Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

My maternal great-grandmother was first I"ve heard being a member. She even divorced her husband once she found that he was previously divorced due to irreconcilable differences. She was hardcore. My grandma and mom were members. My dad was a first-generation member and got baptized at 19. I was baptized at 13 when my parents divorced and stop going to church. My younger siblings followed suit in their adulthood. My uncles and aunts on both sides never became members. Welp there's pattern in my family, church of christ and divorce lol.

Both my parents came from Mothers that joined the COC as adults, neither dad ever did as far as I am aware of. My dad's dad was an alcoholic and my mom's dad died when she was really young before her mom ever converted. Things were really tough for my mom, not a pleasant childhood at all. I think the god concept gave her the love she so desperately craved and she wanted to do everything right, so she was a pretty easy target for the COC. Really none of either extended family members are COC, except maybe a cousin but it is of the very liberal type coc, more like a non-denominational type church. My sibling has remained hard core, hell fire and brimstone, no mercy or grace one true church. Hence why I try to limit or avoid family functions with them. Because they live in such a COC bubble they really don't keep the company of the extended family.

Born and bred. Royalty? I hope not. I've got NI preachers on both sides of the family. I think the CoC extends at least to the great-grandparents on my dad's side, maybe further. So all the extended family has CoC roots, but I don't think hardly any of them still actively attend one.

I was born into the cOC, third generation. My maternal grandparents were cOC. My grandfather was not raised in church. He smoked and drank and was a pool hustler. Then, one day, he met a girl who he really liked. She would date him under one condition. That he attend church with her. He did so and was converted. Some years later, he met my grandmother who was a Baptist. He converted her and then, of course, my mother and uncle were born into it and became generation number two. My uncle left the cOC for the Baptist church in 1986. I was born into it in 1973 and left for the first time in 1996. Given the way I was living, I figured that the right thing to do was to leave the church. The powers that be thought differently and doggedly pursued me. I returned to the cOC in 2012, but this time, I only hung around for about two years. I was in a much smaller congregation the second time around, so when I left, I wasn't pursued as heavily as I had been 18 years earlier. The second cOC that I was a member of simply didn't have the manpower, and thus had to sparingly choose what they invested their time and energy in. At the end of the day, I just didn't rate that high, which was fine by me. My mother eventually converted my father in 1999. They remain cOC to this day.

Moogy wrote:Just an interesting topic. I think our COC experiences may have been different based on how we got there. Multiple answers are accepted.

Great line of thought to reflect on. I also think the experience and reasons for leaving are different and that effects their current POV.

catn wrote:Born and bred. Royalty? I hope not. I've got NI preachers on both sides of the family. I think the CoC extends at least to the great-grandparents on my dad's side, maybe further. So all the extended family has CoC roots, but I don't think hardly any of them still actively attend one.

Face it, catn: you are 'royalty' (or some kind of aristocrat at least). Multi-generation AND preachers on 'both sides'? Yep.

My parents "converted" shortly after they married, which was sometime in the 1930's (kind of dates me!). Dad had never been involved with any church, Mom's family was respectably Methodist, although not overly committed.

So they embarked on a quest to sample what was available: our tiny community in the rural South had the aforementioned Methodist church, a Baptist church and a "Holy-Rollers" charismatic church -- called the Church of God as I recall.

But they ventured out to surrounding communities, and somewhere they heard one of those new-fangled Church of Christ preachers (they didn't think to small case the first "c" back then). The guy was apparently systematic, dogmatic, full of himself and his beliefs, and a slick communicator -- much like Dear Old Dad, who liked what he saw and heard.

Not long after, Dad saw to it that our little town was also graced (?) with our very own CoC. Most of the family, those who lived close by anyway, followed my folks into this new church, dubbed the "Whore of Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas" by certain Catholics (me).

Most of the family who still live there retain at least a nominal affiliation with it, as you're pretty well defined by which church you go to. Kind of a "caste" system . . . A lot of the kids have moved on geographically, and some have then broken away from "THE" church. But there's been a lot of suffering on the part of most everybody -- lots of emotional problems, anxiety, OCD, depression, etc. Seems like even the older ones, the 'gatekeepers' suffer. It's not a real happy branch of the Christian faith, due to the insistence that it's the ONE AND ONLY embodiment of the Christian faith, and that all our neighbors who steadfastly remain in their "denominational" churches are headed for eternal torment. ("Not smug. Not at all. Definitely not smug.")

I escaped after much struggle over a very long time, with plenty of scars to show for it -- kind of like Steve McQueen in "Papillon". (Hell of a good movie.) Overly-dramatic? Maybe a tad. But as some guy said, "You hadda be there to unnerstand."

I am from a multi-generational COC family from my mother's side (based in rural east Tennessee). My father's family (Knoxville area) are mostly Baptists. I can't think of any preachers or elders in the family, though. So, not really that "entrenched". A lot of the much-older family members (dead now) had rather unconventional beliefs and practices. Some were into Spiritualism, one was basically a witch.

Letmethink wrote:
By the time you were 13 and the church relocated, did you feel like you would be lost if you didn't go? Did none of the good brethren there offer to pick you up so,you didn't have to walk?

Sorry its taken me a while to respond, been busy.

The church relocated when I was 9, Dad drove me until I was pretty close to 14. When the weather was good I rode my bike and chained it to the stairwell at the back of classroom end of the building (it was two stories). When the weather was cold or snowy enough to be a bother I would sometimes bum a ride, but mostly just dealt with it because I liked the walk. Had to be selective in who to ask for a ride, because it was a risk that they would want to talk to my dad (he didn't want anything to do with them and never spoke to anyone unless it was strictly for permission for me to go on trips). Every once in a whlle if Dad was up early on a Sunday and was going to the grocery store he would offer me a ride, but it was always getting me there extra early so he wouldn't encounter anyone.

It wasn't a matter that I felt like I would be lost if I didn't go (I wasn't baptized until I was almost 20), it was a matter of having no social life or friends. I was a social outcast at school, so the only friends I had were the girls at church. And as I got older and my peer group at church either left for college or got married and moved away, my only friends were the older married women. As I rolled up on 30 being the only single woman around just fueled my depression and was one of the things that led to me seeking friendship outside the church and finally leaving.

Yeah, sounds all strange, but once Dad was dying and confessed why he had let me go to church, the way things happened as I got older all made sense.

I clicked the first 2 responses. One parent came from a long line of Campbellites, the other converted into it before I was born.