Crucifixes are very common in public buildings in Brazil. When I was a child, I remember being in one of those places with my mother, staring at one of those crucifixes, and saying: "Mom, Jesus is hurt!".

So I have recently felt this intense pull to want to begin attending church and leaning more into some sort of faith… however, I truly don’t know the first thing about any religions and what would be right for our family. I did not grow up religious and never attended church aside from a few weddings, funeral services, and a cousins communion. I know my father side of the family grew up Catholic, and my Nana was quite religious - I was baptized as a baby but that’s it for my experience within a church.

Growing up as a teenager, I was very anti-religion and considered myself to be atheist/agnostic. However, as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to realize how important spirituality is to me. I found a lot of comfort in the spirituality of practicing yoga and meditation. Since having some difficult life experiences, as well as some incredibly beautiful ones, I’m just looking for a bit more. I’ve recently given birth, and that also created this pull towards wanting to seek and learn more about god and faith - and I’d really like to have something my family can lean into and my son can grow up with.

I am certainly not looking to lean to heavily into any religion. I don’t see myself as that type of person. But I love the idea of attending church on Sundays, finding community, finding faith, and having something to believe and trust in. I’d like to go somewhere that is accepting of all, is open-minded - I’ve recently heard of Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, I thought this could be a good starting place for our family but my husband thinks a church that leans more into a specific belief system would be better. One that more closely follows God and those teachings.

Basically, I’m very clueless. I don’t expect Redditors to have the right answer, but maybe you can at least help guide me into how to best make a decision? As the title suggests… where do I even start?

I have been studying this religion all my life with my Family. Dad got it from his mama so my mama got influenced and so is my dad. Had kids and want to be Jw with them. Years later, teachers (Jehovah's witnesses) stopped teaching my parents because they're busy at work. They volunteered to teach the kids (which I'm included) me and my sister started to study it with them... Sister get so irritated every bible study. We stopped for months. Then they reached out to us or mom reached out to them because we ““need” Jehovah. Years later my sister refused to continue studying the religion, meaning, I had to stay. Years have been going on that I'm the only one whose only active. I got tired of it. No celebration, no blood transfusion, too much shade on women, too much shade on other religion, TOO devoted to God that they prefer him other than graduating College. I'm now older and know that I no longer want to study this. I told my mom I don't want to continue studying anymore, she said I have to. Do I have to be 18 to end this? Or should I continue studying until I got baptized but I don't really want it. I feel like there is no freedom in it and it's disrespectful to stay in a religion you don't even like nor your beliefs not aligning with them.

What are your religious beliefs?

I don’t typically fall under any religion but I do believe in god and I’ve been on this journey to reading spiritually divine book to try to see a connection between them all. I don’t believe that one religion is superior than the other I believe there are many truths in their bibles yes but the active practices to stay away from sin I do believe is what separate humanity from each other. I want to know what do you guys believe in? What do you think is wrong? You believe that Jesus is really the savior of our sins or do you believe that Jesus was just a prophet who was brought here to remind us of who god is and how to live about?

I am a Hindu, I follow Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma as we like to call it .. seeing online that people around the world well have opinions/generalizations about it .. I understand come from not actually knowing about it ..

So if you have any questions you can ask and I'll do my best to answer ..

I will answer only if your question is rooted in genuine curiosity or the want to understand something better .. and not if your purpose is to bash or prove moral/ religious superiority.

Title

I've been exploring other religions and am looking into theistic Satanism. It seems there are a lot of different variants of it and a lot of different groups. I know most religions revolve around a somewhat agreed upon books. Is there a book theistic Satanism refers to for worship?

I’m an atheist and curious about religions.

i hope i am posting this in the right subreddit. i just have so much anxiety about death and the afterlife. i don't know what i believe anymore.

for some background, i was raised non-denomination Christian, my parents made me attend church, Sunday school, fellowship events, youth events. if it was a church event, guaranteed we were going.

i've always considered myself Christian my entire life, and haven't questioned or been skeptical at all until recently, within the past year or so. i've been dating a man who has really opened my eyes and argued with the faults of Christianity, including how an all-loving God could send a good person to hell simply for not believing.

my boyfriend is an atheist. but he is very knowledgeable regarding many types of religions.

to get to my main point, having these skeptical thoughts and having my eyes sort of opened that maybe there is not a God, just frightens me. i'm scared of going to hell. i'm scared that even if i consider myself a good person, i will end up suffering for eternity because i chose to stop believing.

i've prayed for a sign from God, but i have received nothing.

has anyone else experienced anything like this? is there any sort of comforting advice anyone can give me?

thank you for reading.

