Spread the Love

Secularism teaches us to be good here and now. I know nothing better than goodness…Secularism depends upon realities and demonstrations; and its end and aim is to make this world better every day—to do away with poverty and crime, and to cover the world with happy and contended homes.

-Robert Green Ingersoll I dislike about this church. As I left, tr the world with happy and contended homes.

is world better every day--to

It’s funny, writing this stuff. Part of me wants so much to dislike churches, because I’m sure they’re wrong and actually detrimental to society. Another part of me appreciates the messages, the benefits, the people. I am of two minds on the issue of church. Last week, I was strongly on the bitter side, and the entry comes across as snide and narrow-minded. I stand by what I wrote, but I’m aware of its negative tone. This week I return to the other extreme. It’s a Presbyterian church I just can’t bring myself to dislike.

Just a touch of sentimentality here. It’s in my old neighborhood, and I had visited this church as a teen. There was a youth group that I was involved in, and I have some fond memories at this chuch. As I walked in, my reminiscing came to an end as I tried to figure out where the people were. It was an empty sanctuary.

I discovered a small group of people in the fellowship hall to the rear of the sanctuary. The pastor greeted me and explained that once a month they hold worship there because the sanctuary isn’t handicap accessible. This is the room I used go to on voting day. It’s an old building, the kind of thing that looks like it’s been added onto and remodeled time after time. So I took my seat in a cluttered hall, facing a stage with some rudimentary props on it. To my right was a kitchen of sorts, and above me was a walkway/balcony thing that led to the church office. The plaster above my head was chipped and cracked. No money for flat-screens here.

The people in it were about as motley as the room itself. It had your basic contingent of old white folks coupled with a healthy number of minority children. There was a guy in a bright orange hunting outfit, and the only person I recognized was the bartender from the neighborhood dive. Didn’t expect that. It was about halfway through the service when I realized there were no minority parents looking after all those kids, and I figure they must be from the children’s home across the street. Good to see the church reaching out to kids in need in the community. Not sure if indoctrinating them with lies about imaginary beings loving them is good or not. Yes, I suppose it’s uplifting to think that the difficulties they’ve had in their short lives—be it neglect, abuse, addiction, whatever—is part of some grand plan a creator has to ultimately redeem them, but if it’s not true, does it do more harm than good?

After a pleasant but uninspiring sermon about how we need to love one another, they had a moment for prayers. One woman prayed for peace and harmony in the Middle East, particularly in light of the revolutions taking place. She wanted to see realized the pastor’s message of loving one another in harmony. She spoke of her sympathy with the women in those countries, too often voiceless, and hoped that they could find greater equality in the changing world. Nice.

Warning: here comes the cynic. How many times have people asked God for peace in the Middle East? I figure millions of Christians have prayed for it nearly every Sunday morning for decades if not centuries. How many Muslims have prayed for it? How many Jews? And yet, it seems that for centuries that area has been doomed to endless violence, with no end in sight. Has god ignored all those prayers? Has he abandoned everyone who has ever prayed for peace there?

My takeaway is this: churches really can promote harmony on a micro-level. Just look at this morning’s eclectic group. A bartender, a bunch of disadvantaged kids, random hunting guy, and a cute bunch of little old ladies are hanging out in harmony. Cobbled together like the building itself, this small congregation hangs on despite a pretty tough world, and they spread the love. But Christianity has a harder time spreading the love on a macro scale. Sure, there’s mission work and charity and saving the unborn children and all that. But the world is more diverse than our little church congregation here. Religion insists upon its own truth at the exclusion of others. History proves God is a divisive force, and to dream of singing Kumbaya across the world under the paternal gaze of a returned prince of peace is laughable. Religion is the cause of the strife in the Middle East, or if not, certainly a major player. We cannot expect love of God to bring harmony to places that experience daily violence specifically because of disagreements over that God. (You will not find an atheist strapping a bomb to himself.)

So there is really nothing I dislike about this church. As I left, the pastor spoke earnestly to me about his desire to make the church work, and I could tell he was happy to see a new face. I hate that I got his hopes up, since I certainly don’t plan to go back. I feel so sympathetic towards them, in a way that reminds me of the very first church I visited for this project. But again, I must look at the root of the reason they are there: belief in a deity that defies common sense. They sit around in a room asking the air to help them spread peace and harmony. Can we spread the love without the church? Why not?

Evangelicalism: The Marketing or the Message?

Lone Starr: But Yogurt, what is this place? What is it that you do here?

Yogurt: Merchandising.

Barf: Merchandising? What's that?

Yogurt: Merchandising! Come, I'll show you…Merchandising! Merchandising! Where the real money from the movie is made.

