Does anyone else hide in plain sight (i.e., as a Unitarian)?

When my daughter was 3, she asked why we didn't go to church like everyone else.

Hoping to avoid the brainwashing by the parents of her fundie toddler friends, we went church shopping and found the Unitarians.

You could land your spaceship on the lawn, and a Unitarian would invite you to stay for coffee after the service and join a committee!

We have been happy Unitarian atheists ever since.

Any other non-believers out there hiding in a church?

Coming out of the closet was hard, but I would never pretend to be someone I'm not.

There are many great resources for raising children in an Atheist household. If I ever have children, this is one of the issues that I know is going to cause problems (esp. with my family)

Would you like some links about this kind of stuff?

Most of them are lapsed fill-in-the-religion-blanks.

The sermons are pretty good (no Jesus or god of Abraham unless it's historical in nature), and the people are fantastic.

The social action committees are great!

As for raising a child, my daughter is 21 now and a Hollywood makeup artist... She's also a confirmed atheist. She really enjoyed the Unitarian church, especially their "You and Your Sexuality" class. It teaches kids to separate biology from love, as well as confidence in body ownership.

We could have stayed home on Sundays and worshiped St. Mattress, but she was an only child with John Boy Walton needs.

how we will address issues of religeon. We already know that we would never forbid our child to explore religeon on her own, but we want to raise her as well as possible according to our world-views, not somebody else's.

American Atheists has some good recourses.
http://www.atheists.org/

You may also want to try the American atheists' Family page...
http://www.atheists.org/family/home.html

They have links to articles and advice on how to raise atheist children (and also many books).


You can also try this forum: http://www.atheistnetwork.com/modules.php?name=Forums

or this forum:
http://www.ethicalatheist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=136&sid=761511a41406649fe4aea635270c9f4a

Maybe they can give you better links, or you can ask them for advice directly.

I *knew* we had family values!

feels good huh?

Austin has a fairly big, active congregation. I thought it was great -- lots of history and philosophy from many sources besides the bible. However, we weren't interested enough to give up our Sundays so never became active.

When we moved to a small town outside of Austin, we went to the Methodist church thinking maybe we could stand the religion enough to get involved in the community. Boy, did that make my mother (a lay minister) very happy. Boy, was I wrong that we could stomach the services!

I was an Episcopalian (you know what they say... wherever you find 4 Episcopalians, you'll usually find a fifth!).

The service is beautiful, but it's the same 15 minutes every week.

I especially appreciate the comparative religions aspect of the Unitarian church.

Learning about other religions helps kids see through the superstition crap.

because of our "heathen ways" the last little girl that told him he was in danger of going to hell for not attending church, got this reply from him, he told her that satan was "her boogyman" not his. What can I say he is 11 going on 22. It seems my son is more afraid of the fundys than of eternal damnation.

My hubby's family is mormon, and since I am so outspoken they know better.

I went to a Quaker high school and learned to like the meditation in meeting. Other than a belief in a god, I share a lot of beliefs in common with Quakers. In England there are Quakers who are non-theists. That is rarer here in the US, but they still occur. An hour for looking inside yourself for guidance and truth is never wasted.

I have a coworker who is an atheist who attends the local UU services with his wife occasionally. Although I've never been to the one here, I found UUs in MD and VA comfortable people to be around.

There's a really active Unitarian community here, and my husband grew up without any religious exposure at all. He, like me (after leaving an originally liberal evangelical church that went hard-right during Reagan), considers himself agnostic -- but sometimes, he shakes his head and seems baffled by some of the crap that flies around these days. I think maybe it would be a good education for him, for us to go to Unitarian meetings, and they don't care if we're both agnostics.

I don't know -- I think it might be good for him to be able to look at the merchandise others have bought without question without having a hard sales pitch, I guess. It would explain a lot of stuff he has a hard time comprehending, I think.

NEVER do. He is so anti-church it's not funny.

You gotta love 'em, they are an open minded bunch. Check out the "Chruch of Realism" online. I don't have a link but they are in the search engines. You'll love them, they conceed no fact not proven by science.