My wife Clancy and I had pretty similar upbringings. We were both raised in somewhat conservative families, both taught that school was a priority and that we’d be going to college one day, both were raised with a hot-tempered and an even-tempered parent, and were expected to attend church weekly when we were young. But in that last similarity is a pretty significant difference.

Clancy was raised in Bavariana, the eastern portion of our home state of Delosa. Bavariana has a notable and distinct German Catholic population. It’s one of the most Catholic-friendly regions in the south. When you cross the county line from Rockford to Mueller, suddenly all of the town names are German and all the churches are Catholic. She was raised Catholic and was surrounded by people raised Catholic.

I was raised Episcopalian in the protest remainder of Delosa. Central and western Delosa have a hundred thousand denominations and while there is a strong thread of evangelical protestantism, it’s presence in the upper middle class community where I grew up, with families that moved there from all across the country, it wasn’t all that strong.

One of the earliest disagreements Clancy and I had involved the nature of organized religion. My view is on the whole pretty positive, hers not so much. I view them as a building block upon which society is formed. I see religion, even when I disagree with them, as an ultimate positive for society. Clancy sees them with considerably more suspicion.

It’s no accident that she was raised Catholic and I was raised Episcopalian. We were raised in churches that are very similar in form but quite different in function. The way we see church is inherently influenced by our experiences in the ones we belonged to. I don’t see organized religion as inherently restrictive because I attend one of the least restrictive denominations. She sees them as more authoritarian because she belonged to a church that was more authoritarian

I’ve noticed a pattern with my friends. Those raised in more devout families or in more demanding denominations or religions are the most and the least religious people that I know. Meanwhile, those that were raised where the household religion was non-existent, less prevalent, one more of ceremony and social brotherhood rather than gospel and doctrine are more likely to be non-practicing (or sporadically practicing) believers or quiet, respectful disbelievers.

The most angry anti-religionists I can name off the top of my head are those in Deseret. They either felt the pain of leaving the LDS church or of being surrounded by the influence of a church that they don’t belong to. Deseret was also home to some of the most devout believers I’ve ever met. Outside of Deseret, I think of Catholic Clancy and my friend Kyle who was raised in the Church of Christ.

Inversely I think of most of my friends from my high school and college years. My friend Dave was not raised to be religious (as far as I know) and he’s not a very religious person. At the same time, he demonstrates a degree of respect for religious as it pertains to moral and spiritual guidance, provided that it stays out of the way of science. A lot of people I know that grew up in ostensibly non-religious (to be differentiated from “anti-religious”) house have that kind of attitude.

An example closer to me is Clint. Clint was raised a staid Presbyterian and was, as long as I’d known him, something of a believer but not in the energetic sense. He displayed no particularly animus towards organized religion… until he went off to Southern Cross University in Gilead for college. Cross was a very religious institution and by the time he got out he was almost an atheist. The further he got from Gilead, the less scary religion became to him and he’s actually started about going to church again.

For those of us raised in more accepting environments, church just takes on a new meaning. Church was once and I’m sure will be a place for me to find spiritual solace. Whereas Clancy’s experiences with organized religion involve a lot of it telling its perishoners what to do and how to believe, my mental associations don’t involve that at all. Less a pronouncement and more an exploration. It’s a place that welcomes me even if I don’t quite believe everything that they tell me.

I’m not going to say that my church’s way of approaching faith is right and others are wrong, though of course I see it that way if you can get enough scotch in me to get me to admit as much. But rather the way that I see church, the role I believe it provides as a social institution and facilitator of spiritual reflection rather than an institution meant to control, is very much rooted in the experiences I’ve had with it. The good news is that it is amenable to people like me that would have a devil of a time trying to acclamate ourselves with a more rigid theology. The bad news is that it makes it so much easier to stray from the flock. It makes the transition out that it’s become difficult for the Episcopal Church to hold on to its adherents.