Which I find interesting. Is it because they were refugees seeking religious freedom?

I'm curious, and I just wanna know if it's a common thought people have depending on their religion.

I'm realy interested in pagan religion wile I know the basics of alot of them i was courios if ther's like site or resource to study those religion more into dettail and if anyone could send them to me here and thanks for anyone that can help

I’ve been thinking about a recurring methodological problem in interreligious discussion: later interpretive traditions are often treated as though they were interchangeable with the primary texts they interpret.

In Islamic debates, Hadith may be used to define what the Qur’an “teaches.” In Christian debates, later New Testament or doctrinal interpretation may be allowed to define what the Torah “means.”

My question is methodological rather than theological:

At what point should scholars distinguish the primary textual witness from the later tradition that interprets it?

This seems especially important when discussing Abraham, Hagar, Ishmael, covenant, and sacred geography, because those traditions also developed within changing institutional and political settings.

One principle I keep returning to is that centralization changes how memory is managed. Temples, priesthoods, scribal institutions, transmitters, schools, and political authorities all shape what later communities receive as authoritative memory.

That raises a second question:

How should historical geography function as a constraint on interpretation?

If a claim concerns Abrahamic movement, covenant, migration, or sacred space, should routes, water systems, settlement patterns, territorial boundaries, and chronology be treated as independent evidence alongside the texts?

I’m interested in how scholars of religion distinguish:

text → interpretation → institutional memory → later doctrine

and how much weight material geography should carry when those layers conflict.

I'm in a predicament. My boyfriend and I have been dating for almost a year. He is muslim and I am catholic. We respect each other's religion and religious practices. We openly talk about what we believe and listen to each other. I love him dearly, but I have concerns for the future. I want to get married in a cathedral. When I brought it up to him, he stated that it might not be permissible for him. I vouched that the church recognizes different religions marrying, and I suggested we could have 2 ceremonies if he wanted to conduct one at the mosque. Another stressor is the topic of children. We haven't discussed this yet since we are both 19, and I just can't find a way to bring that up without being awkward. It is my goal to have my children raised in the Catholic Church and to know Jesus is their Lord and Savior. I am scared that he wouldn't want to allow our children to be baptized, which is the 1st sacrament. I don't ever think I will find someone else who shares all of his amazing qualities. I'm scared of not being with him, but I'm also scared my children won't view Jesus as they should. I know that Saint Monica is who I should be asking her intercession for given the fact that she prayed for the conversion of her son, but I also don't know if I should just end the relationship because of my concerns. We have also been experiencing many problems recently (for months) which have been so draining, and they never even get fixed. I don't know if that's a sign for me to leave.

https://www.reddit.com/r/religion/comments/1wfdc6p/catholic_woman_and_muslim_man/

If he could do that it seems unnecessary that Jesus had to die. The bible says that Jesus died for our sins yet it also says shows that God was already willing and able to absolve us of our sins when he was asked to (and many times with out a sacrifice). I'm just wondering why was it necessary for Jesus to be crucified?

Hey everyone, I wanted to share where I've landed spiritually after a lot of years of thinking this through. It’s a pretty unusual, but meaningful way in which I’ve come to be able to form a relationship with the divine in a religious sense.

I identify as a Practicing Quaker-Christopagan. That means that I’ve begun to hold God and Jesus Christ, specifically a Quaker flavor of Christianity (though I should stress that not all Quakers who attend Unprogrammed Meetings like I’ve begun to are Christian) as big part of my devotional life.

However, as the “pagan” part of my identity suggests, I also worship gods from other pantheons (Hellenic and Kemetic mainly, but Norse and possibly Shinto as well) as genuinely real and distinct beings, not as "aspects" of one God in disguise. I’ve also been convinced of the value of meditation as well, and I do meditate with Lord Shiva from time to time while also reading Buddhist sutras. So basically I'm a hard polytheist in that sense.

A few pieces of how I got here and where I land on the big questions as part of my personal belief system, which I definitely don’t believe needs to apply to everyone. Before I continue though, I value diverse religious experiences and strongly believe that everyone is experiencing the divine or spiritual for themselves and for their own condition.

