Encounters with different beliefs when you were a kid

My earliest encounter with different beliefs was right in my very home when I was a little girl.

I was not brought up formally or even nominally religious at all.

I lived with my mom and her parents. Each of them had different beliefs and each of their beliefs evolved over the years.
They talked about their beliefs and sometimes argued and sometimes mocked one another.

My mom's inclinations were towards being non-religious, spiritual but not religious, or New Age oriented.
She had read a decent amount about world religions, had had friends who were in seminary, and even once dated someone Greek Orthodox. Overall she really didn't approve of organized religion.

My grandmother was more superstitious than religious. She believed in ghosts and omens, and was more likely to be interested in horoscopes and Ouija boards than mom mom was. Some of what I read about Appalachian superstitions make me think of things she said, even though her origins would barely be the northernmost edge of the Appalachians.

She loved images of cherubs and of Buddha. Something about the aesthetic. (she wouldn't have known much about Buddhism)
My grandfather didn't like any of those things.

My grandfather had not grown up religious, and was bah-humbug about religion til midlife, when he became a hard convert to the very heterodox Worldwide Church of God (Herbert Armstrong Church) Sometimes he would rant about the world coming to an end and send the church a lot of money.

They all tended to be very critical of mainstream religion, for different stated reasons.
People with conventional religious beliefs could be very critical of them too.

In a way the mixed messages were a gift, for me, for reasons I will explain along the way.
 
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When I was in kindergarten or first grade, I remember sitting with another little girl who was trying to teach me about prayer. I think I was dubious, as I had been taught to be. (In retrospect there are a lot of things that can be said about that kind of thing that I can expand on later)

I remember being fascinated by the pretty statues in the Catholic churches, but my grandparents reacting negatively.

I remember being aware of Mormons, and somewhat romanticizing them.

I knew there were other religions in different countries, and i was fascinated.

I would sit and read my grandfather's Plain Truth magazines. Or listen to The World Tomorrow when my grandfather did though it was scary.

If the belief system hadn't been so down on women, I might have felt invested in it. It was scary but fascinating.
But my mom and grandma scoffed at it the end of world "doomsday prophets"

One time when I was 8 or 9 a friend of mine from a religious family came to spend the night.
We would have played games or braided our hair or whatever else we do as little girls.
But, she had to refuse to talk about or listen to stories about ghosts, or outer space, or magic
I couldn't believe it.
It reinforced the skeptical and disapproving things my mom had said about religion, as it seemed to keep people away from things that were amazing or interesting.

If nothing else, persistent diversity in belief was a constant feature for me.
I didn't really learn until much later that some people are only exposed to everyone around them believing more or less the same thing.
 
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I for the most part did not find religion interesting. Christianity and the bible seemed to be nothing more than a collection of dreary fairy tales. My grandfather was interested in religion, and two of his biggest interests, life after death and morality, did have an influence on me.

I also recall reading an article in a magazine, about Buddhism, which fascinated me. My grandfather gave me an old paperback written by a man who had travelled through India and Tibet. This too was a big influence.

Later in my teen's I made friends with a convert to Buddhism and shortly after I met a spiritualist. Both of these had an influence, but at the same time one of my closest friends was a hardcore atheist. I consider this an advantage as it really made me think very carefully about such things. I learned to hone my argument before commenting.
 
rocala said:
I for the most part did not find religion interesting. Christianity and the bible seemed to be nothing more than a collection of dreary fairy tales. My grandfather was interested in religion, and two of his biggest interests, life after death and morality, did have an influence on me.
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For some reason I was fascinated by religion, I guess from being (mostly) on the outside looking in.
When I did read through the bible a couple of times as a teenager, I wasn't sure what to make of it. I couldn't figure out how anybody drew any conclusions from it, much less drew enough conclusions to develop complex doctrines that went vastly beyond what was explicitly stated. To me the bible seemed very oblique and didn't define its terms or give dates or author names or contexts in a way that a regular modern book would. So I was a little confused.

We are alike in having our grandfather such an influence for us in that way.
 
