Traditional Family Faith

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Father's side: Historically almost all Lutheran, though much of the extended family isn't because there's been a lot of conversion. One branch was raised Evangelical Free Church by my dad's convert brother and a lot of his kids converted as well.

Mother's side: Half Catholic, half Baptist (American Baptist I think). Amusingly both of these have almost died out, the Baptist side (my mother's cousins) have seemed to mostly abandoned it and converted around or quit practicing, while the Catholic side split fairly evenly between converted to Protestant/quit practicing/still Catholic. Only two of the grandchildren (out of 12) are Catholic (and they are the youngest ones), the rest dispersed between mainline Lutheran as raised/non-practicing "none" and myself.

...and now you can see why I don't have much of a cultural religious identity and find the premise kind of silly. There is simply no coherent religious identity to my background.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Fun fact: I would have been baptized Catholic if the priest in my hometown wasn't so unpleasant and my mother didn't dislike him, but I probably would've converted to Protestantism at some point anyway for my own reasons.

But OMG dude how could you? After all culture and tradition! oakvale would hate you so much.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Probably true but that sarcastic post was made completely sober.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Fun fact: I would have been baptized Catholic if the priest in my hometown wasn't so unpleasant and my mother didn't dislike him, but I probably would've converted to Protestantism at some point anyway for my own reasons.

But OMG dude how could you? After all culture and tradition! oakvale would hate you so much.

Are you seriously saying most people in Ireland DO NOT hold animosity toward people who convert from Catholicism to Protestantism? That greatly contradicts many things you and oakvale have said.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What the christ. No-one cares if you convert to a religion. It would be seen as kind of weird since conversion is not something that's done here to anywhere near the extent of the US.

Bingo. America seems to have a great difficulty in understanding how unreligious, particularly amongst young people, Europe is. It's painful.

Nah I get that. What I'm referring to is the fact that despite that the people in Ireland continue to identify as Catholic for reasons that I find incredibly stupid but all involve "culture" and all that. Meaning that conversion to Protestantism basically means you're rejecting all that and in a way aren't really a "true" Irish anymore. That's what I'm referring to in that Scott doing that would piss off a lot of people. The impression I get is that no one gives a s[inks] if you quit going to Mass or practicing in any way but actually switch to something else and your identification and omg you've just infringed on the glorious "culture" and become this.

That said though is "This way of thinking and identification is rare and quite alien to the Upper Midwest and thus difficult for me to comprehend" that difficult to understand?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That said though is "This way of thinking and identification is rare and quite alien to the Upper Midwest and thus difficult for me to comprehend" that difficult to understand?

I think we all understood and accepted that a while ago; it's just that you seem a little fixated on your difficulty comprehending it.

And of course the fact that established faiths; Catholicism, Judaism even Presbyterianism in broadly secular society remain as cultural artifacts. Modern day saccharin American evangelicalism whether it's at a giant mass church or in a pub basement doesn't really have an established 'culture' (yet) which permeates whole communities and across generations whether practicing, secular or atheist.

But that type of categorization doesn't always work. For one you can't put every person in such a category even based background. Like see my post before and just how splintered and mixed my family is. I can't claim to be culturally Catholic/Lutheran/Baptist/anything because none of that is the majority of my family. And this is not uncommon in fact in the Midwest this is probably more common than having the majority of your family from the same type of background. Second of all I don't see how even if you do have a homogeneous background it has a large and immutable effect on you. Imagine if I was from a mostly Catholic family. Does anyone seriously think I'd be Catholic today or be much different?

And finally the lack of cultural identification within newer churches is exactly one thing I like about it, it means that no one won't be seen as not fitting in because they aren't the "right" race or ethnicity.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Yeah I was wondering that myself.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

My mother's side is mostly Catholic, and my father's side is mostly Lutheran. I am somewhere in between.

Funnily enough that's a pretty accurate description for my family too. Obviously I wouldn't say I'm "somewhere in between" but then you probably understand my point about not being too attached to some religious identity.