Week 9: Christian Science. Holy Shit.

“If half the attention given to hygiene were given to Christian Science and spiritual thought, this alone would usher in the Millenium.”

-Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health

“Yeah, A thousand years of really smelly people.”

-The Churchgoing Atheist

It would be pretty easy to make fun of the nuts who practice Christian Science. Yes, these are the people who believe so deeply that prayer will heal the sick that many of them choose to forgo medical treatment. But part of the Churchgoing Atheist project is giving everyone an equal fair shake, so here goes.

The building has piqued my curiosity ever since I briefly lived on the same street. It is an imposing structure: square, domed, fronted by Greek columns. It looks more like a government building than a church. I wondered if there could possibly be enough Christian Scientists in the Rochester area to warrant such a structure. Finally I had my chance to find out.

Inside it is a majestic building. Above the main room is the dome, gilded with ornamentation. Strangely, there is not one single cross anywhere. There are rows of benches roughly in a semicircle. It could probably hold 700 people. There were maybe 30 people there for the service—a decent number, but they were swallowed up by the room. That place will make a cool concert hall or museum when the church inevitably goes under.

So here’s a bit of basic history for you: in 1866 Mary Baker Eddy was miraculously healed of an injury after reading a Bible passage. She then founded the First Church of Christ, Scientist. The foundation of their belief system is both the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s book, Science and Health, in which she interprets Bible passages.

Christian Scientists love Mary Baker Eddy. In some ways, the structure of the service resembles most other churches I’ve been to: hymns, scripture readings, prayers. But the bulk of their service is simply reading from Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health.

They have no pastor or priest, no official religious leader of any kind, apparently. The service is run by two lay people who stand side by side at the front podium. One reads a passage from the Bible, and the second reads the corresponding passage of interpretation from Mary Baker Eddy.

This back and forth goes on for quite some time. They share no interpretation except the 150-year-old words of Mrs. Eddy, so it barely qualifies as a sermon, but that’s what they call it. Most of the interpretations from Science and Health were bits of wisdom about the nature of existence. It was a lot of new-age sounding spiritualism about how all matter is illusion and the true nature of existence is immaterial. Only when people learn to let go of the material world can they truly know God. I suppose in that respect it’s not terribly different from Buddhism or even pantheism (everything is God). Still, I don’t put any credence in that mushy cosmology.

There are a number of reasons why I like churches. Good music. Friends and fellowship. Thought-provoking, inspiring sermons. Charity work. This church had none of the above. And on top of it all, it was boring! Outrageously boring. Keep in mind: this is coming from a man who doesn’t believe in God but chooses to go to church every week. I am not easily bored. Forget the comparisons to paint-drying and watching grass grow. Mary Baker Eddy took it to the next level. Honestly, I don’t know how this religion ever spread, because this sermon must’ve been boring even by 19^th-century standards. Even the music was boring (lyrics by Mary Baker Eddy). The whole thing was soul-crushingly boring.

Couple all this with a theology that advises against personal hygiene, and it’s no surprise that the Christian Science Church is dying. Their membership has declined according to their own website (and you should check out the FAQ on their site—it’s rich with bizarre rationalizations). I’ll limit the summative criticisms to only two sentences. This church should die out. It is an outrage that people will deny sick children medical treatment, and the claim that religious belief protects their right to do so turns my stomach.

But now that I’ve got the criticism out of the way, allow me to offer a potentially surprising compliment. I respect their honesty. Christian Scientists actually seem to believe what they say they believe. They do what all Christians should do if they really believe in the power of prayer. Sure, I know the standard answer to this: God answers prayers in the form of good doctors and healing medicines. I don’t buy it. Daniel Dennett has a charming essay, “Thank Goodness,” about why we should thank the doctors and the field of medicine rather than thanking God.

You could look at this in different ways. On the one hand, you could say that doctors are agents of the divine, performing miracles each day, and that is the highest of compliments. Or you could say that doctors have devoted years of their lives to learning, compassion, and selflessness, trusting in science to discover how the human body actually works. Sure, you can have it both ways, but I think claiming the doctors would somehow be less effective in the absence of prayer or God is not only wrong, but a cheapening of the profession and the sacrifice of those individuals. Daniel Dennett’s essay expresses this more eloquently than I can.

To close, a few words about belief (again drawing on the words of Hitchens and Dawkins). Christians claim to believe in the power of prayer, but most would choose to actually place their bets on science when it really matters. Imagine if your child was dying and you only had time to drive to the hospital or the church. Those who genuinely follow through on their belief are respectable, in a twisted sort of way, but the more people actually believe, the more dangerous they are. As many people have observed, the 9/11 terrorists actually believed what they claimed to. Why do we not praise them for their faith? If everyone believed martyrdom would lead to immediate paradise, why do they not all follow through on that belief? The same applies to Christians. If Christians genuinely believe death leads immediately to everlasting life with God, why are they so passionately against physician-assisted suicide? Why do other Christians criticize Christian Scientists for their practices, when they are simply acting upon what they believe? The nature of religious belief is a strange, twisted maze, and trying to navigate it makes one realize how damningly stupid the whole thing is.

Week 8: Gotta Light?

"God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God"

-The Nicene Creed

“The natural light of reason has as much right as any other kind of knowledge to be called divine.”

 -Spinoza

“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God.” 

-Martin Luther, Works Vol. 12

 

It would probably be tedious for me to list the many ways in which religious belief has interfered with human progress.  So I’ll refrain from an extensive list, and content myself with the a few highlights from religion’s endless battle against intelligent thought: Martin Luther condemned reason, Galileo was accused of heresy, and former congressman Tom Delay blamed the teaching of evolution for the Columbine shootings.  Today, the Religious Right fights against stem cell research that might alleviate real suffering.  Religion is not the light to the world that it claims to be.

But that does not stop religions from making that claim, over and over again, every week.  Everything in today’s service was about light.  Whoever planned the service got a little carried away with the motif.  The prayers talked about light, the scripture readings, the sermon, and the songs, even the children’s lesson.  It was all aimed at stressing upon the parishioners that God/Jesus/religion/they can be the lights in this world of darkness.

