I also attend a progressive Methodist Church (after being raised and confirmed in a Catholic Church). I expected my teens to participate in confirmation class in 8th grade but part of that class is a personal exploration as to whether or not the teen wants to be confirmed. I supported their coming to their own decisions and it does seem more open to deciding "no" than my own 8th grade Catholic confirmation process was.

DS (now 10th grade) did decide to be confirmed and DD (8th grade) seems like she will too. Of the two, I thought it possible that DD would not as her best friends are all athiests but we've had some good conversations this year about science and faith and why people believe or don't and she seems pretty solid in her faith. Neither chooses to be active in the church youth group but thry do participate in community service with our church and are expected to go to church most Sundays and have noted when we recently had a stretch of Sundays with conflicts that it felt weird to not go. I'm glad they seem to have ingrained that rhythm of weekly church attendance. I know for me, that feeling of being out of sorts when I wasn't at church on Sunday was what led me to seek out a church in my 20s after abandoning Catholicism when I went to college.

I'm Episcopalian and I know many people who were confirmed as adults. It's pretty common -- a lot of people come from other denominations and they don't need to be baptized again, but they choose to be confirmed in the Episcopal church. So you can always get confirmed when you are older.

My understanding is that the whole point of Confirmation is that it's a free choice willingly made. That's in contrast to infant baptism, which Episcopalians do and the babies obviously can't give consent. By definition you can't make someone do it who doesn't want to.

People's spiritual life goes in stages. If the worst thing you have to deal with in the teen rebellion phase is saying no to confirmation, then you will be so lucky!

I was raised Catholic and Confirmation is a sacrament so is "required" and is a big deal.

We now attend a progressive Methodist church and they do offer confirmation but I don't really see it as a "must do" like when I was growing up Catholic. We gave our kids the choice to participate and they did. I told them they could even go all through the process and classes and they could still choose to skip the actual confirmation if they didn't feel it was right for them.

I think religion is a personal choice and by the time a kid is 14/15, they have started to form their own opinions on it and I respect that.

Being confirmed won't make my kids any more or less Christian and it won't erase all the values we have taught them and modeled and what they have learned from church. It doesn't bar them from attending church today or in the future.

if your child says no to confirmation, don't be embarrassed or feel bad. Be thankful that they aren't willing to go along with the crowd just for the sake of doing it and that they are putting thought into their own faith formation as opposed to letting others dictate what they should believe.

This is why I think it's odd to say confirmation is a personal rite of passage to choose your faith as an adult, but it's tied to a young teenage timeline.

OP, I was raised in progressive churches and my parents were all about "thr community" and "planting the seed," and I felt like i didn't have any intellectual reason to BELIEVE any of it so I became a teenage atheist. Then I got into reading about Taoism and Buddhism at the end of high school...and something the Dalai Lama said about how westerners should look for the truth in their own faith traditions made me say "ok fine, I'll give it another chance."

I started with the gospels and Augustine and Aquinas. I really did look for thr intellectual arguments. None of them convinced me. But I did spend a lot of time with Christians in college and wound up feeling like i wanted to live the kind of challenges they did. So I eventually came to an idea of faith that wasn't about being convinced, but about how we orient ourselves to the world and find our way through it, and about Jesus being the sign of a God we can't hope to grasp. I'm maybe still an atheist intellectually but I'm an atheist knocking on God's door every day.

Anyway, my point is that faith is a journey, and being pushed into it can push people away, but giving them room to reject it and return can allow people the time they need. The way I understand religion right now is a 180 from what I thought it meant at age 15. Your kids are young and you HAVE planted seeds.

That's interesting. Thanks for responding.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Confirmation guarantees nothing. I was confirmed in a progressive Methodist church. I quit going anyway for several years, then found my way back to religion—Orthodox Judaism. My mother would now prefer that I was an atheist.

How in the world did this happen?

PP. I went looking for meaning and I found it, but not where my family wanted. I’m philosophically more all-or-nothing when it comes to religion than I was raised and Orthodox Judaism is much more black and white (obviously) than mainline Protestantism. This clicks with me but not my parents, who are much more tolerant of ambiguity and contradictions. Neither of us is wrong, it just is. It’s hard for us to understand each other’s way of thinking but we get along OK.

Anonymous wrote:Confirmation guarantees nothing. I was confirmed in a progressive Methodist church. I quit going anyway for several years, then found my way back to religion—Orthodox Judaism. My mother would now prefer that I was an atheist.

How in the world did this happen?

Both my kids attended church (progressive Christian) through confirmation, and chose to be confirmed. It was an expectation that they would attend church and participate in Sunday school/youth group up to that point, and then the decision was theirs. Both eventually stopped participating, one right away and the other after a couple of years of youth group. I think it's fine. They have an understanding what it's like to be a part of a faith community, what it means to be accepted "just as you are," and what working for social justice looks like. They may come back to it at some later point in their lives--as a lot of people tend to do once they start a family. Or not. I feel like I've provided the foundation and the rest is up to them.

The entire point of confirmation is for the person to come willingly of their own free will

If you force them to be confirmed aren’t you asking to lie? Thats one of the big commandments. Seems pretty counter to what you are trying to teach. I don’t think Jesus would make Jesus Jr. get confirmed if he didn’t want to.

Confirmation guarantees nothing. I was confirmed in a progressive Methodist church. I quit going anyway for several years, then found my way back to religion—Orthodox Judaism. My mother would now prefer that I was an atheist.

Anonymous wrote:Do you want confirmation to actually be meaningful or do you just want them to go through the motions? I was confirmed Episcopalian at 13 and it was completely empty. I didn’t have a choice in my family. It made me resentful of religion entirely. I’ve finally found my way back to one (Unitarian Universalism) which is the most I can handle. Not only did I turn against religion my mother’s overbearing attitude ensures that we are unable to even have a close relationship because my mom refuses to care about any of my beliefs.

Yep, those fundamentalist Episcopalians will really crush your spirit! Your issues with your mother probably have nothing to do with this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up Catholic and didn't want to be confirmed. Parents finally convinced me by saying they would throw a party and I would get money. In college I went to church, ended up becoming a Christian, and married a pastor!

Psst. Catholics are Christians.

I didn't say they aren't. I wasn't a Christian before, then became a Christian but not a Catholic one.

I think some people in the religious forum probably can't accept or likely even understand that a kid can grow up in one religion (i.e. their parents believe in it and force the kids to go through the motions) and actually being religious themselves. The OP is another example.

Do you want confirmation to actually be meaningful or do you just want them to go through the motions? I was confirmed Episcopalian at 13 and it was completely empty. I didn’t have a choice in my family. It made me resentful of religion entirely. I’ve finally found my way back to one (Unitarian Universalism) which is the most I can handle. Not only did I turn against religion my mother’s overbearing attitude ensures that we are unable to even have a close relationship because my mom refuses to care about any of my beliefs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up Catholic and didn't want to be confirmed. Parents finally convinced me by saying they would throw a party and I would get money. In college I went to church, ended up becoming a Christian, and married a pastor!

Psst. Catholics are Christians.

I didn't say they aren't. I wasn't a Christian before, then became a Christian but not a Catholic one.