Different Religions in a Family

[Semiremis]

Eirikir

Growing up we had no set religion other then my mom believing in Jesus and my dad being an agnostic, he wasn't smart enough to know that word though. I came upon Asatru at 15 years ago, though I had felt something there long before. Not an unhealthy love of the Thor comic (I never even liked that book), but something in me that would trigger under certain conditions. I kept my affiliation quiet for the better part of 10 years, not from fear, just that in my family no one cared about religion so it was never brought up.

Fast forward to 5 years ago. I started dating my wife and met.... her family! Now for more background, my wife had given up on her parents religion years before, but still went through the motions to keep the peace in a very abusive home situation. I came along with my faith and she became interested so I shared. Her parents then started on me and never quit. They are very (a woman's place is in the home) conservative fundamentalist christians. Now my wife will find her way back to Jesus... just as long as they can get rid of me. So began the five years of s**t.

My wife and I had a daughter a year ago and decided to raise her asatru, to which the in-laws began an all out siege on us to baptizes her to which we both said no. My wife hated her time as a christian and at times is harder on the religion then I am, so no right. The in-laws, who watched the baby from time to time, started concocting a plan to have the baby baptized without us ever knowing. We found out about it before it happened, so needless to say that was the last straw. We now don't even speak to them. My wife loves it as she hates them all bitterly, not just for the last few years, but the years of abuse too.

eek Yikes. I was going to say that it's too bad you and your wife broke apart from her family but then again sometimes I guess thats the only thing you can do in order to live your lives

I hope things got better for you both, or for you three.  

[o sunflower king]

I was raised Roman Catholic, like the rest of my family. When I was eleven, I began to deviate from the ideas I was raised to believe in. I think the first ideas that really seemed wrong to me were that animals didn't have souls. That felt so wrong to me. Then I didn't believe in hell, that being gay is wrong, and I began to believe in reincarnation.
I've gone from agnostic to atheist to neo-pagan to atheist, to agnostic, and now I'm just... not really doing anything spiritually.  

[Erekhar Amnesuor]

Semiremis

Eirikir

Growing up we had no set religion other then my mom believing in Jesus and my dad being an agnostic, he wasn't smart enough to know that word though. I came upon Asatru at 15 years ago, though I had felt something there long before. Not an unhealthy love of the Thor comic (I never even liked that book), but something in me that would trigger under certain conditions. I kept my affiliation quiet for the better part of 10 years, not from fear, just that in my family no one cared about religion so it was never brought up.

Fast forward to 5 years ago. I started dating my wife and met.... her family! Now for more background, my wife had given up on her parents religion years before, but still went through the motions to keep the peace in a very abusive home situation. I came along with my faith and she became interested so I shared. Her parents then started on me and never quit. They are very (a woman's place is in the home) conservative fundamentalist christians. Now my wife will find her way back to Jesus... just as long as they can get rid of me. So began the five years of s**t.

My wife and I had a daughter a year ago and decided to raise her asatru, to which the in-laws began an all out siege on us to baptizes her to which we both said no. My wife hated her time as a christian and at times is harder on the religion then I am, so no right. The in-laws, who watched the baby from time to time, started concocting a plan to have the baby baptized without us ever knowing. We found out about it before it happened, so needless to say that was the last straw. We now don't even speak to them. My wife loves it as she hates them all bitterly, not just for the last few years, but the years of abuse too.

eek Yikes. I was going to say that it's too bad you and your wife broke apart from her family but then again sometimes I guess thats the only thing you can do in order to live your lives

I hope things got better for you both, or for you three.

Oh yeah, we're much happier. My wife even got off the heart pills she had been put on for stress.  

[Im A Little Pea]

I grew up pretty much Atheist. My grandparents grew up religious, some Jewish, some Christian, but they've left their religions. I think the younger a generation is (say, my generation), the less link it has to any religion. My parents don't believe in god either, yet they are fond of some religious tradition. I've cast them aside when I moved out of the house. I've got a few Christian relatives, yet they all live in Canada anyway and I've only met them once or so.

Several years ago, for a reason I don't know, my uncle has to decided convert. It caused quite a lot of drama, and I remember my cousin crying so much over it because she was afraid he'd force her to change her ways; he found himself new friends who share his faith with him, and she said they were criticizing the way she dresses, goes out with boys and so forth. She was really afraid they'd get to him and that this could change her life (this didn't happen eventually though, because she stood up for herself and he knew he was a minority and better not start trouble).