I remember another little girl at school trying to instruct me in prayer.
I am not sure, but I think that happened because she approached me and asked me about my religion or something.
I wonder, was she being instructed at home or at church to do that at school?
 
The only exposure I had to "other" religions was in boy scouts we had "scouts own" which was a religious program during camping which focused on native American spirituality...the great spirit, honoring nature and the earth. It were generic with hundreds of tribes there was no native American religion, they were tribal beliefs. I think it was in scouting because scouting wanted the.kids to believe in G!d, but did not want to elevate one denomination above the other.

Me.. I left church in third or fourth grade. But my family has always been WASPs my mother was not picky about denomination...we just attended various Protestant churches.

I got back into church in middle school...cause ....girls...the youth groups went on fun trips with minimal supervision and we found time to explore our "spirituality"...
 
I wrote something about that in another thread...

Although I was supposed to be a Muslim by birth, I grew up with Christians. I even attended Christian religion. So I hesitate to say that Christianity is a foreign religion to me.
My mother as well as her parents were "modern" people. I know the parents of my mother only from what she told me; I met my grandfather only on the funeral of my grandmother when I was a baby. They were both interested in progress and overcoming traditional bounds. My grandfather had been appointed by the British to "develop" Somaliland before WW2 and got an important job when Britain had decided to change this territory from the status of a protectorate to a real colony.
My mother has stepped into this, with little criticism of colonialism but rather enthusiasm for European culture and distance to Islam.
My grandparents of my father's side were caring people and convinced social democrats. They had survived Nazi Germany saying yes,yes and doing no,no as it was possible. My grandmother has never been religious in that time but later found friends among the Jehovah's Witnesses. She was impressed with the steadiness and courage they had in this time. I think she always attended their meetings but never really joined them. That was when I was searching for my own way to religion. I attended some of their meetings as well but I felt repelled by the fact that they had a preformed answer to everything and little openness to wider questions, and they told me that unless I join them, I'ld be lost. That was when I was 17 years old.
At the age of 19, I met a good Muslim who had the open mind I needed in my religious search and he also had good open-minded but well founded answers. This made me decide to keep to Islam, so that Islam is of course even less a foreign religion to me.
I recently got interest in the older religion of East Africans. It's also been a monotheistic religion. But the generations before, those who were not Muslim (from birth for many generations) have accepted Christianity maybe under force, but finally with much enthusiasm, so that there is nobody left who still practices the old religion. It's a bit a post-mortem encounter with a foreign religion, and I don't know very much so far...
 
I knew Jesus at a young age. I credit my mom with teaching me how to pray.. reading me the bible.. taking me to church.. answering my questions. Im so grateful to have come to know Him as a child full of wonder and belief and not live to my 80s to where believing in a God i cant see or touch is too far out there.
 
TheLightWithin said:
I remember another little girl at school trying to instruct me in prayer.
I am not sure, but I think that happened because she approached me and asked me about my religion or something.
I wonder, was she being instructed at home or at church to do that at school?
Click to expand...
She sounds like a little evangelical and would probably have done that on her own. I was like that. Theres no big controversy that the school or her parents would instruct her to do that. It was Jesus that tells us to do that as the great commission.
 
wil said:
The only exposure I had to "other" religions was in boy scouts we had "scouts own" which was a religious program during camping which focused on native American spirituality...the great spirit, honoring nature and the earth. It were generic with hundreds of tribes there was no native American religion, they were tribal beliefs. I think it was in scouting because scouting wanted the.kids to believe in G!d, but did not want to elevate one denomination above the other.

Me.. I left church in third or fourth grade. But my family has always been WASPs my mother was not picky about denomination...we just attended various Protestant churches.

I got back into church in middle school...cause ....girls...the youth groups went on fun trips with minimal supervision and we found time to explore our "spirituality"...
Click to expand...
Not sure what ages you were in scouts but it sounds like the cub scouts. My son was in scouts from 1st grade until he earned his Eagle rank. The focus was not on who God is to the individual but the character values He teaches.
 
