At the Washington Post’s On Faith, Remz Pokorny, a senior at Brandeis University, chronicles his decision to stick with the religion he was reared in by two very different parents.

Melissa Knudtson
Madison, Wisconsin
Baha'i since June 2007

By the age of 8, Melissa Knudtson concluded there was a God. Her parents were from a Christian background, but were noncommittal about religion and didn’t rear their children in a faith. The most religion she received was from going to church once a month with her grandmother.

Alvin Bitsilly
Mexican Springs, N.M.
Baha'i since 1991

Before discovering the Baha'i Faith in the late '80s, I was into drugs and alcohol and living a real trashy life. I had just started to try to get my life together.

BJ Lee, Baha'i since 2006
Eloy, Arizona

I was confirmed a Catholic -- my mother’s doing. My father was Jewish and an agnostic. Both raised me to question things and to accurately interpret information, which is what I did when searching for a religion starting in the ‘70s.

Veronica Fairchild
Sun Valley, Nevada
Baha'i since 2004

I was born and raised Mormon. I attended until I was about 17, but stopped attending because the church wasn’t treating my family the way I thought Jesus would treat His brothers and sisters.

Mary Jo Adams
Reno, Nevada
Bahá'í since 2007

I was raised Catholic, and for much of my youth dreamed of becoming a nun. But eventually I found I didn’t agree with much of the doctrine and felt unmoved by the services.

Thom Thompson, author of Questions from Christians about Baha'u'llah and the Baha'i Faith, talks about his conversion from Christianity to the Baha'i Faith, and the similarities and differences between Baha'is and Christians on CBS-TV’s “Issues of Faith.”

Stephen and Megan Morris
Albuquerque
Bahá’ís since summer 2006

Having moved away from the southern Baptist church, the religion of his youth, Stephen Morris thought he was doing fine with his self-created belief system.

Ed LaBonte
Athol, Massachusetts
Baha'i since November 2007

After being an atheist my whole life, I decided, as part of a midlife crisis, that there had to be something out there that was better than nothing. Secular humanists say you have to make your own meaning, but when you’re faced with a gigantic universe that doesn’t care about you, it’s hard to do.

Greta and John Perrine
Flint, Michigan
Baha'is since 2005