Sunday mornings for non-religious - what do you do? (rejecting, Christians, atheist)
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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Sleep in, have a nice full breakfast, then do something fun. I will do home chores/yard work on Saturday, but on Sundays try to stick to more leisurely and enjoyable pursuits. Yesterday for example, We drove a country road to have breakfast at a restaurant about 30 miles away, visited a state park along a river, went to a produce/nursery place and got a few plants and some vegetables/fruit. Then in the afternoon I tinkered with my classic car project, and got a few things fixed. During the NFL season we will watch 1-3 football games, or have them on the radio while doing other fun stuff.
Serious question. For my fellow non-believers, do you have a social group or other thing to go to? For me, Monday-Friday is for work and Saturday is for errands, with Sunday being when I really like to just hang out with people. How goes it for you?
Sounds similar to my routine, I just don't work at a job, I work at home. Sunday is just another day so I pretty much rest, relax and talk on the phone or watch something. Then I take a nap.
As a younger man, I put myself through college working at a supermarket, and as anyone who has worked retail knows, Sundays are typically not a day of rest. I don't know how the faithful manage working retail, but my guess is they are among the religious who are not church goers. Since I was going to college at the same time, free time was for the most part study time, and if there was any time left over, I spent it with the girl I lived with at the time.
Later with wife and two kids, religion was not a part of our lives. I worked full time. Often napped on Saturdays from exhaustion. I never nap anymore during my many years of retirement. Then Sundays were often spent getting the kids to their baseball, soccer or basketball games. Or when possible, we would often use weekends to go for family hikes, camping, outings of all sorts. I have always been grateful about spending time that way instead of inside a church. Even if only for an hour or two. Life is too short.
Nowadays, my wife and I are retired and into 10 years of remodeling our final retirement home. So, during the lulls between remodeling work, we too do just about anything we want on any day of the week. Very often that will include our 10K walk, an outing of some sort. A movie on occasion. Many eBike racks have been recently installed around where we live. We're looking forward to start using them soon. When in the middle of the harder remodeling projects, like now that we're laying a flagstone path from the front gate to the front area where we're soon to build the porch my wife wants, we tend to put in the hard labor during the week and rest on the weekend. Every Sunday I prepare our BSB (Big Sunday Breakfast) which always includes my signature Bloody Marys.
So Sundays we don't go to church (and I don't drive anywhere)...
It was easy in the county where I grew up. Sunday blue laws dating back to the eighteenth century, no retail open except for things like convenience stores and restaurants. Still that way. Every once in a while a thread pops up about it on the NJ forum. There's a new one there now.
Working retail part-time during high school and full-time for a year afterward made me realize I did not want to work with the public. I enrolled in a one-year executive secretarial course at a local school and ended up in the public transportation industry without ever having to actually deal with the public.
Hm... Well, you know, although I was raised Christian and was forced to go to church up to my mid teens, I never found church to be worthwhile. It was just boring for me. I just wanted to go home and enjoy my weekend doing things that actually mattered. I never found "community" in church and never thought of it was a necessary part of my Sunday routine. So the instant I wasn't forced to go anymore, I just used Sunday mornings to do whatever I would like to do.
With that said, now 15+ years post-church, my Sunday mornings are a time of sleeping in and relaxing and then starting laundry. Sundays are my laundry days, so that's how I see them.
It was easy in the county where I grew up. Sunday blue laws dating back to the eighteenth century, no retail open except for things like convenience stores and restaurants. Still that way. Every once in a while a thread pops up about it on the NJ forum. There's a new one there now.
Working retail part-time during high school and full-time for a year afterward made me realize I did not want to work with the public. I enrolled in a one-year executive secretarial course at a local school and ended up in the public transportation industry without ever having to actually deal with the public.
Part of the problem growing up in Texas , besides the churches, was the Blue Laws. The blue laws were repealed in 1985 and it took years of petitions, threatened legal actions and countless unenforceable violations I remember in college passing a petition to help gt signatures to remove the blue laws.
In turn, the inept bishop of the UMC, who would not get off his arse to help anyone, suddenly started publishing newsletters about the evils of repealing the blue laws.
I celebrated when they were repealed. But they are not completely gone. Most counties in Texas prohibit liquor stores to be open on Sundays Car dealerships can only be open one day on a weekend.
For me, above all else, my Atheism has given me freedom. I can do whatever I Choose to do on a Sunday. Not what someone else tries to choose for me through laws or restrictions. IF I want to go buy a new car on Sunday afternoon, then I can. If I want to go buy a bottle of Rum, I will. (And sometimes do)
I have talked about Atheism being liberating, about Freedom From Religion and written enough to fill a book (And probably should publish it) talking about how great my life is, and how the lives of many other atheists are so much better without the bondage of Jesus and/or his followers.
