Van Morrison was a Scientologist, but he later distanced himself from that denomination.
Davis: There's a lot of the gospel sound in your music. Is it true your family were Jehovah's Witnesses?Source: Interview with Van Morrison, conducted by Edna Gundersen, for Music Central online, sometime in 1997Van Morrison: No no no no, not really. My mother was in it for a while, a brief encounter, that was all.
Davis:: Were you taken door-to-door as a child with the Witnesses?
Van Morrison: No, but I was taken to a couple of meetings. I found them quite pleasant, but that was all.
Question: Several references say you were raised a Jehovah's Witness. Is that true?
Answer: No, no, no. I wasn't raised anything. My mother went to some meetings at some point. She took me to some meetings. She didn't call herself that. It was only for a couple years' period. My father was an atheist. My mother was what you would describe as a freethinker. She would check things out and read about things, but she never joined anything.
Question: Did your mother influence your religious curiosity?
Answer: I got interested in studying the religious thing because it was never shoved down my throat, whereas most of the people I grew up with or went to school with, it was really imposed on them. They didn't have any free will. It was never like that with me. So I just studied religion on my own.