I am curious how you see "religiosity". As you mention not wanting that.
I feel like the best thing I can do here is simply provide my own personal story.
I was raised in a Christian home, namely Evangelical. My family attended a conservative non-denominational (non-Charismatic) church that simply identified itself as a "Bible church". It was my mom's childhood church, and it's where my parents met and got married. When I was eight years old my family was kicked out of the church because one of the church elders was having an affair, his then wife was friends with my mom in the choir, and he was able to divorce his wife and marry his mistress by accusing his wife of infidelity, accusing her of having a same-sex affair with my mom. The result was my mom being put under a kind of inquisition style situation where she was told she had to repent and then confess before the entire congregation (twice, once for each Sunday service, in front of thousands of people). Because my mom hadn't done anything wrong, and because she refused to humiliate and shame herself before thousands of people, my family was no longer welcome.
I'm forty years old now, and I would be lying if I said I don't still have some bitter feelings over what that elder--and that church--did to my mom and my family. It's something I am still working through as it pertains to forgiveness, because it left a very deep wound in my family. As, even after my mom passed away from cancer, I would still have people from that church come up to me and who believed all sorts of lies and gossips about my family. And it hurts when, after losing your mother, to have adults come up to you not to say, "Sorry to hear about your mom's passing" but "Sorry that your mom was a lesbian harlot".
Fortunately, after we left that church we found a welcoming congregation that was part of the
Foursquare denomination, a Pentecostal denomination. At the time they didn't even have their own church building, and were using the local YMCA to meet on Sunday morning. It was a very small and very loving group of Christians who were there to help my mom, and the rest of us, heal.
However, after several years, we merged with another local Foursquare church one town over, and then a little while after that our pastor left because the higher-ups moved him out of state and we got another, younger pastor. Under the new pastor, and new leadership the things in that church began changing. By the time I was 18 years old, after my mom had passed and my dad had to move across the state because of his work, I no longer felt like I was part of it--though I was an active member in my youth group.
Also in my late teen years I had began to study Scripture more, and study the early Church Fathers, and started exploring other theological traditions within Christianity. I developed a hunger to learn more about Christianity. And that itself began to put me at odds with some of my own Christian friends. I remember at one point saying that I wanted to believe what Jesus' Apostles believed and to take seriously what they wrote and said in the New Testament--the response I got was surprising, that it shouldn't matter what the Apostles believed, instead it just mattered what the Bible said (surprising, because if I was to take the Bible seriously then that is the same thing, the Bible says what those who wrote it believed).
From the age of 18 and into my 20's I didn't have a church home. I visited a lot of churches. After moving to a new city, I continued to visit and explore, but I myself didn't know where to belong. I looked at a lot of different churches, for sometime I seriously considered the
Charismatic Episcopalian Church. As I was, at the time, somewhere in-between still Charismatic/Pentecostal in some of my theology and also liturgical traditional. At the same time I was also looking at the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, because, again, I was interested in taking Jesus seriously, and therefore taking Christian history seriously.
In my early-mid 20's I eventually had a rather profound exchange with a Lutheran on an online discussion, on a forum similar to one like this. It was a rather simple expression of the Lutheran understanding of Justification. And it blew my mind, and I started looking into Lutheranism--which I hadn't really done before then.
What I haven't mentioned in any of this, was that throughout my life, ever since I was a very small child I struggled with the idea of my own salvation. I had been raised to believe that my salvation depended on my ability to make a sincere and genuine decision to believe and follow Jesus, and if that decision was sincere and genuine, then I could know I was truly saved. And, conversely, if I couldn't pinpoint a precise moment where I made a genuine decision for Jesus, then--maybe--maybe I wasn't saved at all.
