I grew up Catholic and went to C.C.D (it’s like Sunday school for Catholic kids but it’s held on a weeknight) and attended church fairly regularly. My godfather was a deacon in the Catholic Church. But religion was not a huge part of my childhood and I never considered my religion to be a particularly defining feature of myself as a person.
I had friends that were Baptist, Jewish, Hindu, and Sikh and the public schools I attended were extremely diverse. I never gave it much thought as we grew up celebrating different holidays and attending different places of worship.
Brigham City is the only place I’ve ever lived where religion is actually an issue. In other places, the topic might come up eventually in conversation, but here it’s always one of the first things to pop up. Within a week of moving in to our home, Mormon missionaries came to our door with pamphlets about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (or “LDS” as it’s called here).
If you don’t practice some sort of religion, you are definitely in the minority. And my husband and I fall into that category—at least for now.
When people ask, I casually tell them that I was raised Catholic and my husband was raised Methodist, so we haven’t decided yet how we are going to raise our children. That is true, but we’re not exactly in a huge hurry to commit to a church. After all, we were married for over four years before we had our baby and it wasn’t a pressing matter for us.
Being religiously “unattached” made it a little more difficult to meet people and make friends. A lot of the social activities are coordinated through churches here so we didn’t feel like we had as much open to us as newcomers.
It is also tough to be an outsider because many of the residents of Brigham City have lived here their whole lives and have extended families here. My husband and I on the other hand, have no family anywhere in this time zone. It’s hard and often disappointing to be raising our first child so far away from his grandparents, aunts, and cousins. This also means that most holidays are spent either traveling or hosting house guests.
