In the United States, for a middle-class white youth, there is essentially a single line that illustrates the religious spectrum. It runs from atheism on one end to Christianity on the other. That is, of course, an oversimplification of the religious diversity in the United States, but unless you grew up in a household that already had differing religious beliefs than those, then you will grow up somewhere along that line.
Over the course of my youth, I walked that line from one end to the other. I never got very militant on either side; I was never Evangelical in my Christianity, never militant in my atheism. But I definitely went over and back on both sides of the divide. I think that's natural, in a way. Spirituality is an uncertain thing in its very nature. Faith is an opponent of logic, and logic is hard-wired, primordially, into us.
