Starting to Lose Religion

             The photo shows the “New” church building that replaced the traditional old “country” church that we attended in my early days.

        As the congregation grew the historical old Salem church building (yesterday’s blog) became too small.  Money was raised to build a much more spacious church building with a larger sanctuary and “Social Hall” for all of its activities.  Sadly, that old traditional looking brick country church building where I had spent so much of my childhood, was demolished.  While the new church building was much nicer and much more spacious, it never really provided the intimate feeling of the old one.  It could have been that I was just getting older and I was starting to see things more maturely.

        Religion was not just the realm of church, it was also part of my family life.  While my parents were religious, nothing could compare with the religious fervor of my grandmother.  She was constantly giving us kids moral stories and scaring us into being holy.  We all hated her constant moralizing when we were just trying to have some childhood fun.  

        At Christmas when our family would gather at my grandparents house to give and open presents, Grandma always insisted that we patiently sit through the long Bible verses telling of the nativity.  She made us kids take turn reading the Bible passages aloud, while our minds were entirely focused on opening our presents.  Proselytizing to us kids at Christmas, certainly didn’t make any of us more religious.

        I will always remember my surprise when I was in my teens, visiting with my grandparents, when my religious grandmother started criticizing my grandfather for something he had done.  Shockingly, he told her not to give him a lecture.  

        She countered by replying, “It’s not everyday that you can get a free lecture.”

        Grandpa rebutted, saying,  “Yes it is, It’s every day.”  

        That is exactly the feeling that we kids had the whole time we were growing up.

        In Grandma’s defense, I did learn an awful lot about Christianity from her during my childhood and youth.  I often used that knowledge of the Bible later in my life as an atheist, to discourage the Jehovah Witnesses that came to our door.

        In the summer during the middle grades, we always attended “Bible” camp which took place, surprisingly, in Santa Claus, Indiana.  It was something we always looked forward to.  It was a whole week of swimming in the lake, making crafts, and sleeping in dorms with my friends and the kids from other places, who we soon got to know.  There were good meals, followed by the singing of songs in the cafeteria, and of course the obligatory religious lessons.

        I was quite surprised during one of those lessons, when the minister who taught it, told the group that we Methodists, unlike some other denominations, didn’t believe that everything that was in the Bible was factual.  He explained that a lot of the things written there were stories told by the Hebrews, or written to make a point, and those things were not to be taken as something that had actually happened.

        While I was shocked to hear such frankness from a minister, at that young age I was already starting to have doubts about some of the things in the Bible, although I believed in the underlying morals it presented.  I always appreciated that minister’s candor.  It give me permission to think for myself, without being considered a “sinner.”

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