People who suddenly become religious as they get much olderr…

[quote]People who suddenly become religious as they get much older…

It's a common but infuriating phenomenon. I've always likened it to people who are sexually promiscuous throughout their youth, but when they get older, some of them get into monogamous, committed relationships, pledge complete devotion to their partners, and try to pretend that their slutty period never happened. And while I guess it's understandable why someone would do that, it's still a big lie.

The thought of one's imminent demise concentrates the mind.

Or peehaps wisdom that there are powers that be out there, good and bad. Maybe it takes a long life to know it ?

They spent their whole lives being selfish now they’re selfishly seeking redemption the closer they get to heaven and hell.

It’s like when Kings were baptized on their death beds.

Pretty common.

There is a saying, 'Are you afraid to know God, or are you afraid NOT to know God'. Getting older changes everything and the desire to challenge, combat and fight for every damn thing thing in life becomes useless. I feel it more resigning myself to the inevitable to do its thing. If that thing is God, so be it. I'm tired of thinking about everything. Just do it.

As you get older, the anxieties pile up concerning finances, health, loss and grief. People turn to religion as a way of dealing with those things, just like some turn to alcohol.

Your death is a more theoretical when you are relatively young. You can afford to dismiss it with a whatever since it is a long time off for you.

When it is now around the corner, the theoretical becomes a reality.

I really am going to die soon and now I feel the reality of it rather than an intellectual pondering of it.

Thus the existential crisis begins and many turn or return to religion in hope life doesn't just end and your life is rendered meaningless.

I think it's often more genuine and less harmful than people who are religious from the very beginning. Usually an inward looking, reflective process. As R7 points out, it's often about finding a source of comfort, of hope, in a time of life that creates more and more doubt and anxiety. Basically, it's not about becoming religious in a political way - to suddenly start opposing abortion or hating gays, for example. It's using religion as a source of peace, as it's been used for all of time.

This isn't universal of course. Some older people do become religious in a destructive way, but I'd say that's the minority of people who weren't religious before but are seeking something via religion in their later years.

There's three primary types I run into.

1. Rehab, jail & support groups.... the serenity prayer wore them down when they were already at their most fragile state.

2. Trauma & Recovery. Often times, they lack adequate support groups, family and friends can help but often are unable to relate to the circumstances or over/under sympathetic. While religion might not directly address their issues, it provides structure, community and guide for living or in their case, moving on.

3. The rise of the 'religious' atheist - it used to be humanist but humanist is now used interchangeably with atheist, agnostic and anti-theist. These are more the culturally over religious types - they don't believe in the metaphysical aspects but they're not anti-theists or perhaps they're bored with circlejerks and this grants them entry to less hostile debates with the religious. There's a variety of reasons but mostly, it comes back to the need for community and many just aging out of other activities and scenes.

There is a 4th but I don't personally run into it as much. . . which is the politician, even the far left variety, are apt to claim being among the faithful.

Or those that believe it's necessary to join something like Scientology more than the guild to get ahead in Hollywood.

also on the less sincere path the greater phenomenon is the number of would be activists that convert as if it grants them official authority to speak on related issues. But like declaring themselves as a special snowflake version of LGBT (often it's the same people), they don't do anything beyond just declaring it. . . but this has become another area of self promotion and has worked for some to gain media spots as religious authorities. Some go further to create non profits and develop unaccredited schools (overpriced path to just the self ordain method) to declare themselves to be an official related branch of an organized religion - that, of course, isn't recognized by said religion.

It might start out as a troll but it often develops into its own cult and gradually become accepted as a religion.

The only people I’ve known who became very religious were young women, who converted to fundamental!st Xtianity or Judaism, following instances of either trauma/abuse or very serious illness.

Oh, and my Egyptian BIL’s father, who became a ‘devout Musl!m’ after a bypass. He thinks my sister is a white Jezebel succubus trying to corrupt his precious son’s soul.

