My mother tells me that the first time I ever saw a church, I said something along the lines of: “What a pretty castle! Does a princess live there?” Granted, I was two or three at the time and very into fairy tales. But it’s not a bad way to think of my current views on religion as an atheist who was raised by atheists. It’s something I’ve always been curious about but never understood as someone raised in a faith would understand.
Here’s a map of my background, so you know where I come from:
On my mother’s side, my family is Protestant and Catholic. My mom and her siblings were raised Catholic, and some of them are still practicing. On my father’s side, they are Ashkenazi Jews. My dad and his siblings were raised vaguely Reform Jewish. Some of them have become more religious with age; one of them has converted to the Baha’i faith.
When I was growing up, my parents exposed me to many different religions, but they didn’t push me one way or the other. We have holy texts in our house from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zen Buddhism, and even a few Hindu books. They asked if I wanted a Bat Mitzvah, like my cousins, or if I wanted to go to any sort of church or temple. We read mythologies together and learned about ancient religions, and how modern religions evolved to what they are today. As an adult, I have truly appreciated their open approach, and I realize how different it is from how most people raise their children--at least, as compared to the small sample group of my friends.
About a year ago, I started reading The Convert Series from the late, great Toast. The series is exactly what it sounds like: The Toast editor Mallory Ortberg interviewed people who had converted to different religions or become non-religious. As someone who has always been an atheist and who doesn’t anticipate a change in that, it was fascinating to read about other people’s religious journeys. What was their turning point? What made them change their mind? It made me start to wonder when my parents decided religion was worth study, but not belief.
My mom, who went to Catholic school for several years as a child, said that it was sort of a gradual process that started in about fifth grade and ended in eighth. As many young children do, she took Bible stories very literally. She had nightmares about Jonah and the whale.
Her literal interpretation is actually what led her to stop believing. Catholicism teaches that you will not go to heaven if you are not baptized. My mom knew, even as a little girl, that there were people of different beliefs who did not baptize their babies. Why should these babies not go to heaven, just because they weren’t baptized? It wasn’t fair. In fact, it was kind of horrible. She continued going to church until a year after her confirmation, but after that, she told her parents that she’d had enough.
My dad, on the other hand, said he never really believed and did not understand most of what was being taught to him at synagogue. None of it seemed logical to him. It was just a boring chore that his parents made him do, and an opportunity to fight with one of his brothers in the carpool there and back. He stopped going all together in early high school, but there was no concrete turning point.
If I had been raised by religious parents, would I have come to the same conclusions? Would the aspects of it that seem so logically inconsistent to me still seem so if I’d been indoctrinated my whole life? Would I view religion differently if I started lived within it and made my way out rather than always looking at it from an outside perspective? Since I was raised in a non-religious manner and have never seriously considered being anything else, does that make me any different from those who stick to their religions because that is what they have been taught?
There are no answers to these questions, of course, but they are the questions that keep me thinking about religion, how it affects people. My outside perspective gives me a chance to think about religion without the biases that come with partaking or having taken a part, in it. But it also means that I don’t know what being a part of that kind of community is like firsthand.
My atheism is different from my parents’ atheism; they found compelling reasons to opt out, while I have never found compelling reasons to opt in. Religion to me is a pretty castle: gorgeous, interesting, storied, and fun to tour and learn about. However, I have never been a princess; I can never live there.