The closing hymn at today’s Methodist service said, “Christ is the world’s light, Christ and none other” (lyrics by Fred Pratt Green, d. 2000).  I want to respond with Really?  None other? Obviously Mr. Green doesn’t mean that Jesus is literally the sun.  He means it symbolically.  In fact, everything from today’s service was intended symbolically.  When the children’s minister told them to find the light in themselves, and that light is Jesus, and they could find the light of Jesus in all their friends, even if it is very dim, I think she meant that symbolically. 

Which leads me to my point for this week.  Is it possible to speak with more clarity or exactness about what we mean by “light,” or more broadly, by any of the symbolic terms we kick around when talking about God/Jesus?  What do religious leaders (or lyricists, or ancient texts) mean when they use “light” as a symbol?

Symbols are powerful.  Their power is that of suggestion.  They need not be exact.  If symbols were simple equations, where Symbol A = Actual Thing B, then there would be no need for the symbol.  Rather, symbols bring to mind the deep variety of associations we have with them.  So for example, the most basic symbol of Christianity, the cross, conjures feelings of love, awe, forgiveness, suffering, sacrifice, divinity, salvation, etc.  It does not simplistically represent any one thing, but uses the mind of the viewer to create meaning based on that viewer’s experiences.  For this reason, symbols are dependent upon the viewer.  They carry no meaning outside of the mind of a specific individual.  The cross means nothing to someone who has never heard of Christianity.  To the Romans who crucified Jesus, it symbolized torture and punishment, the absolute power of Roman law.  To many in the Muslim world, it symbolizes the blasphemy, decadence, militarism, and economic power of the West.  These symbols are slippery things.

The church’s use of the word “light” is therefore very powerful, since light is such a basic need for humanity.  The notion that light is good must be very deeply rooted in the human psyche.  It allows us to see clearly; it accompanies warmth; it means safety from predators.  Its symbolic meaning has been extrapolated over time to suggest life, hope, joy, and truth.  For all these reasons, I suspect, fire and candles are used extensively in religious rituals around the world.

But I would suggest that the church’s employment of light as a symbol is a kind of trickery.  Ironically, rather than enlightening and clarifying, its usage obscures truth.  When churches talk of the light over and over, it is a convenient way of avoiding saying anything real or specific.  It feels good to hear about light.  It sounds good to hear about light.  It conjures all those positive associations and leaves it at that, without actually saying anything.

When the children today were told that they have the light of Jesus in them, does that mean they have love and kindness in them?  I think so.  Certainly we can spread love like spreading a flame—there’s plenty to go around. 

But to take it beyond that, to use light as a symbol of the truth of Christianity, is to begin down the slippery slope of meaninglessness.  Why do churches and preachers continually feel the need to remind us that the Bible is truth, that God is truth, that Jesus is “the way, the truth, the life,” that the church is the light of the world?  Most Christians don’t believe the Bible to be literal truth, so the church must mean some kind of spiritual truth, some kind of spiritual light that defies logic.  Sorry folks, but I see all this talk about “light” as sound and fury signifying nothing.  Theology is anti-intellectual, spiritual mumbo-jumbo wrapped up in a beautiful and convincing cloak of symbolism.  Any attempt to remove that cloak of symbolism is met with arguments that are impossible to argue with, like, the truth of God defies logic, or the truth of God is outside of science, or some other empty catchphrase.

To close, allow me to borrow some ideas from atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.  There was a time when the influence of the church far outweighed literacy and science.  It was known as the Dark Ages. (Yes, I went there.)  I believe most people recognize that an inquisitive mind is what leads to enlightenment.  Science has been a light to the world, opening doors that the church tries so hard to keep closed.  The inconsistent and bizarre teachings of the Bible pale in comparison to the beauty and grandeur of our natural world.  I have been enlightened by learning about history, chemistry, psychology, math, and astronomy.  I have been enlightened by reading beautiful works of literature.  In our understanding of life, Darwin shone a light—a brilliant beacon of light—that has taken human knowledge to a new plane.  Truly, these are the areas in which light as a symbol makes sense to me.  The church uses the symbol of light only to distract, dissemble, and darken.

Week 7: What is the Value of a Church Community?

"And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." -Ephesians 6:4

Let me begin with baptism, since it is the symbolic beginning of a child’s participation in a church community. Baptism creeps me out. (Baptism of infants, that is.) The child is completely oblivious. He or she is deemed to be part of a church community without having any say in the decision.

Would Jesus or God love the child less if it had not been baptized? Well for 7 centuries the concept of limbo existed as a place to put those children who die without baptism, but the Catholic Church officially decided it didn’t exist in 2005 (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1145257,00.html). The elimination of a hypothetical supernatural realm of existence surprisingly didn’t get much attention in the media. Anyway, I don’t think that most people really considered getting to heaven the true purpose of baptism. Rather, it is a symbolic gesture that the church will welcome the child as a Christian. The cynic in me says that it is the beginning of the child’s indoctrination.

The baptism was followed by a practice I’d never seen before. The pastor held the baby, then paraded it down the center aisle, showing it to each pew, saying that this is their new Christian brother. (Richard Dawkins writes about the flaw of referring to a “Christian child” or “Muslim child” since children are not yet old enough to choose for themselves.) Then, at the end of the aisle, she handed the baby to a random congregation member to carry back to mom and dad, saying that it was symbolic of how the whole church would raise the child.

It is fitting that I saw a baptism at this week’s outing, and consequently thought about how I was raised in a church, because I was there with my parents. Visiting my parents for the holidays gave me the opportunity to attend church with them right after Christmas. This was a highly uncomfortable experience for me, since my newfound atheism, still a secret from them, is in such profound conflict with their beliefs and lifestyle.

