Why I have Never Lost my Faith in God.

Over the past year or so I have been reading and commenting on Blogs by people who, through one reason or another, have lost their faith in God and have become Atheists. I have read of their painful exit from their earlier beliefs and of their struggle to come to terms with their new viewpoints. In many ways it resembled the grieving process when someone close to you dies. Whenever I read of their pain and their bravery I am thankful that I have never lost my faith in God. Because luckily (and I do think that there was a significant amount of luck involved) I have never believed in God and never had any faith in Him to lose.

It probably had a fair bit to do with an accident of birth. I was born in the 1960’s in the North of England. About that time religion was already in decline in the UK as it had been since the end of World War Two. The Sixties were also a time of rebellion when authority was more likely to be questioned than followed. From those facts alone it didn’t look likely that I would have become one of the faithful.

My family are Irish Catholics not long moved to England. Indeed my father liked to mention jokingly that he was at sea during the war – on the ferry over from Southern Ireland in 1939 then aged 10. Settling in Liverpool (where I lived until the early 1970’s) I would probably have been a practicing Catholic except for my Grandmother. As I have related elsewhere in more detail my Gran, bless her, took serious umbrage at the Church when the local priest refused to help her. Holding a grudge like only the female side of my family can she refused to step inside another church for over 35 years. Because of this none of her five children – including my Mother – were brought up in the Catholic faith. Because of that fact my Mother was indifferent to the church – if not actually hostile – and because of that I spent my formative years in Church of England schools rather than Catholic ones.

Now this fact often confuses my American readership in particular. As far as I know (not having researched it to any extent) the majority of schools in England are nominally run under the auspices of our State religion (which is a version of Protestantism called the Church of England) founded, I believe, by Henry VIII because he wanted to get a divorce which the Pope in Rome wouldn’t grant him. If you’re interested in the details I’m sure there are plenty of resources on-line that you can access. Anyway – not having experienced CofE education you might think that there would be a significant dose of religion handed out with the more Secular aspects of State led education. Not a bit of it. This is why my wise parents decided that in order to avoid any religious indoctrination they would send me to Church of England schools until I was sixteen. Sure there was some religion in the schools I attended – after all Religious Education was and still is a compulsory school subject – but at the time such education was considered to be a very low priority. I don’t actually remember being taught religion per se in school and remember most RE lessons as either ‘free study’ periods or half-hearted attempts at getting us to think philosophically. These were normally taught by student or substitute teachers and they were an almost complete waste of time.

Growing up in this kind of environment it is hardly surprising that I had never developed any kind of faith in God. Likewise my peers were as indifferent to religion as was I. The only time it was likely to come up in school was when the local bully used it as an excuse to beat you depending on your answer to the ominous question: “Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?” to which any answer at all usually resulted in being thumped.

So for a whole host of reasons I’ve never had any faith in God to lose. Any yearnings for an understanding of the Cosmos have been more than adequately met by my science education which, at a fairly early age, basically inoculated me against any possibility of religious affiliation – especially given my above stated indifference. So I consider myself one of the lucky ones as I never had to go through the painful process of waking up to reality. Much kudos to those of you who were not so lucky.