Your Religious Heritage

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My dad’s side of the family was Irish Catholic, but I don’t think they were strong in their faith. My mother’s side was Lutheran. After they married and I was born they both became Episcopalians and I was raised in the Episcopal church. They were not that involvef in church, and I always felt I should be Catholic so I finally converted years later after many years of not attending church.
 
Mother’s side, everyone, Mormon through and through. The people who converted, way back when, were American Protestants or CofE.

Father’s side, he was raised as nothing but in Salt Lake City, and sometime in his young life a primary teacher made sure he was baptized Mormon. His mother’s people were Lutheran, converted to Mormonism, and immigrated from Sweden to Utah. I never heard that his father ever practiced any religion.

My parents were not practicing Mormons until shortly before I was born, when something changed, and they became model Mormons.

I left Mormonism nearly 30 years ago for nothing. Raised a daughter without any religion. My husband is atheist. I’m a Catholic convert.
 
My father was a southern Baptist and my mother a Nazarene before they both converted to Oneness-Holiness Pentecostalism. That’s the way they raised me. I was nonreligious/agnostic for most of my twenties, “converting” to traditional Christianity when I was close to 27.
 
My whole family is just general Christians although have always attended United Methodist churches. It was both my parents who converted to Christianity with the rise of Protestantism in South Korea during the latter half of the 20th century and then later also my grandparents. Before that I think my grandparents (before conversion) and farther back were Buddhist. I almost converted to Catholicism this year, and the response was fairly negative saying that all Christianity is the same and that I already met Christ (so conversion is a waste of time). Haven’t mentioned Orthodoxy yet.
 
My family has been Catholic since Christianity was introduced to Gaul/France. 2nd Century, maybe?
 
rfournier103 said:
My family has been Catholic since Christianity was introduced to Gaul/France. 2nd Century, maybe?
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Ah, practically a catechumen?
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: And what qualifications do you have for police work?
Ponton: My family’s done police work in Paris for nine generations.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: And before that?
Ponton: We were policemen in the surrounding areas for 200 years.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: And before that?
Ponton: Immigrants from various countries in Europe all involving police work.
**Inspector **Jacques Clouseau: And before that?
Ponton: …farmers.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: Hmm. So you are a little lamb who has come to Clouseau for to learn.
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Well, being that I am a Gentile, traced far back enough my ancestors were obviously Pagan.

I know nothing of my fathers side of the family. I have not seen him since I was 3. My Great Grandmother from my mothers side was a strong Assemblies of God Christian. I do not know who first went from Catholic to protestant in my family line considering that the ethnicity’s I come from are strongly Catholic (Basque, Mexican, Italian and The Yaqui tribe from Mexico who were converted by the Jesuits) But I am guessing it was with my great grandmother. And my family from her down to my little cousins are varying type’s of protestant. I am the only Catholic in my immediate family. Though I have discovered a few relatives who are also Catholic through facebook. But the overwhelming majority are protestant and I myself went from Pentecostal/non denominational leanings to Lutheran to Catholic. My mother is a Calvary Chapel Christian. I have a aunt married to a assemblies of God minister (He is a good Godly man) But I think the rest of my family just believe in God but are very secular.

From my grandfathers side, they are Yaqui Indians (from Sonora Mexico but a great number of them migrated to Arizona) and the overwhelming majority of Yaqui’s were converted by the Jesuits, So I am guessing a lot of my relatives down in Arizona who I do not know are still Catholic. My Grandfather basically was probably Baptized Catholic as a infant but was not a practicing Catholic from what I hear. My step Grandfather (who I basically consider my dad because he raised me along with my Grandmother) was a non-practicing Catholic.

I did not get much heat when I decided I would become Catholic. A little, but not much. My Grandmother, who is Pentecostal, respects Catholics. My Mother, who is Calvary Chapel christian has some very false beliefs about The Church but she respected my decision and went to my Baptism and does not give me problems. My aunt who is married to the assemblies of God minister gives me Catholic books that she runs into 😃 The rest of my family are so secular, I do not think they would care what anyone converts to as long as they just believe in Jesus.

Interestingly enough, my mother recently took a DNA test to see what she has mixed in her blood and it said there is a chance she is about 1% European Jew. So… far enough back, a distant relative that we share blood with could have been Jewish.
 
Catholic on my dad’s side, going back to the potato famine and even to Cromwell sending Irish Catholics to the colonies. German Catholics from the 1800s as well. There were a few people that converted to Lutheran and then converted back to Catholicism. They were good, solid Catholics. They tried hard to live their faith. My dad left his religion when I was an infant. He dad is trying to make his way back.

French Huguenots, Welsh Congregationalists and Scottish Presbyterians (with a few Irish Catholics a few generations back) on my mom’s side. My mom’s side of the family are still very hostile to my conversion to Catholicism. My mom was raised going to the ‘right church’ and her dad was active in the Masons and very anti-Catholic. It is really more of a status thing with her side of the family. They went to church to cement connections with the ‘right people’. It was always either an Episcopal or Presbyterian church. They wanted all the social and political advantages of being a so-called “WASP”. Not much faith on that side, I’m afraid. It could have been so much different if they went to church, any church, with an honest belief in God. My mom rejected religion when she moved away from her family. The rest of her family pretty much gave it up as well. I pray for them a lot.

How did one generation screw us up so much? After that background, is it any surprise that I was raised with no religion and no church?
 
