I now describe myself as a freethinker. Until earlier this year, I considered myself an agnostic.
I grew up with a father who was a fundamentalist Baptist. He took his children (all eight of us) to church twice every Sunday and again on Wednesday evenings. I had perfect attendance at church for years on end. However, my mother was not from the "Bible Belt" and did not have a strong religious upbringing. Her own father had been raised Catholic, but one day while sitting in church he decided religion was not making any sense to him, so he walked out and never went back. Her mother was equally noncommittal towards religion.
After my mother married my father, she tried to embrace his religion, but she just couldn't stomach it after a while, so she quit going to church. It didn't help that the ladies of the church (in southwest Arkansas) considered my mother a "yankee," an outsider. I remember once hearing my parents argue during the night (thinking the kids were all asleep). I heard my father say, "You are going to Hell and you are going to cause all our kids to go to Hell!" My mother responded emphatically, "If all our kids are going to Hell, that's where I want to go!" That made a strong impression on me!
When I was 9, I figured I had "reached the age of accountability." In the Baptist church, that means you realize you are a lost sinner and if you are not "saved" by that age, you will go to Hell. I struck an awesome fear in my heart to contemplate that I would be doomed to go to an eternal Hell if I died before I was "saved. I was a very shy child, so the idea of going up in front of the whole entire church congregation also struck fear in my heart. What if the "Rapture" came before I screwed up the courage? Just one day could make a difference! Finally, during a week-long terrifying revival that was entirely devoted to the scariest Bible Chapter of all, the Book of Revelations, I mustered up the courage to make the move, and the relief of being "saved" was immediate and immense. What a heavy weight was lifted off my young little shoulders!
The preacher at the church was a hellfire and brimstone preacher who bellowed out, red-faced and spitting, about an angry, jealous, wrathful God, a God with seemingly no pity. He described Hell, the lake of fire, in very graphic terms, all very terrifying.
I began to question. My Sunday school teacher told us that Baptist was the only true religion and only Baptists (with few exceptions) would go to Heaven. I wondered what about people who never had a chance to be Baptist, such as native Americans. What about people who lived before there were Baptists? What about people who lived before Jesus? Were cave men all in Hell? In any case, wouldn't Heaven be very boring? We were told that we should have no friends who weren't Baptist, but that we should "preach the gospel to the four corners of the earth." I wondered how we were to do that if we couldn't be friends with those people. None of it was making any sense.
I remember once in high school I mentioned to some classmates that I believed in the theory of evolution, whereupon they immediately took me privately into an empty classroom and gave me a stern talking-to. Why, that was blasphemy!
One day when I was about 16, as I was playing the piano in church, there was a very noticeable faux pas that happened, and even though it was not my fault, it APPEARED to be my fault, and I just about died of embarrassment. (Without warning, the organist transposed; I did not. Twice). While that was not the reason I refused to go to church any longer, I'd say it was the trigger. It was a good "out." Much to my father's disappointment (he'd been proud of me that I played the piano), I began to stay home with my mom on Sundays. We had what I now would call little "freethinker meetings" of our own. It is interesting that all but one of my seven siblings turned out to be of like mind to our mother. One brother became a Baptist minister. Another became the science supervisor in the Little Rock School District and had to testify in the "creation science" hearings. I think the church itself was our major influence against religion; our mother certainly never tried to sway us. We were very thankful, though, that we had her!
In college, my roommate and I joined the Wesley Foundation, more for social reasons than anything else. Each Sunday a group of us went around to churches of different denominations. That was interesting! One Sunday at the Assembly of God church some people "spoke in tongues," although the language was strictly monosyllabic: "di-di-di-di-di-di....." was all they said). One fellow took up a guitar and miraculously played it with no prior lessons! Apparently God gave him the gift to strum but did not teach him any chords.
That entire experience is part of the fabric of my religious background.
By age 20, I married my first husband, who was Presbyterian. I found the Presbyterians to be quite refreshing compared to the Baptists! They allowed women to be ministers and didn't hate Gays, and their God was benevolent and loving. Following in my mother's footsteps, I tried to embrace my husband's religion. When we divorced, I tried for a while to bring our son up in the Methodist faith, believing that "good" parent takes a child to church. The Methodists gave far more leeway to the individual with respect to doctrine, so that was a step in the right direction. I still felt like a hypocrite, though, because I wasn't really sure I believed in God at all! I went to that church for about two years before giving it up.
For about the next ten years I didn't go to church at all and was perfectly fine with it. During that time I was seeking answers, so I read as much as I could on matters pertaining to religion. I "tried on" all sorts of things, from New Age to Buddhism. I even read all the "Seth" books. I also read voraciously, favorite choices being books about about the human brain, like Julian Jaynes' book on the bicameral mind. I was like the feather in the movie, "Forrest Gump," floating from place to place, and I, too, was trying to sort out questions about God and destiny.
At the end of that ten years, I got a job as a music teacher and choral accompanist in a Methodist church, which caused me once again to be immersed in a steady diet of religion. I think it was conspicuous to some that I did not take communion when offered, but, agnostic that I was, just could not do it. However, I was polite and never made my true views known. The people in the church became my friends. They were mostly liberal democrats like me; they just also happened to believe in a loving God who could be petitioned for help with life's troubles. If only that were true! I was there for ten years, then moved to northwest Arkansas.
Two weeks after we moved, (January of 2008), my brother John, my closest sibling, went missing. I was and am heartbroken! He vanished under suspicious circumstances, and we know no more now than we did the day after he disappeared. Dozens of churches put us on their prayer lists. Literally thousands of prayers were sent up for my brother, for our family. I prayed for truth and justice. When you are in a situation like that, you desperately wish for a God who loves you, who will answer your prayers, or at least provide some comfort. However, in this case, nada. Zilch. Nothing.
Here I was in a town where I didn't know anyone, and I couldn't even start my job until several months later. On top of that, several other unfortunate things happened to me personally soon after that, and it seemed that things were just piling on me. I began to realize that no help was coming and began to realize that there was no one appointed to be "keeper of the truth." Truth can be very obscure. My beliefs about justice also underwent a shift. All the old adages about justice ring hollow. ("What goes around comes around" is a popular one). Just because they have been repeated so often doesn't make them true.
One of my religious friends that I confided in informed me God didn't answer my prayers because I didn't have enough faith. Metaphorically, God was putting the ball in my court, wanting me to play his game and determined to win. However, by then I was past the point of EVER returning to religion. I was no longer sitting on the fence and that was final! I garnered up the courage to tell my Catholic husband about my conclusion (I admit I was a little worried), and then I let some of my more freethinking siblings in on it. Fortunately, they were supportive--even my husband, to a degree. He
knew what I had been through and why I felt the way I did. I "came out" and it felt good!
I finally felt free!! Any anger I had against "God" melted away. How can you be angry against something that doesn't exist? What a relief! I began to see life with new clarity. My sense of responsibility for the world and the people in it became even stronger, not weaker. What a marvel the world is, and how amazing that I am in it! I finally found the Freethinkers, too, and my husband doesn't seem to mind. I think I am going to make it. *whew*
I'm not sure, but I don't think I was even baptized (thank God!) My family wasn't religious, we didn't observe any religious rituals. Nothing. I padiddled around with friend's churches a bit when I was young, but never "felt" whatever it was they were obviously feeling. I usually left feeling kind of stupid and that I'd just wasted my time. I hated that "turn to your neighbor and give them a hug or handshake" feature of so many services. Ugh. It seemed so fake. Frankly, church services almost always gave me a headache that lasted for hours afterward. I suppose that's what listening to a couple hours of utter bullshit will do for you.
