11-Oct-2007: I don't think I'm a Christian anymore...if I ever was one
The immediate cause of this questioning of faith was the ugly debate throughout the world-wide
Anglican
communion, pitting those who fear their fellow humans against those who try to follow
Christ's teachings on acceptance and love—no matter if they are the scum-sucking tax-collectors,
gutter prostitutes, strange people with odd behaviour, etc. We are
all God's children—not just
those we approve of.
You probably notice I am not using polite words anymore in this debate. The homophobes are so firmly
in control that even the Canadian Anglican church, at its general synod held this past summer, refused to endorse
a small token gesture towards my gay brothers and sisters. They rejected the
blessing of same-sex
unions. We're not talking about marriage here (which is legally recognized in Canada); we are talking about
the type of ceremony we share with animals on St. Francis of Assisi's feast day. Canadian Anglicans cannot even
bring themselves to recognize that maybe, just perhaps, gay couples deserve a bit more than the regard we give animals.
I haven't stepped inside an Anglican church in nearly two years and I have no plans to change that relationship.
The United Church of Canada does not have a problem with gay members of our communities. They can marry and be ordained.
(I'm not sure if that is the correct word when applied to the United Church, but, I mean its equivalent: permission to
lead in worship and the sacraments.) I did check our local United Church and, indeed, they are true to their word. I
don't know what they did with their homophobes (maybe prayed with and educated them? what a radical idea, so far beyond
what other churches seem capable of), but they are not in evidence.
Given that, I still have a problem with the organized churches. Anglican hypocrisy just brought it to the surface and helped
frame a structure of words around what I was feeling.
Let's step back a bit.
When I was very young I did not worry about God and what lay behind creation. I was too busy
observing and absorbing the world around me. Everything was new and fresh and just
was. Then a relative talked my mother into sending me to
Sunday school. I can remember overhearing the conversation, though I no longer recall details of what was actually said. I think I did hear
something about how it would be
good for me. So, I dutifully went to the small Baptist church near home every Sunday morning—
alone. My parents never attended church. In fact, my father was an avowed atheist all his life, thinking all that religious stuff was nonsense. My mother
converted to Roman Catholicism two days before she died "just in case." That pretty much sums up her religious attitudes.
So, I sat quietly while sincere people told me stories from the Old Testament and had me draw pictures of "many-coloured coats," "burning bushes," and other interesting
things that I had no concept of. They told me about how angry the guy who made the universe is. He is always "striking" people dead, or sending plagues, floods, and
fire and brimstone down on us. Worse yet, he was soon going to send all his angels to earth to kill everyone. Then they'd pick over the bodies
and decide who they were going to revive and take to heaven. Somehow, I was supposed to be happy about all this death, destruction, and terror from on
high. They had us sing cheerful songs about it. They used bits of cloth on felt-board to show how the human heart is physically changed by sin. I
imagined that when we died someone would cut our bodies open to check on how black the heart was before deciding where to ship our remains.
You might laugh at that, but to me it was deadly serious. I sometimes wonder how many heart attacks today are caused by these and similar ideas
planted deep in our brains when we were children. I did not regard angels as our friendly feathery friends. They were something to be feared with their
merciless slaughtering. I had nightmares about winged creatures with huge curved swords swooping down on fleeing neighbours. Still, everyone at the church
was kind to me and they organized fun events, like Easter Egg hunts. As for all children everywhere, the world around me was a given. It was just how things
were.
Fortunately my parents divorced when I was eight years old, so I was freed from that particular propaganda pit. The people who looked after me for the
next few years were Anglican. There was no talk about a vengeful angry God there. Instead we were given small books containing prayers and
creeds to memorize and recite. This was a kind of ritualistic formal device that suited a small lonely and confused boy. It was comforting to know there
was a world order that stretched far beyond my little world. (Perhaps that's where part of the appeal of the Roman church lies.) Instead of simple songs
framed like popular music, we had a huge booming pipe organ and hymns that moved with majestic dignity, celebrating the wonder of creation and of the
creature who built it.
Fast forward to eighteen, when I was in a drifting period. I had dropped out of school and couldn't hold a job longer than a few weeks. When I completely ran out of
funds I telephoned a man whom I had stayed with briefly a few years earlier.