It’s like for the first time I’m a fish trying to understand the water. Since I was raised with those beliefs and lifestyle, since I was raised in a church community, my entire worldview is shaped by it. And here’s what’s weird—I think I’m better off for it. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I had a weekly prompting to think about life, to consider how I might live better, to give money as an act of selflessness, to learn about how the world works, and so on. I participated in youth group activities that had a variety of social and intellectual benefits, and were often fun as well. I made many friends, and the group of friends my parents made 30 years ago is still part of our lives.

For all these reasons and more, I recognize great value in having a church community, in following through on that promise made to the baptized infant.

But I cannot, as an atheist, accept the underlying reason for it all. My parents are aware that I’m not particularly religious anymore, but they continually stress the importance of being part of something. “How will you raise your kids?” they ask. For them, the many benefits of the community are perhaps even more important than the beliefs themselves. They think that only through a church community will children grow to be completely moral, well-rounded, good, stable people. Churches may indeed help to nurture children in those respects. But if, in doing so, churches connect all that good social nurturing to false claims, dogmatic teaching, and a worldview that discourages free thought, it may not be worth it.

The real question is this: is a church community the only way by which parents can raise good kids? This is a really tough one, because I must admit that young people I know who attend church are often better people for it. Will I deny my children (if/when I have any) that opportunity? What would we replace church with?

Character education comes primarily from the home and the parents. Sure, a weekly trip to church can reinforce things, but character education, I think, depends much more on the manner in which parents behave. But this is an incomplete answer. Children need social outlets and community environments that teach them in ways their parents cannot. I believe arts programs can be part of that. Athletics often foster sportsmanship, diligence, teamwork, etc. Summer camps that include academics or arts are available to parents who don’t want their kids to have to pray or be taught about the Bible.

A side note: I would like to say that youth organizations like the Boy Scouts are also great, because I had a great experience there, and it helped me to become who I am. Unfortunately, the Boy Scouts exclude atheists. That’s their right, of course, but that doesn’t make it right. They also exclude homosexuals. These two beliefs may help perpetuate good old, small town, Sarah Palin-style American values, but they are closed-minded and offensive. It pains me, but I am tempted to reject the Boy Scouts because it is a prejudicial organization. Does that negate all the good that came from it in my life? No, but it certainly taints it. I hope that eventually they’ll wake up and change, choosing to teach kids that people can be good even if they don’t believe in invisible, mind-reading, all-powerful friends who love them (but not if they’re gay).

Unfortunately, youth programs, arts, and athletics would not provide the same kind of stability that a church would. Those are temporary things, with transient social groups. The members of a church may change, but the entity will always remain, a rock in people’s lives. It’s very easy for me to say I don’t need that rock. I have a job, a loving family, a house, and a good group of friends. I am lucky to have a stable life. I hope some day I can introduce children into that stable life and raise them without relying on a church. I don’t want them to be part of a social institution that preaches unscientific nonsense, encourages conformity, draws its values from an ancient tribe of desert nomads, and, at times, propagates hate towards those who are different. I’ll take my chances finding and creating a community for myself and my kids elsewhere.

I left the bright, whitewashed walls of the southern Presbyterian church feeling guilty. My parents were thankful—almost giddy—that I had chosen to participate in that community with them rather than sleeping in during the holiday vacation. That guilt, which for years has been eating at me on Sunday mornings, still will not go away, despite my best efforts. I am confident in rejecting the idea of God, but not confident in rejecting all the rest of it.

Postscript: Baptism doesn’t give children a choice. However, I do appreciate that most churches place value on confirmation, which is the time when a youth can decide to remain part of the church or not. Unfortunately, by that time, the child has been trained to remain part of the community, so it’s not really a fair situation. I recall participating in my confirmation, and I was surprised that some members of my class chose not to join the church. Looking back, I realize that those young people had greater ability to think for themselves than I did at the time.

Week 6: An Evangelical Christmas Carol

“Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

            -from “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” by Herbert C. Woolston

“Scrooge became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”

-from A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

Christmas as an atheist is pretty strange.   Seems I can’t go anywhere without nativity scenes and angels reminding me that “Jesus is the reason for the season.”  I now get a small sense of what it must be like to be a Jew or Muslim living in America during Christmastime.  It’s pretty obnoxious.  Still, as an atheist I appreciate the gift-giving, the family time, the traditions, and the spirit of goodwill, all of which can be entirely secular. 

This week’s Churchgoing Atheist destination was an Evangelical church in a blighted urban neighborhood.  I wanted to see something really different from what I’m used to.  The website suggested I could find speaking in tongues—one of my goals for this project—so I went for it.

Well, there was no speaking in tongues, but in most other ways the Evangelicals lived up to my expectations:

• It was packed to overflowing, even in a neighborhood full of boarded up houses.  Clearly, people need hope. 
• There were no Bibles—because why constrain ourselves with, you know, book-learning and such, when you can just feel the spirit?
• The music was energetic and non-traditional.  Electric keyboards and drums, on a stage at the front, accompanied the songs.
• It was multicultural.  Many African Americans, some Spanish speakers, some speaking Asian languages, and many white people as well.  I admire the inclusiveness.
• Everyone seemed ridiculously happy.  If I’m to pursue this Churchgoing Atheist project, this is something I must come to terms with.  How can I defy and criticize institutions that bring such profound joy to people every day?  (Still, it’s a delusion!  Should happiness trump truth?)

I can’t say, however, that my first Evangelical experience was a typical one because the entire service was devoted to an elaborate Christmas play, which was performed by the many children and youth leaders of the church.  I was at first disappointed that the regular service was replaced by this extended children’s lesson, but as it got going, I became increasingly horrified at what I saw.

Horrified is a strong word.  It was a cute play. It was funny.  It was touching. It championed love and kindness.  It gave many little kids a chance to act and sing for a doting audience.  And since this church is so multicultural, it was like a miniature version of “It’s a Small World,” with children of all shades raising voices together in an act of cultural unity that the world doesn’t see enough of. 

