Talking to Evangelicals - A Blogger Confession

It's been very strange to me that my passion for politics has reopened a discussion that I have left behind for years. I've been avoiding blogging this, but a very interesting discussion on a thought provoking post at Total Information Awareness has pushed me over the edge. My reality is that my past is relevant to this discussion that's going on in the body politic so I guess I'll fess up.

Once upon a time in a land far away, I was an evangelical Christian. I want to a Christian college where one of my majors was the Bible. My activities were all ministries - leading a singing group that raised money for missionaries, a summer evangelizing in England, a summer working a Christian program for inner city kids. Heck, I was the president of student ministries. I've led more Bible studies and prayers and spoken in more churches than I can count. After college, I even worked for the Evangelistic Association of New England. I once enthusiastically attended a Jimmy Swaggart prayer meeting. I attended church multiple times a week, taught Sunday school and led the youth group. The church was my community and my life was all about God and becoming the person He designed me to be.

I'm different today. I haven't stepped inside a church (except for weddings and funerals) since 1990. I don't read the Bible. I avoid most conversations about God. When occassionally someone tries to evangelize me I give them a solid but polite warning that they really don't want to go there. I remain profoundly respectful of people with a deep and living faith but believe they are and always have been rare. That's my bias. I am cautious with those who are overtly religious and generally unwilling to let them know me.

What happened? It's a more personal story than I care to share here, but I will say it was a combination of simply growing up, trusting my own mind and experience, slamming into the sexism of the church time and time again, a family tragedy that rocked my foundations, an unwillingness to reinterpret my experiences through the filter of religion, an inability to stop asking the hard questions and an unwillingness to accept "you just have to believe". Ultimately, what happened is the church rejected me in all my growing unorthodoxy. There was no room for me to be the me that I believed God had designed me to be. The message was conform or you're not welcome. So I left. It wasn't a quick journey out the door, but it was an inevitable one.

I do not hate Christians and I do not hate the church. In fact, I still consider myself a person of faith (I love the word 'deist').  I struggled a great deal in the years after I left the church. I missed the wondrous sense of being known and loved that faith gave me, the sense of purpose I had, I missed the belonging that the community of faith gave me, but ultimately I recognized that I could not go back, that the admissions requirements were too stringent.

The are still too stringent. There is no room for compromise in the politicized wing of the evangelical church. Their world view assumes that they are an oppressed minority, living "in the world but not of it". The left has been identified as one of the oppressors. We of the activist courts, immoral Hollywood culture, situational ethics and tolerance of evil. Our very tolerance condemns us, is evidence that we are on the dark side. Outreach will be responded to with suspicion and a hope that we'll convert. Open-mindedness will be in short supply. Let me clarify here that I'm not talking about individual Christians participating in these churches, I'm talking about the church as a whole - the community that's created when these people come together, that has leaders and rules and budgets and political views.

The evangelical Christian church is at its heart an evangelistic group, fundamentallly committed to going out into the world to spread the good news, to be testaments of faith, to convert the lost. (That's us, by the way.) This evangelistic fervor has been transferred to the political arena, where voting for the candidate who is aligned with the religious principles of the church is akin to striking a blow against Satan. If you doubt the organized and Republican character of the evangelical church, take a moment to read the National Association of Evangelical's political platform. Or read their governmental affairs web content including policy resolutions and church bulletins addressing political issues, available to all churches as inserts in the Sunday church program. As someone who once worked in an association that brought together evangelical churches in the northeast, I'll testify to the fact that there is an organized leadership structure out there.

We will never succeed in bringing the politicized wing of the evangelical church to the left side of the aisle.They may figure out eventually that our principles are more aligned with Scripture, but they'll have to figure that out on their own.

What we can do is learn their language so that we're able to understand what they're saying, use their language to defang the accusations that are lobbed at us, recognize their code words so that when they show up in the state of the union speech we understand what our President is really saying. And finally, we can learn their language so that we can talk to individual believers, with the respect and honesty, in their language, about why we believe their church's political positions are inconsistent with what they believe. We cannot change the church but the church is made up of individuals who can change it from the inside. We have to speak to the individuals and not the leaders or the church as a whole. And we have to do it with respect.

I don't have a lot of respect for the evangelical church but that's personal and I generally don't talk about it. Because I do have a great deal of respect for the people who make up that church, who often give of themselves to help the hungry, the tired, the poor. I respect their faith and their full hearted commitment to a life of purpose, their efforts to become better people (whether or not they succeed). It is to those people, those individuals whose values I believe are aligned with the left, that we must speak.

Comments

[Eric Martin]

Kathy,

Thank you for that very well written and personal piece. It takes immense courage to expose your personal experience to the scrutiny of others. Thank you also for enlightening me on a subject that I only know of from the vantage point of the outsider. I consider these insider glimpses to be valuable assets.

As an aside, there is a blog in my roll called Metablogic written by blogger Josh Gibson. He too is a "reformed" evangelical whose personal story reminded me, in some ways, of your own.

I find this to be an interesting topic because of my own grapples with faith. I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of an organized religion. That being said, I think that the message of Jesus Christ is divinely inspired. If only more Christians were Christ-like, this world would be a different place.

I think you are ultimaley right on the prospects for converting the "Church" vs. individuals, as well as the value in learning the language. I defer to you on such matters.