John Lee, now a retired professor, was running a "Peace Camp" that summer and
invited me to stay for a few days while we figured out my next move. The Peace Camp, located in the rectory and buildings surrounding the
Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown
Toronto (the church was later surrounded by a shopping centre, but it still ministers). The camp was part of a series of summer camps across Canada that were
organized by the
Student Christian Movement. The SCM, was, in some ways, a precursor of the
counterculture revolution in Canada. Students would join together in groups
with specific themes, like "factory workers," or "poverty," or "inner city," and the students in these groups would work in the assigned field, sharing their thoughts and insights
in "camps," often set up in church rectories or similar buildings, where they stayed throughout the summer. The SCM was very closely related to both the
Anglican and United churches.
It was there that I met my first peace activists. I was in awe of a young man on a hunger strike to promote world peace. It was such a new thing at the time
that a reporter from the CBC came to the camp to interview him. I joined them in a massive sit-down strike at an American Bomarc missile base in northern Québec
called LaMakaza that made the cover of MacLean's magazine. A picture of me holding a sign that read: "Non! à la Bombe H" (the demonstration
was in Québec
after all) appeared on the back cover of the Student Christian Movement's national publication. The caption beneath the photo read: "A Christian takes a stand."
After the camp ended I stayed with a group of students sharing a house near the University of Toronto. Every Sunday morning we'd troop to the nearest Anglican Church
on Huron Avenue, and a young priest would return to our home to share lunch and talk. People in the house were connected to the Student Christian Movement and the
national secretary, Alice Heap, lived near us with her family and husband,
Don Heap . The Heap home was a centre of activist goings-on.
And, as Don Heap was an ordained
Anglican priest (his "parish" was among the factory workers where he was a union organizer), meetings would often end with the celebration of communion. I stayed with
the Heaps's for about six months at one time. During that period, Don went to Selma, Alabama for that huge protest led by Martin Luther King. He later went on to become
a City of Toronto councillor, then was in Ottawa for several years as a Member of Parliament. I think you must be getting the picture by now: the influences in my life
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one were religious leaders who took action in the face of injustice and falsehood. I should mention Rabbi Abraham Feinberg of Holy Blossom
Temple, who delighted us with stories about his meeting in Northern Vietnam with "Uncle Ho," as he called Ho Chi Minh, flatly contradicting the lies that the Americans were
spreading (those lies that eventually caused the Americans to lose the war).
After I moved to Montréal in 1967, the Student Christian Movement seemed to fade away, but my interest in religion did not. I majored in the study of world
religions (comparative studies) and went on to complete the course requirements for a master's degree in that subject. I did not attend church. Instead I visited ashrams and
Zen meditation centres, though I never became a member of any group. I stood slightly apart from enthusiasts and practitioners. I met and got to know Bah'ais, gurus, Muslims, communists,
Hindus, Jews, and many Buddhists. I met people from all parts of the world, including Vietnam, and deserters from the American army. Because I had read parts of the major holy
books of the world like
The Upanishads, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Baghavageta, the writings of Lao T'zu, Confucius, the Koran, The Book of Mormon, many legends and myths, as well as a
thorough study of the Old and New Testaments,
some young people regarded me as some sort of leader, but I always pushed sycophants away. Whenever someone thought they had me pegged I switched ground. If they asked
if I intended to enter the priesthood, I would laugh and say, "No, they don't want people who know too much."
After university life, I entered my period of exile, teaching in a small town in Northern Québec. I was emotionally wounded and needed to heal. My students
were Algonquians, and French- and Irish-Canadians. I was searching for a calm centre and I occassionally saw it in some of the Algonquin folks I got to know. Their attitudes
towards some of my concerns were so different from mine. For example, concepts like ownership and property were referred to as "white man's law." If I was at a stop sign and a group of Algonquin
needed a lift, they would simply crowd into my car and tell me where they wanted to go. If I asked a favour I was expected to offer a gift, but I was very slow to pick up on that: they would never ask directly
for anything.
It was during this time, while I was in hospital recovering from pneumonia, that the local Anglican priest found me. I started going to the small local church. Then I met my
wife to be and we married. She converted to Anglicanism and we took our kids to church with us regularly while they were growing up. I volunteered to lead the people's
prayers and to read the scriptures. I eventually became a warden (two wardens and the priest make up the legal body of an individual church). In other words, I got involved. I
wanted
to be a part of the church. During this period, a friend asked me, "How can an intelligent guy like you believe all that stuff?" My answer was that I wanted to believe that once, just once,
a man had returned from the dead, thus conquering death for all of us. I stood and recited the creeds from memory, trying to concentrate on each word. I sang hymns as fervently and as
accurately as I could. I developed a personal mantra.
