Do you have issues with your family due to your religion or lack of religion?

[hrmjustin]

Do you clash with loved ones over God and faith?

I personally debate with my parents all the time. I would say they are both agnostic while my brother is an atheist. My sister never really speaks about it but she does not go to church. They think I am weird that I still go.

I am wonder what your experience is like?

[NaturalHigh]

1. We don't always agree, but we don't have any issues.

My wife's family is Catholic; mine is Southern Baptist. We all get along really well. My grandmother wishes I would be a little more Baptist (and that my wife would become one), but we never have any arguments over the issue.

[applegrove]

2. My grandparents were all presbyterian. My dad too. They are/were all

lovely people who walked the walk. They were all compassionate, liberal and fair. Saints really. Made me into a pollyanna. Made me a target of souless people more than once in my life. Because my family were such great eggs I projected my kindness onto others. Very devastating to my life. I would never want to bring kids into this world who were not streetsmart. Goes to how the evangelicals are being used by the GOP too. I think the lesson is that religion cannot be the only worldview you learn. If you are the type of person who really gets your wings by being in a benevolent religion - great. Fly. But learn about the world from other vantagepoints too. Know the world from as many perspectives as possible.

[Schema Thing]

3. I am shunned by most of my family

I was dumb enough to be born into a Jehovah's Witness family.

[Andy823]

18. I know what that is like

I wasn't born into it, but was a member for 6 years. Studying was a whole different reality to what it was like after I was baptized. It took some time to see the hypocrisy within the congregation, which then led to seeing the "truth" about the organization. My wife and I have been shunned since back in 1996 when we stopped going to meetings. JW's take the art of "shunning" to the extreme, and shows that they are not really the loving christians they claim to be.

[TlalocW]

4. When some of my older relatives - including Mom

Got on the internet for the first time, I was inundated with a bunch of internet BS no matter how many times I told them to check snopes.com before sending stuff out. I would normally just reply with the link, but the political stuff - especially about religion - that the more conservative family members sent out, I would reply all to and write my own debunking essay. They stopped including me, but Mom, who is fairly liberal, would forward them on to me, asking me to reply all to them again.

One distant cousin on my dad's side in Texas cut off contact with me over a reply I made, telling me that my dad would be rolling over in his grave if he knew about my political beliefs to which I replied that Dad was a union-leading, Reagan-hating democrat, further pissing her off.

My eldest niece is extremely religious to the point that Halloween is verboten. She has a step-daughter (who has since graduated high school) that I would innocently get into conversations with (when I had to drive her somewhere) about Halloween where I dished out actual history versus the scaredy tactics of her dad and step-mom and where I tried to convince her that there's no such thing as real magic (I'm a magician on the side, and I hate the abusers of magical principles from faith healers, palm readers, and psychics and will always take time to lecture about them).

TlalocW

[Warpy]

5. I did for years but we finally agreed to disagree

and rarely mentioned the subject.

My parents both died unbelievers and I had nothing to do with it. My mother had read the bible cover to cover and that was it. I don't know what happened with my dad, I wasn't about to grill him about it on his deathbed.

They died peacefully and without fear of hell.

[tblue]

6. No, thank God.

My dad was agnostic and believed it wasn't fair to tell a child what to believe. Better to let them grow up and decide on their own. He just told us to always tell the truth and do the best you can. How cool is that?

My mom practices an Asian religion. She prays to deceased family, which I think is kinda beautiful. There's no preachiness, no judgment, just prayers asking for guidance and protection. Never once has she told me I need to do it.

I have always been the black sheep rebel anyway. Whatever religion some other parent might've pushed me to practice, I'm sure I would have resisted. I'm so glad my family didn't put that on us kids.

[SheilaT]

7. I was raised Catholic, although I can recall

from an extremely early age doubting what I was being taught. By the time I was fifteen or so I was getting into regular arguments with my mother, who insisted I go to mass on Sundays. I think by the time I was a senior in high school I stopped going. Definitely didn't attend by the time I was 18.

I'm one of six kids, and all of us were nominal Catholics for a period of time, but by the time my mother died at the age of 82, it had been years since she'd attended mass, and I can't begin to know when the last time any of us went.

Three weeks ago my brother-in-law, younger sister's husband, died suddenly and unexpectedly. The service at the funeral home did have a priest officiating, but there was almost no religious component, other than the recitation of the 23rd Psalm. It was a level of religiosity that was very comfortable for me.

I have one close friend and a cousin who are still practicing Catholics, and every so often I challenge them on it, because I personally feel that so long as people like them, who do not go along with most of what the Church teaches, so long as they stay in the Church the Church will never reform. Just my opinion.

[LostOne4Ever]

8. I tried to bring it up once

and my stepfather (a catholic) said he would not stand for any member of his family being an atheist.

He takes care of my mom's crappy oil properties and between him and myself we take care of my mother who has MS. I go to school while hes there with her, and I am there with her when he goes out to work. I have a younger brother but he is not physically able to care for her.

I don't want to strain our relationship in this situation over something that is for the most part rather unimportant to me. Though, if I did bring it up I think he would eventually come to terms with it. He means well but he has his prejudices, so he is a lot like Archie Bunker. He once confronted me, thinking I was gay, and said he was accepting of me no matter my orientation. I don't think I ever saw someone as relieved as he was when I told him I wasn't homosexual >.>

So Im trying to gradually come out to him. I made it pretty clear to my whole family that im pretty antagonistic to organized religion and pretty much reject the bible as a bunch of myths.

