I've just found this forum and this post is by way of introduction.
I'm 65, live in the UK, married to an Argentine woman ( now a convert from Catholicism to the Baptist Church) and after 50 years away from faith ( C of E) I've been trying to find a way back!
I'm looking forward to exploring the forum and hope to get things more clear in my mind. My initial intention was to return to the C of E but on seeking help/advice from my church of so long ago, I soon realised just how badly split it now was. I skipped through an online Alpha course and the same old problems/severe doubts about the Christian beliefs shone through. In brief this was largely to do with how to view the Bible and interpretations of it. I was quite in sync with Orthodox Anglican teachings on many social issues but just couldn't get through the supernatural elements so needed to have a full belief. The mainstream liberal Anglicanism does very little for me.
I began turning to Catholicism, something that was alien, even the enemy to me growing up in Liverpool in the 50s and 60s. Even though my family was in no way religious, they never seemed to miss an opportunity to slag off the Catholics. Anyway, having listened and read a number of things about the Catholic church and its social programme and having worked for a year in an Irish welfare association in Birmingham that was strongly attached to the Church, I began to look for more answers in a rapidly changing social world. I thought I was beginning to make sense of things, teachings seemed to suggest for example that evolution was the best explanation of origins and that the creation stories were allegories. At last I thought, those, or some aspects of the Bible that I'd always struggled with were actually not literal matters but allegories very similar to so many stories of the ancient world. Alas, further reading of a website, Catholics Coming Home, seemed to contradict that. If it's in the Bible, it must be true was the general view on there. So, back to square one. No point going further wit the vicar at my local church as he told me I can't cherry pick which parts of the Bible I agree with and furthermore, Adam and Eve was not a first order question but he did believe in Noah and the walls of Jericho story. I was being preached at .
I'll leave it there, I think anyone reading this will see the confused state I'm in but I also hope that some will see that this is a genuine attempt to understand who we are, where we came from and where we are going.
