Raised Without Religion

My family has had a tumultuous relationship with religion.

Both of my parents were raised Roman Catholic. My grandfather on my dad’s side was also Catholic, but his wife had been raised Baptist. She, in fact, was the daughter of a Baptist minister. She married the son of an Italian immigrant, a Roman Catholic, with olive skin. But from what I understand of my family lore, she didn't miss the Baptist church she grew up in. When she was a teenager, she witnessed a community member proclaim to the congregation that he had been living in sin, sleeping with another woman, disgracing his wife. Nana wasn't one for public proclamations, and her sense of empathy for the wife, who now was thrust into the community spotlight, made her enraged at this sort of outburst.

My mother’s parents were both raised Catholic, but divorced when my mother was a teenager. My mother recalls going to Catholic school and being able to tell which nuns were fooling around with which priests. She remembers asking questions, big questions, about life and science, with only “God’s plan,” as an answer. Her inquisitive mind could never quite accept that.

Granted, my family’s experiences aren’t meant to be representative of society’s. I’m sure many people have had wonderful and fulfilling experiences within their own churches and their own faiths. I tell you this to explain my parent’s choice, the choice to raise me without Religion.

No crosses hung in my house.  No Sunday school, no mass, no baptism, no confirmation. When I asked about God growing up, my parents would always preface any explanation with, “Some people believe…” And that was fine. They never hindered me from exploring my own faith, from discovering what it was I might believe in.

When my friends went to summer camp at the Christian Conference Center in town, I asked to try it out. My mother frowned, but allowed it. Everything there was fun and fine until the kids started singing songs I didn't know the words to. I didn't go back.

I read a book of Bible stories that my Grandmother (on my mother’s side) had purchased me. Highlighted, made notes. It all seemed so fascinating.

I asked to go to Mass at St. Joan of Arc Cathedral and my mother obliged. I was eager. I romanticized the idea of church. I drilled into my head the protocol before attending: the holy water, the cross you made on your chest, the kneeling. But forty-five minutes in and my butt hurt on the wooden pews. I had lost what the priest was saying. I felt bored.

After that, I read The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama. I studied Buddhism (as much as any eleven-year-old can). I researched Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, Wicca. I dabbled in them, taking the parts I understood and applying them to my middle-school life, and then to adolescence. I meditated, I prayed, I read, I talked with practitioners.  

I began to have a vague understanding of my own beliefs. I knew I believed in something, but I didn’t dare name it.

My parents raised me without religion. But even without the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, or any other religious doctrine, they still raised me with compassion. They raised me with love and tolerance. They raised me to empathize with others, to participate within a community, to add to the fabric of society. And they raised me to learn.

Because of this upbringing, I had an amazing spiritual journey that stretched from my youth to my adulthood. I asked questions, and sometimes even found answers. And now, as an adult, I feel the strength in my own beliefs because I have tested them.