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My childhood religion was Jehovah's Witness, how dumb was your religion?

Surfpirate 9 Oct 19
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9

Mine would fill a book. Neither of my parents went to church but my dad did a lot of hell fire and damnation stuff at home. We kids went because there was nothing else to do.
So. methodist, baptist, assembly of god (which is pentecostal light) pentecostal and southern baptists. Later catholic an jw.
I took the scenic route to becoming atheist πŸ™‚

8

I was raised Roman Catholic which is pretty stupid: confession, communion, stations of the cross, pomp, ceremony, lavish costumes, it was all very theatrical but there are others that are so much worse like the JWs, Mormons, Pentecostals -- some really crazy Xians.

Pentecostals are batshit crazy.

Love the Bakshi pic.

@Surfpirate Wizards has been my favorite Bakshi movie since I first saw it in the 80s.

you forgot the guilt. that is what I remember the most from the R.C.C. but there was a lot of the rest as well.

@Donna_I They all have guilt. It comes standard with any faith like gravy at KFC.

7

This will sum it up!!

7

My childhood religion was the worst. I was brainwashed to be a Moron (oops, Mormon).

and yet a need to find the truth set you free πŸ˜€ glad you got free of it

@Surfpirate Thanks. I'm also very glad. πŸ˜€

Lol....you were right the first time!!!

6

They all suck ass!

I appreciate your humor. πŸ˜‚πŸ€£

6

Assembly of God.
As a kid I wondered why God didn’t come pre-assembled.
I didn’t ask, because I had already been beaten enough to know better then to question my family’s religion.

Yeah those religious beatings, hard to miss the love in that.

My mom was spare the rod spoil the child with me. My sister got spoiled.

I was still getting assaulted until 23. Never went back for Christmas after that one.

6

My sisters went to a Methodist church and I tagged along. My parents didnt do church. I dropped out in 8th grade, much to the church elders pleasure and not having to answer my questions. Later, as an adult, and having been to some Southern Baptist services, including a tent revival (a real experience - I went because of a cute girl, at 16), I asked my mother who had been raised as a SB why she never sent us. In her Southern drawl she said, "I didn't want to inflict that upon you all."

Your mom is a sweetheart, you are so lucky.

5

In a contest such as this, there are no winners.

Lots of wieners but not many winners, it's all about the patriarchy.

4

jehovah's witness for me, damm fucking cult screwed with my head for years

Garf Level 7 Oct 20, 2020
4

I was Anglican... So dumb not to realize that if all Religions disagreed then yes their is a huge problem here,but then again that was when I was indoctrinated and poisened. No longer the case for me though.

4

I was a JW kid as well.
They take the life out of you.

Well they make a concerted effort but since we are both still standing then I would have to say that we won or at least survived which is about the same thing.

4

Catholic, but who's counting. A great big "Eh" from me

twill Level 7 Oct 19, 2020

Good Day, EH! My wife grew up as a Catholic in Montreal, grey nuns and the whole shebang but she got free of it early as I did, her mother always wanted to be a nun so it broke her heart. Tabernac! πŸ˜€

@Surfpirate I didn't have to deal with nuns. Small town here, we only had a priest, altar boys and what my mom calls the "Sacraments". Whatever they were......IDK. I ran from all of it

4

Recovered Mormon. Idiocracy

That's seriously dumb shit, glad you got clear of it.

@Surfpirate
Me too! I left home at 18 and never looked back. My mom called the bishop to come talk me out of leaving... as I was packing my car. Lol.
It was ridiculous.

You survived it.

3

I was Southern Baptist and it was pretty bad. There were no speaking in tongues or holding snakes, but a lot of magical thinking and threats of hell if you put toe out of line.

Hell is the best! Love Me or Else! God sounds like a wife beater to me.

@Surfpirate God is an abusive parent who makes you believe you're worthless without him, makes you believe he's the source of anything good in your life and anything bad that happens is your fault, even when he's the one that did it.

@Surfpirate my dad claims a JWs told him that their religion lets you hit your wife, as long as the stick is no wider than his finger, (might have been little finger).

@girlwithsmiles don't all patriarchical religions allow for the physical and sexual abuse of others but especially women?

@Surfpirate hmm perhaps, it depends whether Buddhism is a religion. They claim not, but my sociology teacher would point out that they do things, β€˜religiously’, probably more so than many religions.
My parents’ church would never promote wife beating, they’re love and peace Christians, on the surface at least, before the loving judgement and bitchiness kicks in! Lols.

@girlwithsmiles That's where the term 'Rule of Thumb' came from. You could hit your wife with a rod so long as it wasn't bigger around than your thumb.

@sterlingdean I see, and that means as a general rule. Pretty nasty.

@sterlingdean the origin of rule of thumb as a limit for what a husband could use to beat his wife with has been shown to be in error and in fact a man could beat his wife anyway he pleased in the 'bad old days' A wife was a husband's chattel and could be used in pretty much any way he saw fit without his intentions or actions being questioned provided he didn't actually kill her. This is what the Xstian Right would like to bring things back to if they get their way.

