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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Religion
Out of curiosity...
How important is religion to you? Especially in regards to your marriage.
Are you and your H the same religion? Were you raised in that religion?
Re: Religion
Are you watching the new season of Dexter and that's where this came from? Heh.
I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school from kindergarten straight through college. However, I realized right around senior year of high school that I didn't really believe in it anymore. I think it's great that people (including my mother) find comfort in it, but I don't. I also have serious issues with the church's politics, and I find it difficult to reconcile them with the teachings.
My husband was baptized for some reason, but his family is not at all religious. In fact, when his sister came along 15 months later, they didn't bother to baptize her. He is pretty much an atheist, while I lean more towards agnostic.
We are both Catholic. We are not practicing, but it was really important to me that DS be baptized. DH isn't a strong believer in the church at all but I still held the belief that he needed to be baptized very soon after birth and was a little wary of having to wait 6 weeks (since he came so much earlier than I had thought he would).
I will be responsible for DS's religious upbringing. I do want to expose him to different religions and beliefs, per DH's request, but he will be attending mass and getting his first communion. I believe in letting teens make their own choices with regard to confirmation so he can make that decision for himself.
But for now, we are very much Christmas and Easter church goers. That needs to change over the next year though, for DS.
But seriously, I was raised Episcopal, H was raised Catholic. I totally just go through the motions re: religion, but lately I have been thinking about raising DS in the church and it has really led me to question if I want to.
I told H that I don't believe in the bible or Jesus. I believe in God, but I'm not sure how or in what capacity. I want DS to be exposed to Christianity because it's so strong in American culture, but I don't know that I want him raised Christian.
H is a little upset. His family is hardline practicing Catholic, so while he isn't necessarily a big believer himself, he feels pressure from his family (and probably some Catholic guilt). I told him we can baptize all of our children in the Episcopal church but I want to find a new church to actually attend.
H's family thought we should have DS baptized within the first 2 weeks! We didn't baptize him until he was 6 months and it was oh-so-shocking to his family.
We are not the same religion. I am Episcopalian, baptized and confirmed. Both of my parents are Episcopalian as well (funny how that worked out). DH's parents were Catholic and Protestant (not sure which sect MIL grew up in, eventually I think she went to a non-denominational? not really sure as she doesn't go anymore). So I think DH went to Catholic church for a while, then they went to non-denominational (his dad passed away when he was 12). He doesn't talk about it much. He ended up practicing Wicca in high school and college. I think it was more of a way for him to cope about losing his dad and didn't want to accept formal religion. He was losing practice in it when we met and hasn't done much since. Recently he started reading his old books again.
Neither of us are very religious in terms of practicing. Our family values and morality is more important to us. We both believe in a higher being and the supernatural, but don't find organized religion is really for us. I do really enjoy the Christmas Eve candle light service at the church I grew up in.
The minister from my church married us. He's very open with religious beliefs. He was born Roman Catholic, has practiced with other religions and found his "home" with the Episcopalian church. He was very interested in learning what DH had to say about Wicca.
I want to have our future child(ren) baptized at my childhood church by our minister. It would mean a lot to my family for the baby to be baptized. And there are still a lot of members there who know me from when I was younger so it would also be way of introducing the child into that community. We don't plan to go to church with future children, unless they ask. My parents didn't go to church after I was both but apparently I asked about Sunday School because my town was predominately Catholic so many friends had CCD. So my mom took my brother and I and has continued to go to church ever since. I would do the same for my child if that's what they want.
I always thought it was- in case something, god forbid, happened to him, I didn't want him floating around purgatory for all eternity.
Now, whether I truly believe in Heaven and Hell...ehh...but I wasn't taking the chance with my baby should they actually exist!
I know next to nothing about Catholicism, I've never even been to a Catholic church service (other than weddings) so sometimes I don't know what things are Catholic and what things are H's conservative family.
I told MIL that if God wouldn't let my infant in Heaven because he wasn't baptized, then it wasn't a God I wanted to be in Heaven with anyway lol. I don't think she appreciated it.
Yeah, the doctrine is to baptize as soon as possible, so the baby would be welcomed into heaven. However, I think the Catholic church has stepped back from that a bit in recent years.
Actually, here's a link - it's "possible" they could go to heaven. Gee, thanks.
My mom told me that she contemplated baptizing me in the sink, because there were a variety of things that postponed my baptism. Plus, I was already 6 weeks old when they brought me home, so she was waaay behind. heh.
I was raised Catholic (church weekly, confirmed, etc) but I am now an atheist. DH wasn't raised with any religion, and is also an atheist. If we have children, we will not be raising them in the church (which will be a big issue with my mother).
Heh, I'm pretty sure my mom hasn't forgiven me for not getting married in the church, even if on some level she realizes that it would have been hypocritical.
My H was raised Episcopalian, but doesn't know anything about the religion.
