Losing my Religion

Photo by chris liu on Unsplash

This article was prompted by another Substaker,

Beth Brooke

, who shared her own story recently. I thought it was about time I put the spotlight on some of my past and got some thoughts into words.

Despite being a regular church-goer at one point in my life and a self-identified ‘born again’ Christian, I have never been very religious. I don’t much care for routine and like religious ritual even less. I suppose the title of this piece should more accurately be called ‘losing my faith’.

My Dad was a lapsed Catholic when he and my Mum married. She was a baptised Anglican. Their ‘mixed marriage’ was frowned upon by both sets of parents and they ended up getting married in both an Anglican and Catholic church to satisfy convention. I was initially baptised as a Catholic, although never attended church or Sunday school there. I remember the child’s prayer missive, which I found when we moved recently. My Mum was tasked with reading the same prayer to me each night - she had to defer to my Dad’s notions.

‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, Watch and guard me through the night, and wake me with the morning light.’

I said it on my own eventually and it gave me a measure of reassurance when my parents could not. I was never afraid of the dark, but I was afraid of dying in my sleep, though I still have no idea why. No doubt psychologist would have a field day.

Neither of my parents were church-goers and my Dad fell out with Catholicism over the issue of contraception early on in my parent’s marriage. They never really talked about matters of faith, and death and God were fairly taboo in our house too. We were sent to the local Baptist Church Sunday school, as a result of our enrolment in the Girls Brigade organisation - attendance on Sunday was mandatory and there was a lot of flak to take if you turned up regularly on a Wednesday but failed to turn up on a Sunday too. A lot of children from my generation went to Sunday schools; It wasn’t especially uncommon. A lot of children were forced to go by their parents, but we weren’t. I didn’t much like Sunday School - apart from the outings - but church fascinated me: the formal rows of pews, the church organ and the man in a dress. OK, so it was robes, but I didn’t know that then.

As I got older and transferred to senior school, Sunday School turned into more interesting ‘Bible Classes’ where you could have discussions. I no doubt asked too many questions. There were books to complete with answers to a series of questions on a particular topic and we talked through responses. I can’t recall if there were right and wrong answers, but it certainly helped with my analytical thinking. The people taking the classes were probably in their 20’s at the time, but they seemed mature and wise when I was 12. Around the age of 14, I joined the church youth group, which was a heaving mix of as many as 100 people, right up to the age of 18. There were both boys and girls, which was a huge attraction, given that all my other social activities were largely segregated and I also went to an all girls school. Had it not been for the draw of adolescent boys, I might never have ventured further down the religious path.

I loved Girls Brigade (GB) and the weekly activities, but more than anything, it was the camaraderie and friendship that drew me in. There was an element of regimentation and a requirement to incorporate the Christian faith to some degree, which I was never terribly comfortable with, looking back. At the time, I accepted a lot of what was taught to me with little critical thought. We weren’t forced to partake in religious activities, other than Sunday attendance, but there was a strong encouragement and as we got older the pressure to ‘become a Christian’ grew, be it in my own mind or that of my teachers and officers.

I’m still upset about being encouraged to sign the pledge through GB, without any real awareness of what it meant. It so happens that I don’t drink alcohol these days, but I did for a number of years and signing the pledge made me a hypocrite, without my knowledge. Girls of 11 or under, should not be making such rash promises, especially when they don’t understand them. The Brigades were old fashioned and sexist in many ways, but they merely mirrored the times. Kind, good hearted people ran these organisations, for the most part and they were concerned for our welfare and happiness, as far as was practical.

At 14 we started our Duke of Edinburgh Awards and life at GB got infinitely more interesting, although the syllabus was inherently sexists back then, with girls doing baby care and flower arranging and boys doing DIY or mechanics. We petitioned to do more interesting things and took a DIY element as well as a police course, but the Captain point blank refused to let us skip a baby care course, as she said it would be essential experience for us. It wasn’t. It put me off babies even more than I already was, but the lady who took the course was lovely and we later became friends.

Sometime around then, a new minister joined the church. He had unruly hair and wore a suit. He seemed far more dynamic than the previous incumbent and his sermons had some relevance to modern living. I loved the new style of hymns he introduced, which were catchy and melodic. My church going became less of a chore and as I got older I got to know older members of the congregation. People were welcoming, helpful and encouraging, for the most part, and I enjoyed the buzz of new relationships and discussions. As someone who was bullied at school and at home, it felt like a welcoming environment, where I was valued and accepted, without having to pretend be someone I wasn’t. I flourished in this new found warmth.

