The Slacktiverse

Telling Stories of Faith

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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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Two Sides to Every Story and Twelve Versions of Every Song

I've always wanted to Make a Difference. While other children were selling lemonade for petty cash, I was selling hot-glued pom-pom critters to benefit environmental charities. This passion continued into my adulthood, influencing my higher education. With my graduate school essay detailing the inspiration of Sister Dorothy Stang, who fought for indigenous rights in the Amazon, I would clearly never allow my masters thesis to sit in a dusty library for all eternity. It was just a matter of figuring out who to focus on and how I could help them. However, contrary to my own vision and the purpose of my program, I ended up with far more of a social education in how not to do activism than an academic one.

The subject for my thesis came to me almost unbidden. Shortly after some quick Googling on “environmental justice,” I found out about the community of Erris, Ireland. The community appeared to be fighting the good fight against Shell, who wanted to build a natural gas purification facility despite local environmental and health concerns. Coincidentally, my college showed a film about Erris only a few days later.

By the end of the film, I was completely in love with the place and community. Ireland was so beautiful! How could Shell wreck this? The community members were so brave, going up against such a powerful corporation. The cause was so righteous! The farmers were defending land that had been passed down from their ancestors. It was an activists' fantasy; but as with any real-life fantasy, I should have known better than to take it at face value.

At first, I wanted to help the community members defeat Shell. But as I learned more about the situation, I realized that my own skills were hopelessly unqualified. The community had been fighting Shell for nearly a decade. The project had gone through countless community meetings, local newspaper commentaries, and even books written about it. Four of the protestors had been put in jail by their own government for not allowing Shell on their land. If they couldn't solve this problem, who was I to think I could rescue them?

A bit stuck, I hoped that my first trip to Ireland would help me understand what was happening on the ground. Initially, it seemed to be everything I had expected. The rural countryside was the essence of sublime, making me both stare in awe at the cliffs and shiver in an unending chill. The people I interviewed were even more accommodating than I imagined. The hostel owner where I was staying was one of the main activists and she allowed me to mooch a ride to their protest site. On one side of the road stood a dozen protestors, wrapped in wool scarves and drinking steaming tea. They huddled together in the space between the shoulder's white line and the ditch created by the eroding peatland. Brandishing signs reading “Shell to Hell!” they'd yell at the smoky trucks passing through the construction site gates. Behind them stood eight white crosses symbolizing Nigerian protestors against Shell who were executed by their government. Away from the construction site, out-of-town protestors welcomed me into their poster-bedecked camp in the sand dunes. They were all so willing to let me in, take part in their fight, chat with me like I was one of them. Admiring their commitment, I falsely felt like these were “my people.”

My second trip wasn't nearly so comfortable. I focused on interviewing people who were in favor of the refinery or had no official position. Not long into my interviews, my absurd naivete lifted as I realized how different the situation was from the film's and other media's shockingly oversimplified coverage. Every story I had seen or read was either “heroic villagers vs. big bad corporation” or “ignorant impediments to progress vs. economic saviors,” depending on the source. Seeing the complex reality of the situation, I felt rather ashamed by how much I had bought into the black-and-white portrayal.

Needless to say, the supporters were far from hand-rubbing villains or greedy leeches. Instead, they were just as diverse as the protestors – small business owners, farmers, teachers, and politicians. One thread ran through every conversation I had – they desperately loved the area and wanted prosperity. Like the protestors, they too had watched generations of children leave the region for lack of opportunity. One man told me that he had worked at the local peat-fired power plant for nearly 50 years and retired just as it had shut down two years earlier. He had six children and wanted them to have the opportunities he did without needing to leave the area. He simply wanted them to be able to stay near home if that's what they truly desired. Others expressed pride that their area would be able to supply one thing – just one thing, the natural gas – that Dublin didn't have. Although I didn't agree with the supporters, as I found it unlikely the refinery would bring economic revitalization, I certainly sympathized with them.