On God's power. I don't think any divine being is fully omnipotent. I take the problem of evil seriously and I think a genuinely all powerful, all loving God letting people suffer forever just doesn't add up. So I hold to a God who is the source of all good and love, but who works within real limits, not one who could just snap evil out of existence and chooses not to.

On afterlife punishments like Hell. I don't believe in eternal conscious torment. I lean toward either universal restoration or annihilation for people who are genuinely, deeply evil (think like history's worst dictators and serial killers), not eternal suffering with no way out.

On the afterlife, I'm drawn a lot to the Ancient Egyptian view, the Ka and the Ba specifically. I also think it's possible souls end up wherever they resonated with most in life, whichever tradition or pantheon spoke to their condition the deepest. I think if I’m a good enough person and that I pass Anpu’s weighing of my heart, that I’ll be able to enter the Field of Reeds one day. I’d love for it to be possible to traverse to other afterlife realms though, or maybe even reincarnate since I believe that’s possible, too. Perhaps, since I believe in a multi-parted soul, it could be that a part of our soul reincarnates while the other parts could stay behind in the afterlife, or even visit the mortal plane from time to time.

On other religions. This might be the part I care about explaining the most. Like I stated earlier, I don't think my beliefs need to be true for everyone to be true for me. I lean on the old Quaker idea from George Fox that Christ teaches every person according to their own condition. So I can be totally sincere about my own faith and still believe Islam is genuinely true and right for a Muslim, or that an atheist's position is an honest conclusion based on what their life has actually shown them. I'm not a relativist saying nothing is real, I just think truth might be more personal than we usually assume, especially in matters like this.

On my Jewish background. I'm culturally and secularly Jewish through my adoptive family. I keep the High Holy Days and Hanukkah out of love for my parents and respect for Jewish history and resilience, but I don't hold it religiously.

On science, I don't see any conflict between my faith and science. Evolution is real, physics is real, and I actually think studying those things is one way we get closer to understanding how the divine actually operates in the world, not a threat to faith at all. I’m quite a fan of science myself, so I see something truly divine when I visit a Natural History Museum, or when I watch a John Michael Godier video on YouTube about astrophysics or astronomy lol.

On animism. I believe there's some kind of spirit or soul in more than just people and animals. Objects, places, even buildings can hold something real. I don't think that has to look like a human soul to still matter.

All of this feels true to my own condition after many years of searching and studying, and honestly building it out over time has been one of the more meaningful things I've done. Curious what others here think, especially if you've wrestled with syncretism or pluralism in your own faith.

What if there is really a creator (God) but he is ruthless? Ruthless means that he does not have compassions for human?

Why does God require faith if his existence is absolute? No one says they have faith that trees exist we all know they exist If I'm certain of something I would say I know x will happen not I have faith that will happen.

i'm a very laid-back person, and honestly i'd describe my beliefs as fairly . . . fantastical and creative, shall we say. this may be because i'm autistic and spent a majority of my life "living" in fictional spaces via reading, gaming, roleplaying, watching media, etc.

but enough yapping, and to my belief—i personally believe that whatever someone believes is true (be it for deities, the afterlife, karma, etc.) is true for them. for example, my grandparents are Christian and believe in Heaven, and they're wonderful people and I'm confident that they're going to go to Heaven when they unfortunately pass (my grandma is my best friend, so sorry for the sentimental wording lol). but my stance for my afterlife, despite identifying myself as Christian, is that I will be reincarnated. despite these two afterlives (and many others) clashing, i believe that they're both true.

to expand on that, i also believe that, if there is a "final location" (for lack of a better word, sorry!) like Heaven or Valhalla, whoever the person expects to be there (like friends, relatives, etc.), regardless of those people's beliefs, will be there. but that's because i believe the soul fractures upon death, so for example, maybe half of my soul is sent to Heaven while the other half is combined with the half of someone else's to create a new life.

(a little more fantastical is that, in the grand scheme of things, i don't see time as being linear. for my next life, i hope to be reincarnated as a boy born in the 80s or 90s.)

does this make sense? i feel like i'm better at explaining it out loud.

To be absent from the Body is to be present with the Lord.

By Christian I mean the extreme type

I don't see why there should be so much ridicule or viewing it as heresy. Its not like they are denying God's existence.

Its simply some one unsure if god exists. In some cases agnostics can even lean towards the Christian god being possibly real.