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Mary Jo Cleaver's avatar

I was a cradle Catholic. I never read the Bible, didn't feel particularly close to God, believed that if I left the Catholic church I was going to hell. I was educated by nuns who were more interested in telling us how bad sex was (in both senses of the word "bad") than instilling in us (girls) respect for our bodies and our own bodily autonomy (i.e., help in telling our boyfriends "no." Turns out sex wasn't bad, it was enjoyable.) The meme about boys wanting to date Catholic girls was not a joke.

I left the Catholic Church when I got married. We didn't go to any church until one day (after we had been married about 6 or 7 years) some Mormon missionaries knocked on our door. My husband insisted we join, implying that our difficult marriage would end if we didn't join. The Mormons told me that the Catholic Church was no longer God's religion because of apostasy and that the Protestants didn't have a leg to stand on because they had broken away from God's religion and that Jesus had also come to the Americas before he ascended heaven and that Joseph Smith found golden plates that proved that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was now God's religion. My marriage fell apart and I left the Mormon (LDS) church.

A number of years later my son was attending a Presbyterian Church (the liberal branch) and so wanting to go back to church, I went there. It was good place to be, but I wasn't really looking for God, I was looking to belong somewhere.

So, I've run the gamut. I've been exploring a small evangelical church near me and will likely join it. In order to join, I needed to attend 8 classes in which they explain in detail exactly what they are and what they believe and how it affects what they are as a church. They get right down to the basics in the Bible and don't embellish it with other claims to righteousness or authenticity. They don't try to tell me that I must belong to this specific church or denomination in order to go to heaven, they teach me about God's love and Jesus's sacrifice and that I need to acknowledge Jesus as my Lord and Savior in order to go to heaven. They are not claiming a direct line from Peter, but they are basing their church on the those created by Jesus's disciples following that example.

Yes, their services are a bunch of hymns played by a piano and guitars, a pastor in blue jeans and things projected on the wall. But when I watch the congregants, I see people who are clearly engaged, who are clearly feeling in touch with God. Would I like a little Rock of Ages? Sure, but I can play that at home.

For the first time, I'm working on an actual relationship with God and Jesus, rather than on whether I am attending the church claiming the best credentials. It's early days, but I already feel as if this might be the church for me. Somehow I feel like this might be what it was like in the early days with the Apostles.

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So Many Kinds of Voices's avatar

I sometimes attend an evangelical Anglican church that is very "low" in its general style (drums and guitars, Hillsong-type music with words projected on screens, pastor in jeans, even little plastic cups of what looks suspiciously like cranberry juice at Communion (though I don't commune there). Until recently, you could honestly have attended there for months and not realised you were in an Anglican church. Now, though, the pastor is preaching through the Thirty-Nine Articles, one Article a week. It seems to me a hopeful sign of the church rediscovering its identity.

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