re: Did you go to church growing up?

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COC people are very small minded individuals, and don’t understand that the way they are, will push people away from that place. Then they wonder why COC is so small, and why there aren’t too many young people attending COC.

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I’m not familiar with COC specifically, but this is a feature and not a bug for many of the religions. The more they can separate their flock from non-members the better.

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Did you go to church growing up?

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Sure.

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just something you had to go to every week?

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This. I would have given up on it sooner but it would have left my mother going alone. But by 12-13 years old I was done.

I was lucky, in a way, to grow up in a religion that is sillier than most. As soon as I left home that was the end of it.

When I was a kid if you wanted a decent girlfriend, you had to go to church. It opened all doors so to speak.

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I'm atheist now as are all my brothers and sisters. Amen.

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I’m sorry you had a bad experience with a likely fundamentalist background. Unfortunately, now you have no answers to the most significant questions of life.

I almost never missed a week of church for most of my life. At one point as an adult, I started to question some of the things I'd always taken for granted and it all kind of started to unravel for me the more I studied and thought about it. This was both fascinating and scary.

I kept attending for several years after that because the community and traditions were such an important part of my life, but I eventually stopped. I sometimes miss the certainty I once had, but I don't think it would be possible to regain it.

I feel like my participation in church was a very positive thing for me, though that's kind of hard to say because I simply wouldn't be the same person without that background.

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I'm atheist now as are all my brothers and sisters

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that’s terrible. I couldn’t imagine

Yep, for the first 18 years of my life, without a doubt youth groups kept me out of a lot in trouble in my teenage years. Typical Southern Baptist church, I learned a lot about organized religion and hypocrisy. I don’t go to church, but I believe in a higher power, whatever it may be.

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that’s terrible.

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So much for that whole judge not thing, eh?

Didn't go very often when I was a kid. Once I got into college, I started going every Sunday, and read at mass as well.

Still go every Sunday, and still read once a month as well.