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My parents were strict, conservative Baptists and it really messed with my view of religion. For a long time, I considered myself agnostic, borderline atheist. Then I started researching other religions and have settled into Unitarian Universalism. My dad, thankfully, doesn't care. He just wants me happy. That said, no one else in my family is ever going to find out I'm not Christian anymore. No good could come of doing that.

My dad was baptized into a Lutheran Church when he was younger, I believe. I don't know how long he attended or was a member there. His parents converted to the Methodist Church some time ago, not sure how long though. My dad is now protestant, a very devout one at that.

My mom, I am not too sure of her religious backround, she calls herself Christian and can quote the bible very well. She was baptized when she was little, but I'm not sure what Church. She attended a Weslian (sp?) church for a short time when she and my dad were still married, then stopped going altogether after they divorced.

I was raised protestant, mainly through the efforts of my dad. I stopped attending the church when I noticed blatant contradictions with the doctrine of the church and the bible. I attended Catholic mass for a short time as well, but didn't find what I was seeking. I bounced back and forth between several denominations, before giving up on religion altogether, until I met my husband and he introduced me to the LDS Church. I am now a devout Latter-day Saint and wished I would have found this Church sooner, because it is the one that, I believe sticks closest to the gospel.

Okay, so my dad grew up being Christian and was the type that would vigorously read and carry his bible around with him all the time, but then all of a sudden, when he hit his 20s he one day realized he no longer believed in the existence of God or what was written in the bible, for no particular reason at all. My dad is now an Atheist who likes to poke fun at religion when at home. For some reason though, he has taken the book of Mormon from this hotel we stayed in recently so he can get a better idea of what's going on inside the minds of Mormons.

My mom also grew up being Christian, and any time anyone asks her what religion she believes in, she'll say she's Christian, yet at home she never says or does anything that shows her to be. She doesn't own a bible and I don't think she's even ever read the bible, yet she gets all offended and angry if she hears my dad making jokes about religion. What she, herself, doesn't seem to realize is that she also talks bad about religion and sometimes talks about her beliefs in a way that makes it seem to me that she's possibly Agnostic. Basically she's a huge hypocrite when it comes to her religious beliefs because she gives too much of a damn of what her coworkers, friends, and family think about her.

In my entire lifetime of about 20 years (no I'm not 20) I have only been to two Christian churches, and to each of them only once. I was dragged to them by my mom when she got the random idea that we needed to be religious, and I was about 10 years old at the time. Both experiences sucked because I was too young to go to where the adults listened to the sermon. I would have preferred to listen to the preacher/pastor/whatever do his sermon, but I was forced both times to go to where the children were kept. The whole time I was forced to color pictures of religious figures that I didn't even know the names of and was forced to listen to boring religious stories. One of the times I went to church though I was given a bible and a book of bible stories. Of course I didn't read the bible since it was so long, but I did read all of the bible stories which turned out to be interesting.

Throughout my childhood, besides the random times when my mom dragged me and my sister to church with her (my father refused to go though) and my mom's family would pray at Thanksgiving, I never had any contact with religion and never really bothered to think too much about it. Then I entered middle school and all of a sudden religion was really important to people. It was in my first year of middle school that I learned of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice. I had grown up in a household where there were various races and females were taught that they were equal to (if not better than) men. Even though homosexuality was never brought up during my childhood, I somehow new of its existence (or at least assumed such a thing was possible) and when I truly encountered gay people, I wasn't surprised or disgusted by it. I have never thought that loving someone was wrong because love is a wonderful thing, and the fact that homosexuality existed made me assume that it must be just as natural as heterosexuality. The sad fact is that in middle school I found that the really religious people hated homosexuals, were usually sexist if they were male, and were usually racist if they were white. I didn't care much for these people and started thinking about religion. Then one day I asked my aunt what she was, and she told me that she was Agnostic. When she told me what Agnostic was and what the difference was between it and Atheism, I realized that I was also Agnostic because Agnosticism completely fit with my beliefs.

I have been an aware Agnostic for a few years now, and I get a bunch of crap for it. Anyone who's Christian, Mormon, or Catholic looks at me sideways or tells me I'm going to hell when I die, and anyone who's not religious acts as if I'm stupid for believing in the possibility of there being a god or something out there. Just so I can be more fair towards people and more understanding of other people's religious beliefs I've had friends of as many religions as possible; I've had Christian, Catholic, Mormon, Agnostic, Atheist, Wiccan, Satanist, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim friends so far. Oh, and my sister's an Atheist who makes fun of people's religious beliefs in public.

My dad is a Catholic and my mom just identifies as Christian. My dad doesn't go to church ever, while my mom goes about once a month. I was christened as Catholic as an infant, but my parents stopped taking me to church regularly after I was about three. Up until my parents divorced when I was nine, I just went for services on Christmas and Easter.

I decided to become nonreligious when I was 12. Both of my parents expressed disappointment but acceptance. I remember my mom saying she wished she'd taken me to church more as a child, that way I would've supposedly kept faith. I don't think I would have regardless. She has my nine year-old brother in a Christian school, something she wanted to do for me when I was young.

I didn't have any kind of religious upbringing at all, since none of my parents are religious. I was baptised, because my grandmother wanted it, but she's just a mild catholic and doesn't really talk much about religion.
This gave me no real reason to believe in any kind of god as a child (didn't even cross my mind, since god was never a subject of discussion), and now that I'm grown up, I can't find any reason to believe in god. But I can see how some arguments could persuade me as a child, and how I'd cling to those beliefs throughout adulthood.


Nothing wrong with that wink

My father was agnostic and my mother was a literal christian. I never thought like them and had my own understanding of the world. When I was 14 something happened and I realized what I felt had a name, Asatru.