Hello!

[Julia]

Hello all!

I guess I'd best describe myself as a recovering ex-evangelical - brought up in a rather apathetic home but preyed on by the church the moment I left home and went to Cambridge (they know that a lot of university freshers are lonely, open-minded and impressionable - and I certainly got love-bombed by them). I was suckered by a lot of their dogma but there was always some element of rationality in me that tried to make sense of it all and ended up just tying myself in knots. So much so that I followed their ideal - repressed true sexuality, married, three lovely kids... (yes, the church in the UK delights in marrying off people they suspect of being gay/lesbian - sacrificing one of their own to a bad relationship to try to "straighten the LGBT sinner out"; the irony for us being that one of us is L and the other T, so we've ended up happy together by a very convoluted route!)

Then the crap really started. Our third child turned out to be profoundly autistic. At 3 little Sam found church a frightening experience and couldn't control his behaviour on a Sunday morning. Far from helping, the church decided he was a devil-child and it could only have been caused by Sinful Parenting, and they spat us out as quickly as they had sucked us in. Suddenly the people we thought were closer than family were crossing the road to avoid us... That provided the real hammer-blow to make us take a very long hard look at ourselves. It was very tough to admit we'd basically let this organisation take over our lives for so long; A. experimented a bit with the Quakers and Buddhism for a while, but we both came to the conclusion we'd been conned. Thinking for ourselves and seeing just how ridiculous our Christian past is when you think about it came as a blessed relief.

The other thing was, despite having the full sunday school treatment for a few years, the children all have a clarity and simplicity of thought that puts us to shame, and seem completely resistant to religion. They just look at the world around them. And see less evidence for Jesus than the tooth fairy - at least the tooth fairy brings 20p when Mummy remembers!

Of course in a small community where the church has a lot of influence it is often inconvenient to stick out as the atheist dyke couple (though somehow it didn't prevent me winning a seat on the local counci) I guess they are all diligently praying for our souls, we'll certainly keep them busy!

Julia

[Girl Dancing In Orbit]

Are you serious ? "the church decided he was a devil-child"

Welcome... Happy to see you here

xxx

[pagan1]

I wish the church would get its story straight ( no pun intended ),it is like a group of highly disorganized criminals...Jesus very clearly states that we should look to the child in order to understand god...so their obvious conclusion to your childs dislike of their shamanistic behaviour should of been,"We must all be possessed by the Devil!This Holy and Sacred Child has revealed the true nature of our ignorance!We must therefore immediately excommunicate ourselves,and jump into the nearest Black Hole,never to be seen again..."Speaking of Black Holes,did you ever cross paths with Stephen Hawking while you were at Cambridge?One of your web pages mentions an interest in genealogy,how far back are you able to trace your family tree?Please excuse my ignorance,but are you able to explain Autism to me?

[Julia]

Serious... they couldn't understand him, and they couldn't understand why their methods failed to control him. There are various facets to the autism, but what we were finding difficult at the time were sensory hypersensitivity (imagine your hearing, touch etc. all being on full volume all the time), communication problems, and the inability to perceive other people as individuals. So he found services confusing and over-stimulating; his ideal solution would be to go somewhere quiet on his own - which we and his school have taught him to do since - but the church were continually confrontational with him. They would order him to sit down in a noisy room, and when he couldn't cope with complying, and couldn't explain what he wanted, they'd grab him hard. At which point he would completely freak...

Pagan: I was in the same department as Stephen Hawking and used to see him all the time - but I was working down in the basement with the fluid mechanics group. He had an office next to the cafeteria where his group would congregate, they had tables which you could write on and we'd have to be careful not to erase any important theories by spilling tea on them

Oh, and the family - we know a lot back to about 1800 (all births in England had to be registered from 1837, and censuses with names in started in 1841) though one branch we can trace back to 1538. Vicars, they were!

[McQ]

Welcome to the forum, and thank you for the background information. Glad to have you here!

[Mister Joy]

Welcome aboard! That's an interesting yet thoroughly infuriating story. I mean Christ on a bike, I had no idea the Church in this country could ever be so patently ridiculous... devil-child? So the basic consensus is, if somebody has any condition which cannot be contained/cured by a babbling congregation of praying, chanting, in some cases shouting, foaming-at-the-mouth blind believers then they must represent something of or pertaining to the ultimate force of evil in all of existence? And epileptics, cancer patients, amputees, mutes, schizophrenics et cetera are what? All just pseudonyms for Satan-worshipping spawn of Beelzebub?

That's profoundly disturbing. Was it the Anglican church, you say, or something else? Sorry if you said, I must've missed it.

Anyhoo, once again, welcome to the forum Julia. I've an interest in genealogy, too, kinda, though most of the work's already been done for me.  Lucky, otherwise I'd have had no idea where to start. Have fun! Hope to have many a discussion with you.

[MommaSquid]

Welcome to the forum, Julia.  I hope you enjoy your time here.

I hope you find guidance for raising an autistic child...you certainly won't get it from religion.

[Girl Dancing In Orbit]

This is incredible. I can't even imagine what must have been going on in your head. I would probably had some very violent thoughts concerning the church if I was in your position. I hope every thing falls back into order from now on.

[pagan1]

As a parent myself,I should imagine that it would be very difficult to deal with the care of an autistic child,and of course in the back of any parents mind is the thought,will my child be ok when I am gone or if something happens and I am unable to look after them.I suppose also there is the constant concern as to how other children and people in general will treat  him...it is unfortunate that he has already been confronted by the ignorance of others.I am a single parent with two children,a son aged 12 and a daughter aged 17,in August of 2006 my wife died of a pulmonary embulism,I was there with her when it happened.So I can say with all sincerety that there is nothing more precious than the love we have for and get from our children...

[Tricky_Niki]

Welcome to the forum. Hope you enjoy your stay here.
Dealing with a child with issues is hard especially when the very people you thought you could turn to turn thier backs on you. Our 8 yr old has Asperger's Syndrome and I have heard some of the same things from believers but maybe in my case they are right and we are being punished by an imaginary bearded man for not believeing in him.
Good Luck to you.

[SteveS]

Hi Julia, welcome to the forum!

Far from helping, the church decided he was a devil-child and it could only have been caused by Sinful Parenting,

Good grief, this sounds like something from 100's of years ago, "burn the witches at the stake".  Ridiculous.  Nothing like religion to revert understanding and humanity to centuries-old idiocy......

In the UK, too?  Sounds like your town would do well if it were transplanted to the American bible-belt.....