Personal Narrative: My Non-Denominational Christian Religion

I made friends and started to thrive again. I started attending Emmanuel Episcopal Church in town. I always offered for anyone interested to come with me. Some would come with me, mainly as a way to get off campus and try not to be a Cadet for a little while. The liturgy helped to ground me. The Ritual of the Communion gave me comfort and I continued to heal. I stopped rebelling and started to care about my studies and made friends. My Military Science teacher Norman Smith (aka Big Sarge) asked if I would like to attend his church with him and his wife on a Wednesday night. There was something different about this church, something that I had seen in other churches but never felt. Not even in the Episcopal churches that I had been to. The Church was what they referred to as an Agape church. It was not in a building with grand stained glass windows and gold and silver crosses, priests in clerical garb. It was a hotel conference room with nothing but chairs. All of this was very new to me. I didn’t know anyone other than the couple that I had come with and this was NOT a church. I was thinking that I had been duped and taken to a sayonce. The people were very warm and inviting and treated me as a part of their family. But I had remembered Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them."

I began exploring faith with my Christian wife, Gloria, about six months ago, and made the decision to attend church with her. On the first day of attending church, I was approached by a fellow parishioner

As a child in a small, Bible-based church, I was greatly disappointed by the leadership who led our church. The elder board was a group of men who were called on to help make church-wide decisions and to pray for sick church members as well as address issues that arose. Several of the men had very unhappy wives and lived lives of deceit and secrecy. As a child, I knew about times the men and their teenage sons would go out and tell their sons not to get word of what occurred during the night out back to the mothers.

St. Luke Presbyterian Church was a relaxed church. Presbyterian churches abide by the sovereignty of God, the scriptures, and grace through faith. The Presbyterian Church members that attended the service were dressed from casual pants to dresses and suits. The church setting was considered to be a small, local church with roughly about 30 rows of pews. The choir included 15 women and a teenage boy. The members were very welcoming and seemed eager to get to know the guests that were new that Sunday morning. The preacher was an older man, in about his late 60’s or early 70’s. This was mainly a diverse family church with a few college students. At the beginning of the sermon they had children’s church, which is when they relate the word of God to the younger kids so they can understand what the

Gesturing toward the pipe organ, one anxious parishioner confidently declared, "Now that's church! If these kids had any faith at all, they'd be here every Sunday!”  He clearly did not want "his" church full of children, especially if it meant giving up "his" organ music. To him, "worship with us" meant "worship like us". To him,  conformity trumped diversity. To him, his religious conditioning was mandatory for everyone.

As you see, many of us in the church have some time or another, seen these types of things in our life or in the lives of another. The devil has used these tools to distract us, entertain us, and comfort us from doing what God has ordained us to do. And in doing so, the words of God were stolen from us and our neighbors. We can’t seem to remember the message preached or taught one week from

I was raised in a catholic family. Our parents raised us to believe that the catholic religion was the one and only true religion. We went to church every Sunday and was expected to find a person to marry within our religious beliefs. Which meant finding someone who was already catholic or convert them to Catholicism. As I grow older and started to question some of the catholic beliefs and expectations. So when I found the person I wanted to marry and we had to petition the Catholic Church to see if we could get married. My fiancé was not catholic and had been previously married. Two no no’s within the catholic religion. I couldn’t believe that a questioner was going to decide if I could marry the love of my life. We decided to get

31.50% of the world is Christian. 22.32% of the world is Islamic. 0.20% of the world is Judaic. 13.95% of the world is Hindu. 5.25% of the world is Buddhist. 15.35% of the world is secular, nonreligious, agnostic, or atheist. 10.58% of the world is made up of other religions. I am among the 15.35% of the world that is secular, nonreligious, agnostic, or atheist. However, I identify as a religion called LaVeyan Satanism, which sprung up into our world on Walpurgisnacht in 1966 and was birthed by Anton Szandor LaVey.

After writing the personal awareness paper I learned about who I actually am. I also learned more about Gods purpose for me and the path in which is in front of me.

So what are the steps to assist an individual who has been offended by the church? We must love them enough to guide them to realize the error of their decision. We are not denying that the offense happened; however, their decision to quit serving God or to quit attending church is not an appropriate response for their spiritual wellbeing.

The church is far from perfect. Life is complex. There are growing options. And the post-modern mind distrusts most things organized or institutional.

The first time I learned about religion was in third grade. One day I came home, and started to tell my parents about how everyone at school goes to church on Sunday. Even though I had no idea what church was, I still wanted to go because I didn’t like being left out. My parents tried to explain to me what it was. I didn’t really understand it, so I decided to let it go.

We leave, what seems to me, not a holy church, but more of a devil's

“Mommy, why?” I asked as children from every century have asked. At the age of 5, I had just attended a birthday party for a friend from a Muslim family. Colorful balloons meant a fun celebration, but I did not understand colorful hijab. This is my first memory of encountering a practice of religion different from my families’ practice. Innocent observations prompted my questions. My mother explained how people of the world choose different belief systems to live by. We live in an increasingly diverse and global population. I expect these conversations occur more frequently today. Whether, in hush tones or epic monologues, their words affect the future generation’s worldview. Ancient ancestors of Sweden first told their children epic tales about many gods, until Christian themes altered their story.

An event that made me present to stop and notice was last week. My family and I were going to do our usual Sunday routine and go to church. However, before church my mom and I got in a fight about me not getting a car for my 16th birthday. I was so mad and filled with rage that I would not come down for church. I was eventually forced to get in the car when my new phone was threatened to be taken away. When we got to church a man approached us asking for food . This is a common thing that happens in my parish because my church is located in a part of town that has poverty. However,it had never happened directly to my family and I. My mom had me run inside the church to get him a food gift card. As I handed the man the gift card I realized that