I remember my parents letting me choose to go to church or not when I was very young. For the first ten or eleven years of my childhood I went to numerous churches with friends in an off and on again routine. Even though I had some not so good memories of the church these thoughts never swayed my belief or non-belief in religion or that of a god. When I look up to the stars I think of many possible unknown worlds and the possibilities of infinity as space seems to go on forever. I have always had very graphical dreams going back to my early child hood my dreams however changed when I reached thirteen as I started to have sleep paralysis and frequent out of body experiences. We lived in a northern Mennonite town that was very closed minded to things they did not understand so I just kept my thoughts and questions to myself as I went through a very hard time trying to understand the things I was experiencing. I am to religion like a monkey is to a human city, I feel out of place as it does not feel right to me.

powessy
 
Faithfulservant said:
Not sure what ages you were in scouts but it sounds like the cub scouts. My son was in scouts from 1st grade until he earned his Eagle rank. The focus was not on who God is to the individual but the character values He teaches.
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I made it thru life...it was mostly in boy scouts...during campouts Sunday morning one of the older scouts would read from "scouts own" a series of "sermons" basically providing reverence for the earth and things that live on it....the winged, the swimmers, the 2 legged 4 legged and more...to honor them in prayer as you kill and eat them and to waste nothing.

My son made it to Eagle as well and told his eagle board (with a catholic priest and Protestant minister) that he did not believe in G!d. They told him it was a requirement for eagle rank...he told them he valued honesty more and chose not to lie to them...and if that kept him from the rank so be it. He was awarded Eagle and every board member came to tell me how impressed they were at his answers. He had another hiccup...never troop leader, never patrol leader. Only assistant TL, PL...they said leadership is a requirement as well. He said "if my dad and scouts taught me anything, it taught me you don't need a title to be a leader., and some who have the title aren't"

That's my boy!
 
TheLightWithin said:
This is a thread to explore our encounters with other belief systems when we were children or teenagers.

Personal, family, community, social encounters

Broader cultural or sociological observations may fit too.
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I grew up in a rural area. It was definitely not religously diverse back then.

A local library led me to "encounter" other beliefs when I was in my upper teens. Quite a late encounter relatively speaking.
 
Our neighbours were CofE and never went to mass on Sundays.

I wanted to be CofE, but mum said no, I had to go to mass.
 
As a child I loved anything to do with Robin Hood. Now I know that this is not exactly "different beliefs" but a group of medieval people living in a forest is pretty much removed from them norm.

I was always intrigued by the presence of Friar Tuck. I read all sorts of adventure and fantasy but nobody else had a man of God in the gang.

I think my strong feelings of the connection between spirituality and nature started here. It is still very special in my mind.
 
TheLightWithin said:
This is a thread to explore our encounters with other belief systems when we were children or teenagers.

Personal, family, community, social encounters

Broader cultural or sociological observations may fit too.
Click to expand...
I was lucky as a child, as my first memories of religion as a young child was when I lived on Penang Island Malaysia in the early to mid 1960's. Obviously those memories enabled me to embrace the diversity of Faith, even though born to a Christian faith background upbringing.

We used to visit all the Buddhist and Hindu temples, we attended many festivals and we watched them connecting the structures to the person who would participate in the parade. Now if you have not see that, this is what I witnessed as a child 5 to 7 tears old.

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The smell of incenses have stayed with me, love them.

Regards Tony
 
Ahanu said:
I grew up in a rural area. It was definitely not religously diverse back then.
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I relate about the rural. I too lived in a rural area when we moved to Northeast.
There were numerous denominations around, in my small school there was at least one JW family and at least one Jewish family. The children were popular, so to my observation they didn't seem to be discriminated against.
Ahanu said:
A local library led me to "encounter" other beliefs when I was in my upper teens. Quite a late encounter relatively speaking.
Click to expand...
This sounds interesting. Was it the books, or a meeting there?
I don't remember how much religion I read when I was young, but years and years later I looked at the religion section of a small town library near where I grew up (family member had moved to a neighboring town) and saw almost nothing at all on world religions. :confused:
 
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