Growing up, I never bought what my church was selling. I’m not sure exactly why, although I have some theories. I was stunned at a comparatively young age to discover that my parents were flat-out lying to me about the existence of Santa Claus. The tooth fairy and Easter bunny and other tales parents playfully tell their children also offended me when I realized that they were deceptions. It was a small step from those experiences to an overall skepticism that what adults told me was likely to be true.
I remember a period of time, although I can’t precisely pinpoint my age, when I used to have a conversation with myself in church. I’d listen to what was being said and I’d think it was the most implausible malarkey. And then I’d look at the congregation and it appeared for all the world that they sincerely believed what they were hearing. I’d ask myself, “how can so many grown-ups be wrong about this?” For a while, this left me with an open mind. I knew that adults would lie to children, but would they actually lie to themselves? I knew the Santa Claus story wasn’t malicious. I knew that leaving a quarter under my pillow and telling me the tooth fairy left it there was supposed to be good fun. But this religious stuff wasn’t supposed to be any kind of joke. It wasn’t supposed to be fun.
What I actually had to resolve was how so many adults could agree about something and still be wrong. The outcome was probably inevitable, but I was kicked out of confirmation for expressing mocking doubt about things like Jonah and the whale. I don’t know all the details, but I know my father spent the next twenty years helping to reform the confirmation process in the church.
The thing is, now that I am much older, i’ve begun to ponder how that church molded my progressive values despite my deep skepticism and eventual hostility to their teachings. And it really comes down to one thing. I never had the slightest interest in the individual message of Christianity, which pertained to my personal relationship to God and the potential for personal salvation and everlasting life. I just wasn’t born with any fear of annihilation or much propensity for feelings of guilt. Everything I absorbed from the religion and from the story of Jesus Christ had to do with communal values and social justice. What made Jesus exceptional wasn’t that he was willing to die for my sins but that he was willing to hang out with tax assessors and prostitutes and criticize people for acting righteous when they did nothing for the needy.
In retrospect, I think a lot of it is just personality type. Left to my own devices, I never would have attended church in the first place because I really didn’t need it. But, since I was there, I focused on the stuff that spoke to me and scoffed at all the rest. The miracle stories about loaves and fishes and bringing the dead back to life left me thinking that the whole story was completely made up. But when Jesus said that you should bend the rules of the Sabbath to help people in need, that made sense.
Someone said about me recently that I was one of the few people who never had to unlearn religion because I never bought into it in the first place. I don’t really think that is true. I bought into religion. I just think religion should call you to be a good person, not call on you to worry about the fate of your soul.
Never mind all that. Turn to the first book of McGuinn:
“Jesus is just allright, oh yeah!”
well, those lyrics are highly ambiguous, no?
If we’re doing “highly ambiguous Jesus songs”, I nominate Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit In The Sky”.
McGuinn wasn’t the first to sing that. And he’s probably not even the most famous. I bet you that most people would recognize it from the Doobie Brothers, even if they weren’t able to name the band. They certainly know the Doobie’s tune more than the Byrds.
Unless you’re a big fan of the Art Reynolds Singers, then yeah, the Byrds did it first.
I never had to unlearn it because I was never compelled and never went.
My great-grandfather was a fire and brimstone Unitarian (seriously, he was very polar) minister in Akron and Cleveland, but my grandfather moved out west to escape from religion. He never made his daughters attend church and my mom turned around and didn’t make me or my siblings.
At one point after my parents’ divorce my siblings and I were under pressure to attend Christmas service with my father and his new family. I was 19 and said no. My brother, sister and I packed our stuff and drove home that night (thankfully my mom had given us the car to go in the first place).
Walking out on that was one of the two easiest decisions of my life. I actually haven’t spoken to my father in about 15 years, and I’m not sorry.
There’s more to it, but that’s not important here, except that it helped cement my extreme contempt for authoritarians. I hate petty abuses of personal power.
Hey, my mom was the music/choir director of the Akron UU church.
I wonder if they were there at the same time.
I don’t know. My great-grandfather’s name was Bill Denton. I think his son Bob still lives there in Akron.
Are you sure that’s where you got that from?
I was never brought up in the church. I can count on one hand the number of times I have ever been in a church that wasn’t for a wedding or a funeral. But I think you and I have a lot of the same values and morals.