See, even in a comments box I can be long-winded.

[Karlo]

I enjoyed reading your "confession." Say three hails to the Goddess of Mercy, recite the refuges to the Triple Gem 30 times and we will agree to consider your transgressions as void (as in "all phenomena are void"). Just joking... I also cringe these days when someone approaches me wanting to "discuss" religion. It never ends up being a discussion somehow.

[Kathy]

Thanks Eric. I'll check out the blog you mentioned. It does feel strange to reveal myself (as opposed to my thoughts) online. Frankly, this isn't a topic I ever really talk about because it's not a neutral one, it's a place of political and personal passion for lots of people. To me, it's generally just been private. And I don't want to mislead here. No-one would mistake me for a religious person. I'm not a reformed evangelical. I'm not even a Christian. I'd describe myself as a deist, rooted in Judeo-Christian faith. I believe in God because I can't do otherwise, but I can't tell you one thing about that God. I embrace the mystery of it all and challenge myself to live a purposeful life without the comfort of a theological framework.

So don't misunderstand and assume that my history gives me any right to speak for today's Christian. They wouldn't recognize me as one of their own and I wouldn't want them to.

[avedis]

Kathy, I think that there are many more folks out there with experiences like yours than you may realize. I too was deeply involved with the church when I was a child. When I was twelve or so my greatest desire was to be baptised (in our church that didn't happen until you could make a concious decision). I even thought about joining the ministry as a career.

Then, one day I sat to a particularly firey sermon about the pagan practices of Buddhists from a missionary that had recently returned to the states. I thought these Buddhists must be the devil incarnate. I researched Buddhism thinking this would give me a better understanding of the face of evil.

It quickly discovered that the missionary had been grossly distorting Buddhism. In fact he had outright lied about some details. I wondered why. I saw that Buddhism was interestingly intellectual and benevolent. I really started thinking.

I asked my minister if there was a way Buddhists or decent folks from any other religion could get into heaven. He looked at me like I was crazy. "No, of course not. They have not accepted christ as their savior and that's the only way".

I asked about the millions, perhaps billions, of people that had lived since christ, but, due to barriers to travel and communication could not have ever possibly even heard of christ. "saddly, they have all gone to hell" But how could a loving god create people just to fuel the fires of hell? "Don't question the ways of god. Be thankful that your soul can be saved".

I walked out the door of the church and never went back. I studied Buddhism and Taoism and many other religious practices. The Bhagavadgida can be a soldier's good friend. I was scared at first. It was a pervasive consumming fear. I had been conditioned to believe that I was damning myself. Over time, though my enlightened understanding of spirituality grew and the fear slipped off me like a wet musty carpet remnant.

Even now, many years later when I am comfortable with who I am and what I believe (or don't believe), I reflect back on the religious experience of my youth. I still find it hard to accept that a church - a place for the healing of the soul - can fill the soul with such fear and such coldness and such bigotry.

For this reason, I do not accept that the democratic party should attempt to oblige these church goers. They won't reciprocate. It's a one way street for them.

[avedis]

I didn't know if the comment would be truncated....

Sorry to take up so much space. I just wanted to finish up.

I know it seems nasty to say something negative about church goers, but it needs to be said. You want to believe that they are decent folks, trying to do good in the world and trying to better themselves in ways that count.

Maybe they are. Then again, we all know what paves the road to hell.

These christians must believe what thy believe. Their very souls depend on it (the fear). The Democratic party might have some principles that christians would seem to support, such as helping the poor, etc. However, the Democrats also support freedom of speach (which protects pornography), religious freedom (which gives voice and equality to alternative religions and criticisms of christianity), Democrats generally are against censorship of any kind (christians would censor many things that offend them), Democrats support gays (God burned down Soddom and Gemorrah), then there's sexual permissiveness, abortion, etc, etc, there's prayer in schools, there's science (Dem.s) vs Creationism (christians).

If Democrats simply act like themselves and stand up for what they believe in, then they've lost the Christians. The Christians are more concerned with the above issues (because they're a matter of damnation) than they are with murkier social welfare issues.

So I don't think they can be talked to without sacrificing a part of our identity.

Just because they're "nice" people doesn't mean that the results of their actions are good. In the recesses of their minds, dark destructive forces can be at play.

[Kathy]

Avedis,

Take up all the space you want. I'm glad to read the stories of others whose path has been so much like mine. My exit from the church didn't happen until I was 25 - I tried very hard to find a way to stay without betraying myself. I couldn't.

But one thing I did find, rarely, but I did find it, was that there are people whose faith is not rooted in fear but is instead rooted in love, in the belief that they are lucky to experience the love of God and that they're actions and beliefs should be rooted in that love. I was fortunate to know some of these people quite well, to be known by them and taught by them. It wasn't enough to keep me, but it mattered then and it matters now. Not all Christians have a fear-based belief system, not all Christians are motivated by fear of going to hell. The best of them, the ones I miss and wish I could be like but can't are those who are motivated by love and hope. They're the ones we have to find, to speak to. I suspect they're already listening.

[Moriji]

That was amazing, Kathy. Having been an evangelical, you have a better perspective on this issue than the rest of us. Now that I know where you came from, what you posted on my blog totally makes sense.

Thank you for sharing.

[l-arginine dosage]

You talk spiritually which is good. I like how you deliver your words.