When Facebook first offered the ability to choose a religious affiliation, I faced a bit of a conundrum. I don't formally belong to a Christian denomination or identify with evangelical "non-denominationism." Terms like "Red Letter Christian" seemed condescending, as if other people skipped over Jesus's words in the Gospels. I finally settled on plain-old Christian - simple, succinct, and true. But like any label, that word fails to summarize my journey to embrace multiple theological languages that tell the story of God in different, beautiful ways.
Bizarrely, my walk began in junior high via a fundamentalist church that I never attended, although my best friend did. Through it, she heard about a weekly teen "coffeehouse" sponsored by the local Youth for Christ chapter As I didn't have a bustling social schedule, I went with her. Unlike other church-sponsored events with cliquey kids, the group in this place was welcoming, even to a nerd like myself. There were 10-minute mini-sermons, but their preachiness was tempered by three hours of socializing with people who thought being weird was cool. In this way, my first faith community included a number of atheists and agnostics, including one I dated for six months. Out of this mix, my faith grew slowly, rooting itself in a foundation of diverse viewpoints.
Being thrilled to find acceptance, I began attending the youth group led by the coffeehouse's organizer. He was always open and honest with us, alluding to his own spiritual struggles without going into gory details. He acknowledged how easy it was to become distracted and how difficult following Christianity could be. Perhaps most importantly, he encouraged us to open up to each other. As other kids at school had been mocked me for my lack of artifice in the past, it was refreshing to have my honesty accepted. Openly sharing our own voices, we saw how we could fit into God's story.
In college, I found myself challenged to think beyond the evangelical box. I joined a church that embraced charismatic movement as well, which has joyful and loud services. The first time I attended a charismatic service, there were people dancing in the aisles with flags, random "Amens" during the sermon, and jams that challenged those at a Phish concert. The overly-emotional singing and requisite hand-raising was familiar to me from my high school evangelical church, but this was uncontrolled! But over time, I came to appreciate this abandon, even though I never did pick up a flag. Not allowing anything to get in the way of expressing your love for God - even societal norms - was freeing. At that point, words weren't needed - music was the language itself.
My experience further widened during my junior year of college, when I went on a week-long service trip with my friend's mainline Protestant church. Although I knew almost nothing about the community we were volunteering with until we reached it, I quickly fell in love. Known as H.O.M.E., the community arose from a crafters' co-operative founded by two Catholic nuns as part of the Emmaus movement. Based on the philosophy of "Serve first those who suffer most," they've been serving low-income people in rural Maine for the last 20 years. As they discovered new needs, they found new ways to meet them, including establishing a food pantry, an alternative high school, a day care, and a land trust. With a minimum of resources, they've built a community where all are welcome and everyone has a purpose, no matter what your beliefs, background, past addictions, income, gender, and (pleasantly surprising for the Catholic church), sexual orientation. Although most of the people who participated in H.O.M.E.'s activities lived elsewhere, Sisters Lucy and Marie and few other members lived together on a farm, taking seriously Jesus's commandments to share everything they had. I found myself inherently comfortable in this place, despite the physical awkwardness of sleeping on the floor of their chapel. As I slept under a statue of St. Francis, their work made his philosophy real for me, their love expressing itself in action.
My understanding of Catholicism shifted further as Chris, my then-boyfriend, began to explore his faith. He grew up in a Catholic church, but for him, it was just a place you went on Sunday. However, with Pope John Paul II's death, he started thinking more about his role in the global Catholic community. Being that I still saw H.O.M.E. as the exception to the rule, I found this shift discomfiting. That attitude caught up with me on another service trip. As the leaders shared sobering statistics about urban poverty, I smiled to myself, knowing that I wasn't learning anything new. But my smugness high didn't last. During a session where the leaders challenged us to consider what people we weren't "allowing" to be Christian, the answer smacked me in the face. "I haven't been considering Chris Christian; I've been judging his faith as Not Good Enough." Tears streamed down my face and my breath came in gulps. I ran up to the roof of the building, knelt on the asphalt, and begged for forgiveness. After all, this was the man I loved; what kind of person was I that I couldn't trust him to choose his own faith? Staring into the night sky, I related the vastness of space to the diversity in the church. Before, I had heard different accents recounting the same words; now I heard the multi-layered tongues of the apostles at Pentecost.