I think those values come from the ability to empathize with other people on more than a superficial basis. When some people put themselves in someone else’s shoes they are picturing themselves wearing someone else’s shoes. When I do it, I picture myself as that person in their own shoes. It’s not a conscious thing, it’s just the way my brain works. I suspect yours is the same way. But not everyone is like that.
yeah, I’ve pondered that exact question. But I think I would be shortchanging my church if I didn’t credit them with inculcating a thirst for social justice in me. Now, Trinity Church in Princeton is the home of Elaine Pagels. It was maybe the first Episcopalian church to ordain a female deacon. It fought against Apartheid and preached against our involvement with the Contras. This is a liberal church. I absorbed a lot of that. And then, as I’ve said, I chose to focus on the communal aspects and to mock the supernatural aspects.
I think it comes from the instincts of a social animal. An alpha baboon will stop a beta from picking on a still lower baboon. I’ve seen it myself at Brookfield Zoo. Robert Ardrey tells us the story of two young male baboons that attacked and killed a leopard that was attacking the troop, although they died doing so when they could have escaped easier than most of the others. Do baboons have patriotism? Empathy? Conscious thought? Maybe. More likely it was an unconscious genetic imperative. Social animals, including humans, cannot behave with utter disregard for the group lest the group dissolve. A society gives an advantage to survival and the passing on of genes. That’s why societies exist. This is one of many places where the Republican view of economics goes wrong. Anti-social winner-take-all-the-devil-take-the-hindmost behavior doesn’t give you an industrial state. It gives you Somali pirates. And Bain Capital, same difference.
Sounds like you’ve been reading E. O. Wilson. His latest, The Social Conquest of the Earth, is a must-read.
Evolution produces a broad range of traits in any given species. These traits inclue throw-backs to earlier evolutionary stages. The selfish and individualistic behaviors exhibited by modern repugs are examples of such throw-back traits to a time before our species became eusocial — i.e. a time when it was still every man/woman for himself, and larger social units had not yet evolved. Dems who exhibit socially-conscious cooperative behaviors may simply be more evolved, in a real genetic sense.
There definitely seems to be a shortage of that ability on the right side of the aisle. It becomes abundantly apparent nearly every time I talk to one of those folks.
I agree. And the frustrating thing about it (to me anyway) is that their brains just aren’t capable of seeing things that way. There’s literally no way to convince them.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on your religious upbringing, since they are quite personal. I have had some similar thoughts myself, although I attended Catholic schools for most of my education. I would appreciate your sharing your theories on why you did not buy into church teachings, if you are so inclined. I agree that a lot of it is personality. I still think religion has a place in society, but in my opinion it has become somewhat dysfunctional. Typically, when one component of society becomes dysfunctional, the others follow suit. I think that currently our political and economic systems are somewhat dysfunctional and our educational system has been threatened for years by right-wing ideology. It too will become somewhat dysfunctional if they succeed.
I know it was only a detail, but I need to speak to the Santa issue. I have always been careful to tell my kids that Santa is the personification of generosity. As they got older, I mentioned that spirits of any kind can only act through human beings. When they realize that it was actually their parents who buy their gifts, there is no sense of betrayal. And when they turn and help others, they know that they are part of something bigger than themselves. Many people use Jesus as their personification of generosity, and that’s fine. Just be sure that your kids have something decent and kind to believe in.
Like Patti Smith, I always thought that Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine. I was grateful to her for expressing it in her art.
Nowadays I like to think of Jesus as a grown man who died because he challenged authority and probably wasn’t all that interested in being worshipped.
I got to interview Patti for my college paper 15 years ago. She was super classy and totally patient with my rookie mistakes.
My half-breed grandmother raised this bastard boy as Born Just Fine The First Time, Thank You Very Much. Never quite understood the canard about needing dog to instill moral and ethical standards, as the moral and ethical standards I subscribe to are far more stringent and indeed my fifty-seven years far less “sinful” than those of the Jew/”Christian”/Muslim/Mormon Cult of Male Domination.
Years ago an Old Boy up on The Rez was teaching me some of the old ways, said “Tommy, I got no problem with the white dog religion, just think of how many drunks and dope addicts there’d be without it.”
Seriously, you’re going to vote for a guy who believes his god lives on the planet Kolob?
I was raised in a Presbyterian background. My mother attended church, but my father did not. I hated going to church and like Booman, never bought into the whole package. As a matter of fact, even though I had to go every Sunday, I volunteered to stay with the children in the nursery.
