Even if you’ve only been to one UU service, chances are you’ve sung a song by Jason Shelton. He wrote the Fire of Commitment, Morning Has Come, Standing on the Side of Love, (now known as Answering the Call of Love) and many more commonly sung hymns during service. That’s my dad. I grew up going to church every single Sunday with the biggest ego in the whole wide world because my papa was the Minister of Music at our congregation (First UU of Nashville or FUUN). I got to go all around the country with him while he toured at UU churches, giving sermons to any church that asked (and paid for our trip to their state). I loooved church. So much. It was my favorite place to be. I loved learning about different religions every Sunday, learning about sex on Saturday, and having dinner on Wednesday. Whenever the topic of church would come up in school between classmates, I had to let it be known that I followed the best religion in the world and shove it in everyone’s face that I was raised different from their southern-crish-upbringings.

I’d go as far to say that I grew up more UU than most UU kids did. I was constantly around it and I’ve visited more congregations than I can remember. But, after my dad left the church in 2017, I stopped going too. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

Two years ago, we were on vacation in Arizona. We were sitting in a diner, sleep deprived and about to take on the hike of the day. I don’t remember how we got on the topic, but my dad said something to me and my sister that hit me like a train.

“I regret raising you guys UU.”

Huh? I had the best time being raised UU! No one told me what to think, I was always told to ask questions and search for my own truth and meaning, that’s all anybody wants in this cookie-cutter world! To me, it sounded like the perfect way to raise a child. To my dad, it was the opposite.

My dad was raised Catholic by an Italian-Irish mom and an American dad. He was a Franciscan Monk for several years before he moved on (much more complicated than that) to get his Masters of Divinity and focus on music. That’s when he joined FUUN and became the Minister of Music. The point is, he was raised with a completely different foundation than my sister and I were. He actually had a foundation. We didn’t.

At the diner, my dad talked about how every kid needs a foundation of some sort to grow up on and “rebel against when you’re a teenager because that’s what teenagers do.” That foundation is, in short, religion. Kids don’t know anything about the world and how it works, and they’re not going to figure it out for a good decade and a half.

I mentioned loving getting to learn about all the different belief systems and religions from a young age, and I always thought it was a good thing. It is a good thing. It just has some downsides. Like having existential crises in elementary school because I didn’t know what was true and what was not and I couldn’t comprehend that nobody truly knows what anything is at all. I was introduced to dozens of different faiths, and looking back, that wasn’t a great thing.

People often chastise the sense of security that Christians have in their faith in God. Everything is God’s will, He will keep me safe, and if God says it’s my time to go, I’m going to Heaven to live with Him. That sounds crazy I know, but to a kid? That’s exactly what they need to hear. Everything is going to be alright. You don’t have ant idea what the world around you is like, but don’t worry because this kind man in the sky is always looking out for you.

Having complex thoughts and ideas about reality as a youngster is not a normal thing and it shouldn’t be. Thinking that I’m better than my classmates because my religion doesn’t bar me from believing what I want to and that leading to a superiority complex that eventually broke my brain is not a good thing, and that’s what came of my being raised UU.

I never thought about it that way until that morning in the diner. But it makes sense.

I would love to hear about experiences from other people who grew up UU; does any of this sound familiar?