On the flipside, other churches make it much more difficult to leave. I’ve had conversations with disgruntled Catholics and have praised the virtues of the Episcopal Church and I hit a wall. There’s a certain “It’s Catholic or it’s nothing” vibe. Sure, some liberal Catholics do become Episcopalians and some conservatives become Orthodox, but almost all of the disgruntled Catholics are I know are, by definition, Catholic, and almost all of the former Catholics I know stopped attending church altogether. While the Episcopal Church may fit the definition of what they say they want (a more theologically flexible Catholic Church) it simply doesn’t fit their idea of what a church is supposed to do.

They see the church’s function as being what the Catholic Church was to them, similar to how I see the church’s function as being what the Episcopal Church was to me.

I believe that the Battle Hymn of the Republic is one of the greatest song ever written.

—-

I don’t like people that say that they are spiritual but not religious. To me, that comes across as every bit as arrogant as those that say “My church is more correct than your church”. Maybe even more arrogant because at least the churchgoer isn’t saying that they’ve found the answers on their own without help, which is the implication of those that say that they have a handle on spirituality without help. At the same time, I find the notion that any particular church has it exactly right to be… unlikely.

I was baptized and raised in the Episcopal Church (USA), which was a (forgive the pun) godsend for me. I would not have done nearly as well in the Catholic Church or Mormon Church because of the rigidity of their beliefs. The funny thing is, though, that I often wish I was the kind of person that could put faith in a church’s tenets. I wish that there was a church that I agreed with all the time. I wish that I could completely buy in to what they’re selling. Really smart people believe this stuff, so why can’t I?

I wish that I could believe, with a degree of certainty, that God Himself picked a group of people to act as the final word and arbiter of His wishes. I wish I could believe, with a degree of certainty, that there was this guy named Jesus that took the bullet for all of our sins and by virtue of his having done so cleansed us. I wish I could believe that if I read and lived by this book, it would have all of the answers.

In a similar way, I wish that I could believe that all of our problems could be solved by having the government take care of us. Or that everything would work out okay if we just let the free market do its magic. Or that the Republicans were right about everything or that the Democrats were.

I would love to be a partisan warrior, a religious crusader, and a harbinger of all that is right. I am attracted to the imagery of that in the strongest way. I’m a comic book reader. I like right and wrong, black and white, good and evil. I get immensely frustrated by the constant equivocations that people make to excuse that which is wrong and diminish that which is right. And the most frustrating thing is that they make sense to me.

This all makes me sound like a wishy-washy person, which I don’t believe myself to be. Some people around me will describe me as being a moderate guy, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone describe me as wishy-washy. But I make decisions because decisions have to be made and not because an overwhelming since of what is right tells me to. Whenever I am told anything, there is a voice in the back of my head that says “maybe this is not so”.

The spoils go to those who fight for them. Religions that stick to their doctrine and demand adherence succeed while those that foster independence fall apart at the core. Our wars are not fought by those that spend their time questioning why, they’re fought by soldiers that have it within them to just do what they are told. The leaders are not those that question their motivations but rather motivate others to come around to their own righteousness.

People like me watch and say, “Hmmm.”

On Half Sigma, David Alexander made the following observation:

It seems ironic that the people who should be thanking god for their high IQ are the same people who don’t believe in IQ while those who were “cheated” by by God are the most religious.

It is indeed ironic that those that have the most to thank a god for are the least religious while those upon whom God has bestowed less intellectual and material grace tend to be more religious. There are a couple of explanations for that. Some atheists believe that God is merely a stopgap for things that people don’t understand and less intelligent people understand less than more intelligent people. Some more crudely believe that religion is just dumb so dumb people are more religious.

Religious people and those inclined towards religion may surmise that the wealthier are more likely to be spoiled and believe that they do not need God’s grace, making it mostly a matter of hubris.

It reminds me a bit of something that I noticed in Deseret: far and away most of the outwardly religious people I knew out there were female. Mostly Mormons, of course, but even those of other faiths. I noticed the same in Delosa when it came to Catholics and even at my staid Episcopal Church, the social adhesive was predominantly female. This is hardly a unique observation as most statistics have shown women to be more religious than men and one fellow even wrote a book about it, which I’ll comment on in a bit.