Still, horrified. The original script of this play made fun of intellectuals who study the Bible.  It made fun of Jehovah’s Witnesses, by name, because they don’t celebrate Christmas.  But more offensive to me was its message of nonsense.  It featured a girl who “corrected” the belief that the Christmas story begins with the Virgin Mary.  She described how the prophet Isaiah had prophesied the coming of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6).  That prophecy probably had nothing to do with Jesus, but is pretty easy to apply to Jesus retroactively.  Couldn’t Isaiah have told us Jesus’s name?  Oh yeah, he did: “Emmanuel.”  That’s not “Jesus,” but nobody seems to care.  The nonsense got worse. To express how much earlier the Christmas story began, she referred to the famous opening of the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word.  She said that the Christmas story “began in the mind of God.”  How anyone could claim to know the mind of God, I don’t know.  This kind of meaninglessness persisted for some time.

The most memorable part of the play was an abbreviated production of A Christmas Carol.  After this play-within-a-play, the adult actor who played Scrooge had the opportunity to explain to the kids the meaning of the play.  He said that the Holy Spirit had visited Scrooge, and at the end of the play, Scrooge became a good person because he finally found Jesus.

What?  Scrooge found Jesus?  Was I supposed to get that from the ending of A Christmas Carol?

So I thought about this.  It is not outrageous to interpret the story this way.  I could see how Christians might view the spirits that visit Scrooge as the Holy Spirit.  Dickens was a believing Christian, so it’s possible.  And I could see that one might attribute Scrooge’s transformation to a religious conversion of sorts.  Since it takes place at Christmas, perhaps one could make the stretch that he “found Jesus.”  He became a good, charitable person who was filled with the Christmas spirit.  OK. 

But there are some problems with this interpretation.  The first is this: the word Jesus never appears in the book A Christmas Carol.  Not once.  If Dickens intended for us to read Scrooge’s transformation as “finding Jesus,” don’t you think he might have mentioned Jesus?  In order to write a Christmas story without mentioning Jesus, one would have to purposefully try to avoid it.  The absence of any mention of the “savior” is near proof that Dickens was not interested in the religious nature of the holiday.  In fact, “God” is barely mentioned at all—only a handful of times in phrases like “God bless you” and “God knows.”

But perhaps Dickens intended for the message to be implicit?  Doubtful.  Dickens rarely attempted to disguise his message for the reader.  He beats his readers over the head with his social commentary, so that they will make no mistake about the problems Dickens wishes to change.  A Christmas Carol is about kindness, generosity, love, charity, and compassion.  These are virtues that Dickens cherished, and we all should.  Christians have adopted them as “Christian virtues,” but that is an empty phrase.  They are human virtues.  No specific religion—nor even religion in general—has exclusive ownership of these virtues.  Dickens was championing an ethical approach to life (and coupling it with the holiday tradition to sell books), but by omitting Jesus entirely, it seems Dickens was making an attempt to divorce virtuous behavior from Christianity.  Indeed people do not need religion to teach them to be good.

Wait, you ask, wasn’t Dickens a Christian?  I’m no Dickens expert, but I believe he was, as nearly everyone in Victorian England had to be.  But his books are focused on social, political, and moral issues, and there is little sense of any benevolent divinity in them.  Even when he does explicitly refer to religious issues, it is in the context of social justice.  He probably best fits with a religious worldview that understands all religion to have the purpose of social justice.  Many people interpret the Gospels or other religious texts to be valuable primarily because they teach humans how to be good to one another.  For Dickens, salvation was not to be found in heaven, but in the social transformation of this world. 

Consider, for example, the end of Hard Times, when the character with the most Christian virtue, Stephen Blackpool, falls down a mineshaft.  He looks up at the star, and Dickens says it’s like the star that led the wise men to Jesus.  An explicit religious reference.  That star, however, symbolizes no saving Jesus, no merciful God, for Stephen Blackpool dies, and that’s that.  Stephen tells us what that star symbolizes to him: people should be kind to one another.  Stephen’s death illustrates that the heartless capitalist system of Victorian England victimizes good working people, and Dickens uses Stephen’s death to call for compassion and humanity in the industrial world. God is absent from the world of Hard Times, and I believe he is nearly absent from A Christmas Carol as well, or as absent as he can be in a story about Christmas.

I left the Evangelical church and their bizarre Christmas play feeling utterly sorry for those beautiful children.  Their incorrect lesson about Dickens may not matter much in the big picture, but the big picture does matter: churches teach falsehoods.  They present them with confidence and claim that those who don’t buy what they sell are missing something vital.  Churches may have good motives, but those children, all the little children of the world, are being brainwashed.  Why do they need to hear that Jesus loves them?  Why can’t it be enough to say that their parents, family, and friends love them?

 

Week 5: Is the Catholic Church…

…capitalized? To write this blog entry, I begin to type this question into Google. Wanted to make sure I capitalized the right words. But Google tried to predict my question, based, I presume, on the most common phrases typed into Google that begin like that. So before I got to “capitalized,” Google’s options were:

1) Is that Catholic Church a cult?

2) Is the Catholic Church the True Church?

3) Is the Catholic Church evil?

4) Is the Catholic Church the antichrist?

Allow me to answer these questions for the benefit of the world, since apparently a lot of people are wondering these things.

1) Defining “cult” is very slippery. Where is the line between a “mainstream religion” and a “cult”? The word cult has a negative connotation that members of mainstream religions like to give to people they find weird. As an atheist, I don’t see much difference between believing that David Koresh is the reincarnation of Jesus or believing that a divine power sent his only son to be murdered so that we could somehow be forgiven for things that god doesn’t like. Really—is it stranger to believe aliens are hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet or that Jesus will return to earth to yield a judgment sword? Improbable though it is, I’m inclined to think the Hale-Bopp comet “cult” had a better chance of being right. So the bottom line is, yes, the Catholic Church is a cult, but no more or less so than any other religious system that requires belief in the supernatural.

