Christian Origins

I'm going to back up a bit to cover my earliest introduction to spirituality in the Christian faith or more accurately following Jesus. My parents didn't go to church much. My mother was brought up Catholic but gave that up when she married my father. My father said he didn't go to church but was very religious. So anyhow, they made me go to the local Congregational church until I was 16 at which time I abruptly quit. At that time, I guess the Congregational church was on its way to becoming what you would call liberal today. But I did hear all the Bible stories and Jesus' teachings which I took at face value for the most part. I loved singing a lot of the traditional hymns, the cool, majestic sounding ones not the ones for babies that they had us sing in Sunday school. Real hymns, Holy, Holy, Holy, A Mighty Fortress is Our God, Now Thank We All Our God, etc. I usually daydreamed about something else during the sermons which i think were primarily on the level of "be a nice person. don't kill anybody".