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Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 9:46 am
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Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 10:13 am
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That's very interesting. Those observations seem to hold very true. Here's how it is for me:
arrow What was your religion before you chose to walk a Neopagan or alternative religious path? I was raised Catholic. My family went from being extremely religious, go to church everday sort to not at all religious. I only went to a Catholic Pre-school but even that young I remember questioning. Nonetheless I went to Sunday School for many years under my parents orders. My mom has always been extremely devout but in what's considered in a heretic way. (She's actually the one that brought me closest to Neopaganism, considering she loves Tarot, Oujia, and other spiritual things.) My dad's the opposite. He's relatively religious but is strongly against all the things my mom taught me. He told her "not to encourage" me. Yet by 6 or 7 I really didn't believe in "God" the way I was taught about him and by 10 I converted.
arrow How do you reconcile with your previous religion? How do you feel towards it? I never really cared. I still really don't as sad as it sounds. Yes for about 6 years of my life I went to church daily, read the bible, learned all my prayers, but it never meant anything to me. I remember always asking the : "How do you know...?" Sort of questions. Once I told my dad: "No one can be all good or all evil." And he got really mad at me. It didn't seem feasible to me and I didn't believe. I didn't deny the possibility of deities, just the possibility of an ultimately good or evil one. I'm pretty much neutral towards it these days. I don't like it being forced down my throat like most people do sadly, yet I have no problem with people of Christian faith, so long as they do nothing to me.
arrow What similarities, if any, can you see between what your old religious practice was and what your new one is? I really don't see many similarities. I imagine there'd be some there, but at the moment I can't seem to think of any. I guess the most obvious would be the belief in a deity of sorts.
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Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 2:48 pm
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Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 8:57 pm
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Depending on who I went to church with, I was either a Southern Baptist or an Assemblies of God droney/Pentacoastal.
You know, the tamberine slinging, tongues speaking, Puritanical Christians.
I went to AoG summer camp once. It was co-ed, but you wouldn't know it -- once, the girls group was walking back to the cabins from the pool and the boys were walking from the cabins to the pool. The boys had to turn around and cover their eyes while the girls ran out of sight, so the boys wouldn't have unclean thoughts about prepubecent girls in one peice swimsuits and shorts.
sweatdrop
I just never felt it. I couldn't feel it. I got baptized and I still couldn't feel it.
I don't really care for AoG anymore. Theres a bunch of dark people in that church system. I know way too many girls who've had their lives screwed up because they couldn't conform to it, but they were so convinced they'd go to hell over simple things, like, you know, kissing boys.
It's just a big shame. They're welcome to follow it if that's how god calls them (though, if that's really god, I can't say).
The only real similarity between my old religious practices and my "new" ones, are that... ... That... uhm... hmm...
Well, I still give monetary offerings. Except, its in the form of buying a homeless man a meal, or feeding a stray cat, or donating to clean up a park, or for generally good causes, instead of putting the pastor in a bigger and better house while the church crumbles around them. rolleyes
Church was always boring. I never got the concept of sitting in an artificial building, decorated with artificial plants, if everything god made is outside. I'd pretend that the dots on the tiles of the ceiling were stars and I'd try to find the constellations in them. I wanted to go outside and play and not do paperwork on a book that was written thousands of years ago..
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Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 9:49 am
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Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 11:27 am
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I was baptised and confrimed a Catholic before I made my break from traditional religion; I had dabbled a bit off and on for years, but my mother and her parents pushed me through the Confirmation ceremony (which I vocally protested).
For a long time I was very bitter towards it, and there's still some there; not so much towards the religion itself most days, but towards the pretentions of some of the practitioners. My grandparents, my grandmother especially, are Sunday Catholics; they get dressed in their best and are as devote as you please when in church, but the minute they're out the door, they're looking down their noses at someone in the congregation. They're good people, very kind and genrous, but a lot of what they've always preached only ever seems to apply to them when they're at mass.
I'm pretty ambivalent to it all now; I think it's a beautiful faith, but I think it has a lot of kinks that it needs to work out.
As for similarities, I'm not sure there are many. There's definately an emphasis on helping others rather than harming them. Belief in a benevolent higher power and a plethora or other entities that can be petitioned in times of need, and an emphasis on ceremony. But that seems to be the extent.