I find this notable because historically speaking, organized religion has been less than entirely generous to women. Both the Catholic and Mormon churches reserve their highest posts for men to this day. If religions are institutions of control, it seems to me that they spend more time trying to control women than men.

And yet women are on the whole more religious than men. They are more likely to believe in God, more likely to go to church, and more likely to want to raise their children to be religious. Murrow in the aforementioned book believes that this is because the social setting of church has become more geared towards women than men in much the same way that some believe that our public schools have become “feminized”. There may be some truth to this, though I never saw that at my church (which, might I add, is among the more hospitable to women and in the largest denomination to be lead by a woman).

I think there are more obvious culprits. For instance, women are raised to be more right and proper than men and part of that entails going to church. Either because it is demanded of them or they’re just naturally inclined to, women seem to more often be conformists in general. For better or worse they’re also more social; nearly every high school social club was dominated by women. As any woman that’s been lost with a man and in need of directions will tell you, men are also less inclined to believe that they need help.

So there are plenty of reasons why women are on the whole more religious than men, but I nonetheless find it an interesting phenomenon.

Interestingly, to me, in the Truman household the husband is the more religious of the two, attends church more often (which isn’t saying much), and is going to be the one tugging for the kids to be raised in a more religious environment.

In the comment section below I was reminded that my friend Tony’s ex-wife and fiance Lara was raised Mormon. Obviously out in Deseret I got to know a number of Mormons, but interestingly prior to moving out there a number of not-entirely-insignificant people in my life were of the faith.

Examples:

• My middle brother Mitch’s first serious girlfriend was a Mormon. She seemed to be falling out of the faith when they met, though.
• My best friend Clint’s first serious girlfriend was also a Mormon. She was a recent convert, though she didn’t entirely adhere to the moral codes of the faith and was quite torn up about that.
• The youth director at my Episcopal Church was also Mormon. She was loved by the congregation and particularly us kids, though her faith did cause some problems with some higher ups in the church and they passed a no-more-Mormons canon partly in response to her. She never pushed her faith on us, though, and I doubt she could have been too active a member of her faith.
• A girl that I almost dated while I was in college. She was the sweetest of sweethearts. Her father was Mormon and her mother converted on their marrying. The father ditched the family, but the mother stayed in the church and continued to raise her kids as Mormons.

A conversation at Half Sigma about whether men should tuck or untuck their shirts reminds me of a recent discovery.

I’ve almost always worn my shirts tucked in, whether dress shirts or golf shirts or T-shirts. Part of it is aesthetic. I believe that shirts are intrinsically meant to be tucked in just like I believe belt loops need belts. Otherwise it just looks wrong to me. My wife disagrees about both beltloops and tucked in shirts — she thinks I look better with my shirt untucked. Part of it is comfort. Because I always wear and I am not flat-stomached, I can sometimes feel the belt buckle on my tummy, particularly when I’m leaning forward.

Because I have a long torso, this is rather inconvenient. What happens is that unless a shirt I have is too big, whenever I lean over, sit down, get in my car, or do anything that requires my bending over or something rubbing along by back, the backside becomes untucked. That looks worse than a shirt that is tucked in or untucked. So I have to resort to buying shirts that are too big.

Recently, I’ve decided to start wearing undershirts under my golf shirts. So I went out and bought a bunch of V-neck undershirts. With an undershirt tucked in, I don’t have to worry about the belt-buckle on my tummy. And if Clancy thinks that I look better untucked, I figure that there may be something to it appearance-wise.

As many of you know, Mormons have a special undergarment that they wear. It’s not a V-neck, exactly, but it is low in front so it doesn’t appear in front when someone is wearing a button shirt. It does, however, appear along the side of one’s collar and you can sometimes see it through someone’s shirt, depending on what they’re wearing. So it’s not invisible. As best as I can tell, if a young man has the undergarments it means that he either went on a mission or is married (I can think of no one I knew out there that wore them that wasn’t one or the other). So I could tell by the undershirt line I could see by the collar whether or not a guy was a Mormon in good standing. I’m told that some guys at The Big Mormon University sometimes cut a regular undershirt to look like the undergarments so that it’ll look to nice young Mormon ladies like they went on their mission.