@sterlingdean, @girlwithsmiles well there are certainly plenty of 'proper xstians' who would be quite willing to look the other way in cases of spousal abuse and child abuse for that matter. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone can amount to a policy of not my business and therefore not my problem. Some of the nastiest xstians I have ever had the misfortune to experience had mouths that butter wouldn't melt in and they were full of xstian righteousness, which is why they usually looked down their nose at everyone else.

@Surfpirate and their slaves, as I remember.

3

Polish catholic, you folks can figure it out, too f***** up for me. But I still like the kielbasy. πŸ˜‹

How funny. I went to look up kielbasy, thinking it’s probably got cabbage in if it’s Polish...and guess what πŸ˜‚ it looks nice.

@girlwithsmiles if I remember right cabbage is kapusta. πŸ€”

@oldFloyd that’s another recipe with cabbage in, yes 😊 [tasteofhome.com]

3

Is this a contest, if yes what is the price?

Whatever you feel is a fair price to pay.

2

We mostly went to Conservative Baptist churches; but we also attended Pentecostal churches. Mom would get a bit tired of dry Hellfire and brimstone sermons Sunday after Sunday at the Baptist churches and she liked the more lively Pentecostal churches; but she could only handle them for a limited amount of time due to their speaking in tongues. Dad went wherever mom decided to go.

I was taught hell is real, painful, and eternal

I was taught that most people were going to hell because the did not believe in Jesus, or the right things about him.

I was taught that the purpose of life is to love Jesus/god, to believe the right things about him, and to be willing to suffer and die for him.

I was taught that women were created inferior to men, that men should be the head of the house. ironically, my mom was the spiritual leader of our house and she called the shots most of the time in everything else, too. She always said that no matter how good a woman is at something, there will always be a man, somewhere, who will be better at it.

I was taught that demons are real, and are among us and they sometimes they liked to hide things (like keys) just to mess with our heads and provoke us to anger.

  • I was also taught good things by my mother, but this was despite her religion, not because of it. She would have never thrown out, or turned her back on, a child, or other family member, for being gay--even though she saw it as sinful. Any of us children could have married a non-white person and she would have been absolutely fine with it. And, she quit going to churches because the preacher was too misogynistic, racist etc.

Demons sound pretty tame by your description. How can there be so many horror movies about them? Lol

@dkp93 : Oh, they could do terrible things, too; but those things happened to "other people." Around our house they only hid keys and misplaced towels etc πŸ™‚. Oh, I just remembered, my mom insists that one time they communicated to her through a Ouija board.

2

JW"s mixed with Baptist and Pentecostalism.

Interesting mix of insanity, nice to see that you weathered the storm and came out whole

2

Catholic. Probably done far more damage than JW.

2

My parents weren't all that religious. My bro and I church hopped growing up and ended up Presbyterian simply because of the wonderful youth group activities.

My and my friend enjoyed the baptist summer camp for similar reasons. Bude was nice too, and sleeping in hay in the top of the barn 😊 thanks for helping me remember.

1

Christian Scientist

1

Pain in the ass. They have nothing better to do with their time but knock on doors and pester people and waste their time with fairy tales no one is interested
in.

Yeah, those door knockers are so annoying.

1

Yes!!!

Two moronic thoughts equal two moronic thoughts!!!

0

Not too bad really: the Church of England had a nice sung service, a bit like the Catholic one, with hymns in between. So the serotonin was running.
Sunday school was fun and the people running it decent.

Of course, going back as an adult was quite different, the talk of the virgin Mary and others things quite offended me in my late teens, the impossible standards that women are held to.

But on the whole the sheeple were fine, to me. Their new clergyman is awfully judgmental. But I’ll leave the olds to it, if they think they’re Christian, it’s their life.

So subtle, it's hard to notice the programming but it is still there.

@Surfpirate well put it this way, it was much easier to deal with than the intense dictatorship and whackings that occurred in the family home. Church on Sunday, like school, was a type of respite πŸ™ Having, β€˜manners’ was apparently much more important than any sense of self or self respect.

0

So just to be completely honest, I found that growing up in a religious cult like the JW's was very difficult but it did give me the choice of giving up or fighting back and I chose the latter route. We all make our own personal choices and they are not always easy choices.
As I approach my 60's I look back and think that I wasted time agonizing over the agonies that I endured as a JW, getting carried by 4 classmates outside of school ground so they could give me a beating but not get expelled for it is one that is never going to leave me but it galvanized my will and my resolve to be a better person and to reject all religious dogma.
Would the world be a better place without religion? In my opinion it probably would be and for the agnostics and other fence sitters, you are entitled to your opinion too. Still religion has its place and maybe it does some good, otherwise we might just be psychopaths having rape for dinner.

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