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Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 4:47 pm
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~ What was your religion before you chose to walk a Neopagan or alternative religious path?
I didnt really have a religion. My family mainly focused on being Chrisitan, but I never cared much for being of that religion.
~How do you reconcile with your previous religion? How do you feel towards it?
I never cared for being Christian but as I went to studys and worship I never felt comftorable with what the pastor would say, such as when he discussed sins and hell. Ppl out there do sins all the time, and there are so many other types that dont belive in that type of god, so does that mean all ppl are bad and going to hell? I never thought to belive in what they said and all I saw the bible as was a history book. Its true, but it doesnt tell us what to be. I got into pagenism first from a friend in middle school. As i looked up more on that and Wicca, I saw similarites with that and Chrisians, but it had different and better views to it. Pagenism to me is a more free expression and I dont worry as much about what others think and how I have to be in the world. Im happy for who I am. ~What similarities, if any, can you see between what your old religious practice was and what your new one is?
I can say that there is some kind of god out there, but I wouldnt call it a god...I'd call it a source of energy, and everything living has that. I do think that there is a God and Godess and if you think of it their had to been a female to develope the world as it is today. Both male and female create, and I see that of our developing of our earth, though in reality no one can say how earth really came to be. But that dosnt matter for we are here and all we can do is live.
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Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:09 pm
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Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:27 pm
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Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:42 pm
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arrow What was your religion before you chose to walk a Neopagan or alternative religious path? I was raised as a Baptist. I never really believed in God...not in the Christian sense, anyway. But when you're little, or at least in my case, church was somewhere you went because you were told, not necessarily because it was what you believed. I, like many of you, was the one who got in trouble a lot in Sunday school for asking all the "Why?" questions that no one seemed to want to answer. I got tired of it. I knew it wasn't what I believed, and finally I got tired of sitting there every Sunday. I felt out of place. At nine, I discovered Neopaganism. I studied for a year, and by the time I was eleven, I decided it was for me. I talked to my mom about it, but she was not happy. Thought it was 'devil worship'. I had the same talk with her again in August. Now she seems fine with it.
arrow How do you reconcile with your previous religion? How do you feel towards it? I really still don't care. I've only been out of the broom closet to my family since August, and although my mother and brothers seem to be okay with it, my grandparents are extremely judgemental. They say Im going to burn in hell, but they are not exactly very good examples of Christians, either. What they and the church have to say about me doesnt matter. Im not bitter towards Christianity at all, though.
arrow What similarities, if any, can you see between what your old religious practice was and what your new one is? There are no similarities that I see, and Im comfortable with that. I may have been a Baptist before, but I never believed in the Christian god, so it doesnt surprise me that what I was and what I am now arent similar.
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Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 9:35 am
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Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:47 pm
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I was *kind of* raised Southern Baptist. As in my parents took me to Macedonia Baptist Church every sunday until I got about 5 years old, then they half-assed it by quitting church and sending me to a certain school named Wake Christian Academy.
I didn't enjoy it all too much... everyone seemed completely... obsessed with God... and I more or less just held a respect for his existance (or to some people's views, a lack therof).
I dropped out of the whole "christianity thing" when my parents finally decided to send me to public school around the end of 5th grade, due to WCA's too-high costs. For a while I had considered becoming an Atheist, but I didn't feel quite right with that either, because I do still believe in a higher deity/ies.
I became interested in both wicca and witchcraft around the time I started high school. But I never got too close to the idea for fear of my parents getting.. well you know... parently.
Until just recently. (Recently as in about a half a year to a year ago) I talked it over with my mom and she baisically said she didn't care as long as I wasn't worshipping Lucifer. So now I'm 18 next month and almost out of high school. I haven't dedicated myself to wicca just yet, but I am spending alot of my time studying and researching it.
So I suppose my view on Christianity is neutral. It's just that alot of christians around here don't really behave the way they should... Very violent lot... the ones around here are. They have a knack for always threatening a close scientologist friend of mine whenever he just speaks his opinion and is trying to start discussion.
But ah I've been rambling, so I'll cut my post off here. But the similarities between christianity and what I believe now are... well they are almost identical.... the trinity (instead of father, son, holy ghost it's the Great Spirit, and the God and Goddess.) and of course the Golden Rule.
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Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:29 am
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Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 7:32 am
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Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 9:41 am
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