And then, I was overwhelmed by medical difficulties. I was deeply depressed and on medication, but it seemed all the church could
do was to ask me to do more for it. My priest was also suffering from depression and was asking me for support and reassurance. It got so that I began to dread going to church
because it would mean that I'd be asked to read, lead prayers, assist in communion, organize an
event, etc. I was drained, sleeping eighteen hours or more a day, my waking time spent fighting paranoid fantasies. I wanted the church community to help me. In the state
I was in, I needed people to comfort and reassure me, even though I was avoiding them. But all they could do was to keep reminding me about
committee meetings (which I couldn't face) and upcoming special services (which sounded like something from another world).
And in the background was that dreadful debate that revealed so much hatred hiding behind those good Christian smiles.
And, in the background to
that was a war between American fundamentalists and Muslim fundamentalists.
And, behind
that was a man in agony reflecting on this, the history of the universe, and his place in it.
It is astounding to what extent chemicals control our thoughts and emotions. My brain was short of serotonin and dopamine; thus I saw black shadows encroaching on my peripheral vision.
I read books on the physics of cosmology. I started to see a beautiful process. My hormone-starved brain saw motes within motes within motes; infinity and zero becoming one.
There was no room in the universe for a master creator. The universe is, itself, the creator of all it contains. I started to understand—at least I think I did—the essence
of all the religions I had studied. Just: let it go. Be at peace. You are a small part of an enormous process, so make what you can of it. I feared I was starting to understand Kierkegaard—
with whom I had struggled in university. Is
this was the existentionalists were trying to communicate? I am so passé.
But, what has replaced existentionalism? New Age claptrap? Pretty words and noble sentiments wrapped in sincere intensity? The universe is too tough for that. The
ether passed out
of existence more than one hundred years ago, and
vibs are but a new incarnation wrapped about the same fallacy. The universe is too enormous to put up with that, dark matter or no.
There are too many messiahs and prophets for me to focus on one man. History is littered with too many virgin births and resurrections. Sober men use clever words that, in
the end, show nothing but their small ignorance. Churches are struggling to retain members by adhering to ancient shop-worn rituals designed for simpler times.
Take, eat, this is my body broken for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you. I so wanted to believe. But, in the end, it all comes tumbling down.
My complaint about religion in general is that they are all equally right and equally wrong. They are attempting to describe the universe,
life, and our place in it, using language and images suitable for specific audiences. But, you don't need a religion to give you a frame of reference.
We all construct a view of ourselves and the world through which we filter events. I can accept that religions share insights with us, but, then, so do many
other sources.
My specific complaint about religions is that they are sometimes used as a cover to perform actions that are outrightly condemned by
their own scripture. The wars between Islamic and Christian nations of the past fourteen hundred years are a prime example. No where in the New Testament
or in the Koran are we instructed to make war and slaughter unbelievers, or to murder Jews. Yet, we see Imams praying for the deaths of Christians and Jews, and we see tele-evangelists praying for
the deaths of Muslims. I have seen them pray on television for the deaths of specific people. I was taught that only the
other big guy (the devil) wanted
death, pain, and mayhem upon the earth. And even more alarming are the apparent beliefs of those closest to the American president that we ought to be
promoting the apocalypse, in order to speed Christ's return to earth. Sorry, but in my book that is the diametric opposite of Christianity and is more in line with
the beliefs of devil-worshippers. And, other religions don't get off the hook. Consider the wars between Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, for example.
Yes, good people do good things in the name of their religions. But, I suspect, they would do good things in any case. Certainly the fear of eternal damnation
never motivated anyone to devote their lives to charity. Actions born from love of creation, God, humanity, whatever you want to call it, are what I see as
the most powerful and meaningful. But, such genuine devotion to the good does not come only from organized religions. Humans don't need to be told that
they must do something because some guy in the sky wants it. And, do most pay attention in any case? What organized religion is good at is telling us
they think the overlord wanted in the past. Most of their teachings are several centuries out of date. The gay marriage issue is a prime example. Individuals, social agencies, and
governments started to see the injustice of our laws and started work to change the law long before most churches did. Many religious groups lost the high moral ground.
ceding it, ironically, to politicians. Delicious ironies abound.
Now I don't want my dear readers to go away thinking that I have given up on the church because it let me down when I needed it most, or that I don't
believe
anymore. I still accept that most church members have good intentions, even when they do participate in perpetuating injustice, or let their personal prejudices blind them
to the teachings of their own scriptures.
I still believe in the primal goodness of the universe and there is a very deep meaning hiding behind our version of reality. I just realize that I don't
have to call myself a Christian to believe that. And, somehow, saying that makes me feel very good. Liberated in a sense.
But, I really don't think it fair to call myself a Christian any more.