Besides the shirt’s failure to tuck in, there is an aesthetic difference that is strange. Along my collar is the white undershirt, and I swear when I see myself in the mirror one of the thoughts that flashes through my mind is that I am looking at a good Mormon soldier… until I realize within a second or so that I am looking at myself.

If I’d worn this in Deseret (particularly while my wedding ring was lost) I might have given some young Mormon lady the wrong idea. Luckily, the cigarette that was usually in my hand would have given me away.

To no great surprise, reports of a possible reunion between the Anglican/Episcopalian and Catholic Churches were premature and ultimately false:

Archbishop Bathersby, who co-chairs the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM), said in a joint statement with Anglican Bishop David Beetge that the London Times report, which carries the headline: “Churches back plan to unite under Pope”, is “unfortunate”.

Episcopalianism will always be thought of as “Catholic Light” and not without reason. They’re both lithurgical in practice, traditional in sentiment, and struggling. They’re sort of like that old divorced couple or that band that broke up and later the former participants think to themselves that maybe it was a mistake. Of course, the more time they spend around each other the more the problems become visible.

None of that is to say that there wouldn’t be benefits. It would give the Catholic Church an easier way to start allowing for married clergy. Back when the Anglican Church started ordaining women the Catholic Church made a deal with Episcopalian ministers that they could convert to Catholicism, still be married, and assume Catholic priestly duties. They remain to my knowledge the only married Catholic clergy. So liberal Catholics could see this as an opportunity to slip through an expansion and ultimately undo the prohibition that has arguably caused quite a few problems in recent years. For the Anglicans it would put butts in pews. For conservative Anglicans it would prevent the church from getting too far off track.

But ultimately there is no way around the fact that Episcopalians and Anglicans will never see the Pope as the infallible messenger of God. A significant portion of the church (including its leadership) disagree with the Catholics positions and emphesis. And to the extent that the church has an identity (at least in the west and in the United States in particular) it’s as the church that doesn’t have strict and rigid demands of its followers. It’s acts as counseller more than leader. That, obviously, isn’t true for the Catholic Church (even if it’s not as rigid as some people would like it to be).

As far as Will’s post earlier, one of the oddest and frankly frightening things that can happen to a person has recently happened to me; I’ve begun to feel truly abandoned by my own church.

This isn’t necessarily a new feeling; back in college, a similar state of distancing began occurring, beginning mostly with a falling-out with a former girlfriend who was in “vengeful bitch” mode (despite the fact that she dumped me after cheating on me) and who did her level best to use the rather small on-campus church community as a means to attack me, to get others to ostracize me, and eventually causing me to stop going to weekly services largely because I didn’t know who to trust and didn’t really feel like risking any run-ins.

However, that was a social aspect, a result of “even in the house of God, you find those who are not holy.” In the past year or so, my own church’s positions on any number of things have begun to make me question whether either I, or the church, have lost sight of the bible and of certain principles. Probably it’s somewhere in between, but a few things come to mind:

1) My church, unlike pretty much every one else, completely disallows the option for priests to marry and have families. With a recent changeover in church leadership, many people have hoped this would change, but the new church leadership quickly put the kibosh on that, meaning it’s likely at least 2 decades before another possible revisit. This is sad because the church is currently facing a relative lack of priests, some priests serving 4 or 5 churches and driving between them each week to be sure that weekly services happen, and one of the major reasons that people don’t enter the priesthood is that they don’t feel up to being celibate their entire lives.

2) A number of sex scandals involving said unmarried priests were revealed to have been repeatedly covered up. I can’t say anything but that this makes me worried; while nothing ever happened to me, and the priests I knew were all good and holy men, the worry that they might have done something to someone else and simply never been caught? Especially with organizational policy that moved priests away from their congregations every 5 years even if they were well liked and doing a wonderful job? Scary.