[quote]I think it's often more genuine and less harmful than people who are religious from the very beginning. Usually an inward looking, reflective process. As [R7] points out, it's often about finding a source of comfort, of hope, in a time of life that creates more and more doubt and anxiety. Basically, it's not about becoming religious in a political way - to suddenly start opposing abortion or hating gays, for example. It's using religion as a source of peace, as it's been used for all of time.

Good points. But also, there is a huge difference between spirituality and a sudden embrace of and adherence to an organized religion, which is complete bullshit and an opiate for the masses (as someone once said) regardless of a person's age and how old they were when they first became "religious."

R6 your comment is lovely, wise, profound and thought-provoking. Have you written anything for public eyes about your views on these matters? You write so well, and seem a deep and interesting person.

Whatever happens, I wish you all the best in your journey back to Spirit (or whatever the source is, for you).

r14 What variety of pagan? old skool, neopagan, fluffy bunny?

After many years of not going to church, my mother went hallelujah when my father died, and became increasingly mental as she got older. I think it’s for a little bit of extra insurance, just in case it’s all true.

I find it "interesting" when bodybuilders, male strippers, and fitness models and porn stars "FIND" religion.... They had no problem parading their body nearly nude and in some cases entirely nude to make money, but then they become self righteous christians...

9 out of 10 of these guys are also trump lovers for whatever reasons..

You (gay) sinners need to get yourselves to church! There is still time to repent! The Lord will forgive you!

Well R15...why that matters in regards to my reply I can’t imagine...and I’m sure you’re just going to take the piss if I tell you...but very well, if you’re so interested and must know—the path I’ve chosen for the time being is Brythonic (essentially Ancient Welsh) reconstructionist animist, with a side of pluralist ecofeminism. At the present time, I venerate the general pantheon, and haven’t yet specifically devoted myself to one deity (I may one day, or may not, we’ll see). My ancestral roots are in Wales, and I live there, so I find it very much a homecoming to follow this paganry branch. Still, I’m open to any changes that my happen in life in my future, and know that I may have to alter my spiritual course in response—Paganry has a lot of lovely space to allow that, unlike more dogmatic faiths.

Wiccans, Freemasons, Rad Faeries, and the Neo crowd get a bit of a sideeye from me, if I’m honest. I’m more a boring folkloric, traditionalist, lets-not-scare-the-Hos type. To each their own, though. Anyone half-decent who’s not of fundamental!st Abrahamic faith is more or less fine by me.

[quote]As you get older, the anxieties pile up concerning finances, health, loss and grief. People turn to religion as a way of dealing with those things, just like some turn to alcohol.

Actually, I have observed and now discovered that the exact opposite is true: As you get older, the “stuff” that really doesn’t matter falls away - money, possessions, prestige/status, being “right”, etc. - and one finds that what truly matters is kindness and peace. God, and surrounding oneself with those close to God, provides both of these blessings in abundance.

Also, with age also comes the realization that we truly are not and never have been “In Control” of anything, except how we choose to respond to whatever life throws our way. When we accept that we aren’t in control but that a higher, benevolent power is, it takes an enormous burden off our shoulders.

[quote]After many years of not going to church, my mother went hallelujah when my father died, and became increasingly mental as she got older. I think it’s for a little bit of extra insurance, just in case it’s all true.

There's a line to that effect in THE BOYS IN THE BAND. Michael says he goes to church so he'll be "covered" if there turns out to be a God, or words to that effect. Of course, if you're going just for insurance and don't really believe, I don't think that would count in the eyes of "God" (even if there is one).

[quote]Actually, I have observed and now discovered that the exact opposite is true: As you get older, the “stuff” that really doesn’t matter falls away - money, possessions, prestige/status, being “right”, etc. - and one finds that what truly matters is kindness and peace. God, and surrounding oneself with those close to God, provides both of these blessings in abundance.

"Actually," I'm sure it depends GREATLY on the particular person's life experiences. But I'm sure you're too narrow-minded and ignorant to comprehend that.