We considered getting married in his church to appease older family members, but then remembered that it was our wedding & got married on the beach.
My sister baptized her daughter to appease older family members & is now feeling pressure for 1st communion. I'm pretty sure we won't bother with that.
Looks like DH and I are the only religious ones on the board (so far!).
I was actually raised Jewish but stopped doing anything once I was bat mitzvah'd and made my own decisions (ie. dad stopped making us go to services). I never really felt connected to the religion.
DH was raised Catholic but had stopped practicing for a while. Once we started dating he had just started going to back to church a little more and we started going together. Church became increasingly important to use and we knew that we wanted to raise our kids as Catholics. Now, since I was Jewish, I knew that there would be certain aspects of the religion that I couldn't participate in (ie. communion) and it was really important to me that I be fully involved in my child's religious upbringing. So I converted. I went through the process and was baptized and confirmed Easter of '09.
Religion and church play an important role in our lives and marriage. We go to church every weekend (when we're in town), we have a great friendship with our priest, I teach 5th grade CCD and we help out with our church's marriage prep class.
Those of you with kids who aren't religious but insisted on having your child baptized....why? If religion isn't important to you, why go through the motions of a baptism? Not picking a fight or anything, but I just find it very hypocritical.
I was raised Protestant (mostly Methodist, though we did end up at a Congregational church when I was in high school). DH was raised Catholic - baptized and confirmed, but has been non-practicing since high school. We were married by the Congregational minister (but not in a church).
We consider ourselves spiritual, but not religious and we don't currently attend any church. However, we will likely discuss what we'd like to do now that a baby is on the way - we want our children exposed to religion, we just need to figure out where to go.
Tradition.
Organized religion, in general, is hypocritical. At least many, many people feel that way.
I suppose I shouldn't have said I wasn't "religious" so to speak, but rather, I suppose I would be viewed as a very liberal catholic.
It's important to me, not very important to DH. But he is very supportive of me and my faith, even to the point of makin sure I have a church to go to if we're out of town, etc. That's one of the many things that really impressed me about him.
We are not even close on the religion spectrum. I was raised in my religion, yes. DH was not.
Our little Irish rose came to us on March 5, 2010
Don't drink the water.
Disclaimer: I am not an MD. Please don't PM me with pregnancy-related questions. Ask your doctor.
Yes. I would venture to guess this is the main reason for most people
And "going through the motions" of a baptism is going to one church service (as in one hour of my time).
Not important at all. DH and I were both raised Catholic. I went to CCD through confirmation. At the time of confirmation I knew for sure that I didn't believe in God, but my Mother guilted me in to finishing it out. She kept telling me how upset my Grandfather would be if I wasn't confirmed. Ahhh the Catholic guilt.
DH and I both do not believe in God at all. Now that we have a baby there was a lot of pressure from both of our families to get her christened. We are not. My Mother thinks this is the most awful thing because of course if my baby dies she will not be allowed to go to heaven.
I am the Godmother to my best friend's baby. They wanted me to be the godmother despite my non believing....they aren't religious either though, and just wanted the christening for tradition.
I do celebrate Christmas and Easter, but just in the sense of spending time with family ...and decorating!
Religion is important to me but I think culturally more than anything else. DH was not raised with a religion for the most part and I was. It did not matter that he wasn't Jewish when we met but it was important for me to keep my religion and raise my children in it. The only thing that I still struggle with is Christmas (it's not religious for him) but it's obviously important to him so it will be a family time not a religious thing.
So I was baptized Catholic and that's about as far as that went...
I struggled for a long time with religion. I always had a hard time understanding the logic of religion, and really had a difficult time accepting the "We just have to have faith." argument I was getting from some folks.
I have come to realize that I am culturally Christian. I enjoy Christmas, going to some churches that have great music programs and are opening and affirming (Trinity Church and Old South Church in Boston both come to mind,) but for me it's more about the music and the sense of community than the Bible, Jesus, etc... If I was less busy (and I didn't enjoy my lazy, brunch filled Sunday mornings, ) I could see myself singing in the Trinity Choir and being a part of that church. I worked for them for a few years and it was the first time I felt comfortable, as a gay man, in a church setting. I know many churches are more open and affirming now, but I'm fairly certain I could not go to a Catholic church and feel comfortable. Plus, I have real issues with the Catholic church's approach to music. Music should belong to everyone. Get rid of the cantor and make the whole congregation sing! : )
Side note: When I was in college, Trinity had a college ministry called "A New Day" (AND), I don't know if they do it anymore but I sang with the band (called the And Band lol). We did a lot of contemporary Christian music as well as some mainstream stuff (random U2 or Sting covers, etc).
Also, I have missed you around these parts. Where have you been?
LadyExtravaganza... Things are crazy this time of the year. Not only am I teaching during the day, but somehow, I managed to schedule something for every night of the week... hmmm... need to rethink that for next semester. I pop on most nights, but I'm usually not awake enough to respond. : )