I never became a “believer”. I went through the Catechism classes and became a member of the church, but it was just me obeying my mom. To this day I have never told her that I’m an atheist, but I’m sure she knows because I don’t attend church anymore.
One of the big talking points I hear about atheism is that if you don’t believe in God nor go to church that you are “evil”, which is a construct of the church. And you must then worship Satan if you don’t worship God. And you are lawless and without morals, too.
I find the insecurities of many Christians to be puzzling. If you choose to believe in what your religion tells you, then go right ahead. I find the practices of Mormons and some aspects of Catholicism to be very strange. But I’m a live and let live kinda gal. I only get hostile when someone tries to teach their religion in my public schools or tries to impose their beliefs on how I manage my body.
But I’m a live and let live kinda gal. I only get hostile when someone tries to teach their religion in my public schools or tries to impose their beliefs on how I manage my body.
I used to feel that way too, donnah. But impositions used to be the exception, rather than the rule. Unfortunately, it has now become an almost 24-7 thing since one of our political parties decided that “god” was strictly on their side in all matters. And anyone who is not part of their tribe is in cahoots with and serving what they view as the “master of evil”.
My conversion to atheism occurred while I was still in the single digits, and I’ve always been convinced that my role as an altar boy was instrumental in this for reasons I’ll not bore you with. Suffice it to say my “faith” suffered not from victimization from the priest, but rather from observations that vantage point offered that led me down a path not unlike the one you described.
It was also helpful if not determinative, that about the only thing on the bookshelf at home was the 1959 edition of Compton’s Encyclopedia, which provided me an early anchor in reality, and sparked the fires of curiosity that mere faith couldn’t survive. A god as described in the bible no longer made any sense, other than as “man behind the curtain” used for purposes having nothing to do with an eternal afterlife. He was just another “wizard” with a different address.
This inevitably led me to conclude that most of the major religions were really just precursors to politics, that used the threat of eternal damnation to modify behavior and exercise control over the masses and the individual, so as to establish a heirarchy that would insure social order and compliance with its dictates. It was particularly effective if you buy into the idea that like “Savoir-Faire is everywhere!”, the punisher unlike the secular cop, is gonna catch you.
What I took/derived from my experiences with and thoughts about religion — mainly xtianity — are the same as you did. Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, is no doubt the best insurance for your own personal survival, and if all collectively adhered to such, survival of the species as well. So it can achieve a very desirable goal, but not one outta reach if the foundation for it — the god behind the curtain of reality — were to be abandoned for recognition of the reality that social order and harmony are a requirement for the continuation of societies and we as a species.
After all, the reason why this “L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space[4]” is a factor in the Drake equation, is because we at least recognize from our own dismal history despite “religion” and its prominant role in it, that we remain a big threat to our collective song never being heard in time or at all, by the other occupants of this universe.
We have to survive ourselves, and as I see it, the “I’m right, you’re wrong” nature seen in the divisions between the major religions does more imperiling than insuring our collective survival, as does having the collective social order founded on the survival of unproven and unknowable individual souls, as opposed to maintaining living bodies until Father Time does his dirty work.
As an atheist, I have few disagreements with the dictates of AGAPE, but see it as something if nothing else, dictated by self-interest and instincts for self-preservation and that of the species, rather than as a ticket to an eternal life we’d never survive as ourselves, no matter how much family and friends we’d be reunited with.
Hell, let the cable go down around here for a day, and I’m bored sillier…lol
How about you?
Spiritual v. Religious ~ big difference, IMHO.
“Spirituality” is such an amorphous word that I’m not sure it has any real meaning, does it? It really can anything to anyone. Or is that the thought you are trying to convey?
I am a geezer, and I grew up in South Carolina within field trip distance of Bob Jones University. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Christianity and community were so intertwined that one was always hearing religious references. That said, 1950s preaching in the churches I went to was b-o-r-i-n-g and likely not the best theologically either (that is, it was confusing). Obligation to my parents and the fact that most of my friends also went to this church meant that I made an honest attempt to figure out why this was considered so important.
I can see now the events that cracked that seamless universe. A visit to a friend’s Baptist Church “Sunbeams” children’s program at which the topic seemed to be “Catholics are bad people because they won’t allow Baptists to proselytize in Mexico.” The total disconnection of Sunday morning from the life that we were living. Getting “churched” by a friend for going to see a movie on Sunday; the movie was “Martin Luther”. The constant arguments against this or that in society that was undermining the “faith” when the concern was more members and more generous offerings. Arguments over nonsensical philosophical categories like “predestination”. And the sense of outrage that a benevolent god would condemn 5/6 of the world’s population to hell.