At the end of the second trip, with more than 30 interviews completed, I was left with a dilemma. Taking sides was out of the question. Beyond the issue of academic objectivity, the problem was too complex, wrapped up in cultural and personal histories that I could never fully understand. But I slowly came to think that there was a good use for my outsider status. I believed I could do the one thing for community members that they could no longer do themselves – give them an opportunity to hear each other's stories. So I dutifully wrote up my paper, complete with summaries of both sides' narratives and suggestions on resolving the community's fissures. After getting positive feedback from a few people on both sides, I was pleased as punch that I had done something Good and Useful.

Or so I thought. I realize now that each side always had the ability to tell their stories, but it was up to them to decide when, where, and how to do so, not me. I recognize that much of what I saw as me “helping the community” was actually muscling in on their story. I was trying to make meaning for my own presence, justifying why my project was important.

In reality, I needed them far more than they ever needed me. I was yet another temporary resident, passing through with my own agenda. They were used to seeing people like me in Erris, and Ireland in general, cultural tourists with academic or literary ambitions. Like so many others before me, I tried to figure out what they needed on my own instead of just asking. My confidence buoyed by my many hours of library research and academic credentials, I brashly assumed I knew what was good for them. Although not much negative impact came from this particular situation, in part because I did listen to an extent, similar “good intentions” have paved the road to hell for the “subjects” of other research projects.

But some good did come of my thesis, even if it wasn't anything like what I anticipated. I see now that the community members are the ultimate authors of their relationships and community's future. By letting go of my role as “world-saver,” I realize that fundamentally, people must tell their own stories – not just in Erris, but everywhere.

Even though what I was doing was ostensibly academic research, what I've actually applied this lesson more than anything else to activism. Now I know that listening to the people affected by a problem must be the first step before taking any action to address that issue. Learning slowly and patiently to understand what people need is essential. Although intellectually easy to acknowledge, this principle is far more difficult to put into practice. Even if the activism addresses something that personally affects you, hearing other voices widens the picture, building a better comprehension of the issue beyond one's own perspective. (The Occupy movement and Slutwalk are learning this the hard way, with those who are being ignored suffering the most, sadly as usual.)

The fact is, everyone has a story to tell. Most people want to tell it, especially to a truly engaged, respectful listener. In some circumstances, there may be a place for you to help; in others, there may not. But the act of listening itself, or just offering to listen, is empowering to both sides in a way that has worth independent of any other action. Needless to say, for all of the notes I took, I wish I had listened even more before writing – or even starting – my thesis.

So thank you to the people of Erris. Thank you for welcoming me into your community, for being patient with me in my naivety. Thank you for telling me your stories, for letting me into your lives for just a short period of time. Thank you for allowing me just to listen.

--Storiteller

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Climate change and Christianity

The polarizing nature of climate change still occasionally surprises me. It really shouldn't - I've seen how solutions have the potential to upend social hierarchies and taken-for-granted ways of life. I've been called a liar (not to my face, thankfully) and told that the science is merely "what I believe." But the research is so solid, the risk so high, that the thought of people violently denying the concept is dispiriting. This rejection personally affects me because I've devoted much of my adult life to creating climate solutions. In fact, I just completed a 300 mile bicycle ride from New York to D.C. to support several climate change and bicycling organizations.

Seeing this denial in evangelical Christians is particularly frustrating because I am a Christian who started out in an evangelical church. I know these people, love these people, and am actually related to some of them. So for them to not only disagree with me, but completely dismiss my life's work, is deeply discouraging.

From a pragmatic point of view, I believe it's important to engage American evangelicals on climate change. Not only can they be a significant political bloc, but they are often very influential in their communities. Church members regularly participate in other local groups, like PTAs and City Councils. As federal activities frequently follow local ones, mobilizing a community's leaders is essential. Building these alliances could be the key to moving many cities, and eventually the U.S., towards action.