An incident the following fall cemented my rejection of Protestantism being the end-all of Christianity. Chris and I were engaged and we were trying to decide between being married in a Catholic church or the evangelical church I attended in high school. In our pre-marriage interview, my high school pastor looked hard at Chris, knowing his Catholicism, and said, "You do know that marriage is a holy act?" Too shocked by his total disrespect to say much at the time, Chris later commented, "Yes, that's why Catholics consider it a sacrament." After that meeting, I walked away from that church and its narrow-minded perspective once and for all.
Later that year, I read A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren's attempt to reconcile and draw from a variety of Christian traditions and belief systems. I loved it - it expressed everything I had been thinking. As we were attending a Catholic church at that point, I told our priest that I was looking for a church where community and diversity met. I wanted a church where everyone said hello to each other during the passing of the peace, where the members shared meals together, that drew from historical and modern Christianity, and that fostered relationships among people with diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. Frowning slightly, he informed me that no such church existed. I wanted to physically hear the many voices in harmony, but would have to wait.
When we moved to the U.K. for a year, we needed to find a new church again. Instead of the large Anglican evangelical church in town, I was drawn to a Catholic study group led by a few young men studying to be monks. Unlike small group leaders that orchestrated fill-in-the-blank "discussions" (sometimes literally), their knowledge and in-depth study encouraged engagement with the text. They wanted the group to wrestle with theological ideas, just as scholars throughout history had. While the story of faith could have ended up tangled in obscure philosophical points, the words only became more impressive the closer we looked at them.
In addition to the small group, we also began attending the monks' Sunday-afternoon services, full of ritual and chants. I had never been a fan of "smells and bells," but the services' formality invited me in rather than pushing me away. This wasn't going through the motions like I had viewed it previously - it was engaging with history, drawing us into long practiced traditions and ways of moving. The silences and solemn music spoke of quiet grace.
After a period of personal and geographic transition, we finally found the faith home I had longed for. Chris and I now attend a multi-denominational emergent church that embraces traditions and beliefs of many branches of Christianity. We have Catholics, mainline Protestants, and evangelicals from a variety of countries and cultural backgrounds. A recent sermon series covered the uses of the cross through history, including the Greek cross, St. Francis's Tau cross, and the crucifix. We aren't specifically tied to the liturgical calendar, but let it guide us gently, embracing celebrations of Advent and Lent. Perhaps most importantly, we are a community. We break bread together, both with our weekly celebration of Communion and the after-service spread. We share our joys and concerns every service and try to say hello to every person during the passing of the peace.
This spring, my pastor referred to the Easter narrative as "our story as Christians." This is my story and the story of those faithful people that helped guide me to where I am now. I hope it resonates in every action I take, every note I sing, every word I speak even when I am not speaking of God. To misquote St. Francis (the origin of the quote is unknown), I hope that my life reflects the idea to "preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words."
--storiteller
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Fascinating journey. The obvious question, for me at least--and please read this as curious, not accusatory, and feel absolutely free to not answer--is why you chose to explore Christian options and atheism but no religions outside Christianity.
My own suspicious is that people start out, regardless of what they believe, with a notion of which religions are potentially acceptable for them, and they either believe one of those or they become agnostics or atheists. For myself, for example, very Reconstructionist Judaism and inventing my own religion* are the only options outside of atheism even remotely considerable. It's not that I don't recognize other religions as legitimate choices for other people, it's just that they're for *other people.* It's inconceivable *I* could be, (for example) Christian, Buddhist, or Wiccan.
