Becoming an Atheist: the Formative Years

I was born in 1956. My father, a Jew of Hungarian and Polish descent who grew up in the South Bronx, and my mother, a black woman whose Jamaican immigrant parents brought her up in one Harlem neighborhood church after another (at least one a storefront location pastored by her father), decided somehow that I would attend church with my mom while my three younger brothers would be raised as Jews. Religion seemed to be important to both of my parents; my mother and I went to Christ Episcopal Church every Sunday, while my father and brothers attended service at Temple Gates of Heaven each Friday night. My brothers also took Hebrew classes on Sunday mornings. The one time I remember missing Sunday School and church was on Sunday, September 18, 1966, when my youngest brother Stephen was born.

As a member of the Episcopal church, a church similar in many ways to the Catholic church, I enrolled in catechism classes at age eleven to prepare for confirmation. After several months of lessons and testing, the lot of us pre-adolescent girls came to church one Sunday in white dresses and veils, the boys in suits, and we were presented to our bishop for examination and blessing. My brothers, each in his turn, were bar mitzvahed at the age of thirteen.

Probably fifty percent of the population in Schenectady was of Italian or Polish descent. A great many of the kids our age were second generation Americans like us, meaning that our parents were born in the United States but most of our grandparents were born overseas. In that way, my brothers and I fit in neatly with our neighbors. On the other hand, we drew attention in our town because blacks probably made up no more than five percent of the population, and Jews were even more uncommon. For the most part, I enjoyed our bi-religious and biracial upbringing, and I hope my brothers did too. I think most kids want to stand out. We certainly stood out back in the 1960s and 70s when no one else we knew had a family like ours. Of course, there were times when it felt awkward or even painful to be seen as different. For the most part, however, our family makeup was a conversation starter and a mark of singularity.

To be continued...

(Excerpted from Stepping into the Light: You're a Christian, what now? by Diane L. Harris)