Atheists in foxholes.

Whatever helps someone cope with aging as long as they don’t impose it on others is fine with me. Growing old is one of the toughest things in life which is almost an oxymoron because growing old is also lucky. Therein is often the rub, an existential conundrum. You’re glad to still be living while you watch yourself fall apart and lose your loved ones. One of the great gifts of family now more available to same sex couples are grandchildren and other younger generation loved ones. Don’t discount it!

Weak and clueless people, when facing death, always turn to religion or superstitious shit.

[quote] He thinks my sister is a white Jezebel succubus trying to corrupt his precious son’s soul.

r12 Is she?

Half my high school class turned out this way. I attended a small all girls Catholic high school, very progressive for its time, and graduated in a group of 66 in 1968. We received a top notch education - faculty was comprised of 2/3 highly educated, younger nuns, all with advanced degrees, and 1/3 lay faculty members, male and female, most in specialty subjects like music and art history. Religion was not pushed down our throats - in fact, the religion classes we did have tended to focus far more on social issues of the time, like racial issues, poverty, etc. I remember the "Is God Dead?" TIME magazine cover being discussed at length. A few years after we graduated, many of the nuns began leaving the order, as nuns did back then, and the school gradually began to change...

Fast forward: at our 20 year reunion, in their biographies, there were a few mentions of Reagan and "pro life" issues. By the 40th it was even worse - the school had fired a popular and championship winning female soccer coach when she and her female partner applied for a mortgage and it was apparent that they were *gasp* gay! And to my horror, most of these bitches supported the school's position! By the 50th, fully half the class were obvious Trumpers, "conservatives" and rabid pro lifers. A couple of them were women I considered close friends back then. I occasionally hear from one (straight) woman who "gets it" - she sent her two daughters to the school in the late 80s and early 90s and says while it is still academically strong, it is nothing like the one we attended AT ALL.

With the exception of one girl who moved to the East Coast with her family after we graduated, I believe I am the sole dyke in the class. I was the editor of the yearbook, the school paper, and the literary magazine, all in the same year, and once in awhile I will get a FB message from someone about some event or other, which I always ignore. There were some bright and intelligent women in this class, and to see them morph into rabid pro life Republican reactionaries and Trumpers makes me very sad...

R14 Thank you, you are very kind. I have not written on any of these matters, because most people are not interested. So, I keep it all silent, secret and sacred. However, when some sort of inevitability strikes one, wether it be financial, physical or spiritual.. what does one do? I find this Buddhist thought helps me, "When you can't control what's happening, challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what's happening. That's where your power is."

Religon is the basis for which i live my life which to to show kindness , help people when they need it, forgive people when they are jerks, it is centered on love. To love your brother as you love yourself. Simple and true.

R29...Religion is not required to have that philosophy.

I think it's a combination of facing death and the realization that the world you used to know doesn't exist anymore, which can be scary. So the idea of a serving a being with the power to make things "right" is comforting.

R26 LMAO you'd have to ask her. Tbf she may indeed be sucking her fiancé's soul out through his cock and keeping him from his Paradise of 100 virgins, idk (good for her if she is!) Really, the sex lives of partnered hetero people do not interest me and make me squicked, though.

Many people join churches for the support system. This is especially true for older people. Church services are often the only social contact for many of them.

Also, people use churches for networking and job opportunities. It's a great way to find a job and to advance your career, as Christians like to hire other Christians. This usually only works for straight people though. There's a lot of pressure for married couples in affluent neighborhoods to join a church. If they don't, they could lose out on social and career opportunities.

r30 True. However, those in the staunchly anti-theist crowd tend to be lazier as a whole rather than create new social and humitarian opportunities, the majority just point to secular organizations that are filled with religious and agnostic people. They pontificate on why people are religious and how awful religion is but they tend to be one note singers. . . and it moves into the territory of "If women ruled the world, there would be no wars" delusional bs in its own right.

r33 it works for everyone else, too... it's just more effective in some locations than others.

