While this post follows a series of other threads I’m throwing this out here as a curiosity sort of thing to see if its possible to determine what the broad scope of faith view is on this board. I’m just curious as to what people’s experiences are and if they’re willing to share--not in debate as to validity of denomination, but to see roughly as a snapshot how we (SFReader posters) shake out across a spectrum. I’m curious to know more about the people I post with.

Since I’m curious and since many people view this as an intensely personal issue, I’ll share first as a gesture of good faith (no pun intended) while trying to avoid being overly self-indulgent. Here goes:

Like Alice Cooper and Jesse James I am the son of a Baptist preacher. Not just a baptist but a *Southern* baptist. Fire-and-brimstone theology, dancing is a sin, probably (thought not explicitly stated) a sympathy to the concept that the earth is 6 thousand years old.

As a result I was an enthusiastic atheist by the time I was 16.

I remained so, devouring books on the subject especial about objectivism, during a 2 year period. By the time I joined the army though something was gnawing at me and my position had changed more to resemble “hard” agnosticism.

By the time I was done with my experiences in the military I was outwardly a “soft” agnostic and subconsciously a “believer” in “something.” Then I met my wife who’ve I’ve gushed on about at length across different threads so I’ll avoid a repeat. Suffice to say I was stunned a person of her education and intellect would hold so devoutly to a faith--and one so rigorously defined--. i.e. not a generic ‘spirituality‘.

Long story somewhat shorter, we stopped the social activities of our youth as bad for our liver and started going to a church once we‘d been married for a year or three.

The church was a denomination under the umbrella of Methodism. Methodism as the name applies tries to come “from a method” and its tenants were: faith + reason. Man has a rational mind, he should apply it in all aspects of his life and faith is not aside from this somehow.

This was a *crazy* concept for a son of a southern baptist and former atheist. Reason is not the province of bible thumpers! What the hell?! Then I discovered something stunning to me (but probably not to people raised in other traditions than the one I was) and that was that the pastors had degrees, they had educations. My first pastor held a Masters in Archeology. My second a PhD in Theology and not from some church sponsored seminary but from Yale University.

The net result is that I heard no Oral Roberts/Jerry Fawell/Pat Roberts/etc type sermons. No 50-ft Jesus. No 9/11 was god’s wrath for America tolerating gays. No 6 thousand year old earth. I also learned that many of the “gotcha” questions I had come up with as an Angry Young Man atheist and devotee of Ann Rand were hardly knew and that they were central questions addressed by people in theology--not avoided, not unanswered and not immutable, but actively pursued.

Which then lead me to realize something about myself. When I didn’t believe I didn’t pursue knowledge. I only sought out material that reinforced my position and that flaw in myself wasn’t limited to theology. Now, I find I don’t read many atheistic arguments so the reverse is true, with the central caveat being that I did at one time.

Then one day my faith was tested.

K, don't worry. The incident did help me understand that faith and the faithful are seperate.

I also think it situationally ironic that Gustav and I are sitting in almost exactly the same place--though seperated by years. Unexcited agnostics about to marry intelligent Catholics = his present and my 10 year past.

I'm curious to see where he'll be in five years and after the birth of children as our "start" point is so superficially similar.

I've had some experiences that have left me less-than-satisfied with organized religion.  I was raised a Catholic, but oddly enough my mother is really some sort of atheist-agnostic-Christ is an alien sort (whichever she feels like at the moment, apparently).  I always questioned the idea that you must seek God through a priest, and that you will only be forgiven your sins if you confess them to a priest, so I found that I was rather comfortable attending an Episcopal Church when I started dating the woman who would become my wife.

I also appreciated that Episcopal priests have lives and families outside of the church.  I always questioned the relevance of a priest preaching family values when he has no real family of his own.  How can a priest really know about marriage and having children, for instance, if he has never done it?

However, I am a bit of a traditionalist, and do like that the Episcopal church does mass and communion.  Somehow it doesn't feel like church to me without mass and communion.  I like the ceremony.

Anyway, I was happy with my wife's church until they tranferred in a new priest.  The old priest was nice and friendly.  The newer one made it clear that he disliked children, and he felt that if children misbehaved, they should be made to sit with strangers.

What?  I'm not letting my child sit by someone I don't know.  My child was well-behaved.  I do have an issue with blanket statements being made about the behaviour of children when my child is innocent.  If he had a problem, he should have dealt specifically with the ones creating the problem.  (Aren't the children the future of the church anyway?)

Well, I had told my wife this guy was a former Catholic.  Come to find out, I was right.  We actually know people who knew him when he was a Catholic, and apparently he hated children even back then.  He told one girl that she was going to burn in Hell because she had lied to her parents.  Wait a minute?  Wasn't he supposed to be forgiving her sins?

Another thing about the Catholic church - my grandmother would dutifully send in her "donations" even though she felt she wasn't well enough to actually attend church.  I never heard her say a priest ever came to visit her at home.  They'll take your money readily enough, but don't ask for any favours in return.

And I've heard plenty of horror stories about various couples and their nightmares trying to get married in the Catholic Church.  How about being told you must meet with the organist on a certain date, regardless of the fact that you are working on that date, and, oh, by the way, miss this or any other meeting and I won't perform the ceremony?

And then there's the fact that my daughter briefly went to a Catholic School (public schools around here weren't an option, and we couldn't afford the ritzy girls' school), but she didn't even know who the twelve apostles were!  Not only was she practically falling asleep from boredom during math lessons, she wasn't even being taught anything religious! 

Right now, I attend church once in a while.  After the problems with tranferred priests we left the one church, only to end up at another rather rogue parish that wanted to do morning prayer instead of mass.  I became quite disillusioned with the Episcopal Church after our bishop became vocally opposed to the ordination of a gay bishop.  Again, what about accepting other for who they are, forgiving sins, turning the other cheek, and all that sort of "good Christian" stuff?  (The first things that seems to be forgotten in these debates are the whole core ideals of Chritianity itself.)  However, they retired our bishop, and the new one seems more reasonable.  Now we just have to find a convenient local church (they eventually closed the church that we used to attend).

Now, I know there are bad seeds everywhere, and there are critics of each and every branch of every world religion.  I just know what I'm most comfortable with.

As for the belief in something higher - I've said before that I've had too many weird experiences to deny the existence of something else.  I truly believe I've felt both good and evil, beyond just the good and evil that men do.  I also truly believe that all religions have at least a grain of truth.  They all serve a purpose, although that purpose can be twisted and corrupted.