Tuesday, December 06, 2005
The Great Rift Valley
A troubling note from an old friend.
I've never encountered any of this in my family (my nephew has been attending Liberty University, so maybe that's changing). In my Methodist Sunday School, the Bible was taught to children as factual stories but neither literally nor as science, if you get what I mean; as I got older I felt free to understand them as myth & metaphor. I cannot recall a pastor ever sermonizing on the creation story as valid science. Since I no longer attend any church, it's been easy to avoid or ignore creationist thinking in my private life. But I could skip the matter anyway just by going to any number of mainstream protestant churches or attending a Catholic Mass. I may not agree with a church's organizational structure or some points of doctrine (those might not even come up during a year of services), but I wouldn't have to "leave my intellect at the door." Few of the protestant sermons & priestly homilies I've sat through over the past thirty years were intellectually challenging, but none were so insultingly stupid I wanted to walk out. During the period when I felt most spiritually adrift - late adolescence with the Vietnam War raging - I was blessed to have encountered some "religious" people with very strong intellectual & moral standards, Catholic, protestant, Jew, & Buddhist who at least kept me focused the specific dilemma I faced.
My friend's reaction is understandable. He's college educated, thinks deeply on whatever concerns him, an agnostic who accepts the basic moral premises of the protestant tradition in which he was raised, & willing in the cause of family peace to put up with a certain amount of belief he personally doubts. Go ahead, tell me I'm a sinner in need of redemption. Say I have to be "born again" even, since that's what's being preached here. Let me enjoy the community, the social hours, suppers & picnics, be glad I'm a dutiful family man who doesn't drink to excess, use drugs, or rob gas stations. But don't demand I be ignorant as a condition of belonging. Don't insist this is the only way when I know for a fact that the history of Christianity is filled with intellectual giants, artistic geniuses, & nondogmatic saints. & I also know that humans are not descended from the monkeys we have now. The truth is far more beautiful & intelligent.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
The last time I attended church, the pastor made the mistake of ridiculing evolution. He worked the congregation up something fierce with the "it's only a theory" argument. He ended by saying something like "I ain't descended from no monkey! I don't know about you!" "Amens" filled the air that day!My friend's letter also described a born-again anti-evolutionist cousin as "one of the most upright, honest and outstanding men I've ever known." We cannot always escape the narrowness just by walking out of a particular church.
My personal beliefs aside, I'd never attended a sermon where I was asked to come right out and make a choice between the Bible and evolution. That, however, has always been my stick in the sand. Long ago I'd decided that I could not attend a church where I was steadfastly required to leave my intellect at the door. I've left other congregations for lesser reasons. I can't attend and pretend to believe and I can't attend and not believe, either.
I've never encountered any of this in my family (my nephew has been attending Liberty University, so maybe that's changing). In my Methodist Sunday School, the Bible was taught to children as factual stories but neither literally nor as science, if you get what I mean; as I got older I felt free to understand them as myth & metaphor. I cannot recall a pastor ever sermonizing on the creation story as valid science. Since I no longer attend any church, it's been easy to avoid or ignore creationist thinking in my private life. But I could skip the matter anyway just by going to any number of mainstream protestant churches or attending a Catholic Mass. I may not agree with a church's organizational structure or some points of doctrine (those might not even come up during a year of services), but I wouldn't have to "leave my intellect at the door." Few of the protestant sermons & priestly homilies I've sat through over the past thirty years were intellectually challenging, but none were so insultingly stupid I wanted to walk out. During the period when I felt most spiritually adrift - late adolescence with the Vietnam War raging - I was blessed to have encountered some "religious" people with very strong intellectual & moral standards, Catholic, protestant, Jew, & Buddhist who at least kept me focused the specific dilemma I faced.
My friend's reaction is understandable. He's college educated, thinks deeply on whatever concerns him, an agnostic who accepts the basic moral premises of the protestant tradition in which he was raised, & willing in the cause of family peace to put up with a certain amount of belief he personally doubts. Go ahead, tell me I'm a sinner in need of redemption. Say I have to be "born again" even, since that's what's being preached here. Let me enjoy the community, the social hours, suppers & picnics, be glad I'm a dutiful family man who doesn't drink to excess, use drugs, or rob gas stations. But don't demand I be ignorant as a condition of belonging. Don't insist this is the only way when I know for a fact that the history of Christianity is filled with intellectual giants, artistic geniuses, & nondogmatic saints. & I also know that humans are not descended from the monkeys we have now. The truth is far more beautiful & intelligent.
Labels: growing up, religion
