Lately I am thinking that till very recently in many fams or schools or churches we might be physically hurt, or locked in closets, for going against elements of Churchist Dogma. I know a woman in her 40s now who was locked in a closet by other kids till she said she accepted Jesus, for example. Not exactly the Spanish Inquisition, but enough to scare the hell out of a kid, and leave an impression, and so I think we don’t really make up our own minds about religion until we are a few whole generations removed from any sort of physical or emotional torture, trauma, corporal punishment, confinement, or ostracism for questioning or ridiculing Churchist Dogma. I count myself as free to choose, but not without being extraordinarily Hard-Headed and able to cope with aggressive pecking hens and turkeys, as it were. I can do it, but carrying generational baggage. My father was too scarred by it to be free to choose. My mother was just crazy, and did not know what side she was on in anything. But looked at that generational way, it is not surprising that many people remain believing that believing matters, but only if we believe according to their specific formula. All other believing is Bad, etc. And get Very Weird about it, because this stuff was hammered in the same day they learned Poop was Bad. And to reckon it will pass as people wake up from the Nightmare of Medieval Thinking.
Churchism is a word I made up, and is self-explanatory. It refers to the belief that attending Church is itself a good thing, irrespective that each Denomination preserves the memory of being at War with the others, and torturing its own people for suspicion they secretly liked those other ‘Christians.’ The denominations this did not apply to were mainly Dissident Sects that ‘everyone’ wanted rooted out and sent on. It gets me around the issue of Christians saying that I am not talking about ‘Real Christianity.’ I get it. I was a teen convert Christian, and Christians with a different take on Jesus I felt were missing the message, or missing the love, or limited in their development, or if I was straight up honest, not Really Christian, not they way I meant it. And that means nothing in the History of Christianity had a lesson for me, other than that Satan had great Power over those who fail to get it right, like I did.