I started out defending my faith, but gradually I felt I had nothing to fall back on. I knew what I had been taught, but when challenged, I could only refer vaguely to the Bible… When I would mention the Bible, my best friend would say, “I gave up believing in fairy tales when I was a child.” Those words struck me hard in my youth.
A 27-year-old graduate student of philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville, JonMarc resides in Steubenville, OH, with his wife Teresa and two young children. While completing his undergraduate degree at
It was the great hymns and potluck suppers that Don Brey remembers best about his days growing up in the Methodist tradition, not necessarily the church doctrines. Don credits his
I was born in the ghettoes of Chicago’s South Side in 1961. My first memories are of dilapidated apartments, window frames without windows, trash strewn on the streets, urine-soaked alleys, and a neglected-derived independence. As a three-, four-, and five-year-old, I remember many times coming and going from the apartment my mother, siblings and I shared while my mother, an active alcoholic at that time, had friends over from morning till night — days filled with card games, cigarette smoke and all the beer and vodka they could want. When I was about seven years old, my father, whom I had only met once, came to the apartment announcing that my six siblings and I were going with him. It was the last time I would see my mother for years. Much later, my father told us my mother told him she was moving and leaving us at the apartment, and warned him that if he didn’t come get us, we would be abandoned.
Growing up in the heart of conservative Mennonite and Amish communities in Ohio, Chad Gerber has fond memories living in the Mennonite tradition, though, he was not particularly spiritual. That
I sat at work with my head in my hands looking at the computer screen. I couldn’t believe what I had just read. There was no possible way that was the truth. How could it be? I always thought that I was right and the Catholics were wrong. If the statement I had just read was true, it would mean so much would have to change. Yet, how could they be right? This was only supposed to be a harmless trip to EWTN.com in order to disprove my fiancée’s parents and their firm Catholic beliefs.
Kevin O’Brien returns to the Journey Home program but in a rather different capacity – as himself. As an actor, he has portrayed various Christian personalities as a guest. But
I was born third of four boys to a family in Wisconsin; though most of my life growing up and starting my own family was spent just over the border in Minnesota. My father’s grandfather had emigrated from Namur, Belgium just after the American Civil War and joined America’s largest Belgian-American community in Door County, Wisconsin. My mother’s side had been in the U.S. much longer, descending from Scots-Irish ancestors. My grandfather, who died when my father was just 17, had married outside the Catholic Faith in about 1910 to a German-Lutheran woman; hence our part of the family was raised in the German-Lutheran faith, and our step-grandfather pastored a German-Lutheran church in northern Wisconsin for half a century.
It has been said that life is a journey and not a destination. For close to fifty years I followed a spiritual path that was shaped in and through the Anglican Communion. Choirboy, altar boy, priest, secretary to the Diocesan Synod, Franciscan friar, confessor to bishops, and chaplain at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, I have seen it all in Anglicanism.
Growing up in Anderson, Indiana, Fr. Randy Musselman was part of a Baptist family that was not particularly active in its faith. However, he was baptized at age 14 and
Taylor Marshall learned the basic tenets of the Christian faith through his friend’s Lutheran Church. In high school, Taylor experienced a profound religious experience and soon felt a calling to
I was born and raised in the small town of Huntsville, about 60 miles north of Houston, Texas. I was not brought up in a particularly Christian household. My mother had attended Sunday worship services in various faith traditions throughout her childhood, all stemming from Calvinistic theology with an evangelical twist. My father was a disfellowshipped Jehovah’s Witness, who rarely spoke of any sort of faith. So, as one could imagine, I grew up in a rather secular household with some moral standards, but no moral lawgiver.
Help us share the truth and beauty of the Church.
Help us share the truth and beauty of the Church.