We all pretty much pretended nothing was happening, as far as I've seen. Yet it wasn't the truth. And when he wasn't around my mother (his older sister) didn't mind laughing at him behind his back. I remember that when we talked about it, no one ever assumed him much credit over his choice. We all just said that 'it's probably some mid-life crisis and he'll get over it once everything comes back to normal', or that his friends drove him into it. None really thought this decision to be a very reasonable one. Now that I think about it, well, that wasn't a very respective assumption. But I thought that way too.

Nothing drastic happened because of it. We didn't break apart. But it's certainly changed things... Not in a good way, that's for sure.  

[SchizoSpazz]

now with proselyting, an expanding world and diversity religion wise, there's all sorts of different religions in a family.
my siblings and i were essentially raised mormon by my paternal grandparents (my dad was/is an inactive mormon as far as i remember, and my mom was protestant, but became wiccan after her and my dad divorced. the rest is a collection of catholics, agnostics, atheists and mormons). i have one sister who i know is agnostic but i'm not sure about my other sister or brother. i'm now an inactive mormon (i disagree with a lot of the politics, but there's some things i believe that i haven't found anywhere else). my husband's an inactive mormon, but his whole immediate family is mormon (he's the only one who didn't marry in the temple).
and i suppose now in my family, since i am where i am now, and still profess to be a mormon, i'm the black sheep becasue i haven't gone out and explored, when in truth, i did and came to my decision on my own now and has nothing to do with ignorance or popularity (and i'd imagine if we ever have kids, we'd raise them mormon, just different than we were, and let them make critical steps on their own time, not the time we see others pressure them to  

[Lateralus es Helica]

Different religions in a family are so fun. My mom's family was Protestant while my dad's Catholic. They'd fight like cats and dogs if I went to this or that church or took communion, etc. Then they wondered why I turned out to be an atheist/agnostic...  

[CalledTheRaven]

Me, neither of my parent's are religious. My mom will describer herself as spiritual sometimes and if you push my dad on it he'll tell you he believes in Mother Nature but he's not really a pagan or anything of the sort. We were basically raised in a very free environment in that sense. We used to go to church with my grandparents when I was a kid so for a while I was an average sort of Protestant Christian but around the age of twelve I actually started thinking about the things I was being taught at church and realized that I disagreed fundamentally with a great deal of it. In fact, I only went as long as I did, because I liked the singing and to spend time with my grandparents.

As of now, my brothers are basically nonreligious and I'm a Norse path pagan. It's not really an issue. I haven't told my grandma because I think it would hurt and worry her and I feel no need to distress her but I'm generally open and proud about my faith. As for other family connectionn, I have a group of cousins that are Mormon, a couple of pagans, but largely generic Christian or nonreligious types.

What gets fun is that I moved in with my boyfriend of several years last September and he's a nonpracticing Catholic. That's not a problem but his mom is very devout and his dad's family is very Protestant. Now I've been able to deal with his mom well enough. As long as I can talk reasonably and intelligently about my beliefs, we seem to get along fine. She's an intelligent woman seems fine with it as long as I don't seem crazy and I don't try to convert her family. See, she has a sister that, by all accounts is a bit of a fluffy bunny pagan that threatens to curse her family when she gets angry, so It's easy enough to come across as reasonable in comparison. And I don't know what will happen if my bf and I ever have kids. I do not intend to baptize my children in any faith before they are old enough to even voice an opinion. his dad's family makes me a bit uncomfortable but I've only ever met them the once and I don't see that that interaction will increase dramatically anyway.

Basically, there's a lot of religious diversity in my life, and I haven't even gotten into my friends, but we tend to get along fine. Everyone mostly tries to respect everyone else's beliefs and paths and we all get along pretty well.  

[Mystic Requiem]

I think that whenever I make up my mind about religion it will probably turn into a s**t storm. Somebody mentioned a book to me with herbal remedies (which I love) and had Wiccan in the name. Before I asked my mom said I couldn't get it. Don't know if that was the reason, but I took it as that. My sister-in-law's side of the family is hardcore Catholic and Protestant and many of my relatives are either Baptist or Catholic; very few are atheists. Here I am thinking of converting to a pagan religion that my dad views as a "cult" and I'm a part of a big Christian family. Oh that'll be fun.

I'll start to talk about it more whenever I actually have freedom over my religion. Just a few more months.

 

[Aakosir]

Lateralus es Helica

Different religions in a family are so fun. My mom's family was Protestant while my dad's Catholic. They'd fight like cats and dogs if I went to this or that church or took communion, etc. Then they wondered why I turned out to be an atheist/agnostic...

I don't really think I can form a good response other than wow.