-Spaceballs

Christian radio is quite a beast. If you’re in a decent-sized market, I bet you can find five to ten Christian radio stations with a casual tour of the dial. This has become a hobby of mine. On car trips, I like to find preachers or Christian rock, and I’ll listen until the nausea begins to jeopardize my driving. This drives my wife nuts, but she humors me, partly for the sake of the blog and partly because she is just nice and tolerant to a fault. I do think it bothers her, though, that I have Christian radio stations on my preset and I listen to them with our infant daughter in the car. I’ll have to stop that when the little one is old enough to understand.

So one of my favorite stations is run by Calvary Chapel, which is apparently a nationwide network of churches that could be generally classified as evangelical. I can discern no traditional denomination from either their radio broadcast or the bulletin from church this week. I like the Calvary Chapel radio because they have a lot of preaching, often focused on Biblical passages, rather than the almost exclusively pro-life propaganda that one gets from Catholic radio (a blog entry on that later, for sure). Calvary radio preaching is pretty humorous. To give you just a taste, here’s an example. I recently learned that demons are real. Not in some metaphorical or symbolic way, but actually real. And they are out to harm me every minute of every day. But that is good news! Because the only relationship I want to have with a demon is for it to be my enemy. And there is more good news: the Bible says that 1/3 of the angels in heaven fell with Satan*. That means that there are still 2/3 of the angels that are on my side. Therefore, the forces of evil cannot win. It is a mathematical certainty.

Oh my. Yes, this is my entertainment on the way to work in the morning. So when I heard that this radio station has local churches affiliated with it, I had my next church with which to resume the blog project. There were many Calvary churches in the area to choose from. Mine happened to be located in a strip mall. Good start. It is a former supermarket, now selling food for the soul. Man does not live by bread alone, after all.

It was refreshing, I admit, to realize that the beautiful appearance of a church doesn’t matter to many churchgoers. Attendees of this church need no awe-inspiring architecture, no ornate sculpture, symbolic iconography, or even a nostalgic feeling of walking into a church building. In a sense, they are not subject to the persuasive power of those traditional church elements. So is it more about the substance of the message? Perhaps.

The place was full. Not packed, but full enough. So they’re doing something right, I suppose. I continue to be surprised at the success of the evangelical movement, even in a liberal community like mine. But it doesn’t take a theology degree to figure how powerfully influential the marketing is. Unimpressive from the outside, this church was pretty smooth on the inside. The sanctuary is adjacent to a Christian bookstore and Christian coffeeshop. In the anteroom there is a large, flat-screen television showing a feed from the sanctuary. I must have walked by ten greeters, all of whom were wearing matching polo shirts. “Welcome, brother,” they said. That made me all fuzzy inside.

Let’s get to the service. Typical elements of an evangelical service:

• No ritualistic liturgy. The bulletin had a rough outline of a few items, including music, sermon, and collection, but nothing resembling traditional prayers or readings. I’m glad to see they put no more stock in that uninspiring crustiness than I do.
• Contemporary music. There were no hymnals and no organ, just a projection screen with lyrics and an acoustic guitar. They sang 3 or 4 songs in a row to begin the service. For all the popularity of contemporary Christian music, this was pretty boring. One thing traditional churches have going for them: good music. Bach was no slouch.
• A focus on the Bible. Nearly every person walking into this church carried his/her own Bible. That’s not too common. The sermon was based on a specific passage, and the pastor encouraged everyone to read along. This is consistent with the evangelical belief that each individual can experience God directly; no intercessor necessary.
• A focus on the spirit. It’s all about the love, baby. Evangelicals place way more emphasis on the holy spirit than other Christians. This is the third piece of the trinity, and frankly, I never understood why it needed to be separate from God or Jesus. But the New Testament, particularly the book of Acts, places much importance on it, and evangelicals use it as a foundational aspect of their worship. God should be felt in the soul, and each individual should be moved to worship or act on his own, as the spirit dictates.
• Just a tad bit of crazy. The speaker began by saying that Jesus is going to return, and we need to be ready for it, because it might even happen before then end of their church service that morning, and wouldn’t that be awesome. I think he was totally serious. Nobody else in the room let out a chuckle. I had to disguise mine as a cough.

The emphasis on the Holy Spirit is a huge factor in the success of evangelicalism and one of its defining characteristics. It’s all about feeling good. These churches convince people that God has directly touched each of them, that it is God’s love that makes them feel good. Also, if you put your hand in the air, you feel it even more strongly (but not as strongly as those people who put two hands in the air). It is a powerful message. I’m sure this message partly accounts for the stark difference I see in attendance. Most of the churches of European denomination I’ve attended—Baptist, Presbyterian, Reformed, Methodist—are somewhere between struggling and on life-support. But this Americanized brand of evangelicalism is flourishing. What they say must have something to do with it, because people wouldn’t show up just because of the marketing, would they? The radio station, the flat-screen TV, the matching polo shirts, the heavenly smell of God-sponsored coffee? (Slightly tastier than secular Starbucks, no doubt.) Is this why people go? Certainly not. The message must have something to do with it.