I don't love all of him, but I admired Christopher Hutchins's fidelity to his atheist creed, even unto death. Of course, he was drunk at the time, but still.

r33 And I'd say there's as much pressure among the lowest classes as there is among the highest, ironically, for much the same reasons. . . just different values. Oft both seeing the other as the cost of decadent excesses, of rutting in the streets like wild animals. But, of course, as a society we demonize "the rich" more while we idealize (or pity) the poor. Yes, more people desire to be rich than poor but often convinced they won't be that kind of rich person. Much like children that believe the govt should pay for everything and that capitalism is evil but once they join the working world, at least once a year, question why they're being taxed so much. While fantasies of the poor are often more about the various things they wouldn't be able to sacrifice or do without... it's a pity so many people deleted their videos and selfies of when they decided to camp out on the streets or in tent cities after it got inevitable backlash to experience what homelesness is really like.

R30, it is the basis of christianity.

R30 which many churches have forgotten i needed to add

Bah. Humbug!

When people say someone is religious they mean "oh, you're no fun, you don't have sex, and are a judgmental person". When people say they are spiritual they mean "I'm so hip , you can't pin me down, I am one with the cosmos, don't lump me in with those uptight religious people".

[quote]you can't pin me down, I am one with the cosmos, don't lump me in with those uptight religious people

What's wrong with that?

Nothing whatsoever, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass makes for beautiful reading.

Interesting thread, so far.

I’m especially interested in the pagan poster, and want to learn more about their religion.

Anyhow, reading this thread has made me aware that I need to be more sensitive and considerate of those who do not believe as I do, which is that I am an atheist.

That said, religion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s that the aspects of religion that I’ve been exposed to, are the aspects in which profound and deeply steeped hypocrisy is mired within.

Born again evangelicals (which I was surrounded by when I lived down South) tended to be very judgmental and unkind. Their public personas were quite different than what was going on behind closed doors. It’s impossible to be perfect, and what is infuriating with these types is that they’re consistently condemning others who do not believe as they do, yet also consistently fuck up, and think it’s OK, because all they have to do is ask Jesus’s forgiveness, rather than actually change.

It made me quite stern and reactionary to all religion, yet not all religion is based on attaining perfection, which is impossible, hence living hypocritically. I need to remember this, and this thread has been a reminder of this.

I need to let loose a bit, and become more tolerant of others’ views. It’s hypocritical of ME to claim to want more tolerance from others, yet to remain intolerant while insisting so.

Im still opposed to any hateful ideological bullshit, however, this thread shows that religion is a wild and varied thing that can be very cool and even helpful to some who view it as a way of interacting with the world, rather than as a game to win or lose after death.

Thanks, DL.

[quote]Religon is the basis for which i live my life which to to show kindness , help people when they need it, forgive people when they are jerks, it is centered on love. To love your brother as you love yourself. Simple and true.

Religion isn't required to do any of those. My mother taught us to value genuine goodness and compassionate acts for their own sake. Most of the older converts to religion that I know go through the outer motions of fake conversion while spouting off the same vile "moral" arguments that religion often condones, and are still spiritually dead inside.

R27, any theories on why that transformation happened?

R27 here...honestly, I wish I knew. Many of them, but not all, "married well" and now live in big ass McMansions - we all came from pretty solid Catholic middle class, four and five kids (or more) per family. Some of them live far beyond the kinds of lives they came from and now have country club memberships and in ground pools. But that's not entirely it - it's just that they seem to have morphed into very Stepford like ways of speaking, dressing and thinking. Most of them have left the parishes and neighborhoods they grew up in behind - just like the ranch houses their parents raised them in - and now attend well heeled parishes in the wealthier, predominantly white suburbs they live in.

