I Think I’m Walking Away From Organized Religion

Johnna Jaramillo
7 min readJul 7, 2021

There are many reasons people stick it out with religion. There is the community aspect, the charitable works, the comfort of rituals and rules and even just family history. When my Grandmother passed away, I found such comfort in the funeral rituals that I vowed that I would never leave the Catholic Church. I believe my exact words were, “the Church is stuck with me, whether she likes it or not.” But, I couldn’t do it. It may have taken two decades, but I finally had to call it quits. Here’s why.

For 13 years, I was a typical 70’s Catholic kid. We went to Mass every week and of course I started Catholic school in first grade. I loved everything about it. I couldn’t wait to wear my white dress and veil and make my First Communion. I happily attended extra Bible studies where I learned about a loving Jesus through felt board stories. As I neared adolescence, things started to change. My parents, who had always been on the strict side of the spectrum religion-wise, started to act differently towards me. Something about my very being seemed to disgust them. I’m not exaggerating. As I started to develop into a young woman and become more interested in normal teenage things like boys and music, they seemed to want to squash all of it. “You’d attract attention even if you were wearing a trench coat,” said my Mother with disdain. Sometimes my Dad would just look at me and shake his head without any explanation. Then, right after my Confirmation, they got saved and we left the Catholic Church.

Clearly, they were on their own journey, but from what I could see, the hippie Catholicism of the 70’s didn’t sit well with them. Soon, we were ensconced in the Evangelical world with church three times a week, speaking in tongues, tithing and the prosperity gospel. It was quite a drastic change and the timing was spectacularly bad. While I might’ve started to question some of the rules of Catholicism, I outright rejected this new form of worship. That seemed to confirm in my parents’ minds that I was bad and it wasn’t just my actions that were bad, it was me, down to the core. A good kid wouldn’t have questioned their decision. A good kid honors her parents. A good kid wouldn’t listen to music that talked about sex, never mind the fact that most of it went way above my head. A good kid wouldn’t want to hug and kiss boys. After one dance at the local Catholic parish, I was told that “only the slutty girls hung around outside talking to the boys after the dances.” I didn’t really even understand what that meant at the time, but I knew it wasn’t good.

Thus began the paradox of my high school life. I was a pretty straight-laced kid who didn’t want to get into any trouble, but in their eyes, I was a slutty, untrustworthy daughter. The few mistakes I made were pretty typical, but they were never forgotten. When the police called to let my parents know they had found one of our bikes that had been stolen, my Mother said that she was worried because ‘well, with some of the things you’ve done, I just didn’t know.” This type of interaction played out over and over for four years of high school. By day I was living the nerd life and being made fun of for not participating in certain high school activities and by night I was the slutty daughter who wasn’t part of the family anymore because I was rejecting the new found fundamentalism. My Mother always made sure to clarify that I was always part of the family, but it was just that I had chosen to separate myself from the family because I didn’t wholeheartedly embrace their new faith.

I am thankful for enough good influences in my life, mostly in the form of teachers and some good friends, that had faith in me and helped me keep my eye on the prize, graduation from high school and college life. I toed the line enough to get through four years with some lengthy groundings and first class arguing for a few privileges. For example, all secular music was banned in my home and I wasn’t allowed to go to concerts, but I convinced them that we had received a set of tickets as a gift and that it would be rude to refuse. Nothing ever changed with them though. To this day, they are convinced that I spent my high school years whoring around and barely getting by grade-wise because I was a decent writer.

The message of their God was loud and clear. Who you are — the kid who loves rock and roll and making out on the front door step with her boyfriend — is bad. Don’t get me wrong, they would say they loved me, but it was clear they didn’t love who I was at all. And now, having mostly raised my own kids, I can see that religion does that a lot. I know there are families that practice religion in a healthy way and I admire that. Somehow, they know those rules about sexuality are there and they don’t hyperfocus on them. For them, the focus is on generosity and forgiveness, you know, the good things.

As time has gone by, what I have seen is a lot of people hyperfocusing on rules about personal conduct, not just theirs, but other people’s too. For them, the world is divided into good people who follow those rules and bad people who do not. By doing that, I think they are missing a very damaging aspect of religion. When their kids wear a low cut shirt, listen to music about sex or, god forbid, don’t conform to sexual norms, they internalize that they are bad. Somehow, that message gets mixed in with all of the other complicated feelings of adolescence and sticks around. On an intellectual level, I know I am a basically good person, or at least I try to be. On an emotional level, I am the bad kid who will never measure up to the standards of purity that they held out for me.

As soon as I bring this up, I will be told that their message was wrong and that I shouldn’t blame religion. The good things about religion will be pointed out to me and I can’t argue with that. If you have gotten through a lifetime of practicing an organized religion and have only positive experiences, then I am truly happy for you. I can only urge you to be vigilant with your own families. Be careful of youth groups that focus on purity and modesty. Be wary of any preachers who promise prosperity and happiness to you if you follow certain rules and beware of community when the focus is on setting the group apart as special or chosen because of lifestyle choices. Life is very seldom that neat. I have seen many families that look very holy on the surface deal with the same problems that regular, struggling families do: adultery, abuse, financial problems. When you have internalized the message that you are a bad person, it is harder to pull yourself up from those hard times because you think, even if it’s subconscious, that you don’t deserve happiness or any good things.

I did end up raising my kids in the Catholic church and while I don’t totally regret that decision, I am less and less happy with it as time goes by. I thought being a part of that community would be good for us. I thought that the good would outweigh the bad. Perhaps I should’ve paid attention to how often I had to excuse or explain away things that weren’t good. I hope my kids have mostly gotten the message from me that they are loved unconditionally and for who they really are. But in the last few years, as politics and Covid have divided us even further, I saw that I was going to have to either take a stand for what I truly believed, or be seen by my kids as part of the judgmental, hypocritical big picture.

I don’t judge those who chose to stay in and stand up for change. I also know that many people genuinely have mostly positive experiences, even when they don’t conform to the standards that the Church sets forth. I think it can truly be a calling to stay and be the person who works for change. You can open the hearts of people around you when you do that. You can also hurt the hearts of those you love when you do that too, those who aren’t accepted and know they never will be. I used to focus on the good and what I was getting out of the practice of religion. I’m not sure that was wrong, but now I know I cannot do it anymore. Is the door totally shut? Maybe not. Sometimes I joke that me and religion are on a break. As time goes on, my answer to a lot of questions is ‘I don’t know’ and that doesn’t seem to fit well with the type of religion that I was a part of. The truth is, not only do I not know, but I never knew. The future might seem a little scary when you admit you don’t know, but it’s also freeing. If there is a God, I’d like to think they would crack a bit of a smile, watching one of their creations find that freedom.

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Johnna Jaramillo

I'm a traveler, writer, peace lover and loyal friend.