I was raised Pentecostal and in my teens disagreed with a lot of the teachings. My relative are all Catholic and have strong beliefs in the church. I have in the past been Baptist and nothing more. So I don't have a lot of knowledge on religions so to speak.
I never felt fulfilled with religion so now I follow my own path. I would have to say it is more pagan than anything.
My family all thinks I am going to hell because I am not Catholic or Christian but I know or feel what I am doing is right for me so I will continue to do what I want.

Great post. I started answering this post about 5 times now but kept stopping because it was taking me too long and stuff kept coming up. Now that I have some free time finally I'm going to make another attempt. For me personally I feel that this question has been around for a long time and you can't find one correct answer for it.

On a personal level I tend to take the side of spirituality, but let me tell you a little about my self and my experiences with this very question. First you need to know a little background information, my father is an Atheist and thinks spirituality is a waste of time. He was brought up as a Protestant but religion was never ever very important in his household. My mother is an agnostic, but was raised very Catholic in her childhood but kind of stopped believing by the time she hit adulthood. So my upbringing was largely Atheistic, in fact for a large portion of my life I took my father's view that spirituality was a waste of time.

Growing up it was rather awkward when you hear of people going to church, and worshiping some sort of deity and I had little or no respect for that. In time I learned tolerance and by my early teens I really felt there was something missing in my life so I began researching spirituality. By the time I was 15 I was studying Buddhism, and Hinduism philosophy but not practicing. The philosophy alone was enough to keep my need for spirituality at bay for a long while. It was just a little before I found Darkness Embraced that I started dealing with my Pagan Matron Goddess. After researching for a few months I took an eclectic path mostly influenced by my matron goddess Pele, reconstructionalism, and the Buddhist/Hindu philosophies that began my journey.

My parents reaction to this change was very casual. My mother didn't really care at all and took little or no interest in it. My father gave me a little bit of a hard time over it with some name calling for believing in what I do, but after a while he stopped caring as well.

In my family there was no set tradition so I didn't have the heartache of turning from one practice to another. I know many others who do have to face the troublesome act of changing faith and the negative light it shines upon them. I do think that spirituality tends to win over tradition at least in recent times but it isn't for everyone. Family ties to tradition some times run so deeply into people that they will face exile if they decide to break away from the structure. The world of spirituality has a long way to go before it can slip into already set traditions without causing trouble but it looks like it is beginning to change this way. Hopefully for the better.