What Are the Jehovah's Witnesses Like?

“As faith grows in your heart, you will find it hard to keep what you have learned to yourself.” –A Jehovah’s Witnesses publication

What is Easter with the Jehovah’s Witnesses like? I wouldn’t know, because it’s not open to the public.

I had been looking forward to going to a Jehovah’s Witnesses’ service for a long time, but had been unable to figure out how. They are the only denomination that doesn’t post their worship times outside their churches (they call the buildings Kingdom Halls). They also do not post their worship times on their websites. I got handed a brochure once in the supermarket parking lot, and it also lacked any specific information about when or how to join them for a service. Frustrated and perplexed, I put them on hold, waiting for them to come to my door. Which they did, last week.

I did not have the courage to invite them in and tell them I am an unbeliever who is interested in a theological debate. Perhaps next time. But I did accept their “invitation” to join them for a “memorial of Jesus’s death.” It was held on what other Christians call Palm Sunday, one week before Easter.

Another blog entry will follow about the theology of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Today’s is dedicated to the closed-door nature of their organization. It’s ironic that for a group so famous for their evangelism, they are so difficult to visit. I showed up at the worship service indicated on my “invitation.” Dressed in my only suit, I entered a small building packed with perhaps 100 people. A few people greeted me, but mostly I went in uninterrupted. It looked like most of the seats had been reserved with coats and Bibles and things, so I looked a bit confused trying to find a place to sit. A young man about my age asked me if I was visiting and said I could sit next to him. Thanking him, I asked if there was a program or bulletin. Nope, only a songbook. Every other church I’ve been to has a bulletin which announces weekly events, names of church leaders, etc. Many have specific information just for visitors. The service had none of that information either. There were no announcements about the weekly youth group meeting, the Bible study session or mid-week prayer time. It was just a welcoming, the sermon (more on that later), contemplation of the bread and wine, a word for the visitors, and that’s it.

It all started to come together for me when the man next to me asked me what religion I was when I told him I was visiting. I said not really anything. He said, “Just, sort of Christian?” and I said, “No, not really anything. I just decided to come out of curiosity when the people came to my door.” He said, “That’s fine, this service is open to the public.”

Open to the public? What an odd thing to say. It implies that some meetings are not open to the public. My suspicions were reinforced when they had a “special announcement” towards the end for visitors. The speaker said that any visitors were invited back to another service in two weeks’ time to explore Biblical teachings. Two weeks? That means that on Easter, no visitors were allowed. How odd is it that a religious group would have some services open to the public and others only for those in the fold? Certainly it’s their right, but it’s strange, especially for a group so dedicated to attracting converts.

Their means of getting those converts is often referred to or mocked in the media. There’s a Seinfeld episode (“The Opposite”) in which Elaine gets kicked out of her apartment, and one of the reasons is that she buzzed Jehovah’s Witnesses into the building and it took hours to get them out. The door-to-door method seems intrusive, out-of-date, and ineffective. Yet, they persist with it. They must get 100 people who ignore or reject them for every one idiot like me who shows up. But their method relies on face time, which can be powerful. Their bread and butter is the individual Bible study session. I had 3 separate people offer to join me for a Bible study session between my chair and the door as I was leaving. Once you’ve expressed some interest, it seems they press you with a personal but very regimented system of teaching to draw you in. It must work, because they claim somewhere between 7 million and 18 million believers. Their official website, www.watchtower.org, has a prominent link on the homepage for an individual study session. More on the watchtower later as well.

Here’s another strange thing: the 3 people who offered to study the Bible with me were all young white men in their 20s or 30s. This was in a congregation comprised of all ages and colors. It was as though I were targeted by certain members because of my demographics. Coincidence? Perhaps. But I got the strong sense that there is heavy training involved in how to evangelize, because all 3 people said nearly the same thing, and matching demographics struck me as one of the tactics.

Upon leaving the service, I was, as always, full of mixed feelings. The people all seemed nice and normal, like any other churchgoing people I’ve encountered. I had no reason to criticize them any more than I’d criticize any set of believers. I didn’t want to come into this week with a prejudice, that I had to find something to mock in the Jehovah’s Witnesses. But I cannot get around the uncomfortable feeling of secrecy and cultishness that I left with. I’m sure their kindness and openness is genuine in their eyes. But it is in part false. It must be false if it is shaped by a centralized system, which indoctrinates and controls the thought of its members even more strongly than most other religious organizations. A more detailed blog entry about the content of the service and their beliefs will follow soon…

Catholics: What Century Are You Living In?

-I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful. –Pope John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 4

-Let no one deceive you with shallow arguments. –Ephesisans 5:6

Women can’t be priests? Really? Forgive me for beginning with such an obvious and tired old subject, but really?