By age 18, I gave up trying to square the circle of the conflicts between the Bibical story of creation…and the information that had been discovered through the scientific method. And my intended career path was into science. And then I read Bishop John A. T. Robinson’s Honest to God. Wow, an Anglican bishop who had serious questions and doubts! What was going on here.
Dutiful still when I went to college, I joined the Wesley Foundation and subscribed to the Methodist magazine for college students called motive. The college minister was active in the Civil Rights movement, and motive was an edgy and intellectual, not feeding answers so much as raising interesting questions. It turned out that the Wesley Foundation was the intellectual hot spot in an otherwise dreary football-crazy university. I was introduced to classic cinema through their film series, to twentieth century neo-orthodox theology and existentialist philosophy through their study group, and to the civil rights movement through weekend projects and a tutoring program. It was as a result of this participation that I saw Rev. Martin Luther King speak at the Methodist Student Movement conference in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1964.
Two intellectual moments in that period. I read on my own Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Paper from Prison and was struck by his letter in which he ponders a “world come of age” and what a “religionless Christianity” might look like. To understand where that seemingly absurd question comes from, it is in the context of discussions with his colleague outside prison, Eberhard Bethge. And the fact that Bonhoeffer, author of a treatise on ethics, was in prison for:
The second intellectual event was weekend seminar at the first desegregated conference of the Methodist Student Movement of the United Methodist Church, South Carolina Area. A speaker in a lecture about the purpose of the church expressed that the church is that invisible college in history that acts as a social pioneer. And when it appears in one of those many “cigar boxes with steeples on the top” as it did in the black Baptist churches of the Civil Rights movement, it bears witness to the fundamental love that is and acts to establish universal justice. That’s its purpose. Reconciliation. And then he described the sickness in those “cigar boxes” that we all encounter as not coming to terms with the fact that surely by 1915 the common-sense two-story universe collapsed. That human beings in the West no longer actually operated with a literal view of the two-story universe that was the frame of Biblical religion. That literal view became a cartoon relic of God on a cloud. But the “cigar boxes” still tried to operate is if that common sense of the universe still existed and tried to force people back into that relic as a precondition for understanding what the church uses shorthand to call “the gospel”. Which led to a discourse on “the religious at the bottom of the secular”, what folks are struggling to talk about with the shorthand “spirituality”.
My view now is that those “cigar boxes” are mostly empty of any of the church in those terms. So much so that the exceptions stand out in stark relief. But a lot of the national and judicatory organization in some denominations are quite alive, much to the anger of a lot of congregations. These are almost exclusively in the now minority “mainline denominations” that have been losing members for four decades.
My understanding of religion and spirituality after 52 years struggling within some church or another and 13 years away completely from any religious community is that it has to do with educating self-reflection about the cosmos, the world, society, other people, the self and that which is incomprehensible (don’t go equating that with anything else – it is not a euphemism; I precisely mean “incomprehensible”). And self-reflection on the action one takes in the world from some tension between values, desires, and realities. And demonstration of human community and reconciliation.
The technology (if you want to call it that) by which traditions conducted this education in self-reflection were story, liturgy (including drama, music, and dance), and visual and literary symbols. These became problematic in almost every religion because of the ability to mistake the symbol for the reality. Mistake the story for history or science. Turn the drama into a theater of cruelty. Or appropriate the stories, liturgies, and symbols for something other than a journey of self-reflection and reconciliation. The Western term for this mistake is “idolatry”. What we see going on in religion that fuels the right is the idolatry of the Bible, the idolatry of the image of Jesus, the idolatry of the intellectual concept of “God” and all the euphemisms for the concept, and the idolatry of money.
It’s sad to see so much reflexive dismissal of Christian writers, present and past. There are some who have really good insights into the practice of self-reflection and reconciliation. But you have to struggle with the way they express what they are trying to say and read deep between the lines. And not get hung up on the metaphors themselves. And there are key works that help explain how our culture came to be what it is today, a history of ideas perspective from the original texts.
I’m not asking for agreement on any of this. This is just some thoughts on my religious upbringing. And the journey is far from over.