At the age of almost four years old, my parents led me through the "Sinner's Prayer" and I "Asked Jesus into my heart". But I was four years old, and didn't fully grasp what was going on. When I was about eight years old, I was already having a crisis of faith, talking to my dad about how could I know if I "really meant it" when I asked Jesus into my heart. I was eight years old and unsure how to know how if I could "really mean" something. So my dad led me through the "Sinner's Prayer" again, just to make sure I meant it this time--but I still didn't know. And I didn't know how to know.
When I was twelve, a traveling evangelist came to my Pentecostal church, and I was one of several other kids my age who went up front to "receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in tongues". Like almost everyone else who went up, when the evangelist prayed and laid hands over me, I fell to the ground and began speaking in ecstatic utterances.
But I still didn't know if I "meant it" when I asked Jesus to be my personal Lord and Savior, and I was told that I should be showing evidences of a transformed and sanctified life--bearing fruit. And yet, I was now twelve years old and undergoing puberty, and my hormones and my brain were a total mess. It seemed like the more seriously I was trying to take my faith, the more unsure I was of it. It felt like the more I wanted to obey God, the more sinful I was. The more I desired God, the worse I seemed to be--and rather than leading me to comfort and peace with God, I was constantly afraid and terrified. Terrified that I was beyond redemption, terrified that I was rejected by God for my lack of faith and was destined to eternal torment in hell. That God could love others, but not me, I was beyond hope.
By the time I was sixteen years old I was active in my youth group. And I went on my first mission trip to help serve the homeless and work with a church in San Francisco doing outreach in the inner city. It was an important experience for me, and I grew a lot. I came back "on fire" for God. But peeling back the veil, I was still a scared child who was unable to shake the feeling that I was beyond redemption. I would, frequently, spend hours privately in my bedroom literally cry out to God while laying prostrate on my face--begging Him to make me holy, begging Him to save me, begging Him to make me better. And sometimes, sometimes I felt a little better, but then I would trip up again, and again feel like I was beyond hope. After all, why was I not seeing the fruits of holiness in my life? Why was I constantly struggling with the same things over and over?
And those feelings lingered in me into adulthood. So when, finally, in my 20's I had a Lutheran explain the Lutheran view of Justification, my mind was truly and thoroughly blown away. God could save me simply because He loved me and wanted to? I could be saved entirely apart from even myself, simply because Jesus lived, suffered, died, and rose again? It wasn't up to me to show God how much I loved Him, it was up to God to show me how much He loved me? These were mind-blowing ideas that fundamentally turned an entire lifetime of religious experiences on their head.
As such, I very frequently tell people that I stumbled backward, that I tripped and fell into Lutheranism entirely by accident. Lutheranism was never on my radar. Of all the churches I was exploring, Lutheranism just wasn't even in my peripheral vision. And then suddenly, as though struck by lightning, I suddenly wanted to know more about it. And what I discovered in the Lutheran tradition was truly radical. The more I learned, the more I read Scripture, the more things just seemed to click. But I was, at the same time, afraid to start going to a Lutheran church--what would my family think? After all, when I had first started studying Church history and theology, a lot of my Evangelical friends thought I was walking away from Jesus. When I left my home town I learned of rumors being spread about me, some pretty awful things--such as that I had become a drug dealer.
It took a few years, almost into my 30's, but I eventually did build up the courage to start attending a Lutheran church, accepting that even if there would be people who didn't like it, I had to follow my conscience, and that what I needed and wanted was to hear the Gospel being preached. I've never looked back since then.
The goal of me mentioning Lutheranism isn't to say "You should be Lutheran". The goal is simply to share some of my own personal experiences. I do believe that there is something uniquely special about the Lutheran tradition, but I don't feel comfortable simply telling someone "Be what I am". But I do encourage people to study theology, and to always be willing to challenge their own assumptions on matters of religion.
-CryptoLutheran
Maybe the percentage is a little higher, but I like to dampen my estimation so as not to overplay my actual engagement with the issues involved. I know I'm no expert on the subject of Evolution; I'm just an ongoing, general researcher really.
