Religious Roots
Everyone has religious roots and this is a description of mine. I was raised in an evangelical Christian fundamentalist family. My mother was a conservative and my father was a charismatic. We alternated between churches and belonged to two very different church families.
After a tragedy where our house burned down and a life was lost my parents both became enlivened Christians of two very different kinds.
Conservative Christians
Our conservative church family who were also our relatives were staid and sober sided literal interpreters of scripture who were focused on the Rapture. This church family was hung up on their belief in “election” and, denial of the manifestation of spiritual gifts in the here and now. They were worship leaders, pastors, and missionaries who believed outward displays of joyful charismatic worship were distasteful, not necessarily “of God” and disdained dance as being sexually inspired by immature Christians who were not allowing the Holy Spirit to do his work in them.
Charismatic Christians
Our charismatic church family who were also our relatives were likewise literal interpreters of scripture who were focused on the use of spiritual gifts and the Second Coming. They upheld the Pentecost and were joyful worshipers who held their hands high and moved their bodies to music. They were worship leaders, pastors, and missionaries who believed that evidence of the infilling of the Holy Spirit was manifest in the outward display of speaking in tongues, holy laughter, prophetic utterances, and other spiritual gifts. They believed that conservative Christians had quenched the Spirit within them by remaining hung up on the letter of the Word and not allowing the Holy Spirit to do his work within them.
Evangelical Christian Fundamentalists
Both church families believed God had given man had complete dominion over the earth and, consequently, both had very unhealthy consumptive and exploitative attitudes towards nature and the plants, animals and insects, who were an essential part of our environment that require our careful stewardship. Their attitudes led them to be materialistic, degraders of the environment who rationalized their destructive behaviors as being “God’s will” for them.
Remarkably both sects believed the Devil was a real being who is the king of this world, while simultaneously believing that God was control of everything. In addition both religious sects believed that in the end times all true believers like themselves would be swept up to heaven in the rapture to live eternally with God and Jesus.
Church as most people understand it only happens on Sundays in a specific building with pews and a pulpit. Yet the Bible teaches that the church is the children of God and not a place, name, or building. It also teaches that Jesus taught all throughout the week. Therefore bible directed evangelicals believe that clustering together into small groups of people who meet together several times during the week is one of the best ways to grow in your relationship with God and stay connected with others. This practice combined with the lack of time available outside of work, school and home responsibilities leads to ghetto-ization of believers, as church related activities replace all leisure time opportunities to socialize with non-believers.
Change in Direction
I left the confines of these exclusive cults many years ago and I chose to pursue nature based and inclusive spiritual paths.
Were you raised in a religious household?
Well there are no religious Root’s here I can tell you. :) To be serious it is something I get into more now. But I lean both ways. No not like that. I lean in towards new age stuff, ideas and philosophies. But at the same time I am drawn to some really quite conventional Christianity in a surprising way. Am I mixed up ? Oh yes. :)
I was raised in the Anglican church, sang hymns, heard the Reverend hold the service, went to Sunday School, the works.
Then at the age of eleven – 1971 – everything stopped. The church suddenly became unimportant to most everyone in the whole town. I don’t recall why, and nobody else im my family I’ve asked about this can tell me.
What a variety of religious backgrounds we present. I’ll be interested to hear from other readers what role religion played in the households they were raised in.
I am from a mixed marriage 1950’s Quebec style. My father was an Irish Protestant (shhhhh!) and my mother French Catholic. In a nutshell, it was worked out that the children would be English speaking Catholics. That didn’t last too long as I stopped believing in “God” not long after finding out that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, et al, were not real either. Religion was never preached in our house, though it was not not spoken against. Very liberal parents. It is only now in my early 50’s that I have recently begun to look at scripture as a potential source of inspiration though I suspect it may be just a phase as the whole thing just doesn’t strike any deep chords with me. Will probably die wondering what it all means. (smile).
Somewhere between the ages of 30 and 50 most of us seem to begin to develop an interest in spirituality and begin to look for inspiration by examining the writings of ancients. Most seekers learn to meditate in their middle years. Remarkably, I have observed that within my own circle of friends this occurs whether or not they had a particularly religious upbringing.
I was raised a catholic, but knew that it was not my path from a very early age. The nuns and priests would either not answer my pointed questions, or would dance around them like a politician. I put my foot down at the age of 14 and only went to Christmas midnight mass with my mother a few times after that, and mostly just to please her.
Like you I knew at an early age that the religion of my parents was not my path. It’s interesting how some of us spiritually awakened and found our path early on while the majority did not begin to seek until they were between 30 and 50 years of age. I’ve always wondered why that is.