*Which would necessarily be convoluted, obtuse, heavily metaphorical, full of weird numerological games, and pantheistic.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 08, 2012 at 08:24 PM
I dunno, Froborr.
I wasn't particular sure about Christianity, and seriously explored both Islam and a Goddess-centric paganism before being completely bowled over by Neo-Platonic Christianity in college.
(Yes. I am the only person in the modern world who finds Augustine's sermons on the Letters of John to be impossibly sexy).
And I have heard several theists -- mostly pagans, but some converts to Judaism and Buddhism as well -- who were absolutely gobsmacked by the religions they found resonant.
Even now, Literata's posts keep tugging at something in me...
Posted by: hapax | Jun 08, 2012 at 11:25 PM
This is a story that I wish were more prevalent among the people who are the religious leaders that get television time and who often say such hurtful things about members of their own communities. It seems like if we had more people whose experience were grounded in, well, experience, we'd have more people acting in accordance with the words they profess as a faith.
Posted by: Silver Adept | Jun 09, 2012 at 02:08 AM
How much of our spiritual expression is tied to what we've experienced? I mean, before I took English classes from Seymour Mayne, I don't think I'd ever considered Judaism beyond the Christian Old Testament. But, having read Dr. Mayne's poetry, and the poetry of A.M. Klein, and a number of other things over several semesters, there are several aspects of Judaism that I quite like and, were I crafting my own personal religion, I might incorporate. Likewise, after spending almost a decade in UU churches, there are elements of various pagan traditions that I quite like, but would never have considered before.
Of course, I'm not particularly seek-y. Those of you who are seekers, how widely do/did you seek?
Posted by: Mike Timonin | Jun 09, 2012 at 09:02 AM
Fascinating journey. The obvious question, for me at least--and please read this as curious, not accusatory, and feel absolutely free to not answer--is why you chose to explore Christian options and atheism but no religions outside Christianity.
Although it's condensed in the essay, it took me about six months between when I first thought I might be Christian vs. when I would actually say I was Christian to someone. Bizarrely, this was also the same time I was dating the atheist guy mentioned above, so there was some active challenging while I was working through it. During that period, I did (and continue to) consider a number of different options. I had a lot of difficulty picking and choosing what to put in this essay.
I gave some serious thought about Buddhism, but 1) although reincarnation has an appeal to me, it never connected spiritually and 2) the fundamental personal aspect of Christianity did strongly connect with me. Even though the "personal relationship with Jesus" part of evangelicalism is cliched (especially considering the huge emphasis on the cross rather than his life), that's what connected with me. Although I didn't talk about it in my essay because I haven't read about it enough, the emphasis on incarnation in Orthodox Christianity is really appealing to me. Similarly, my emphasis on the creative aspect of God and beauty of nature overlaps with some parts of paganism, but the idea of multiple gods or no personal gods don't really "make sense" spiritually to me either. Like hapax, Literata's essays do resonate with me, even if the forms of worship are very different.
Posted by: storiteller | Jun 09, 2012 at 10:49 AM
I think, a lot of time, when we experience or seek the sacred/mystical/numinous/spiritual/wondrous/etc. that feeling of connection is very similar across faiths, even though it can be crucial to individuals and communities to practice and believe in certain specific ways.
A friend of mine was comparing spirituality and/or religious practice to the feather Dumbo uses to fly; the form or even the existence of the magical or supernatural isn't particularly important, but feeling the connection and practicing the ritual is important, to her. And she was coming around to saying "I believe in God," because she does, even though she doesn't mean what many other people do when they say that...
Posted by: lonespark | Jun 09, 2012 at 11:30 AM
Let's see.
I was raised nominally Christian, went to Sunday School occasionally, etc. Decided in early adolescence that it didn't work very well with my take on magic etc, as I really liked D&D and Tarot and so forth and the local churches did not approve; decided in mid-adolescence that it didn't work at all, really, with my take on sexuality.
