The letter I wrote to my church

Excellent. I don't think it should be legal to indoctrinate children like that. Let them decide when they're old enough.

 

nice~

i dont even know if i have a record with my old church lol

omg, i even was baptised, xD

good luck AGT

 

Hmm, I was actually thinking about doing this myself. My old church was nothing more than a hostile environment that was ironically the last place that Jesus Christ would have ever step into. It wasn't the fact that I'm gay or because of evolution, the fact is, religion killed itself by letting its true colors show. It happened at every church I went to, instead of a safe haven where you can hang out with your church "family," it was just a nest of vipers, venomously spitting their bile filled words and indoctrinating their children into the same hateful dogma

 

So agreed

 

Nice one, 'Gaytheist.

That letter is very calm, respectful, direct and professional. Best way to get a point across.

Why do adults, who supposedly "Know better", think they can force their beliefs on young, easily manipulated minds instead of inviting young people into an open minded, questioning way of thinking? People are so preoccupied with their own agenda they assume it MUST be right for everyone else.

 

Actually, you've inspired me. I tried to do this a few months ago, but I could find any information on de-baptism, so I gave up. I'm going to email the church and demand the deletion of my records.

 

So is it the bishop you have to write to?

I'm asking because I was brought up as United Methodist. I play drums at church, but only because I still have to put together a tennis-ball riser so that people downstairs don't file noise complaints. That and the people I play with over there are great musicians and are really fun to play with.

 

Ah, okay. So basically that's not really much of a possibility for me, knowing my dad.. Alrighty, then.

 

Nice work, AwesomGaytheist!
I don't even know if my name is on a church record since I was adopted. Does anyone know how I would find out?

 

The problem is that I think records are often handled locally. That is, the church a person attends, not the churches national denomination office.

So you'd probably have to write to all the churches in the area where you came from. That could take a while...

Even for me, information could be hard to come by for some records. I am pretty sure I was baptized--at least one of my grandmothers would have killed my parents if they didn't have me baptized. But I have no record of the event, and it could have taken place at least at 3 different locations. I never pursued the search past asking a couple of uncles (one of whom is well versed in family history). But...it's not something of huge concern, either. The only practical concern I've had was one year when I attended a Christmas Eve service at a church that had communion open to anyone who'd been bapitized. I was not 100% sure--just mostly sure--so I just stayed seated in the pew.

In any case, I'm not personally interested in having the record destroyed. There is a chance I was baptized in my maternal grandmother's church. Based on the stories I heard about the place from my mother, I would not be enthusiastic about being affiliated with them. But, even so, I wouldn't try to get my name purged. The event took place. And the church had family history, which I respect, even though I'm a different place in my life now.

 

I would like to do something like this as well at some point. I am still on the church record at my old church even though I was told that I am no longer welcome.

It's kinda weird.

Congrats on doing this though!

 

Hopefully nothing too bad happens. I've heard that churches usually keep membership terminations by member request pretty quiet. So, that's a good thing in this case.

 

If they're assholes about it, you can always make their response public.

 

This is really risky though... depending on how you do it, you could have some major legal issues from it. Or, you could just have an entire church after you.. Either way, neither is a good option.

 

That sounds pretty time consuming...maybe I'll just let it be. XD