Juliebata's childish road to atheism...

[juliebata]

It started with my folks. Dad wasn't religious. Mom was way Lutheran. Dad was part African-American. Mom's family was appalled, and basically disowned her for a number of years. So we never set foot in a church, except for weddings and funerals.
When I was about 7, I was beat up by the school bully. He came from a family of bullies, there was a sibling in each grade at school. They all had this mean, inbred look about them...
Anyway, as I ran home bawling, I was thinking, if there was a god, he would have protected me. Later that same year, my friend Kelly invited me to join her at her Sunday school. She described lots of activities, and I thought it might be fun. I don't remember what kind of church it was. I went a few times, and we did have some fun, but I wasn't really getting into the religion part of it. I just couldn't make myself believe. The clincher came when I found out we were expected to go to church on Easter Sunday. Easter, the day when I'm supposed to search the house for eggs and EAT A WHOLE BASKET OF CANDY!! (That was the extent of my family's Easter celebrations.) What were these religious nuts thinking? Keeping me from eating my candy? This is how my 7 year old mind took in the situation. Candy was more important than god. I never went back to Sunday school with Kelly. And I never believed in god.

So I'm writing this instead of doing what I set out to do today. I need to send a mass e-mail to everybody who's going to bake for the Tiptree bakesale at Wiscon. I have a stack of addresses, I just need to type everything in, and figure out what I'm going to say. It's the hardest part of the whole thing for me. I've had all day to do it, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe tomorrow...
The stomach is better, the underlying pain is still there, but the acid-blockers are doing their job, keeping things under control so I can sleep. Now all I have to do is get tired. Last night I stayed up with LJ, and didn't go to bed till 7am.
-Juliebata

Comments

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

Even without the school-bullies in the picture, there was something particularly conformist in the way the Important Stories of Christianity were transmitted to me, in a public school as well! (I have a childish drawing of the Three Kings, with hand-written caption to prove that!) I knuckled under at the time because, well, there wasn't much else to do.

I should explore the way you've done... some time soon. :) We watched an episode of West Wing last night, where a Jewish member of the staff talks about why "voluntary" prayer is a bad idea, talking about a "fourth grader" in general, but you got the feeling, the staffer was referring to a series of incidents in his own past.

Crazy(and reflective)Soph

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I find it very weird that you encountered Important Christian Stories in public school (presumably grade school? junior high?).

I don't remember that bit of West Wing -- must have missed that episode. I must say, Madeleine Murray O'Hair* certainly had her uses: When someone objects to school prayers because they have a problem with it, it's much easier to understand than when a Presbyterian (for example) objects on principle.

* Noted atheist activist who was largely responsible for the banning of prayer in U.S. public schools back in the early '60s.

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

Kindergarten. :{ And probably in the time before activism made a real dent on separating church/state in Wisconsin elementary schools. I remember forming opinions about the rightness/wrongness of Nativity displays on school grounds, based on my experience of seeing them on our own school grounds (but not for long). I'd forgotten a lot of it, so encountering that drawing of mine was a shocker, to say the least. :)

The West Wing ep was "Shibboleth" (http://www.westwingepguide.com/S2/Episodes/30_SHIBBOLETH.html), which combines Thanksgiving week ("Turkeys in CJ's office!") with the arrival of Christian refugees from China, thus giving Toby the opportunity to cross swords with a particularly ungracious CHINO ("Christian in name only") woman; at the same time, he's advocating the sister of McGarey for a government appointment, since she is famed for making an issue of enforcing the separation of church practice/education while in schools. A little too eager, as things turn out, but Toby explains the personal importance...

Crazy(tmi?)Soph

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

Urgh, small factual error in my recounting of the CHINO thing, since I think Toby wasn't even in the room, *duh*

Crazy(I should just nevermind, eh?)Soph

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

We both had friends who got us involved in their activities, some of them religious. I had a nearby friend who got me involved in a group, Pioneer Girls, which was sorta like Girl Scouts only with a religious focus. My dad, who's very allergic to any organized religion, genearlly ignored it (but refused to pay for a uniform). In junior high, I was also friends with a girl whose family (I later realized) were missionaries. Her whole family was pretty nice, but they moved away again after a year or two.

Anyway, none of it really stuck with me long term. It was as much making new friends and finding new activities as anything. I've never felt the urge to pursue any specific group spiritual practice, though I've always been kinda interested in what people do. Some of my best friends have been Methodist, Quaker, Buddhist, and of course Jewish.

Certainly, I don't recall any major conflicts with chocolate. I'd remember that.

So I'm writing this instead of doing what I set out to do today.

I'm reading this because I CAN!!! It's been ten days since I've had a chance to more than skim-for-big-news here, and you wrote this nice, juicy, even timely piece o' prose. Yay, Julie! Thank you. This is my prize for having dealt with a) email from my brother and b) a youngish person who went to last month's meetup and was bored and then whined passive-aggressively in her LJ about it. It's so nice to be here in the land of Real Conversation and Not Just Bitching, and I thank you for it.