In any case my mom, since you mentioned her, imagined she'd be a Dorothy Day social justice warrior nun until an unfortunate/fortunate encounter with a hard drinking, chain smoking, leering priest.
The experience disturbed her so much she started dating, and met my dad.
After my mom married my dad she continued to distance herself from her childhood vision of Catholic Saintliness and became a Jehovah's Witness.
Out of the frying pan into the fire of obsessive religiosity.
But she couldn't keep out of politics, especially Daniel Berrigan inspired ant-war politics, so the Witnesses kicked her out, literally bouncers at the door style.
Then we were Quakers.
I never paid any attention to the flag salute in school, I'd sit quietly at my desk reading or drawing space ships. Nor did I pray in mixed company. Doing either of those things would buy a person a ticket to hell. Praying around the flagpole before school would have bought an express ticket to hell . (Are certain Christians still doing that? It seems the worst sort of idolatry, but then they voted for Trump as well.)
Things got really strange for me after I quit high school. At one point I was living in my car in a church parking lot. Several good people tried to save me but I refused them. I also survived a David Lynch version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Thankfully we never got so far as the actual wedding and broke up when I jumped out of her moving car and left a lot of my skin and blood on the streets of Berkeley California.
My ancestors were Wild West. Previously they were European religious and political dissidents of various sorts who landed in America and hit the ground running into the wilderness. They were not seeking any particular opportunity so much as escaping whatever hell was brewing in their native lands.
My last immigrant ancestor was a mail order bride to Salt Lake City. The Mormons were recruiting young women like her in Scandinavia. She didn't like sharing a husband so she ran off with a monogamous man who was passing through town and they homesteaded a ranch that's still remote from any church.
In history class I used to wonder about my ancestors and the U.S. Civil War. My ancestors were all here in the U.S.A. but there were no Civil War stories. Both my grandfathers had World War II stories, one as a pacifist who refused arms and chose to work in the shipyards building and repairing ships for the Merchant Marine, and the other as an officer in the Army Air Corps. But the Civil War was distant from my ancestors and maybe they wanted it that way.
The only religion, non-religion, or anti-religion anyone in my family agrees on is Not Mormon.
My wife's family is thoroughly Mexican Irish Catholic. One of my wife's uncles was a priest.
The sorts of relatives in our families who'd refuse to attend weddings in an alien church, or even accept such a marriage as valid "in the eyes of God" are dead.
The community I live in is majority Hispanic and Catholic. Less than 15% of the people here identify exclusively as "white." Less than 5% belong to any Southern Baptist or similar Evangelical churches, churches of the sort I read so much about on DU.
Prosperity Gospel Christians are rare here. People may attend Mass less frequently, or not at all, but they don't tend to switch brands. The megachurch phenomena doesn't exist here as it does in Texas or some parts of California, churches that wrangle up those straying from other churches, and those seeking to fill some vague emptiness in their hearts that I mostly attribute to television.
Religion and nationalism can be horrible things, and can be especially poisonous when mixed, but you work with the tools you've got, not with the tools you wish you had. In my community Social Justice activism frequently has a very Catholic context.
Whenever I want to mess with someone who asks about my religion, especially if I think they are a Creationist, I tell them I'm an amateur Evolutionary Biologist. Anybody can be an atheist and they know it but biology is hard.
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