I don't remember exactly how old I was when it all started.
I was in grade school, probably 4th grade or so. It was a spring or summer day and I was playing in the garage when a man walked up the driveway and asked to talk to my mother. I went to the door, summoned her and the two went into the house. It seemed a little unusual to me, enough so that I still remember it decades later.
It turns out, he was a minister from the Methodist church our neighbors attended. My Mom was looking to join a church and had asked the minister to come by to talk. Apparently it went well because soon after we started attending. I would be an active member until I graduated from high school and left for college.
I really enjoyed church. They had an excellent music program taught by a talented musician and director who became something of a mentor to me. I was an active member of every choir I could join. I played in, and later directed, the bell choir, and toured the Midwest and Europe with the church choirs a couple of summers while I was in Jr. High. The three week tour of Europe was a fantastic experience for a 15 year old from the Midwest. I loved the youth groups, made many friends and had a lot of good times. The annual candlelit midnight Christmas service was probably my favorite event of the year and felt absolutely magical to me.
The theology of the church was very moderate. There was little evangelizing, no proselytizing, speaking in tongues or anything that wasn't dignified. We took communion occasionally, believed in God and Jesus, and valued fellowship. I had one Sunday School teacher who loved talking about the book of Revelations and end times prophesy and I loved hearing it. The topic and the idea of watching prophesy unfold seemed edgy and cool and fascinating.
The church was so moderate that when a new minister came in a few years later, his more evangelistic approach really upset things. There was a decent shake-up of membership, with some leaving and some new people joining. But he was more dynamic and outgoing and that was good for the church. To the bad side, they drove out my friend, the music director, because of suspicions he was gay. He never did or said anything remotely inappropriate but in the early eighties the rumor was enough to force him out.
Not too long after we started churchgoing, my brother transferred to a Baptist school and was required to attend their church. They were far more evangelical and over the years my brother went down a much more conservative religious path than me.
All in all, my church experience was good. When I left for college in Boston, I was a firm, committed Methodist. I continued occasionally going to church, at the campus chapel, and still believed very strongly.
One day at college, a couple of us were asked by a girl in one of my history classes if we wanted to attend a lecture that evening. Being at college and wanting to be exposed to all sorts of new ideas I accepted without any real understanding of what the event was. Once we arrived, I was surprised to find that it wasn't a lecture at all but a full blown Maranatha worship service. There was moaning, swaying, possibly some speaking in tongues, and when the minister asked if people were sinners, I watched the very gentle, very kind girl from my history class scream and wail in utter despair at her "sinful" ways.
It made a big impression on me. I couldn't imagine that this girl had done anything that required that level of grief. She acted like she had killed someone. Of course, according to Christian doctrine, she may as well have killed someone. She was tainted with original sin, holding all the sin of humanity just as much as Hitler himself and she obviously bought it completely. I had a clear view of one of the most negative aspects of Christianity, Christian guilt.
It all seemed overwrought and ridiculous, but you couldn't argue with the power of the ceremony. In fact, when they issued a call for a show of hands of those who wanted to rededicate themselves to Christ, my hand went up. I mean, as a Christian, how could I refuse such a call? But that was the extent of my participation. For the first time I saw human beings whipped into an intense emotional frenzy spurred by religious passions, completely out of control and separated from reality. It was scary.
Over the next few years I attended church less. The formality, the rules, the stuffiness, bothered me. With exposure to different beliefs and people and some real thought, I had begun to realize that a god who discriminated against people for the way in which they worshiped or the minor differences in what they believed could not be a loving god. And I had seen too much of Christianity to believe that the Christian god was a loving god.
After I got married and started law school, I gave up formal religion completely. In part, I needed the time on Sunday morning to sleep. In part, I just wasn't comfortable with the formality, the contradictions and the hypocrisy.
I still strongly believed in Jesus and Christianity, intellectually more than I ever did, but I didn't think church had it right. My beliefs were my own and thus even better as they were personal. I had a personal relationship with God. When we moved out to the Washington DC area, Carol would find a new church, but my Christianity was about to run smack into the religion killers, rationality and skepticism.
To be continued . . .
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