I liken it to probably what someone in the old East Germany felt when they defected into West Berlin and never went back.
Sometimes on Sundays, I sleep late and just relax for the day. Sometimes I head out and explore the world. Regardless, I do what I choose to do, because as an Atheist, I have that choice. I do not have to attend some dysfunctional, meaningless gathering of believers, nor do I have to restrict myself to what I do based on what some old irrelevant book says . I have the freedom to enjoy life to the fullest and to do so on my terms.
I hope all other atheists find a way to enjoy their Sundays too.
Part of the problem growing up in Texas , besides the churches, was the Blue Laws. The blue laws were repealed in 1985 and it took years of petitions, threatened legal actions and countless unenforceable violations I remember in college passing a petition to help gt signatures to remove the blue laws.
In turn, the inept bishop of the UMC, who would not get off his arse to help anyone, suddenly started publishing newsletters about the evils of repealing the blue laws.
I celebrated when they were repealed. But they are not completely gone. Most counties in Texas prohibit liquor stores to be open on Sundays Car dealerships can only be open one day on a weekend.
For me, above all else, my Atheism has given me freedom. I can do whatever I Choose to do on a Sunday. Not what someone else tries to choose for me through laws or restrictions. IF I want to go buy a new car on Sunday afternoon, then I can. If I want to go buy a bottle of Rum, I will. (And sometimes do)
I have talked about Atheism being liberating, about Freedom From Religion and written enough to fill a book (And probably should publish it) talking about how great my life is, and how the lives of many other atheists are so much better without the bondage of Jesus and/or his followers.
I liken it to probably what someone in the old East Germany felt when they defected into West Berlin and never went back.
Sometimes on Sundays, I sleep late and just relax for the day. Sometimes I head out and explore the world. Regardless, I do what I choose to do, because as an Atheist, I have that choice. I do not have to attend some dysfunctional, meaningless gathering of believers, nor do I have to restrict myself to what I do based on what some old irrelevant book says . I have the freedom to enjoy life to the fullest and to do so on my terms.
I hope all other atheists find a way to enjoy their Sundays too.
Though I am a fellow atheist, I doubt church goers would agree or approve of how you describe those who go to church on Sundays or what going to church means to them. Though I too enjoy the freedom to do other than go to church on Sundays, I am quite sure church goers don't feel a lack of freedom to do what they choose to do on Sundays. Not my thing, but it's not a bad thing for those who choose to do that sort of thing. Not for all of them is all I'm saying.
Now as for the kids who are dragged into church like I was when I was a lad, that's not freedom, but for me that wasn't all that bad either. Mom thought it was the thing to do in any case. Until we stopped going altogether, because even my mom came around to thinking there were better things to do with our Sunday mornings. Still, for others, church on Sundays is meaningful and something to look forward to. Not so much like living in old East Germany I don't think.
Growing up in our house, Sundays were tense, because my mother had little self-esteem as a wife and mother as a result of how she'd grown up (suffice to say my grandfather was such an a-hole that when he died when I was thirteen, I remember practicing in my head how to pretend to be sad at the wake and funeral because that would be expected of me).
So she didn't want to be late to church, because that would make her look bad, and we had to be dressed right because if we weren't, that would make her look bad. Not that she SAID this, but later I realized that her low self-esteem was the driving force behind her Sunday morning behavior.
So she'd be running around like a chicken with her head cut off, yelling at everyone, yelling at my father that he wasn't helping her get the kids ready, at which point he would help my younger and sister and I put on our Sunday shoes and chances were 50-50 that he put them on the wrong feet and no one would realize it until later when we complained that our feet hurt. I mean, this wasn't once or twice. We had our shoes on wrong a LOT. LOL.
And mind you, part of my father getting HIMSELF ready meant that he had to put on his artificial legs, but I don't remember him ever once putting them on the wrong way. LOL.
Then we'd all pile in the station wagon, my mother yelling we'd be late, and chances were 50-50 that my father would start backing out of the driveway while one of us still had a foot in the driveway and a door open...that happened a lot, too. Dad was very absent-minded.
But once we got there, Sunday school was fun. I liked the stories, and I was good at memorizing verses, which was a big part of it. Then there was singing and sometimes games and coloring, depending on our ages. But then...the church service. Very boring. I did like the singing. By then my father would have escaped after dropping my mother and us off and gone to get his mother, who always had candy for us kids for church, and the ten of us filed into "our" pew.