Thanks!

Do they have a name for the Irish sent away by Cromwell? I heard there used to be references to Cromwell made by parents to naughty kids. 😛
 
I don’t know what it is about human nature that drives us to want to (anonymously) talk about ourselves, much less why we enjoy reading about others, but here we have it!

Unlike most or all of the other responders, there is no point in my life that I have been a Christian of any sort. MY father is a lapsed Irish Catholic and my mother is Jewish. Before they got married my mother extracted a promise from my father that the children would be raised Jewish (this is what reconciled her father to the marriage). My father, being quite liberal, never had a problem with that to my knowledge, and even drove us to afternoon Hebrew school twice a week. His family is mostly Irish Catholic all the way back, with some English sprinkled in. We don’t talk about it at all but I think he probably goes to church just once a year, on Xmas.

My mother’s parents were Holocaust survivors and neither of them were Orthodox. My grandfather grew up Orthodox and abandoned it sometime during his exile in Siberia I guess… My grandmother’s parents also grew up Orthodox. Ultimately, thanks to God I found my way back to that heritage.

So there you have it, one of the reasons for my strange fascination with Catholicism has been unmasked. Another is the Church’s long and bitter relationship with the Jews and its radical and fascinating about-face at Vatican II.
 
JustaServant said:
What is it?
Not the denomination or church you attend now, but the religious affiliation your family is connected to and you were raised in. Your parents or grandparents.
Both sides of my family were Catholic. But I have a feeling my mothers side might have been Orthodox or even Jewish in the past.
What was your family’s reaction when you cut yourself off from that heritage?
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My parents were Baptists but prior to that on my grandmother’s side there were Brethren from Switzerland and central Europe…

When I became a Baha’i my parents were neutral about it and didn’t seem that interested… I gave my brother and sister copies of Baha’i World Faith which was a compilation of Baha’i Writings.

Later I married a Baha’i and my father supported the marriage and attended the Baha’i wedding. I later discovered that my wife’s family also was from the same Brethren in Switzerland that my grandmother came from…
 
I would say that my father’s family would have been Catholic for a long time given his family is largely Irish, and since he tells me that many of our ancestors were Catholic. However, some of his family is Episcopal. My mother is Vietnamese, and I do not know how long her family has been Catholic. Catholicism was introduced in Vietnam in the sixteenth century is all I know about it.
 
HIndu heritage. My ancestors from South India converted by St. Francis Xavier probably because I can only go back up to my grandfather born 1884. His family was already Catholic and he was Baptised as a baby.

Praise God for his Grace and Mercy!

MJ
 
JustaServant said:
What is it?
Not the denomination or church you attend now, but the religious affiliation your family is connected to and you were raised in. Your parents or grandparents.
Both sides of my family were Catholic. But I have a feeling my mothers side might have been Orthodox or even Jewish in the past.
What was your family’s reaction when you cut yourself off from that heritage?
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Wesleyan Holiness.

The reaction wasn’t good, which is one reason why I have resisted cutting myself off from it entirely.

But not the only one. Cutting oneself off from one’s heritage is justifiable only if the heritage is radically corrupted at its core. Which few are.

Edwin
 
One set of maternal great grandparents were the typical England-to-America, entirely Anglican/Episcopal sort, though Great Grandmother was confused by Christian Scientism in her later years :(. The other pair were from Austria and didn’t seem to mind the subtleties between the Catholicism they practiced in the old country and the Anglicanism they picked up in America (though there is some question whether one was actually Jewish).

Paternal side is messier. One great grandfather was a poor Ukrainian Jew (think Fiddler on the Roof and you won’t be far off). Upon moving to America, he and his family didn’t really practice much of anything. His son, my grandfather, would eventually convert to Lutheranism in order to follow a sweet young lady into the exclusive, Lutherans-only Walther League. The other great grandparents were culturally Catholic from Sicily. They became Lutheran within a few decades of living in America.

My father always knew he’d be a Lutheran pastor, and my mother had no trouble transferring to Lutheranism from the Episcopal Church. I intentionally say transferring, not converting, since there was little difference between the two, especially before the modern liberalization. Even the liturgies were near-identical. They were married by an episcopal priest.

So that’s… Jewish, Christian Scientist, Anglican/Episcopal, Catholic and Lutheran.
 
Contarini said:
Wesleyan Holiness.
Cutting oneself off from one’s heritage is justifiable only if the heritage is radically corrupted at its core. Which few are.

Edwin
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Would a Jew who was convinced that Jesus is the Messiah and became a Christian be “cutting herself off from her heritage”? Should she convert?
 
My family, on both sides, are Polish, with perhaps some Jewish or German heritage on my father’s side. Therefore, I’m sure most of my recent ancestors have been at least nominal Catholics.

My parents, however, fell away from the faith when they were younger, and I was raised in a Protestant-leaning household. It was really a mixture of some Baptist ideas with the televangelists of the day, and frankly, was a little light on theology. My dad loved Charles Stanley, and my mom was a big fan of Kenneth Copeland. We went to church when I was a young child, but perhaps never again until I was about 15, when I got into some trouble at school at became interested in going again. We went to a “word of faith” church in Florida, but only for a few months.

I became a convert to the Catholic faith as an adult, having previously dabbled in things ranging from hardcore atheism to the occult to Calvinism. In fact, ironically enough, Reformed Baptist James White was a major influence on my conversion to Catholicism.
 
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