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[quote=Anonymous]I grew up in the South. I grew up going to church but my family wasn't really religious; going to church was just what people did on Sunday mornings. In my family, we never talked about religion or God or Jesus at all, never prayed together besides saying a quick blessing before eating dinner, never read the Bible together, none of that. We just went to church on Sundays. It was more of a social/cultural expectation than being about religion for us. Now that my siblings and I are grown, none of us go to church any more, not even my parents.

Everyone I knew growing up went to church. I can't think of any of my friends, classmates (in public schools), or neighbors who didn't attend church. I didn't know anyone who was Jewish or Muslim or any other religions until I was in college. There was a lot of ethnic and racial diversity where I lived but hardly any cultural/religious diversity. About 80% of my classmates were African American, about 5% Asian American, and 15% white. The African American students mostly went to Baptist church or African Methodist Episcopal church or non-denominational Christian church. The Asian American students mostly went to Korean Baptist or else Presbyterian churches. And the white kids mostly went to Presbyterian, Methodist, or Southern Baptist church.

It just wasn't even a question that you went to church. The question when you first meet people isn't 'what do you do for a living?' it's 'where do you go to church?' Most people went multiple times per week (Sundays of course but also Wednesdays, some of the Episcopal kids I knew went Saturdays too). A lot of the African American kids I knew would be at church literally all day on Sundays-morning service, Sunday school, then they'd stay for 'fellowship'/lunch all afternoon and have another church service Sunday evenings.

Even though I went to public school, we did pray in school and before most school events/functions like sports games. School recitals/concerts almost always included religious songs/hymns. We had Christmas and Easter themed programs at school. This was in the 90s-early 00s. [/quote]

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