2) The True Church? What does that even mean? There are apparently a lot of people wondering if the Catholic Church was the first church, i.e. the church that began in the first century right after Jesus’s death. Well, there’s no doubt that it grew out of that initial community of believers, but so did every other church. More to the point, though, the answer is No because the Catholic Church that exists today probably looks absolutely nothing like the churches did in the first years after Jesus. Read the book of Acts for a sense of that first church. That and Paul’s letters in the New Testament are as close as we can get to knowing what it was like, and the Catholic Church’s emphasis on ritual, music, priesthood, and liturgy are drastically different from the charismatic, impassioned, spontaneous, spirit-driven worship of the first Jesus-believers. I heard once that the evangelical churches today are probably much more similar in nature to the first churches than Catholic or protestant churches are.

3) Yes, because it knowingly lies and shamelessly acquires wealth by deceiving people into giving them money. In my humble opinion.

4) No, because there is no such thing as the antichrist.

Now that we’ve got those big questions answered, allow me to pose my own questions about the Catholic Church. Is the Catholic Church…

…alive and well? Most certainly. This week the Churchgoing Atheist project took me to a Catholic Church, a place unfamiliar to me, a lifelong-protestant-turned-atheist. Of course I’d seen Catholic services in movies (like The Godfather, when all the murders happen) and I’d been to Catholic churches for weddings and funerals, but never had I been to the average run-of-the-mill service. I was amazed to find so many people there. 200? 300? There were more people at this service than had been at all the services of the previous four churches combined. My impression of the Catholic Church is that of a church lots of people belong to in name only, begrudgingly remaining Catholic because of lingering childhood guilt, and that prejudgment had led me to expect an empty church. I thought of Catholic Churches as dreary and dark, full of stodgy old people. I couldn’t believe the number of young couples, children, even teenagers. Everyone looked happy, or at least content. People were kneeling, praying with their eyes closed before the service began, something one rarely sees in protestant churches. I just didn’t expect the enthusiasm for a church that most Catholics I know don’t attend or attend only out of a feeling of obligation. This church was legitimately vibrant, and I was witnessing only one of the three services they hold each Sunday morning.

…subject to such strange questions on Google for good reason? I can understand people asking if the Catholic Church is the true church, because many people (like myself) question what they are told. It is perfectly reasonable to observe that there are hundreds if not thousands of variations of Christianity and wonder how that could be. Is it not strange that such disparate rituals and belief systems claim the same origin? Should we not ask what our belief in one of those systems implies about the truth of the other 99%? I can also understand the question about evil. History shows that the members of Catholic Church—in the name of the Catholic Church—have perpetrated war, murder, rape, theft, and so on. I do not wish to dwell on the evils that churches have historically done, because that subject gets a lot of attention from atheists already. Suffice to say, though, it’s a fair question. Is that Catholic Church a cult or the antichrist are nonsensical questions that I suspect get typed into Google by people who are taught to be prejudiced against Catholics. Who that might be, I can only speculate. (Mike Huckabee, I'm looking in your direction...)

…mindless? I would like to explore my protestant/atheist bias here—I don’t claim total neutrality in this project. My impression of Catholics is that they value mindless ritual over serious engagement in critical thinking. This impression comes from history class, in which we learned about the Reformation, from Catholics that I know, and from things people in protestant churches would tell me about Catholics. I believe protestant denominations, in general, encourage individual thought more than Catholics. Today’s service certainly reinforced this belief. To begin, there were no Bibles to be seen. There were books of liturgy—that is, choral responses, prayers, songs, etc.—on each pew, but no Bibles. If someone wanted to read for himself the day’s scripture, he could not. Second, the service consisted primarily of stock sayings that would be sung or spoken aloud by the congregation with no text or prompting. This suggests that the service follows the same pattern each week, and rote memorization or mindless parroting of responses allows one to participate. The sermon consisted of 10 minutes of meaningless platitudes about how God is present in our lives and brings joy to us even when we are unhappy. It did not refer to any book (other than the Bible), current event, or personal story. It did not challenge the listeners to contemplate. It merely reassured them that God was everywhere and his presence should make us happy. It was completely devoid of intellectualism. I admit that ritual has psychological value, but it seems that the Catholic Church places emphasis on ritual at the expense of critical thought. But I am open to having this belief disproved over the course of the project.

…charitable? Tough one. I believe the answer to be yes, because the hundreds of people who came to this service today brought Christmas presents for the poor. There was a huge stack of them. During the offertory, nearly everyone donated, and a second offertory was immediately held to raise money for a specific individual. This church must have raked in the cash. On the other hand, this church had the most beautiful interior I’d ever seen in an American church (I have seen cathedrals in Europe). I was struck by how a fairly bland-looking church in an urban neighborhood could have such ornate beauty inside. The wood paneling, the stained glass, the golden ornamentation, all suggest enormous cost. I can understand why people during the reformation got angry when they saw their hard-earned money contributing not to charity, but to the beautification of a building, the sole purpose of which was to make people so struck with awe that they would be more likely to give money. Still, I am sure the Catholic Church in general and this one in particular give away huge amounts of money to people who need it. This is a topic I’m interested in pursuing further, but not today.

…purposefully using guilt to control people? I just have to comment on this, since the notion of “Catholic guilt” is so prevalent. To what extent does the Church knowingly employ guilt to control people? Probably a lot, but no more so than many other denominations. I still get the guilt call from my mother, in which she expresses “disappointment” that I’m not in church on Sundays. (Why? Why disappointed? Would you prefer falsehoods and piety to truth and thoughtfulness?) I went to the Catholic Church today hoping to get some good juicy guilt preaching, but I didn’t. There were only two moments when the priest played the guilt card: the people weren’t “joyous” enough during the first hymn, and since the topic of today’s service was joy, he wanted to see them really get joyous on the second hymn. (They did not.) The second instance of the guilt card was during the children’s sermon, when he asked the children if they had all gotten their Christmas trees from this church’s Christmas tree sale. When one said no, everyone laughed, and he said, “It’s OK, there are a lot of good trees out there, but the best ones are here.” It was a subtle and harmless plug for the church’s Christmas tree fundraiser, not to the children but to the parents. Still, guilt card.