My mom is a deist (though she would probably identify as a lapsed catholic if you asked her). She believes in a god (She calls this god Odin after she had a coma a while back where she dreamed she met him) who started the universe and watches without interfering with the only exception being that he will make it rain occasionally if she prays hard enough

After the experience with my stepfather, I told her that I'm an agnostic and she had no problem with that.

I have no clue what my younger brother believes, he never talks about it. If I had to guess I would say liberal christian/lapsed catholic. He knows i dislike organized religion but i dont think he understands what I mean by agnostic. He did come home once mad at "atheists" after hearing about some atheist group was trying to get "under god" removed from pledge. He was shocked when he found out I agreed with them.

[LeftishBrit]

9. Not with close family, no.

Second-generation atheist on one side; third-generation atheist on the other. Some religious relatives - mostly Jews; a couple of Protestants; no problems (there have been family quarrels for other reasons, but not religion).

I do have a distant cousin who is VERY religious, and while we don't have quarrels, we don't have a lot in common. Belongs to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group. Spends all the time reading religious texts and going to synagogue, while his wife earns the living AND raises 9 kids. (I generally have a bit of a problem with women's role in ultra-religious groups of all religions). Doesn't believe in the secular state, and specifically not in the State of Israel, even though he lives there, because he doesn't think it should have been established before the coming of the Messiah.

[Freddie]

10. My son (22) is an atheist

And he's convinced that *all* religion is wrong and a force for evil in the world.
I'm an ELCA Lutheran, a follower of the Christian Left. My church welcomes all with full equality; we have women pastors and our synod bishop is a woman. I find a great deal of comfort in the faith I was raised in, especially now that my 84-year old mother is in hospice and facing death soon. Mom is a believer too and brought me to the church as a child.
My boy does not acknowledge that there is a huge difference between my church and the Fundies that are trying to impose their particular vision of Christianity onto the country. I accept his lack of belief and am not trying to push anything on him, I just wish he was not so smug and dismissive of mine.

[Mariana]

20. He's 22.

Lots of 22 year olds are smug and dismissive of their parents' choices and opinions, about everything, not just religion.

[Freddie]

21. True dat.

He's a good kid and we agree on just about everything else, including politics (this liberal raised him right). We'll have to agree to disagree on this topic.

[Bad Thoughts]

11. Religion drives racism and self-hatred in my family

My family's religious background is complicated, to say the least. My father was born to Jewish immigrants, but was convinced that he should become Christian by a Jesuit priest when he was in college. He hid this until after his mother's death, when I was already 11 years old. My mother's family are of Mexican and German descent. My mother was to some degree influenced by her father's Catholicism (he belonged to one of the Nuevomexicano brotherhoods), but her family was more Lutheran in their practices. She became Jewish when she married my father, but our family became Episcopalian when my father "came out" (so to speak). We diverged after I left for college. They found that they were happier in a Catholic church. I became agnostic, but became a Reconstructionist Jew after reading some Martin Buber.

As complicated as that may seem, the problem are not within our family but with uncles, aunts, and cousins. My father's sister became embittered by his conversion. She wouldn't attend his funeral. However, things are worse on the other side. Three of my mother's siblings embraced the kind of Evangelical Christianity that emphasized Dominionism. They are extraordinarily judgmental, criticizing all our actions for in terms of their narrow view of faith. Worse: they embrace an anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic attitude. Consequently, they completely deny our Mexican background, and family gatherings often feature some immigrant bashing. Strangely, my being Jewish is the least contentious aspect of family dynamics. It's really all the political BS that has come along with religion.

[truebluegreen]

12. My sister--the only surviving member of our immediate family

is a born-again evangelist true-believer who doesn't think it is possible to be a good person without similar beliefs.

We don't speak, on that topic or any other.

[Still Blue in PDX]

13. I had huge issues with my husband for years.

He was raised Catholic, went to church every Sunday and went to Catholic school through the 6th grade.

I wasn't raised with any religion, and when I was 24 I got "born again." It just about drove my husband crazy because I wanted to save him. Mind you, it wasn't even a big time evangelical church, it was Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. His idea was that he was a grownup and he didn't have to go to church anymore and wasn't having it. Consequently, I had a terrible time getting my kids to go to church because dad didn't. It was kind of weird for me, too, because I didn't fit into the young marrieds or the young singles.

I finally gave up.

About 20 years ago my spiritual journey went pretty much full circle to my beginnings of being a believer in God/dess but not any organized religion. Since I've morphed into what you might call an eclectic Celtic reconstructionist kitchen witch, I've found out just how Lutheran my kids really are in spite of them trying to resist that every step of the way. They are appalled at my "religion." Strangely, my husband is okay with it. I was talking with a Pagan friend who said that Catholics usually don't have a problem with it because the rituals are similar -- it's all about the "smells and bells."


So yeah.

[rug]

14. My wife's Baptist, my oldest daughter stopped going to church.

Our biggest argument is over replacing the toilet paper.

[Iggo]

15. Only on holidays, weddings, funerals, hospital visits, and whenever they're high on disaster porn.

Other than that, we're fine.

[ButterflyBlood]

16. Not anymore really

Used to be an issue because of my bitterness toward and leaving of Catholicism, but now it seems that I just set the trend and basically everyone in my immediate family has too.

[Marrah_G]

17. We just don't discuss it

I am Wiccan and they are practicing Catholic. We don't discuss it with the exception of an occasional question about mine from a cousin or two.

I think New England is a little different then other places in that religion is something that is usually considered private and not often discussed (unless there is something big in the news)

My sons are atheists and my daughter is still figuring out what she believes, if anything.

[ZombieHorde]

19. Yes, until I was around 17 years old.

My stepfather then told my mother that she should back off since I was old enough to make up my own mind regarding religion. I was very happy that he intervened on my behalf.