Lastly, I see this rejection as conflicting with our shared faith. In fact, my belief in loving my neighbors drives my passion on the subject. Climate change is the epitome of environmental injustice - the most vulnerable are suffering because of actions by those more privileged. Living in a way that ignores climate change's impacts is not only ignoring those who need food, drink, or clothing, but in some cases, taking it right out of their hands. Not to mention climate change's devastating effects on the ecology of the world that Christians believe God created. Many other Christian organizations agree with my perspective, including the U.K.'s Christian Aid and Operation Noah. Even the Catholic Church, for all of its failings, has taken a stand on the subject. But when Richard Cizik, the National Association of Evangelicals' vice president for governmental affairs, spoke up about climate change, he was pressured to resign. Why can't most American evangelicals acknowledge this as an issue?

The first reason evangelicals have ignored climate change overlaps with a major reason non-evangelicals have as well - climate change is hard to see and appears to only affect distant people. This issue can be approached from two angles: by directly helping local victims and/or raising awareness of those abroad.

On the local level, one of the best ways to interact with people affected by climate change is by getting involved in adaptation activities. Based on recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences and the US Global Change Research Program, many cities are forming plans and services to help those who are or may be affected by climate change. Fortunately, helping the victims has the side benefit of raising volunteers' awareness. Being part of a team reaching out to elderly people to ensure they avoid heatstroke or assisting families without electricity because of a recent hurricane puts a local, human face on the impacts.

Listening to the stories of international victims may be another effective method to prompt action. Many evangelicals already care about similar issues abroad, like malnutrition and lack of fresh water. They give money to Heifer International or "adopt" a child participating in a missions project. Yet they have no idea that climate change could set development efforts back by decades (according to Oxfam). By taking groups in developing countries that churchgoers already care about and illustrating how climate change will negate efforts to help them, the impacts are made real. The most empowering and effective way to do this seems to be helping people hear the victims' stories in their own voices. Climate Central, Oxfam, Christian Aid, and many other organizations have started to do this work, but bringing these stories to American churches could really move the needle.

The second major reason both evangelicals and non-evangelicals don't get involved is that climate change is something we all contribute to, even if it's inadvertently. As with sexism and racism, people find it very difficult to admit they are part of the problem. In my experience, the best way to tackle this is to communicate that we're all in this together. When we approach climate change as a community, it takes the pressure off of each individual to be perfect. Luckily, churches, with their built in social networks, already have a great set-up. Starting at the individual church and then building it to a larger grassroots action can be extremely powerful.

The third major reason some evangelicals have rejected climate change is very different from the other two - their vast cynicism about and misunderstanding of science. Even the most heart-felt testimonies will not sway those who think the very cause is made up. Unfortunately, I think climate change is too politically fraught to solve this problem. For this group, the most effective approach may be showing how the solutions to climate change can improve their communities and lives. This was actually the main approach I used when I recently lobbied Congress, another place where science is not very popular. People don't want to pay $100 to fill up their gas tanks and then sit an hour and a half in traffic. Instead, they want to walk and bike to the corner store; many even remember doing so fondly from their childhood. People want clean alternatives to the coal-fired plants that contribute to childhood asthma. People want clean, healthy food that supports the local economy instead of that which poisons the land and the workers that pick it. And so on and so on. The beauty of this approach is that I know it actually works. I received a very generous Climate Ride donation from my conservative aunt for this reason. In addition to her fondness for me, she supported me because she frequently uses a Rails-to-Trails walking/biking path, one of the Climate Ride beneficiaries. Changing the conversation from problems to solutions helps people see that they have a place in this new society, removing much of the fear. Ideally, it also helps them see the larger context, that everyone benefits from a more environmentally and socially sustainable economy. Although it fails to challenge their privilege, a baby step may be all we can ask from this group right now.

With climate change, we have to acknowledge we are the simultaneous cause and solution. As a result, we all have to band together to make a difference. Bracken Hendricks, one of the founders of the green jobs movement, spoke to us the final night before we rode to Capital Hill. He said that to solve the very real injustices of climate change, we have to build a movement like that for civil rights. We have to approach it from every angle - legal action, mass media coverage, community responses, and face-to-face conversations. I believe evangelical churches could be a true ally in this movement. But first, we have to break the political and mental barriers restricting churches and individuals from taking action. Finding the right language and stories to tell is just the first step to helping them become part of the solution.


-- Storiteller
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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

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