Life savers were the best. There were eleven life savers in a roll, so I would eat the first one at 11:05, and keeping looking at the clock to have another every five minutes, and when the roll was gone, church was over or almost over. Sometimes she had pink Canada mints or other candies, too. I also, as mentioned previously in another thread, had an internal game where I found if I stared at Reverend Gaston long enough during the sermon, everything around him would go black and his talking head would just be up there floating alone. I found this an entertaining exercise.
Then home to a big Sunday dinner around 1 pm. In my younger years, we had to remain in our church clothes all day and we could only play quiet games, like board games and cards, which we did love to do. No running around outside and getting dirty and making noise on Sunday. We weren't a big TV watching family, for which I am now grateful to my parents, but Sunday nights we younger ones got to watch Disney before bed and my older sibs got to stay up for Bonanza.
As time went on and the older sibs rebelled and the world changed a bit and maybe my mother just wanted some peace and quiet, we were allowed to change into play clothes after dinner and go outside on Sundays.
Part of the problem growing up in Texas , besides the churches, was the Blue Laws. The blue laws were repealed in 1985 and it took years of petitions, threatened legal actions and countless unenforceable violations I remember in college passing a petition to help gt signatures to remove the blue laws.
In turn, the inept bishop of the UMC, who would not get off his arse to help anyone, suddenly started publishing newsletters about the evils of repealing the blue laws.
I celebrated when they were repealed. But they are not completely gone. Most counties in Texas prohibit liquor stores to be open on Sundays Car dealerships can only be open one day on a weekend.
For me, above all else, my Atheism has given me freedom. I can do whatever I Choose to do on a Sunday. Not what someone else tries to choose for me through laws or restrictions. IF I want to go buy a new car on Sunday afternoon, then I can. If I want to go buy a bottle of Rum, I will. (And sometimes do)
I have talked about Atheism being liberating, about Freedom From Religion and written enough to fill a book (And probably should publish it) talking about how great my life is, and how the lives of many other atheists are so much better without the bondage of Jesus and/or his followers.
I liken it to probably what someone in the old East Germany felt when they defected into West Berlin and never went back.
Sometimes on Sundays, I sleep late and just relax for the day. Sometimes I head out and explore the world. Regardless, I do what I choose to do, because as an Atheist, I have that choice. I do not have to attend some dysfunctional, meaningless gathering of believers, nor do I have to restrict myself to what I do based on what some old irrelevant book says . I have the freedom to enjoy life to the fullest and to do so on my terms.
I hope all other atheists find a way to enjoy their Sundays too.
We had such horribly strict blue laws in SC, it was hard on us drunks who couldn't buy alcohol on Sundays. We still have blue laws, just not quite as bad. When I was young though, you had nothing to do on Sunday EXCEPT go to church. Everything was locked down on Sundays and it still is as far as the liquor stores. I don't expect we'll ever get these yahoos to let go completely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LearnMe
Though I am a fellow atheist, I doubt church goers would agree or approve of how you describe those who go to church on Sundays or what going to church means to them. Though I too enjoy the freedom to do other than go to church on Sundays, I am quite sure church goers don't feel a lack of freedom to do what they choose to do on Sundays. Not my thing, but it's not a bad thing for those who choose to do that sort of thing. Not for all of them is all I'm saying.
Now as for the kids who are dragged into church like I was when I was a lad, that's not freedom, but for me that wasn't all that bad either. Mom thought it was the thing to do in any case. Until we stopped going altogether, because even my mom came around to thinking there were better things to do with our Sunday mornings. Still, for others, church on Sundays is meaningful and something to look forward to. Not so much like living in old East Germany I don't think.
I have to agree with you AND with LargeKingCat. Churchgoers are not special in any way. They go because they have been taught to do so. Or, proselytized to so profusely that they buy into the threats of hell. Maybe they finally just gave in, whatever the case may be. Nothing is about choice with Christianity. I feel like if there wasn't so much pressure on closet agnostics/atheists to be a part of the 'gang' or 'social club', just keep your disbelief to yourself kind of thing, then there would be a whole lot more of us speaking up and out.
But, I do see your point. Albeit delusional and completely unnecessary, going to church in and of itself is harmless. I wish they would just call it what it is......a social club where they all agree. At least on the Jesus thing. Or not, depending who is still in the closet. Or, someone who has to always be right. Someone who needs to be in charge and swears they have the correct interpretation. What am I saying? NONE of them get along and that's why there are 100's of different denominations in the US that all "agree".
And all this time, they thought I wasn't listening in church.
Last edited by Northsouth; 06-28-2023 at 10:50 PM..
Reason: Edit to add
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