3) A major problem and controversy locally is illegal immigration. The church’s position is that immigration policy needs fixing, that it is too restrictive. This I cannot entirely disagree with. The church has outreach programs for the poor, which (for obvious reasons) attract illegal immigrants. These things I have no problem with. However, the church’s newspaper has recently been trumpeting, loudly, how the church is now organizing bus trips for the sole purpose of bringing illegal immigrants into the country, setting them up, and openly defying immigration law, and multiple churches have been giving “sanctuary” to people who’ve been ordered out of the country after violating multiple laws… and this portion of the stance I simply cannot agree with.

4) The church, too, has been relatively week on defending its own values and standing up for what’s right. In the urge to be seen as the “peaceful” church, concessions have been made to certain other (highly expansionist and not at all kind to women) religions that should not have been made. Incidents in which members of my church were killed by these other religions, simply for not converting to the violent one, have been glossed over in the name of “interfaith solidarity.” While yes, my church has a “turn the other cheek” doctrine, to ignore those who are deliberately trying to kill oneself on that scale is suicidal, and to not confront the violent doctrines of this other church is not (in my view) a good policy.

Now, is my particular church in danger of fracture? Highly unlikely. Most of its fracturing was done a few centuries ago, and it’s the fractured-off portions that seem to keep fracturing into branches, or synods, or whatever else they call themselves. However, the trouble for me is this: I grew up in this church. The basic tenets of the church, I still believe in. I can’t see myself attending any other churches, really, though I have done so on special occasions more for respect of other people (weddings, funerals, and the like) who attended those churches. But at the same time, the things above also signal to me that, at least for the time being, I really can’t attend my own either.

I’m a religious, or at least spiritual, person who doesn’t feel truly welcome in any church.

Compared to last time around, the Christmas Eve service at St. Jude’s Episcopal Church was relatively non-eventful. There were no drunkards that required assistence. Apparently, the week after the drunk guy’s appearance at the church, Father Shelby mentioned him in a sermon. He more or less had the same point of view that I did: if there was anyone that needed Christian acceptance, it was someone that had a reason (or lack of willpower) to get drunk on Christmas Eve. He also congratulated the congregation on dealing with him, which was primarily my father the usher and my brother, who helped him find where we were in the Hymnal or Book of Common Prayer.

Once upon a time, St. Jude’s was a really up-and-coming church in the area. In fact, when we requested to move diocese the request was denied because the troubled diocese we were in needed at least one success story. We were building a new sanctuary that could actually seat more than a hundred and allowing the congregation an escape from the heat by air conditioning the breezeway. Then, rather suddenly, Father Blythe left the church for the private sector and, upon his exit, we found ourselves millions of dollars in debt. Once the shining star of the Bay, we suddenly had difficulty finding a pastor that was willing to try to wade through the financial ruin that our new building had laid upon us.

The church is not what it once was. There used to be three Christmas Eve services that were filled to the brim, but now there are two and the pews are barely more than half full. Some of it had to do with Blythe and his somewhat unpopular successor, but a lot of it trails the fate of the Episcopal Church as a whole. I never knew whether or not I would raise any children I might have as Episcopalians, but until recently it never occured to me that there may not be an Episcopal Church to raise them in.

It all began with Gene Robinson, the famously gay Bishop appointed in New England. That brought to bear a number of conflicts that had been lying underneath the surface for some time. Since that appointment, it has been one thing after another and now many of the most successful churches are threatening to break off and voting themselves out of the Episcopal hierarchy.

The press generally portrays the conflict as Liberal vs Conservative. The Liberals want the church to embrace homosexuality and recently elected a woman, Katharine Schori as the church’s Presiding Bishop. The Conservatives refuse to ordinate women, reject homosexuality, and apparently feel that they have more in common with the Nigerian Anglican Church than the Episcopal Church USA. All of this is true, but in a greater sense the staunch liberals and staunch conservatives are in a sense teaming up against the history and identity of the church as they attempt to reshape it in their own preferred image.

