Running head: SITTING ON THE FENCE
Sitting on the Fence
Stephanie Cox
Arizona State University
Sitting on the Fence As a child, I wasn’t a member of a church, although my mother was a non-practicing Lutheran and she hoarded Catholic memorabilia. Throughout the years my friends and extended family members brought me on church trips to Disneyland and Summer camp and introduced me to many different ideologies: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon), Islam, Potter’s House, Baptist, Pentecostal, non-denominational and Catholic. As an adult I have had exposure to members of additional ideologies: Buddhism, Jehovah’s Witness, Atheism, Amish Christianity and once attended worship at a synagogue in Prescott, Arizona. Following my first marriage, I was Mormon for over a decade. Approximately six years after my divorce I chose to leave the church and became Agnostic, although I still hold a personal belief in Jesus Christ.…show more content… I was driven to them because I adore relativism as a way to practice my own religious freedom, along with many Americans that claim no religion but still maintain their spirituality2. According to Pew Statistics, the percentage of Americans that claim no religious affiliation has risen over six percent in the last seven years, while major ideologies such as Catholicism and Evangelism have seen decreases in the same time period2. However, Mormons only lost a tenth of a percentage point of their population, which is approximately one-seventeenth of its population the year