The slight wrinkle in this ideal was that I wasn’t 100% sure I believed in God - I tired to pray earnestly, but never heard or felt the sort of things other people reported experiencing. Maybe my faith wasn’t good enough? I believed in Jesus as an historical figure, but wasn’t very sure about the God connection. I was given some recommended reading, which included CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity. I read everything C.S Lewis wrote and loved the way he could argue a point. Those arguments were persuasive to a 14 year old with little education, experience or critical thinking. I figured if these intelligent, older people could believe, then my lack of belief was simply a failure on my part. I so wanted to experience something and to fit in. I ended up reading the bible from start to finish, reading various books and talking to different people and came to the conclusion that if I wanted to believe and have faith then maybe that was enough. I certainly didn’t want to admit I’d never ‘heard’ a response to my prayers or felt something spiritual stirring inside of me. My continuing attendance was surely an act of faith, after all - what is religion if not that?

My journey culminated in adult baptism when I was 17. My Dad forbade me to go ahead with the ritual, as he maintained that I was already baptised and didn’t need to be again. Fair enough, perhaps, but I was in full rebel mode by the age of 16 and would have done it to spite him, if nothing else. I genuinely believed it was the right thing to do and despite my doubts the Minister and various people I respected, said it was an act of faith. I was terrified. I couldn’t sensibly respond to the questions, because I was too uncertain about my feelings. The whole thing was excruciating. I’d been so pleased and proud that I’d made it to that point and had invited friends, family, even school teachers, to witness my immersion. I was wet and tearful and felt a fraud because I felt nothing. People were really congratulatory and positive. I was still really under-confident, and self-hating. It must be me, I concluded.

I was married in a Christian ceremony to a man who was also a confessed Christian - a friend of a friend - and from there it was all downhill. A series of life challenges, including losing our home and deteriorating mental and physical health, as well as separation from friends and family, made me very quickly reassess my faith - or lack of. I fell out with ‘the church’ however, long before I fell out with God. I won’t bore you with the sordid details. We initially went to a local Baptist church when we got married, as much to make friends as anything else. We clashed with them over their youth policy (which excluded local estate teenagers) and the Anglican church we attended after that, for their exclusion and stigmatisation of the homeless young people that my husband worked with. Many church people were turning out to be discriminatory and lacking in love. I couldn’t reconcile this with what I knew of Jesus’s teachings in the New Testament. It knocked another dent in my already faltering faith. When we moved again, my then husband wanted us to join another church, which I was less keen to do. We did eventually seek out the local Baptist congregation and met some lovely, caring people, but as our marriage started to fracture, so did the church family, over internal changes and petty politics. I can’t remember when I stopped going along, it wasn’t a conscious decision, but I felt increasingly uncomfortable, at odds and hypocritical.

Despite my parting of ways with the formal church, I’m very grateful to those original church friends, many of whom I’m still in touch with. They showed me an uncritical, accepting love and friendship which I had not experienced at home, or anywhere, for that matter. It was an addictive feeling and I would have done almost anything to keep feeling it as a child and young person. I’m fortunate to have made lifelong friends through the GB, the youth group and the church. I had discussions with people my own age that I would not have had outwith that environment and I’m sure it was formative for my character and thinking. I wasn’t coerced into any particular thoughts or actions, although there was always a pervasive, unspoken pressure to conform to the belief systems presented. The churches I attended weren’t especially strict or authoritarian, though they still had a lot of power and control over people; they determined what behaviour was unacceptable - according to their beliefs - and alienated some people who weren’t prepared to concede to those in positions of authority. It’s a dangerous precedent that in its extreme form leads to cult cultures, where people are punished, made to admit fault and seek forgiveness from the community. The churches I was part of were moderate, generally accepting and socially active. They were not bad people and they were genuine in their belief. My experiences were largely positive and I wouldn’t ever criticise my church friends for their beliefs, although I do still have issues with inculcating minors into rigid ideologies, especially if they are made to feel that they aren’t allowed to express opinions which differ to those held by adults.

I don’t miss the traditions and rituals of church, as some people do. I’ve never been a naturally ‘religious’ person, although I do believe in human spirituality, that we have a soul that we can choose to nourish or ignore. I’m not sure that I can go as far as to call myself an atheist - I believe there are powers in the Universe bigger than us humans, be it the universe itself, nature, or something else. I’ll put my hat in the ring with the Mother Nature worshippers, the tree huggers, the hippies, the lovers. I miss having something/someone bigger than myself to defer to, having no one to be grateful to; I miss the mystery and magic of singing with other people and I feel inadequate being responsible for my own destiny and the that of the world. I don’t miss church or religion - it was always the people that mattered - it always will be, religion or none.

There are so many haters out there, within the auspices of religion and without. Love: practical, imperfect, non-discriminatory, unending, is what people need - and it doesn’t require a religious belief system to transact it.

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I do not intend to hurt or offend anyone by my narrative and have no real criticisms of my time within the auspices of church life. I was a child and young person and grateful to belong. It was only in my late 30’s I began to question myself and my beliefs more critically.

I am always happy to enter into discussion on any of the topics I write about.

Thank you for reading.

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