My call to Catholics: do not feel guilty for not going to church. I have spent many Sunday mornings feeling guilty for not being in church. Even if you believe in God, the notion of a God who actual cares whether you are “worshipping” him enough should be offensive to you. I tend to waste a lot of time checking fantasy football stats and drinking beer, so I sometimes feel guilty that I’m wasting my time, but I don’t feel guilty for missing a morning of being indoctrinated.

Week 4: The Quakers, Pearl Harbor, and the Hubble Telescope

John Proctor: I may speak my heart, I think!

Reverend Parris: What, are we Quakers?  We are not Quakers here yet, Mr. Proctor.

-from The Crucible, by Arthur Miller

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends.

-John 15:15

 

This week the Churchgoing Atheist project took quite a turn.  It involved a weekend trip to Philadelphia to meet some friends, and I wasn’t sure I’d want to find a church and attend services right before a five-hour drive home.  There was also a fair likelihood I’d be hung over.  So without planning for any church service, I went to Pennsylvania—a state that was founded for the sake of religious freedom.

I found myself walking the same streets that Ben Franklin had walked, wandering around Old City, wondering if he, too, had been tipsy on those streets.  And so I was already in this historical frame of mind, impressed with the aura of cobblestone and brick, when I realized my hotel sits right next to a Quaker meeting house from the early 1800s.  I knew little about the Quakers: their official name is the Society of Friends, they are most prevalent in southeastern Pennsylvania, and their meetings consist of sitting in a room and waiting for someone to be moved to speak.  That’s all I knew, so I could not pass up the opportunity to attend the Sunday morning meeting, especially in a historic building in charming Old Philadelphia.

This was also the first week of the project that I went somewhere completely foreign to me—I had no idea what to expect.  Luckily, they’re used to visitors since it’s one of the oldest meeting houses; they have brochures and books, like many historical landmarks.  I was a bit early, so I introduced myself to a gentleman setting things up, and asked if I might join them as a visitor.  Unlike my previous weeks, this didn’t feel like I was spying for some reason.  I was just a curious tourist, and they welcomed me. 

The room itself was nearly as I’d imagined: just four walls and benches facing each other to form a square.  The very layout emphasized the equality of all members of the Society of Friends.  There is no clergy or leader of any kind; volunteers from the membership make committees to handle nuts-and-bolts issues, but the essence of their belief system is that all people have equal access to wisdom.  I cannot help but compare this to most other Christian churches, in which the ordained minister or priest stands at the front, often elevated.  Surely this setup is practical, but it is also symbolic.  It creates a didactic tone, in which the seated listeners absorb wisdom from a standing fount of knowledge.  I’m sure this is an ancient religious practice, and I should point out that it’s a psychological tool.  It helps to establish the credibility and authority of the religious leader, which would help to perpetuate that leader’s beliefs.

So I meditated.  The meeting had begun, and nobody was moved to speak at first.  There were some thirty people filling the benches, most with their eyes closed, and so I tried to join in.  For me, meditation means trying to sit still.  It is torturous.  Searching for inner peace causes me anxiety and physical pain.  I am unable to sit still due to some combination of immaturity, lack of practice, and an irresistible compulsion to stretch and pop my knuckles and other joints.  Even writing that sentence makes me need to pop.  (Cure, anyone?  Please!)  So I thought, if this is what the Friends’ meetings will be like, count me out.  I was not quaking because I was not moved by the spirit.  I was not moved by the spirit, I conclude, because there is no spirit.

But I soon became moved.  A man rose to speak.  He said that he’s troubled by the approach of December 7^th.  He was a small man, but his voice was powerful, slow, emphatic, and I was fixed on his words.  He described being a young man during World War II, moving supplies to a car factory that had been retooled to make airplane engines for the British.  He reminded us that the war helped get the U.S. out of the Great Depression, and while the Europeans were fighting we were making money before 1941. We had no commerce with Hitler’s Germany, he said, but it is ironic that we did make money selling scrap metal to the Japanese.  He ended with this statement: I hope this country soon learns which end is up.  He needed say no more.  The weight of his statement was palpable.  Rarely, if ever, have I felt the power of an unspoken implication hang in a room.  I took his implication as follows: the US is in its 8^th year of war in Afghanistan.  We are fighting an enemy that we had helped to create and supply during the Afghans’ war against the Soviets—just like how in Iraq we fought an enemy we had helped create and train during the Iraqis’ war against the Iranians.  More broadly, we should resist violence and militarism rather than glorify them.  The passionate anti-war beliefs of Quakers were evident in this man, and I was indeed moved.

More meditating, and this time, there was more to think about.  Time passed.  I was thankful when another person rose to speak.  I regret that I can only paraphrase him, for his words were beautiful and articulate.  He began with a topic I’d recently heard about myself: the Hubble telescope can look at a patch of sky that has no stars in it and no light.  After collecting data for 10 days, a patch of sky the size of a grain of sand will yield dozens of new galaxies (http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/).  He said his first thought upon reading this was “wasteful God.”  Why would he make so much universe?  But then, he thought, the universe is like falling in love.  As you begin to, you realize there is more to a person than you can ever know.  You can continue to learn about a person forever, nearly getting lost in infinity.  Learning about the universe has transformed his conception of God, forcing him to question what Jesus’s role is, and how his words can carry meaning in light of everything we now know about the universe.  And he concluded that Jesus had a simple message: love one another as Jesus loved us.  Learning about the universe doesn’t negate that, but complements it.  Both lead to grace.