But I don’t see it. Seems to me that underneath it all, the same mushy feel-goodery underlies it all. Evangelicalism has watered down the intellectualism of the old denominations, replacing it with just feeling the spirit. But it was mostly pseudo-intellectualism to begin with. Really—can one have an intellectual assessment of demons or supernatural realms or why God makes tsunamis? No. Evangelicalism has simply repackaged the old messages, given them some modern pizzazz, some American flashiness to answer that stuffy European curmudgeonry. A spit-shine certainly can make junk look good.

*(N.B. This postulate is taken from Revelation 12:4, which says that 1/3 of the stars fell from the sky. The mythic book of Revelation is written in symbolic language, and interpreting this passage to refer to angels/demons is by no means self-evident. I think most preachers on the radio expect their audiences to be stupid. Of course, if you are listening to a radio preacher, you probably are. But that doesn’t apply to me, naturally.)

The Resurrection of the Blog and The Miracle of Birth

So I’m a dad now. That’s why I took a year off from the blog.

I visited a few churches after the gospel experience. They didn’t live up. A Baptist church. Unitarian. I floundered for a few weeks, trying to figure out what to say after that gospel church. And then my wife tells me we’re going to have a baby. That’ll change a person real quick.

I’ve spent many hours staring at the eyes of my little one, thinking how amazing it is that she exists. She is so tiny and alive, I cannot help but be overwhelmed sometimes. It is easy to see why it is called the miracle of birth, and I certainly understand anyone who sees god’s hand in it. It’s almost impossible to believe. During my wife’s labor, I was reserved, stoic. But at the moment my daughter was born, I was swept away. Serious waterworks.

I have perhaps made it through one of the great tests for an atheist and come through unconverted. Birth feels miraculous, but we know enough now to understand most of it, and it is no miracle in the literal sense of the word. Sure, it is a miracle in that it is amazing and mind-blowing, but it is not supernatural, nor does it need a divine hand to cause it. I suppose other great tests of my atheism will be when I am faced with losing close family members and when I face death myself. But for the time being, I remain confidently atheist.

If anything, I feel more strongly that thanks to god for this birth is misplaced. I recall once again Dennett’s essay “Thank Goodness,” that argues thanks should go to the doctors, nurses, orderlies, and other hospital staff. It should go to those people who invented technologies and conducted research to make the delivery possible and safe. It should go to the countless individuals that have led to today’s quality medical care, with no help whatsoever from god.

I am not unchanged, though. I have greater reverence for life. It is striking to realize that I am part of a great, unbroken chain of life. Every ancestor I’ve had survived long enough to reproduce, ancestors who lived when the pyramids were being built, ancestors who lived through wars and ice ages and Krakatoas, ancestors who lived on Pangaea. My daughter and I belong to an unbroken chain of life that dates back millions, maybe billions of years, to when the earth was young. It is truly awe-inspiring, and even more so when you see birth and realize how dangerous and traumatic it is. I can’t believe people live through it (the mother or the child). How a baby manages to take its first breath, to move its arms and legs, to pump a heart that will beat every second for decades to come—it’s amazing. It’s not difficult to imagine a divinity overseeing us because it is all so damn improbable. But I will not submit myself to an imaginary superforce just because my existence is unlikely. Nor will I teach my daughter to.

So how will I raise this little one?

When I told my mom we were going to have a baby, I think she waited a couple weeks before she asked me about church. It was a topic we’d avoided for a while, as I knew she silently disapproved of the fact that I didn’t go to church. (Something tells me she wouldn’t like the reason I go to church these days.) Anyway, she had stopped pushing me to go to church, but always said that what really mattered was how I raise my kids. I got that line so often when I was dating and then when I got engaged and married.

When mom asked if I was going to take my little girl to church, I just looked at her and said, “No.” I couldn’t sidestep that one. Hurt, she said, “So you’re not going to have her baptized?” “No.” And that was that. We continued watching TV in silence. The subject has not come up again…yet.

In my earlier entries I often struggled with conflicting feelings about the value of church, especially for young people. I will not deny its many good aspects with one broad brushstroke. But my wife and I won’t subject our daughter to lies and closed-minded superstition (not to mention hours of painful boredom) under the guise of “truth.” The challenge is to instill the right values and provide a strong, loving community, without all the other nonsense.