Yes, for sure. I find myself holding back my thoughts and distinctions because I love my mother so dearly and I don't wish to break her heart. My father and I discuss but my father is not a truly independent skeptic. He has the capacity to think for himself although he enjoys following sometime.

Kindly,

Mark

Going along to get along with the ones we are bound to, love, care for, have cared for us, and will generally be there for us in our time of need either unconditionally or limited conditions or when no others may choose to step up at all... Compromise, is the exchange so weighing or is/are there other ways to perceive your predicament to make it not so displeasing... We all compromise to some extent. I feel where you are coming from, and I believe you are doing the right thing with there age, and since you live far away and don't see them often. I imagine you've already made early escapes, get there Friday, return home first thing Sunday morning or Saturday night.. Loyalty is becoming a lost characteristic of so many, if we don't give it how can we expect it in return. Do we shun everyone every time things don't go our way. Idk, I hope not. Sounds pretty lonely.

This is gonna sound weird but I'm atheist and regularly go to church. I use the time to meditate and think about what I need to do to better my life. I even started a financial program for members in need. I just missed the community of church I guess, I don't know. My religious parents have no idea. My father is Catholic and my mother conformed to Islam and moved to the middle east so occasionally I'll get the "you need god" phone call but I think they know I'll never change.

Yes.

My folks are good people who view EVERYTHING through the Jesus lense. I've not been to church since October of last year and they know this. They do not push me to go with them when I can visit them, which makes the relationship reasonable and more healthy.

I can see the point of going with them because of that sense of limited time. For me, however, it's too much of a trigger.

Until maybe about 15 years ago, I used to be quite ferociously anti-religious, to a degree that I now look back on with some embarrassment. A huge career change and some significant personal development got me to a point where I realised that, really, it's not for me to judge "what gets you through the night", and if a belief in God is what is needed, then who am I to deny you that?

I've had to come to this conclusion, because one of the things I love is singing ancient music, and some of the best ancient music is liturgical...which has ended up meaning that I spend rather longer in church in the course of a year than an awful lot of believers! It also means that I find myself in contact with quite a few believers, which brings its own challenges.

But that comes with a big condition: namely, that the believers I interact with are willing and able to extend the same respect to my choice not to believe, although I'm not sure it's really a choice in my case. In my experience, it's often not the clergy who are the worst offenders, but those who are perhaps a little less sure in their faith and feel the need to prove it to themselves by challenging others who don't believe.

In the situation you describe, it sounds as if you've made a pragmatic decision not to rock the boat too much by just going along with things, and I think that is a perfectly moral and reasonable thing to do: I do quite often find myself in church services, and the "compromise" I make with myself is to be respectful of the ceremony without participating - so I'll do what I went for, which is to sing, and remain respectfully silent in prayers and responses, etc. I don't know what, specifically, it is about the business of attending church that you hate, but maybe it is possible to feel able to be there - for your parents - without feeling co-opted by the whole religious/spiritual thing. For what its worth, one of my clergy friends is also the headmistress of a church school, and asked me a couple of years ago if I'd do a morning a week's counselling, specifically because I am not a believer, and she felt it was useful to have someone with a different perspective within the school, particularly for those children who did not have a faith either. I think that took courage on her part, and implies a respect for my point of view that I am very grateful for - religious people can be tolerant, too!

It's probably too late in your parents' lives for you to need to confront them with the differences in your spiritual outlooks, but it is important that you can find a way of staying true to yourself while keeping things on an even keel with them. And, if you're coming under pressure from other churchgoers, remember that you are modelling a degree of respect for your parents that they might do well to imitate in regard to their attitude towards people with a different spiritual outlook to themselves.

The closest I can relate is my big sister because my parents were both horrible nightmare assholes and they've been dead for a long time my sister is very religious but she loves me to death and she does everything she can for me she knows that I am anatheist and we agree to just disagree but one time when I was staying with them I went ahead and went to church with them a couple times just to support my sister I kind of just watched all the crazy people and thought wow it was a very small Church and it felt very cultish but they all seem to get a lot out of coming and bonding with each other

The last time I went to church with my dad was was the Sunday after my mom died almost 6 years ago. I don't know if he ever attends anymore but he's never gone when I was visiting him. I'd probably tag along just to see old friends.

My Mom's family was Lutheran, my experience of them is they are very low-key and soothing, especially compared to any evangelical cult! Emphasizing personal responsibility and Actual xian behavior towards others...how refreshing! Go with the flow, when they are gone you will be glad you did!

We don't speak. They think it is a phase. A 40 year phase.

Both of my parents know I am an atheist, I don't hide my opinions. My Mom is more accepting of it than my Dad. My dad still asks me if I want to go to church with him but I politely refuse. I cannot sit in church without feeling like an individual amongst a group of mindless drones. I just can't do it.

I'm not incredibly close to my parents or my family in general...Some of them have spoken issue about my atheistic nature but I've let them know they could go right to hell.

Nope. Mom's been dead since 2003. If she suspected, she never said.
Dad lives in Oklahoma, with his Sunday-school teaching, 4th wife.
He knows I'm an atheist, and he says he has his own doubts.

i understand. sure, there is no point in antagonizing a situation where no one's going to change and its only going to cause confusion and pain.

Do what you must... I participate in some things for the sake of my 80 year old Mom who i take care of... I have zero religious inclination but I’m not botherd as long as it stays out of politics, policy and science. Being here for others sometimes means putting your own convictions on a shelf. Do it with kindness and be proud that you have the privalage of be bigger than your own beliefs.

It costs you very little to humor them, and I agree, in their 80s there's no need to disturb their slumber. You're a good daughter. Going to church once in a blue moon with them is definitely a minor first world problem, and it probably comforts them and allows them to imagine that you're still good with god. It's not hypocritical, it's kind.

My parents had a pretty good track record of minding their own business when it came to myself and my three older brothers, once we were adults. Still, they were traditional church goers, prayed before meals, etc. I learned to just let it be as it was, and they died ignorant (so far as I am aware) of my apostasy, and that's fine ... that's the way they wanted it. I didn't think less of them for it; given that they gave me unconditional love and a good, stable and ultimately intact home as a child, what's to complain about?

My mother is a lapsed Christian. She still gets pissed when I say "invisible man in the sky". Or "thank the landscaper."

My mother is a Christian and although I respect and love her, I will not tolerate any assertion of a positive value for church or religion or the religious. I am too aware of the evil done to the world under the fallacy of (good god/church/religion) I do not waste my time going to church with her and if provoked, will demolish any faith (belief without evidence) claim. Even from her.

I'd go with them. Just don't say the words if you don't believe them.

I live with my 91 year very god loving mom. I go to Easter services with her. Really it's no worse than when a friend calls me to help them change a tire. Or makes me go see some just awful movie with them. I make my teenage son go with me so we can complain about it later and out of earshot. My mother is a wonderful woman. It's a small bit of torture I'll put up with. As a footnote, the MAGA crowd is vocal in her church and my mom hasn't gone to church in months.