I became less moral. Example; today I am getting married, which saddens me. Of course it will not be a religious marriage, though I fear that the sex will be less enjoyable, as it is no longer out of wedlock...Alright, here I joke, but all things sinful are considered more fun, which is just a bit of philosophy that I picked up from religion.
Really, to get into this any further, would be more self-psycho analysis and I suppose that I've gone on long enough as it is. Suffice it to say that Christianity has indeed had a negative impact on myself, but to a far greater degree, in my opinion, society as a whole.
Now a few further, more reactionistic things that I have to say...

You pride yourself on open-mindedness, yet you do not accept that there could possibly be a God? Seems a bit unusual, if you ask me. Not to preach, but in order to explain myself, I am an agnostic. I believe that it is illogical to completely discount possibilities that seem improbable until they've been entirely impossible and disproving God is impossible. I do not believe, personally, but I do see the possibility; don't you?

I'd say Christianity has impacted me both positively and negatively. I was born into a Catholic family, but my parents were C&Es (people who only go to church on Christmas and Easter) and the priest at the local Catholic church refused to baptise me unless my parents promised to start going to church more often. This pushed them away, and my grandfather found an Episcopal church when I was six and started taking me to Sunday school because apparently I'd been asking questions about God. Eventually my parents got back into church, and my mother became a Sunday school teacher.

The church we went to was a nice mixture of traditionalism and openmindedness. Given that it was an Episcopal church, there were, of course, a lot of stodgy elderly people who didn't much care for changing up things like the church music or the order of the service, but when it came to things that count, the church was generally patient and open to other ideas. The priest saw nothing wrong with questioning one's faith, and my Sunday school teachers always taught us the reasons for things being right and wrong - they didn't tell us that the ultimate reason for morality was just "because God said so." We even discussed evolution and learned that it could coincide with our religious beliefs.

The problem came in high school when I fell in with a bad crowd. No, the bad crowd wasn't a bunch of skeezy crack dealers or anything... the bad crowd was a group of Bible Belt Baptists. Refer to Kiki Lucas's post for a general idea of what these people were like. We met daily during our break between classes to study the Bible - every day a student would get up and give a talk about something he/she learned from reading the Bible. Sometimes our teachers would (quite illegally) do the same. Our lessons were sometimes decent, but often included such controversial and offensive topics as "Mormonism Is A Cult And Is Not Christian." This was one that was covered twice, once by a student and again by a teacher (both were from the same church and held the same view). We also met weekly outside of school at someone's house to do a longer Bible study.

I was afraid of Hell. I was afraid of doing "wrong." I wanted to be a good person and do what was moral and righteous. I allowed myself to become one of them and turned my back on my true beliefs that I'd always held, because they told me I was Wrong. When I went to college, I stopped seeing those people, didn't go to church as often due to living two hours away from home, and became friends with a pagan. We don't talk much these days, but I owe her a lot because she helped me begin to see where I was being an intolerant (intolerable as well) bigot. Over the next few years, I grew away from Christianity as I realized the reasons for my belief - I was born into the religion, so I never really questioned its basic mythology during my childhood or teenage years. I started to do so and realized that I don't have good enough reasons to believe. And personally, if I haven't found enough evidence to believe, I think it would be disrespectful to claim that I do believe.

I am agnostic - I haven't found sufficient proof of God's existence, but I don't discount the possibility. I am also an atheist - lacking belief in god(s). Discounting my experience in high school, Christianity has affected me positively because my earlier church experiences helped me form my morals. I've tossed out the "rules" that I can't support logically, but I kept the good ones, and I know why I hold these morals, not just because some invisible dude supposedly said so.

Heh, school....
The last catholic school i've been assisting (and i mean, like a normal school) made me turn into an atheist rofl
I thank those biology classes i had there... but still they made me pray every morning before going to our classrooms. scream
Anyways, before that, i knew everything that the bible said, and it helped me way more to become atheist/evolutionist, seeing some loopholes.
I'm not saying that the catolicism/christianism is a total lie, i respect their basical beliefs: Do good to others, and you will have your reward. I don't mind if it's heaven or the beer-volcano land, but it's nice and true. (Yay for Karma too)
I just HATE people who believes in every word and comma stated in the bible without trying to think further than that, like the catholic/christian members of the guild heart