Catholics are generally an educated bunch. So why do so many accept such an obviously discriminatory policy? I believe that no Catholic should accept the teachings of their church because it is officially a discriminatory organization. Only years of indoctrination can cause an educated person to overlook this outrageous fact.

I’ve heard some Catholic leaders explain why women can’t be priests. Their reasoning is wildly nonsensical. It should be offensive to anyone with a brain. In fact, I’ll refer to today’s passage from the scripture and encourage readers to take it to heart: “Let no one deceive you with shallow arguments…Learn to judge for yourselves what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:6-10). Each Catholic should judge for himself or herself whether they want to swallow the backwards teachings of a religious group mired in the past, blind to equality and reason. Just google “Why can’t women be priests” and read the insulting games of logic for yourself.

But none of this is actually what church this week was about. It’s just what I thought of as I sat in a crowded, downtown Catholic church waiting for the service to begin. I watched people genuflect before entering the pews. I watched them cross themselves. I listened to songs in Latin. And I began to wonder whether religious people place more value in things just because they have always been done than in their own ability to think.

The priest’s sermon had some really strong points that I agree with, but ultimately led me to ask the same question. What century are they in? He referenced a story from the Gospel of John, in which Jesus heals a blind man. The people asked what the blind man had done to deserve his blindness, and Jesus said nothing—he was blind so that God could reveal his glory by healing him.

OK, so that guy is pretty lucky. Jesus heals him, he can see, dances off down the street, whatever. Everyone’s amazed at God. Excuse me, but what about all the blind saps that Jesus didn’t heal? Why did God make them blind? Couldn’t he just show his power more effectively by miraculously making everyone able to see. No wait—why stop there. He could miraculously make everyone healthy. Oh, and make enough food for everyone to eat. Heck, he could throw in ice cream stands on every street corner in the deserts of Israel. Seems to me there are better ways for God to show his glory.

Ah, but I’m being unfair. The priest wasn’t interested in all these potentialities. He was merely trying to extract from this ancient and probably untrue story a reasonable lesson for today’s listeners. And it is here that I must admit he had some good things to say. He was addressing some real and serious issues that we all think about. Why is there suffering? Why is there illness? How are we to respond to pain? He told a story about a person with Downs Syndrome and how she brought much joy to the lives of people she touched. He suggested that all people have gifts to bring, that all people can make life better for others. He made the beautiful point that we should not measure quality of life by physical ability. The disabled, sick, and elderly are equally human, and we should not as a culture be afraid of physical diminishment. What does it mean to be fully alive?

I’m glad I went to this church and heard this lesson. Indeed, I am better off for hearing and pondering this message.

At the same time, I am deeply angry. He suggests that we should explain away suffering as something that God wants. Suffering as we think of it—well, that’s not actually suffering. If you think that blindness is bad, you’re just not getting it. If you think that a child dying of cancer is bad, well, you’re just missing the point. If you think that someone being born without legs and consequently being forced to beg for pennies next to a trash heap in Nepal is bad, then you’re not realizing God’s true purpose.

If it is for the glory of God that these people suffer, as Jesus suggests in John 9:3, nobody should worship that God. They should reject him.

Thankfully, it is not for the glory of any god that people suffer. If it were, that would be a cosmic cruelty without reason for hope. Rather, suffering has reasons that we can understand and do something about. We might not be able to cure blindness or cancer yet, but perhaps someday. We might not be able to give people legs, but perhaps someday. And until that day, we can organize human civilization in intelligent ways that respect the dignity of all and ease suffering everywhere. Pie in the sky? Unrealistic? Cheesy? Yes, all of the above, but certainly better than worshipping the imaginary being who caused the suffering for his own glorification. We should be beyond that in the 21^st century.

Jesus ends the story of the blind man with this observation: “It is for judgement that I have come into this world—to give sight to the sightless and to make blind those who see…If you were blind you would not be guilty, but because you claim to see, your guilt remains” (John 9:39-41). The Catholic Church would do well to heed Jesus’s words. They claim to see. Jesus himself says that those people who claim to have all the answers are the most ignorant. But wait, churchgoingatheist, wouldn’t that apply to arrogant bloggers like yourself? To anyone? Yes, I suppose it would. Jesus’s words create a paradox, by which nobody can ever speak to anything with authority. Another logical trap, causing people to remain in perpetual ignorance rather than thinking for themselves.

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.