With all the hypocrisy in my mom's church I'm very surprised she has not turned from Christianity. There were some absolutly rediculous incidents there and I think she still wonders why I'm not Christian. My brother is an a** about me being Pagan and thinks I'm Wiccan, so he tries to make fun of me for that, which is totally invalid. It also supports why I'm not Christian. I know brothers are like that, but when you have a cross tattooed on your arm, wouldn't you think you would be a bit less hypocritical? He's the only one who says crap about it. My sister has gotten more Christian, which I find very ironic... There's a lot of irony and hypocrisy in my family... You don't even want me to start on the in-laws.  

[h y p o c h r i s t i]

My mother is a non-denominational Protestant and my dad is a Catholic. They're only occasional churchgoers, though. They had some faith conflicts when they were still married (my dad had my mom go to a Catholic church, and she said there were doctrines and sermons she didn't like, nor did she like having me and my older brother get christened). My dad's just recently started going back to church after almost ten years. My mom's had three toddler-age foster children for the past several months, so it's become hard for her to go. Other than as a young child, neither have forced me to go to services, although they'd enjoy it if I did. My ten year-old brother attends a private Baptist school and my mom doesn't want me "conflicting" him with my atheism, though I'm not quite sure how I'd do that exactly. It's not a subject that comes up often.  

[Morbid Daydream]

❝ My mom separated from her family by moving provinces away and not giving them her phone number, etc. So I wasn't influenced by them. Both of her parents (my grandparents) are Christian. My grandma falls under whichever sect/whatever that believes all religions are worshiping the same deity just in a different way and that none are wrong. I'm not sure about specifics about my grandpa, but he does go to a Dutch church I believe. -shrug- It's not religion that caused my mom to separate though, but she did grow up going to church and whatnot. She has a belief in some form of deity and afterlife. She keeps to herself about her beliefs and as far as I know doesn't belong to any religious organization.

My dads parents didn't belong to a specific religion until he was... ten? I think. Then they started going to Jehovah's Witness meetings. So the latter part of his home life had that belief in the home. I have no idea what he actually believes though. I don't think he's really the type to think that sort of stuff through. It just doesn't seem to really matter to him and I've never really asked.

Growing up we had Christmas and Easter and other christian holidays, but we celebrated in a pretty secular way. My brother and I when to catholic elementary (and my brother went to a catholic secondary school - when it came time for me to go to secondary school we had moved where religious schools were private). About half the students weren't of that religion though, since where we were the schools weren't private. They did have lower bully rates. That's the reason my mom put us in them. For the most part my dad didn't really care. I think there was a bit of fuss from him about celebrating holidays, but I'm not sure.

I'm not sure of my brothers beliefs either actually. I think he's an agnostic atheist though, but I could be wrong. I identified as an agnostic atheist for the longest time, then a satanist, and right now I'm sort of unsure where exactly I fall. Probably agnostic atheist with satanic elements, but I am browsing other religions and learning right now. -shrug-

Everyone in my family is pretty accepting of others religions. We do celebrate Christian holidays with my grandparents (mothers side), but it's done with minimal religious influence other than a prayer before supper. There was the issue of my grandmother on my dads side sending Jehovah's Witnesses to preach all the time to my mother though. She didn't mind them being there too much if religion wasn't talked about (since they were very condescending) and once they started she kicked them out and told them if they came back she'd sic the dog on them instead of answering the door. We had a lovely pitbull which I don't think they realized wasn't aggressive in the slightest (outside a bit of play of course). They never came back. ❞

 

[SaturnineSound]

My dad is Catholic, my mom is Lutheran, my brother is Atheist, and I'm Agnostic. My mom's not very religious, but my dad is. He tries to get me to go to church every once in a while, and I can tell he's a little disappointed that I'm not Catholic, but generally it's not a problem.  

[trina30f]

It took a long time for my fundamentalist Mormon parents to get over the fact that I am an Atheist/Skeptic. Though my mom still talks about Jesus's second coming almost every time we talk together, things do get better with time.  

[x-MistressMurder-x]

My family is horrific. My parents are homophobic, and refuse to accept any religion that isnt Christianity/Catholicism/Protestant. I am a devout Traditional Satanist, and on numerous occasions have been told I share Wiccan views on things. As you can imagine, I have been threatened with exorcism, and getting disowned, but seeing as I'm on this iPod, I'm still alive and in my own, uncomfortable, home. My sister is Christian, and was baptized as such. The same for me as well. When I get older, I'm going to baptize myself to my own beliefs, and figure out how to break the hold Christianity has on my life.

Wish me luck, and may the Dark Lord/etc. be with you all.  

[chessiejo]

what is it with the homophobia anyway?

to me that seems like barely an afterthought in the Bible, and can be explained away by context and cultural influences.

so how did it get to take center stage?

a methodist District Superintendent told me "if churches would worry less about homosexual ministers, and more about adulterous ministers, we could really make some progress."