Religion's a bit of a touchy subject for me. As many of you will know, I've been brought up in a church-going family. I've never really had an option to not go to church - it's always been expected that I'll go every week, apart from when I'm on holiday abroad, and finding a church may not be as easy. My parents are currently on holiday in Majorca (they return tomorrow), and even though they weren't around, I still went. Why? Well, the answer's simple. I knew full well that if I didn't go, they'd find out very quickly, and they wouldn't be very happy with me at all. There's also the fact that not long after moving to Biddulph and attending this new church, I was roped into helping sing with the worship group at every service, and I can't really get out of it. In hindsight, I could've used work as an excuse, seeing as I'm currently contracted to work on Sundays, but I just didn't think of it at the time.
I should probably mention at this point that my dad is a Minister in the Methodist Church, and currently has five churches to look after in Staffordshire and Cheshire. He's had up to eight before, and temporary charge of many more while colleagues have been on holiday.
My main issue with the church is its attitude towards homosexuality. I'm fully aware that there are some Christians out there who have no issue with people who identify as LGBT (the theologian, Vicky Beeching, is one of the more prominent of those), but it seems to me that a lot of Christians don't agree with homosexuality at all. The Coalition for Marriage (C4M) was set up by Christian organisations in opposition to the proposal to allow same-sex marriage in the UK, and their petition attracted 650,000 signatures. There were some issues with these figures, namely that apparently, some of the signatures were duplicated, and there was no real way of verifying if each signatory was unique. Even so, 650,000 people actively opposing gay marriage is a frightening number. And I suspect that my parents are two of those people. My dad has preached against homosexuality and gay marriage on several occasions in the past, and a few months ago, he made me feel so uncomfortable (my parents still have no idea that I'm gay), that I seriously considered walking out of church part of the way through a service. Also, in 2012, I went to Spring Harvest, which is a big Christian festival held at Butlins in Minehead (it's also held at Butlins in Skegness), and this was not long after I realised that I was gay. I didn't want to be there, but I still went, as I knew my parents wouldn't be happy if I pulled out of it at the last minute. I just felt so uncomfortable the whole time I was there, and was so relieved to just get back home. From what I remember, there was no homophobic preaching at all - I just didn't want to be there.
Then there was New Wine 2013. New Wine is another Christian conference, and is held at the Royal Bath & West Showground near Shepton Mallet in Somerset. (There have also been conferences held at the Newark Showground in Nottinghamshire.) Once again, I didn't want to go to this, but still went anyway. What really peeved me was that I never explicitly said to my parents that I didn't want to go. I just said to them that I'd think about it, and they assumed that because I said nothing to them, I wanted to go. As well as this, we'd got back from a holiday to Europa-Park and Saint-Nazaire less than 48 hours before we left for New Wine, so I didn't think it was a good idea to go, but I was unsurprisingly ignored. Also, we were due to be moving house from St Dennis to Biddulph a couple of weeks later, and I wanted to crack on with packing my things up into boxes. Anyway, we got there, and things didn't get off to a good start for me, as I was made to feel like a spare wheel while we were setting up the caravan, awning and tent. As the week went on, things got better, save for a bit of sexism and racism in some of the main sessions. There was a little bit of homophobia as well, but nothing compared to what was said by the main speaker in the final session on the Saturday night. He was speaking about a flight he was on in the US, and essentially bragging about how he'd managed to convert several people on that flight to Christianity, coming across as rather irritating in the process. One of the people he allegedly converted was one of the flight attendants, who was gay. (The speaker claimed he cured this person of his homosexuality, but I know full damn well that sexuality is not something you can just turn off like a light switch.) This flight attendant had been in training to become a priest, but eventually realised that he was gay. He was given a choice - to marry a woman, or be kicked out of the training process. He chose the latter, and went into the gay community, eventually getting this job as a flight attendant. The speaker then prayed with this man, and was then 'cured' of his homosexuality. The speaker then went on a bit of a rant about how ANY form of sexual relationship outside of marriage was completely unacceptable. And what happened? He got applause from so many people in the marquee. I was so infuriated by this that I nearly walked out, but I didn't. There was a bit of time later on in the session where people were more free to move about, so I went outside to go to the toilet and to just get some fresh air to calm down. I'm so thankful that it happened on the last night, as I don't think I could've coped with it for much longer.
Anyway, that's set my background out. Apologies for it being lengthy, but I felt it necessary. Now onto my actual views on religion.
I'll be honest - I never really feel like I've had much of a faith in Christianity. When I was younger, I suppose I did, but as I've got older, I've just lost interest. I've tried to gain more of an understanding of Christianity, but I just don't really identify with what I've looked at. I attend a bible study every week with some people of my age (it's actually nice to have this for a change, if only for the social aspect), and it's OK, but I just don't gain much in theological terms. I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm agnostic. I've come from a Christian background, but I don't have much of a Christian faith. I only really go to church these days for the social aspect of it, so I do sometimes wonder why I'm still going, and the answer's clear every single time - it's my parents. I don't really want to go to church any more, as I fail to see the point of carrying on going when I don't gain much knowledge and understanding of Christianity, but I know full well that my parents would be very disappointed if I told them this. I think the only way I can get out of it is by moving out and waiting until my parents have moved away from the area before leaving church, but that's going to be several years away. I also generally agree with
@Mike's post, with particular regard to churches not moving with the times. With regard to religion and sexuality, I get the impression that a substantial proportion of people believe something along the lines of 'Everyone's welcome, apart from if you're gay, in which case, we don't want you here at all', which I find upsetting. If the church were more accepting of those who are gay - and more accepting of minorities in society in general - and was more willing to change its views in order to become more relevant to society, then maybe church attendances wouldn't be getting lower and lower.
The majority of religious people I've met are really nice people, but I don't agree with some of their views on controversial issues, like abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and the like. But I actually like that. I like that we have different views, as if we all agreed on everything, then there'd be no reason to have any discussion at all on the big issues, and life would be incredibly boring!
TL;DR - Gay agnostic from a Christian background, feel frustrated with the views of the church on homosexuality
EDIT: Just a little extra thing that I remembered. It was New Year's Day 2012, and I was going through a very tough time. I was questioning my sexuality, and was a bit emotionally volatile. We had family visiting, and I got a bit bored, so I went into my bedroom for a bit to have some time to myself on my laptop. Dad realised that I'd gone off somewhere, and he unplugged the WiFi router, and essentially forced me into spending more time with my family, even though I didn't want to. I know it sounds pathetic, but it actually got me rather angry, and that night, I just ended up listening to a lot of Adele (don't ask why!), gradually becoming more and more of an emotional wreck. I ended up getting to the point where I just wanted to smash anything in sight to pieces, and practically broke down in tears! I was so glad to get back to uni a few days later, just to have a bit of breathing space. Not long after, I faced problems again, and was persuaded by a couple of people on here to go to London for the weekend. I booked my train tickets at about 3am on the Wednesday, went to Truro to pick them up (didn't want to risk them not arriving at my accommodation in time) on the Wednesday afternoon, left for London on the Saturday morning, and arrived back in Cornwall late on the Sunday evening! I really needed that weekend away, even if I did manage to spend all night awake at Diogo's playing Rock Band and Trivial Pursuit.