Week 10: An Atheist Feels the Gospel Spirit

I’m in way over my head.  There have only been a handful of times in my life when I’ve said to myself, “How the hell did I get myself here?”  Shivering in the dark with no car on a Cree Indian reservation in northern Quebec.  Stopped at a military checkpoint in Nepal with drugs (not mine) in the car.  Standing on top of a spikey, iron stockade fence, trying to untangle my pants, so I could escape a graveyard.  Yes, that about sums up the most adventuresome moments of my life.

But here’s an honorable mention: church this week.  I realized that I have no idea what I’m doing on this project.  It seems simple enough.  Just visit a church each week.  And it is that simple, and I plan to continue doing it, but this week was the first time when I just thought, “What the hell am I doing?”  I thought this during the few seconds it took the pastor to walk down the aisle and hand me a microphone, as 200 African American faces turned around to look at the white atheist in the back row explain why he’d sat down in their church.  The pastor had asked if there were any visitors.  What was I going to do, blend in?  Hope nobody had noticed me?  So I had raised my hand and stood up.

Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic.  It was just a church like thousands of others.  But toward the end of the service, as I sat and watched people falling on the ground in hysterical shrieking prayer, I realized that I just don’t know shit about religion.  My upbringing, my religious study, my book-learning, my self-indulgent Churchgoing Atheist project—it is all dwarfed by everything I don’t know.

So let’s get the easy things I do know out of the way first.  First, people look ridiculous when they are screaming and crying about God in a wild frenzy.  Most observers would laugh if they were not wide-eyed with incredulity. Second, I am a voyeur who deceived good people in order to write about how they are delusional.

But when I stood up I didn’t say that, of course.  I was partially truthful.  I told them my name, and that I had seen their church on the news when they donated all the collection money to Haiti earthquake relief, and that their church had looked like a joyful, interesting place and I wanted to visit.  Everyone said “Welcome”—and a few said “Praise God!”—and I took my seat.

Now on to the tough stuff.  I’m not going to criticize these churchgoers for their worship style.  To do so would be a failure to recognize the dramatic difference in culture.  To expect them to act “normal” according to my white-middle-class norms would be narrow-minded and ignorant.  It would be arrogant at best and racist at worst.  Besides, I already decided I don’t know shit.  But all this is beside the point, because I don’t want to criticize the service anyway.  I loved it.  (Well, some of it.)

My experience with religion has been narrow.  Even for this blog, I’ve gone to a fairly similar group of churches.  Never had I seen anything like this.  This church was genuinely uplifting.  People had passion!  There was a raw, naked, honest quality to impassioned worship that I have never seen before.  The music was deeply moving.  I don’t believe in God, I don’t think Jesus is listening, I don’t think there’s an invisible holy spirit in the room with me, and even I was nearly moved to tears.  It was joyous, infectious. 

There’s something about a specific organ sound that gets me.  Not a church pipe organ, but a jazz organ, a gospel organ.  That vibrating sound that warms the bones.  It’s a living thing.  And the jazz organ played for nearly the whole two hours.  It sang during the hymns, riffed during the prayers, and conversed with the pastor during the sermon.  It pumps life into the soul, even of an unbeliever.

Please don’t get the idea that I’m converting.  Still pretty confident there’s no god.  But I have to say, if gospel churches dropped Jesus and just started worshipping the gospel organ, I’d consider it. 

The atheist worldview, however, dilutes all of those good feelings.  The joy one feels is cheapened when one recognizes what’s actually going on, even if only imperfectly.  The bottom line is this: all the passionate worship, the hysterical prayer, the uplifting message—it’s all a mistake.  Once we begin with the premise that there isn’t a god that's listening to any of that, the atheist eyes begin to understand, and it’s way more complicated than simply explaining it away with God.

What I see is a fascinating combination of history, culture, biology, and psychology.  Trying to explain this complex blend of factors could fill a library.  I’ll just take one aspect that intrigued me.  Since I loved the organ, I'll build on that—there was an improvisational quality to the whole service.  Yes, there was a bulletin with a plan for the service, but each part of the service was flexible and open-ended.  The prayers seemed unscripted.  The band played along without music.  The congregation spoke or stood whenever they were moved to.  It was as though the speakers and the singers and the band and the congregation (or audience, if I may) were all interacting parts, playing off one another in a grand improvisation.  And this improvisation is part of black culture.  Jazz grew out of it.  Rap grew out of it.  Certain kinds of dance grew out of it.  And all of those cultural ingredients were in the religious stew that I tasted.

Several days later and I’m still not sure what to make of it all. Part of me wants to laugh and sneer and mock.  Part of me wants to pity them for wasting such time and energy.  Part of me wants to recognize that their lives are filled with joy and community so even if they’re “wrong” it doesn’t matter.  And part of me wants to just join in and feel the love.

I can’t just feel the love, though, if my head says it’s an illusion.  Still, I get the attraction of it all.

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.