I was exposed to paganism fairly early on, mostly in the form of Scott Cunningham's books, and found it appealing, went through the Teen Wiccan stage when thank God there was nobody else around. Took a comparative religion class in high school and found Buddhism interesting, but like the world and desire too much to really get into that. Read a bunch of Starhawk, found that it resonated, but didn't get serious about stuff until after I had some kind of post-high-school weirdo mortality-related nervous breakdown.
In college, I did a lot of "reconciling religion and science" reading at first, got somewhat derailed by new friends and boy drama and the occasional class, and also took some classes on magic in history. After a couple post-college nervous breakdowns, because I learn slowly, I started doing more of said reading, and, with a small group of friends, started meeting with the professor who taught magic classes to learn more meditation/theory/magic/occult stuff. I found Hinduism and Taoism appealing, but never quite did anything about that other than reading a few books. Also went to a few pagan rituals with a friend of mine, and liked them, but never really made time for them on my own. (I'm also an introvert, and reluctant to meet new people, which does not help.)
Of late, things have been...resolving more, in a way I'm reluctant to talk about just at the moment, but it's basically good. I call myself some kind of pagan these days, with a dose of pantheism somewhere in there; not sure what I'll call myself in ten years.
Posted by: Izzy | Jun 09, 2012 at 12:16 PM
Thanks, storiteller and hapax; I think "spiritual resonance" is a better way of what I was trying to express.
For me, the problem is that most religions require an ability to resonate spiritually; you have to have *some* sense of the spiritual or notion of the numinous or capacity to experience whatever-it-is. Whereas Judaism has room for religion as a purely intellectual exercise--it is not the only way to be Jewish, but it is a way to be Jewish in a way (AFIAK) that is not really an option in most faiths, where some experiential element is expected--and of course anything I invented myself would be a purely intellectual enterprise. So those (and atheism) are the only options workable for me. Were I to be Buddhist or Christian or Muslim or Wiccan or any of the others I've looked at, I'd be missing half the religion.
On the other hand, I don't think I can really call myself a seeker. My interest in religions has always been a matter of intellectual curiosity, not a quest for enlightenment or identity or belonging or anything like that.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 09, 2012 at 04:36 PM
...huh. Maybe it's just because I hang out around UUs and people who get along with them, but I know lots of people who do religion as an intellectual, ethical, social or cultural exercise. I have met people who identify as Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan, Heathen, UU, Christian, as and Native American traditional practitioners who have said they don't experience and don't care about the anything numinous or mystical. Christians especially, where they just think something along the lines of "That longhaired radical socialist Jew offered something to live up to..." Well, and Quakers. Maybe moreso them than Christians, in my experience. But anyway there's really a broad range. That isn't to say those folks are always going to feel welcome in religious communities or feel it's important to be part of them. And yet so much of religion is cultural, and so much of culture is a deep and meaningful component of identity...
Posted by: lonespark | Jun 09, 2012 at 06:57 PM
Ah, the post-high-school weirdo mortality-related nervous breakdown. I've been there (although in my case it started in high school)... heck, I'm still there.
Posted by: Base Delta Zero | Jun 14, 2012 at 11:29 AM
Huh. Yeah, that's... almost completely opposite my experience, which has generally been that (with the exception of cultural Jews like my family) atheists don't care about the numinous/mystical, religious people do.
Again, huh. I... would have said "Christians especially" about my experience, too.
Of course, now I'm confused, because this plays merry hell with my ideas of what religion is and why people do it...
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 14, 2012 at 11:45 AM
@BDZ: It's a tough one.
I'm tempted to blame Springsteen, but also the "high school was the best years of your life" culture does not help, in general.
...meanwhile, for the most part, I wouldn't be seventeen again if you paid me. Twenty-one, maybe, but even there I'm not sure I'd want the drama. Though I'd like to sleep until noon. ;)
Posted by: Izzy | Jun 14, 2012 at 11:57 AM