The ECUSA is and always has been a largely political organization rather than a theological one. To many, this is the primary weakness of the church and may well prove to be its undoing. But I don’t see it that way at all. To me, the Episcopal Church is a facilitator rather than a dictator of belief. If you believe in the Catholic tenets, then by all means become a Catholic. If you follow the evangelical march, become a Baptist. But if you don’t quite fit in anywhere else or you’re not sure where you fit in to the larger Christian community, the Episcopal Church is as good a home as you’ll find. The church was essentially founded on a rejection of the belief that any human institution can really get God right 100% of the time. That’s why we were not only given scripture and tradition, but also the ability to reason.

Unfortunately, the lack of a strong theological center has lead some groups within the church to try to make it into the church that they have long wanted to see. The conservatives want a Catholic Church without the pope and celibate priests. The liberals look around and see Christianity overrun by conservatism and want to set up a liberal church. The conservatives seek the approval of the Catholics and evangelicals while the liberals seek the approval of the seculars. Neither seem to really appreciate the church for what it is and both seek approval where they will not find it without substantially changing its identity.

I can’t honestly say that I find both sides to be “equally wrong”. By and large, my sentiments lie with the theological liberals. Until I fully appreciated the damage it was doing to the church (and that he is as intolerant of the conservatives as they are of him), I applauded Robinson’s consecration. I want women to not only serve as associate rectors, but to have their own congregations. But by and large, in their rush for social acceptability outside Christian circles, the liberal leaders have completely dispatched tradition and alienated the conservative lifeblood that a church needs to thrive. An institution needs those that seek to protect its identity even as it remains open to those that walk a different path.

The reason that there appears to be an opening for a liberal church it’s because those that have gone that route have lost their identity. The Unitarian Church merged with the Universalist Church and rather than growing its numbers have declined. Those that seek the approval of non-Christians ultimately become non-Christians, or their children do. Schiori was the Bishop of Nevada at a time when the state saw incredible growth, but the church’s numbers remained stagnant. People like me, that embrace the amendment of theological tradition, are the ones that don’t show up to church week in and week out. Those that want to protect the institution, to keep it in stasis, are the most reliable when it comes to preserving its identity.

Yet the Episcopal Church is one of the relatively few that allows anyone baptized to eat the bread and drink the wine. What the conservatives sometimes overlook is that the Episcopalian tradition is one of acceptance and growth, both spiritual and intellectual. The Episcopal Church is a political, and to a degree democratic, organization. It’s simply not a church where you get to tell other people what to do or believe. For people like me, that means that we have to hold back when our congregations do not approve of the changes that we would like to see made. For the conservatives, it means that it is New Hampshire and not Mississippi that gets to decide who the Bishop of New Hampshire is going to be.

I hope that this all gets straightened out in the years to come. There have been some encouraging signs. Schiori has backed off a bit and sees her first duty as to protect the institution (rather than remake as she would like). The Archbishop of Canterbury has stepped in and has also declared this to be a priority. The ball is in the conservatives’ court now. I can’t say that I’m a fan of their idea of joining the Nigerian branch, but at least that would keep them in the larger Anglican community and a part of being an Episcopalian is accepting the decisions of others within the community.

When I was a kid in Sunday School, I heard a different story of Mary and Joseph’s trip back to Bethlehem where Jesus was born. Mary and Joseph went around from one place to another in search of logic.

It was the neatest Christmas story I had ever heard. I had this vision in my mind of this guy and this pregnant woman on some sort of glorious search for Truth, going house to house and engaging in philosophical dialogue with the townspeople of Bethlehem to discover universal truths about life, the universe, and everything. So then they finally found someone cool and decided to hang out in their barn till the Son of Lord God was born.

It reinvigorated my interest in Christianity until I figured out that she was saying “lodging.”

I now know that I have been in Deseret for too long.

Back in Colosse, whenever I saw a mother under the age of 25 – married or not – I wondered how exactly that happened. I mean I know how that happens, but I figure that there was some miscalculation along the way.

I found myself thinking about a colleague at Falstaff in Accout Services. I thought to myself “I wonder why she doesn’t have children?”

Because… you know… all normal married 25 year olds should have kids.

I am even at the point that I consider marriage at 25 to be normal and am curious when I meet someone over 25 that is not married.

Heaven help me, by pure osmosis I am absorbing their view of the family…