Honestly, I found the speaker’s words inspirational.  Never have I seen this kind of sincere questioning and exposure of a person’s beliefs in a church.  I appreciate the Quakers’ acceptance of skepticism and their willingness to challenge conventional understandings of God in light of things like war and science.  Certainly this happens in other churches, but it is laid bare in the Friends’ meetings by average people.  Still, I must question: what is grace?  What does that word mean?  If Jesus’s words lead to love, are we defining grace as love?  Or happiness?  Or peace?  Or beauty?  Any of those words would be more meaningful to me than “grace.”  Many times have I heard, “May the grace of the lord Jesus Christ be with you forever and always,” or some similar platitude, without attempting to understand what that means.  Still, I admire this man’s eloquent words, and his awe at the majesty of the universe is something I share.  We need not see a divine creator’s hand in it, though.

I tried to meditate more, fidgeting less as I now had even more to think about.  I wasn’t really meditating.  In between thinking about war and the universe, I recalled some events from last night’s intoxicated blur.  Many Sunday mornings in college I thought about how I should be in church to somehow atone for the previous night’s revels.  Guilt is powerful, and churches serve to both create it and alleviate it.  But as an atheist, I seek no divine forgiveness, and I do not need church to somehow cancel out mistakes.  That was no different this morning, but still…quiet reflection—specifically about how one might live better—has much value.  I believe this is why many people go to church.  They don’t necessarily believe in a personal God that can hear their prayers and spends his time judging their every move.  Rather, they acknowledge that church is a valuable tool, a mechanism by which they can understand their own mistakes and make right in the future.  My mistakes?  Well, choosing Bud Light rather than a slightly more expensive option.  But seriously, wastefulness, selfishness, and immaturity.  But I knew all this already.  It doesn’t hurt to sit and think about it occasionally, but we must recognize that it is not God we offend, nor is there some good and evil balance up there in the sky that will tilt this way or that.  Rather, actions must be measured according to the joy or harm they bring to living things in this life.  This I believe, and I intend to pursue an understanding of morality in the weeks to come.

Finally meditating, now, I was nearly startled when the last person rose to speak.  She explained that she had spent a week serving on a jury, debating whether or not to convict a young man of a crime.  She had gotten to know 11 other jurors well, each of which came from a different background and religious persuasion from her own.  They had grown to understand and respect each others’ viewpoints, and the process had made her a better person.  She took to heart the words of the judge, to think of each person in the case as though he/she was a member of their own families.  The speaker said she came to a new understanding of the meaning of empathy. 

Jesus said, “I was in prison, and you visited me” (Matthew 25).  The Quakers have long been advocates for justice and compassion in the criminal justice system, and the speaker’s words reminded me of Jesus’s.  How many Christians hear this message?  How many Christians who believe life is sacred actually visit prisoners, or even treat them with dignity and compassion?  I cannot say, but I can say that in 20+ years of attending church, I cannot recall a single instance of mission work in prisons.  I certainly never would have gone. 

The meeting soon ended, and I made my way home, highly impressed.  This group of people showed that the Quaker traditions of nonviolence, social justice, and open-mindedness are alive and well.  I felt I had been sitting in a room of thinkers—that is not to say that thinkers do not exist in all churches, but rather that the Quaker church places such high value on individual thought that it forms the entire foundation for the service, whereas in other religions, thinking takes a back seat to liturgy, music, unison responses, and other traditions.  (Perhaps this overgeneralization will be confirmed or challenged in upcoming weeks and months.)  So to conclude, I return to John Proctor’s line from The Crucible that I cite in the opening.  As a Puritan, Proctor is scolded for speaking his heart.  Quakers were instrumental in founding Pennsylvania as a haven of religious tolerance because they believe that reasonable people must be allowed to speak their hearts.  The authoritarian character Parris criticizes Proctor and the Quakers for the very belief that should be most lauded, a belief essential for democracy, essential to a tolerant society.  I may be an atheist, but I write this blog because I feel compelled to speak my heart, as the Quakers do.

Week 3: Jesus is Everywhere, Man

“Nowhere man, please listen.”

-The Beatles

“And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.”

-Common phrasing during church communion ceremonies

A few items about my Sunday morning before we get to the church.  I began by lying to my brother.  He was visiting for Thanksgiving, and I have not yet told my friends or family about my little project, so I couldn’t tell him the real reason for my going to church.  He had to leave to drive home, so I knew he wouldn’t want to go along, so I was able to say I’ve been looking around at churches, conveniently leaving out that I was doing so as an atheist researcher-critic-spy.  I’m not exactly “out” as an atheist—not entirely.  When the subject comes up among my co-workers or friends, I’ll express my skepticism, or depending on the company, my outright disbelief.  But the family is a different issue.  Most of them are believing Christians.  I’ll have to confront that down the line.

Second item from Sunday morning: as I was lying to my brother, I was watching Fox News Sunday.  I had the pleasure of listening to former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee talk about health insurance as though he cared about logic and reason.  He will attempt to use logic to fight against the Democratic initiative of providing health care to the poor.  However, he will reject logic if it runs counter to the creation story in Genesis.  I fondly recall the presidential debate in which he said that he didn’t know about evolution because he wasn’t there when God created the heavens and the earth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-BFEhkIujA). It’s funny and terrifying to me that this kind of thinker is shaping millions of opinions.  But I’m not too worried about another Huckabee presidential run, because a majority of the nation, I trust, realizes it would be a mistake to elect someone who’s an even bigger religious nut than Bush.  Also, coincidentally, at the very time I was watching Huckabee on Fox News, four police officers were being shot in Washington State by a career felon that Huckabee had granted clemency to and released from prison as governor of Arkansas.  This tragedy will stick with him, I suspect.

Third item from Sunday morning: apparently WCMF does “Breakfast with the Beatles” on Sundays, so my stumbling upon the Beatles three weeks in a row is not divine providence.  It’s just a program I was unaware of since only recently have I started doing something on Sunday mornings other than sleep, watch political talk shows, and play video games.  (I did those things for years on Sunday mornings before I became an atheist, so don’t be too quick to blame the atheism for my laziness.)  Today’s show presented me with “Nowhere Man,” and I think the Beatles’ exhortation to “please listen” is apropos for this morning’s trip.