But it seems to me it's not just material wealth- I don't begrudge anyone their success by any means - but it sometimes feels like they don't have any type of social conscience whatsoever, and their opinions are set in stone. Crime and poverty are black issues. Welfare queens are the ones getting abortions. Don't want my tax dollars going to "immigrants" either. And priests molesting kids is wildly exaggerated by "liberal media!" It's like a switch went off in their brains. I don't get it, I really don't - I just don't want any part of it.

r44 It's not required but your biases are showing.

My biases? I was involved with some well known individuals in separate groups hosted by prominent unis.

One atheist and one religious - predominately Catholic but you tend to find them more in schoarly discussion groups of theology, philosophy and political theory.

Around 2006, both groups went off the rails. (to be fair, so did many other groups I was involved in.)

the atheist group went from studying and comparing religious texts and philosophy from rationals to the contrast with the more fundamentalist. The general consenus was most religion, philosophy, political thought was a paradigm that could be shifted or a microcosm representative of a larger whole.

the religious group followed suit in a similar fashion.. it went from complexity of thought to simplistic notions of faith and confirmation biases.

they all ended up as circlejerks.

go back a decade and we can throw pagans under the bus as they reached the height of fluffiness. . . with the expanse of the internet and the bulk of it being reduced to chain letters and marilyn manson. Or again, the sheer number of celebs that ended up in (the other) A.A. -- Though the drama was delicious, much more than the craziness of the 1900s to the 1970s variety. It's ashame more people don't know the history of neopagans. It gets promoted as being lgbt friendly given some aspects but it truly wasn't in terms of philosophy. The feminist side is interesting too as it was popular with rad fems that all believed themselves to be hereditary witches. IZ (Zsuzsanna Budapest) was the more entertaining one.

^ my ventures into the neopagan realm was one part rebellion, being a fag and I was heavily invested in medical history.. which as with early science was tied closely to religion and mysticism. . . a way of understanding or making sense of the world. . . and even with modern science that we view as long since separated we judge more by faith - that the evidence we have at the time with tools and technology available to us is sound and good. But are theories are ever evolving. . . we prove ourselves wrong time and time again.

And I believe most would agree that we question the validity of social science's influence today... especially as the methodology has moved further away from the pragmatic but instead manipulated to present the desired outcome or theory.

I haven't read the posts but of course many people become religious as they near death. Salvation is comforting when thinking back on one's life and religion offers salvation.

My grandma never seemed religious. When my grandpa died, she went into a slow, depressive state that still haunts me, but she never turned into a super religious. But her home was full of Mother Maries, specially Our Lady Of Fátima. Now I see she had her faith but it was more discrete. I miss her dearly. She was a true matriarch - tough but you knew she had that sweetness inside of her. Maybe her toughness was just modesty.

I am catholic - I pray and all, but I'm gonna try to be more like her. Discreet, tough but tender when it's needed.

My mother however was always vocal about religious. Staunch church lady. Now it's even worse since she retired. She does all that church work, prays the rosary, etc.

Ask Jane Fonda, OP. It resulted in her divorce from Ted Turner.

I, for one, welcome the grim specter of death!

R51 Who became religious of the two, Ted or Jane?

R53... Jane.... Ted is a atheist and Jane found (or re-found) catholic religion... Not sure though how devout she is to it though...I would think not such much given their doctrine on women and the gay population..

R54 Thank you for the info.

I grew up in a rural, conservative area and attended the same Baptist church my family founded a century prior. It was solemn but not fanatical, with a “faith is a private matter” vibe.

At some point in the early 90s, I was forced to attend a larger congregation that was very much involved in the broader movement toward religion as a sociopolitical method of control. It was this experience that left me with religious trauma and cynicism, although I still held the values instilled by my understanding of the teachings of Jesus.

The vast majority of the “religious” are ignorant and selfish hypocrites. It is only recently that I’m able to separate their association from the truth inherent in the core teachings of not only Christianity, but all religions. If I am able to find a community of like-minded individuals, I think it will be valuable for maintaining a sense of community as I age. The Unitarians are probably a good fit.