Leaving is a very hard thing and takes the courage of one's convictions, so what the other poster wrote, I understand. But even though there is a price, if you don't stand by your convictions, then you might as well not have any. I was always a "follow-the-leader" type before then.
My best friend, very intelligent and far better educated than I, who is now deceased was into reincarnation, and I was curious about that and the occult at that time, too. I can't say I was directly exposed to that in church, but through some of the members. The book that so fascinated us at the time was "Gretchen, I Am."
Actually, I credit the Pentecostals the most for getting me to see the error of my ways in dabbling in the occult. At a catholic college course in Sociology, I wrote a paper about reincarnation and got an A on it although the professor said I quoted too much from a book." He should have flunked me lol.
I wasn't Catholic then, but two Catholic girls accompanied me to a seance in the dark basement of the spiritualist church here. By then, I was wary and prayed I wouldn't get any messages. Fortunately, everyone present but me IIRC got one. I was relieved I didn't. So theses poor naive Catholic girls did, and might not have gone were it not for me, may God forgive me for that. And I made other mistakes like that during that period of my life, looking for answers, takss a long time to be cleansed from all of it and an effort of the will.
Not too long after, the girls invited me to go with them to a witchcraft initiation at night at a local state park. That was just too far out after that spooky seance, and I wanted no part of it and declined, wish I'd known enough then to warn them that their church frowned on such things as that, officially.
I have since remonstrated (nicely) with some ignorant Catholics about what their church teaches about some of the things they get into.
The churches in my region pretty much stay uninvolved in any pregnancy resource centers because of “neutrality” or they identify themselves as “pro-choice” flat-out. The pro-lifers in the congregations are tepid in interest and voiceless on any pro-life principles.
It isn’t easy to leave but there comes a time when it just becomes so clear that it’s time to go.
Growing up, I wasn’t into church at all and I was interested in astrology and read books like Amityville Horror and The Exorcist. I did attend church after I had kids but it was pretty much social stuff. Even after I had kids, I was searching for answers in books like Deepak Chopra’s or some Oprah-endorsed books. I look back and recognize that God protected me from those books. The books and activities offered through the church were definitely left-leaning and New Age in nature. It did no good to bring up any objections. People would just roll their eyes (yeah, even the so-called conservatives). I wanted my kids to have church friends but I was exposing them to leaders with liberation theology attitudes. The warning blips were there along the way but we finally got the klaxton and we couldn’t ignore that!