by Caroline Garlick

Created on: July 07, 2010

I've known from a very young age that I am atheist. My primary school was a standard white, middle-class suburban one; whilst it did not exclude anyone on the grounds of race or religion, the fact was that there just weren't any non-white, non-middle-class kids in the area. As such, as I'm sure was and still is the case in many English schools, we chanted the Lord's Prayer in morning assembly, sang hymns twice a week and thanked-the-Lord-for-our-good-dinner-amen every lunchtime. Being a good kid and not inclined to extreme acts of definace, I joined in like everyone else. I even enjoyed singing the hymns (as a side note, my partner was shocked to hear me belting out a redition of "When A Knight Won His Spurs" in the shower just the other day) - not because I felt any religious attachment to them, but because I've always loved a good old sing-song. At the same time, my parents sent my sisters and I to the local Sunday School every week; not because they were devout Christian themselves (although they do declare a flimsy belief in God, probably because they went through the same school system a generation earlier and never thought to question it), but because it was just what the parents in the area did to get the kids out of the house for a couple of hours. I liked going to Sunday School and always had great fun making posters with glitter and glue in the musty, dusty old church hall. I knew all the stories and the songs, but even as a young child I viewed them as I viewed other childish entertainments like fairy tales, pop music and Disney movies - gentle, non-threatening and utterly fabricated. In fact, just last Christmas, at the age of twenty-four, I went with my mother to the midnight service at the local church on Christmas Eve. My mother felt like she should (it's the only time of year she goes, save for the odd wedding or funeral), and I'd had a coupe of gin and tonics and wanted to sing some Christmas carols for nostalgia. When I sat quietly facing forward during prayers, my mother prodded me indignantly and lamented the day she decided not to get me christened - she's convinced it's all her fault I'm a heathen.

Once at secondary school, which in my case was a comprehensive, no emphasis was placed on the Christian faith or any other, and it was here that I developed a real interest in religious education. Due to the fact that my school was not a designated "faith" school, I was taught about religion from a purely objective standpoint. We had open discussions

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