Dads
side of the family had been fairly strict Catholics but he had more or
less rejected religion by the time I was born. (See the entry DADS
PRIMARY SCHOOL located in the FAMILY HISTORY chapter). Some of mum’s
cousins were religious but as far as I was aware neither her or her
parents had any religious beliefs at all. Outside of school religion
played almost no part in my life at all, the only time I ever seen the
inside of a church was at weddings, funerals and christenings. My
parents attitude seemed to be that if I “found” religion then that was
entirely up to me, they didn’t attempt to sway me one way or the other.
At
school we had what would be best described as a standard church of
England religious education. It was mostly bible stories in the
classroom and at school assemblies, we also had to say prayers before
and after meals. Looking back I noticed that the amount of religious
education we got depended a lot on the teacher we had at the time. Mrs
Irneson in the final year was actively involved in the church and ran
the local sunday school. This was obviously the year we got the most
religion in the classroom.
I
did make an attempt to read the bible at school, after all we were all
given one and I just treated it like any other book. I didn’t have much
reading stamina at the best of times so the size of it combined with the
fact it was difficult to understand and contained pages of endless
genealogies made sure that I didn’t get far. I noticed that it was the
only book (apart from the dictionary) that was not read from start to
finish. In fact it was treated just like the dictionary the way teachers
selected stories and passages that were midway through the book.
For
most of the time I simply taken in what we were told at school just
like any other subject. Outside of school I had a keen interest in
science, mostly astronomy and often read books that were well ahead of
my age. When I read about things like the big bang theory or how stars
and planets formed I wasn’t just fascinated by what was known but also
how they knew these things. This contrasted sharply with religion which
often gave vague answers to question such as “because god made it that
way”.
In
1984 one of the biggest news stories of the year was the famine in
Ethiopia complete with all the disturbing images of starving kids. This
hardly fitted in with the claims being made by the teachers at school.
It was around this time that I also heard my parents say this to a
religious group who came knocking on our door one Saturday morning. That
was the first time in my life that I heard someone openly criticising
religion. Not long after came dads stories of how religion was
practically forced down his throat at Holy cross catholic school.
Admitting that you hadn’t been church the previous sunday instantly got
you a smack round the side of the head.
I
also noticed how some members of my generation had religion pushed in
their direction by their parents but others didn’t. I did attend sunday
school with one friend for a short time but that ended when I stopped
hanging around with that person. Another was always complaining about
having to go church with his parents all the time.
I
suppose the feeling that something wasn’t quite right with religion was
always there from the start although I probably accepted some of it at
the time. Some mistakenly think that I rejected religion because of
certain tragic events in my life but this is not the case. I suppose it
wasn’t until I got to secondary school when the nature of the religious
education I got changed and my encounters with deeply religious people
led me to questioning the subject a lot deeper.
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