Funerals and Weddings In Your Old Religion
Sooner or later, somebody you love is going to die or get married inside the religion you left. You will be invited. You will have to decide whether to go, and if you go, how to be there. There is no way around this. Avoiding it costs you the relationship. Going badly costs you in a different way. Going well — present, kind, not pretending — is the move, and it takes some thought.
Religious funerals and weddings are designed to do something specific to the people in the room. They are designed to enact the worldview of the religion through the bodies of the participants. You stand. You sit. You bow. You repeat. You take the bread. You sign the register. You say "amen" to the homily. As an unbeliever, you will be asked, by the structure of the event, to perform belief you do not have. The question is what to do with that.
The default move: show up, do not lie
The default move for a thoughtful ex-religious person at a religious funeral or wedding is to show up, sit in a back pew or a polite middle seat, do the basic respectful things that anyone in any culture would do (stand when others stand, sit quietly when others sit), and not do the parts that involve actively asserting belief you do not hold. Specifically: do not take communion in a Catholic Mass if you are not Catholic. Do not say "amen" to a creed you do not believe. Do not put on a kippah and bow your head and pray a prayer that means something specific you do not endorse, unless the meaning is general enough to be your honest meaning.
There is space here for some judgment. Standing during a hymn is not the same as singing the hymn with intent. Bowing your head during a prayer is not the same as praying the prayer. Wearing a kippah at a Jewish funeral is a sign of respect that does not necessarily affirm belief in the God being addressed. Wearing a hijab at a Muslim funeral, similarly. Use your judgment. Err on the side of presence over performance and honesty over performance.
The mistake people make is at one of the two extremes — either fully performing the rituals as if they still believed (which costs you internally and feels like a small betrayal of yourself for the rest of the week), or making the funeral about your unbelief (refusing to stand, walking out at certain points, getting into a debate at the reception). Neither is the move. The move is to be unobtrusively present, doing what respect requires, not doing what affirmation of belief requires, and being a person other people can lean on.
When you are asked to participate in a more active role
Sometimes the role is bigger than just a guest. You are asked to read at the funeral. You are asked to be a godparent at the baptism. You are asked to give a toast at the wedding that includes a religious element. You are asked to say the kaddish for a parent. You are asked to recite the Shema at the bedside.
For each of these, the honest move is to think about whether you can do the thing without lying. Reading a passage of scripture at a funeral is, for many ex-religious people, fine — you are reading words written long ago that contain wisdom you can stand behind, even without affirming the metaphysics. Giving a toast that mentions God in a way the family will hear as religious — also often fine, depending on your tolerance for ambiguity.
Being the godparent is more complicated, because it usually involves an explicit promise to raise the child in the faith. Many ex-religious people, asked to be a godparent at a Catholic baptism, decline by saying something like, "I love you and I want to be in this child’s life forever, but I would not be honest making the promise the role asks me to make. Let me play that role in a way that does not require it." Most families can absorb that with a little time. Some cannot. The choice is yours, but I would not recommend making the promise just to keep the peace; it tends to come back to bite you in the relationship later.
A note on funerals specifically
Funerals are not the day to litigate the religion. The grieving family needs the ritual to do its work. Your unbelief, even if it is sharp and recent, has no business at a funeral as a topic. You can hold whatever you hold privately. The work in the room is to honor the dead and support the living. Most ex-religious people do well at funerals because the basic moves of any culture’s funerals are the same and you already know them — show up, be quiet, make a casserole, tell a story when asked, be near the grieving, do not make it about you.
For your own parent’s funeral, the question is sharper. You may have a parent whose belief was central to their life. You may be invited or expected to lead something — a eulogy, a prayer at the graveside, a candle-lighting. Lead the thing if you can do it honestly. If the structure of the event requires you to make claims you cannot make, ask whether you can lead a different part. A eulogy is almost always doable. The substance can be your parent’s life and what they meant to you. You do not have to make a theological claim about where they are now in order to honor what they were.
If, at the funeral of a religious parent, you find yourself in the middle of a service that is repeatedly affirming things you do not believe, sit quietly. Stand when the family stands. Sing if the hymn means something to you and skip if it does not. Cry. Hold a sibling’s hand. The funeral is for grief. The grief is real. Whatever you believe about the afterlife, the loss is the same. Be in the loss.
Weddings: a slightly different problem
Religious weddings are not as pastorally serious as funerals; the room is happier and the stakes feel lower. They have their own version of the same problem, though. You are at the wedding of a sibling or a friend in a tradition you no longer practice. The vows are religious. The ceremony has explicit religious content. There may be a Mass, a chuppah, a nikah ceremony.
Show up. Sit through the parts that are happy. Smile when the couple kisses or breaks the glass or says I do. Toast at the reception. Eat the food. Dance if there is dancing. The wedding is about the couple, not about you. None of your discomfort with the religious elements should be visible in the day; the couple does not need that. Save your processing for later.
For your own wedding — if you are an ex-religious person getting married — you have the freedom to design the ceremony so that it does not require you to affirm what you do not. Many ex-religious couples do a humanist or non-denominational ceremony, or a civil ceremony with a personal officiant, and it is fine. Some still use a religious officiant out of love for a parent, with a ceremony that has a softer doctrinal content than the standard one. Some elope and do a separate party. All of these are valid. Do what you can stand behind, on the day that is going to be in your photos forever.
A reminder about the long game
You are going to be invited to many of these events over the next thirty years. The strategy of showing up, not pretending, and not making it about you compounds. Year after year, the family who was nervous about how you would behave at a Catholic wedding or an LDS sealing or a Jewish bar mitzvah learns that you are still you, that you can be in the room without making a scene, that your unbelief is not a project of theirs.
That is how trust gets rebuilt with religious family in slow motion. Not through speeches. Not through theology. Through showing up, behaving like a kind person, being present at their important days without lying about your own. Over a decade, this earns you back a lot of the relationship that the initial deconstruction strained. You do not have to give a single defense of yourself. The defense is just the way you live, in front of them, at a hundred small events that add up.
Not therapy. Personal advice. Elder X is not a licensed therapist. This is honest writing from someone who has walked the road and sat with people on it.
Other Pieces of After
When the family stops calling
For people whose family has cut off contact, formally or quietly, after they left their religion. The grief, the confusion, and what to do when the people who said they loved you stop showing up.
Holidays in your old religion
For people who left their religion and now have to navigate Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, Passover, or other holidays inside a family that still observes them. How to be honest without blowing up the family dinner.
Telling your family you no longer believe
For people deconstructing who do not know how to tell their religious parents, siblings, or spouse what they actually believe now. Honest writing on timing, scripts, and what to do when the first conversation goes badly.
If You Came Out Of...
Pages written specifically for people leaving these traditions.
Leaving the Catholic Church
For ex-Catholics, lapsed Catholics, and people walking away from the church they were raised in. The guilt machinery, the family Mass, the saints you still half-believe in, and what comes next.
Leaving the LDS Church
For people who left the Mormon church or are in the middle of leaving. The temple, the family, the testimony you no longer have, and what comes next. Honest writing from someone who walked it.
Leaving Orthodox Judaism
For people who went off the derech (OTD) from Hasidic, ultra-Orthodox, Yeshivish, or Modern Orthodox communities. The shidduch system, the language, the family, and the immigrant-style transition into a wider world.
Want to Talk?
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