I was hoping to hear some speaking in tongues, frankly.  The website said that the this week’s church (a different Reformed church from last week) has a healing service in the last Sunday of each month, and those who wish can have hands laid upon them for healing.  I wanted to see that in person, because when I see it on TV (Sunday mornings, surfing channels during the commercials) it seems staged and unbelievable.  Unfortunately, nothing remotely like that took place, so I was confused and disappointed.  I intend to seek out and find some faith healers before this project is over.

I was hoping to hear some good Christmas music. I used to genuinely look forward to Advent services; Christmas music really does move the soul.  But for the first Sunday in Advent, this was one lifeless place.  Yes, they sang some hymns and played the organ, but there was no joy.

I was hoping to hear a sermon with a little more substance than last week’s.  So I listened, and determined the truth or falsity of some of the snippets. 

This is what I heard.  “Jesus was one of us.”  True.  This was the theme of the sermon, which the pastor repeated to emphasize Jesus’s humanity. Jesus was indeed human.

I also heard this: “Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit?  Yeah, right.”  My sentiments exactly.  Here, the pastor was conveying the attitudes that must have confronted the young Joseph and Mary when it was discovered the unmarried couple was going to have a child.  He avoided coming right out and saying the virgin birth was true or untrue; I couldn’t tell what he believed about it.  I imagine he wanted it that way, since it is indeed a touchy subject for any liberal-minded religious leader.  Even the Bishop of Oxford admits that it’s not essential for Christians to really believe in the virgin birth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S--X7n3TxI).

I also heard this: To merchants, Christmas is an opportunity to fill their registers.  True.  The pastor took the first Sunday in Advent as an opportunity to remind people of the fact that Jesus is the reason for the season.  I, too, am somewhat turned off by the rampant materialism in our society, and I don’t mind if churches combat this.  Family, fellowship, and a spirit of giving make Christmas a holiday worth keeping.

So there were some parts of the sermon I agreed with.  But…

I also heard this: “Satan said ‘yes’ to death, and God said ‘no’ to death.” False.  I think this was to illustrate that Jesus rose from the dead, but the speaker introduced Satan out of nowhere at the end of a meandering sermon, so I’m really not sure what this was supposed to mean.  Since both are fictional anyway, I’ll move on.

I also heard this: “To many of us, Jesus is a brother and a heartwarming friend.”  Perhaps true in people’s minds, but false in reality.  We should have relationships with real people, find inspiration in learning, and find comfort in truth.

I also heard this: “Jesus is one of us.”  False.  Jesus is nowhere, man.  This was the dramatic climax of the sermon, in which the speaker transitioned from past tense (“was one of us”) to present tense.  His point was to emphasize that Jesus is alive in people’s hearts and minds.  Yes, people may believe in Jesus and that might make him real in a metaphysical way, but it’s wish-thinking, so we should ultimately reject it, even if that belief itself does have some positive results. 

…Or maybe this is true.  Jesus’s molecules may very well be part of us.  Mathematicians have estimated the number of molecules that will be part of a given individual’s body and the likelihood that those atoms might be recycled by the environment and end up as part of us.  I am not a mathematician, and I don’t necessarily trust all the assumptions made in this calculation, but if it’s anywhere in the ball park, then it’s quite likely that we all contain some atoms that once belonged to Jesus.  So I guess Jesus isn’t the nowhere man—more like the everywhere man, though not in the way my church told me when I was little.  And now that I think about it, that bread we eat might actually be Jesus’s body.  (Judge the math for yourself.  It was done for Shakespeare, but the same reasoning would apply to Jesus. http://www.jupiterscientific.org/review/shnecal.html).

Since I was listening so closely, I’ll end with some commentary, not about the substance I heard, but about its presentation.  Why do religious leaders need to speak in such an unnatural way?  OK, I’m fine if they speak slowly.  That’s good practice when speaking publicly.  They want people to really hear and think about their words.  Good.  And I get that they’re impassioned, so emphasizing words and taking dramatic pauses is part of the passion.  There’s an element of entertainment in what they do, and they need to keep people listening. 

But there are aspects of the speech I’ve heard recently that are just obnoxious.  They leave pauses in random places: “This is the (pause) day the Lord (pause) has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad (pause) in it.”  It’s difficult to recreate in text, but anyone who’s been to a church probably knows what I’m talking about.  It’s as though religious speakers need to give additional weight to their words with an affected style of speech.  The quotation at the start of this entry about breaking bread is another example.  The speaker uses the archaic “brake” for the past tense, rather than “broke.”  This is the wording in the King James Bible.  I would not have an issue with this, except that nowhere else in the service did he use a King James translation.  It’s as though the formal sound of the archaic word “brake” somehow adds extra importance to the act.  (Though many people probably thought he was speaking poor English: “He break the bread…”)

I think there’s probably a very logical explanation for the value religious speakers place on an elevated tone. Our brains learn to process language in different tones differently, so a police officer or business executive or salesperson uses a tone suitable for his/her specific purposes.  (Can you imagine if your waiter spoke like your priest?)  Speech about religious material is sacred by nature, and a tone of high reverence has probably always helped to lend the appropriate weight to those words.  I suspect a particular manner of speech has evolved during the thousands of years humans have been telling sacred stories.  The extent to which some speakers take this, however, is ridiculous, such that the manner of speaking obscures rather than enhances the meaning of the words.  It becomes a distraction.  It is a tool by which religious speakers convey that what they say is deep and profound and listeners have been trained to process the tone of voice rather than process the meaning of the words themselves.  Caveat: this is certainly not true for all religious leaders.  I was married by one who gave intelligent, eloquent sermons in speech that was engaging and unpretentious.  But during my first three weeks of the Churchgoing Atheist project, I’ve noticed the affected speech a lot—from the pastors in weeks 2 and 3 and many of the lay people reading prayers or Bible passages.  

Thanks for sticking with me on this entry.  When you really listen, there’s a lot to talk about, and I intend to keep listening.