Tag: Christianity

ROG answers Arthur’s Question on Irreligiosity

I’m more irritable with perversions of Christianity than I am with the irreligious. I think it’s because they are SUPPOSED to be on “my” team.

One of my favorite people in Blogistan, Arthur@AmeriNZ, asks:

You know—of course, you do—you had me scurrying for my dictionary to consider the relative merit of “gauntlet” v. “gantlet”. I give you the victory on points.

But that’s not my question. You are religious and at least some of your readers are not. How hard is it for you to overlook what I can only assume is, if not blasphemy, then as close as you can get? Some of us are a bit more stroppy in our irreligiousity than others, so I’m wondering how you reconcile that with your own faith. Or, is it that your faith allows for those who are of differing—even non-religious—beliefs?

This is something that I, as a heathen, have long wondered about.

Arthur, I hyperlinked “stroppy” for my American readers, because I had never heard of the word until I saw or heard you use it.

I think my faith journey has been helpful. I was “saved” watching Billy Graham at someone’s house on Oak Street in Binghamton, NY when I was nine years old. This house is about a half-block from my church, a couple of blocks from my house. I mention this because it wasn’t an event that took place either at home or my church.

Went to Friday Night Bible Club almost every week for years. Figured that I was destined to become a minister, and others felt similarly. But here’s when things went off track. The more I read and studied, the less the whole thing was making sense. Some of the Old Testament stuff, especially in Leviticus, was troubling and confusing. I had a very difficult time with the notion of missionaries needing to “save the savages” in other countries from their “inferior” religions. In particular, I was told that all the Hindus in India were going to go to hell, and I did (and still do) have some real difficulty with that.

So I started drifting away from Christianity in college, though I still hung out with the campus ministry occasionally. Around this time, I read a book about Mahatma Gandhi. There’s a quote in there, and I’m paraphrasing, but in response to the question of why Gandhi didn’t become a Christian since he was an admirer of the teachings of Jesus Christ, he replied, “I’d become a Christian if I had ever met one.” Think that was a great retort.

In my 20s, I drifted theologically, flirting with various faiths, including the Moonies, and occasionally no faith at all. When I found my way back to Christianity over time in my 30s, it was with a more – what’s the word? – adult (?) sensibility, better able to deal with seemingly inherent contradictions of living faith and document.

As I was doing a Bible study in the mid-1990s, one of the exercises was to go to a faith tradition different from my own. I went to a now-defunct Coptic (Egyptian Orthodox) church on Madison Avenue in Albany and spent about three hours there. After the service, I was engaged in conversation with a member. He wanted to know what my religious background was; I told him that I was a Protestant, a Methodist at the time. He said to me, as nicely as one can, “You do know you’re going to go to hell, don’t you?” This had to do with the fact that Protestants, unlike Catholics and Orthodox, do not subscribe to the literal belief in transubstantiation. That certainly helped my understanding of faith in the world from a different perspective, and how it felt to be the “other” theologically.

Indeed, I always engage people in religious conversations, if they want (and I have time) because all it can do is hone my own faith. Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door? Come on in!

So, Arthur, the long answer to the question, is that irreligiosity bothers me far less than it seems to bug others, maybe because I’ve been there. “Opiate of the masses”? If that works for you. The late Christopher Hitchens’ tirade against the idea of God/faith? Fine. (Although this writer does have a valid point about Hitchens in a wider context.) Let’s face it, faith can be a bit scary, like stepping out into the void as Indiana Jones did in the third movie.

Actually, I’m more irritable with perversions of Christianity than I am with the irreligious. I think it’s because they are SUPPOSED to be on “my” team. So those Westboro Baptists tick me off far more than atheists. The peculiar intersection of Christianity and Americanism I find troubling because I believe Jesus was fighting the status quo, not embracing it.

I like many comedy movies about God. George Burns as God (Oh God), Morgan Freeman as God (Bruce Almighty). I love Monty Python’s Life of Brian so much that I bought it on DVD just this year.

Arthur, I’m not overlooking blasphemy; indeed, I happen to find it helpful to me. And yes, my faith allows room for those who are of differing— even non-religious— beliefs from me, because I think that is the Jesus message.

Sidebar: there was a discussion in adult Bible education at church a few weeks ago, and there was a conversation about whether people know you’re a Christian. One guy said that it would be unlikely. He didn’t wear a cross, carry around a Bible (like I did my first two years in high school – really), so how would anyone know? I suppose I DO want people to know – surely people at work know that, at least, I sing in a church choir. I mention faith periodically in this blog, I hope, but not TOO often. To proselytize would be anathema to me; this is what I believe, but I’m not saying that’s how someone else should feel. On the other hand, if you think, “he’s not so bad, for a Christian,” that’d be a plus.
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Still taking questions.

 

H is for (Methodist) Hymnals

I don’t know how many of those hymns were meant to be sung, because – I neglected to mention – there is no music in the book, only lyrics! Evidently, “everybody” already knew the tunes.


When I was growing up at Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church in Binghamton, NY in the 1960s, we used a hymnal that looked exactly like this. (A.M.E. stands for African Methodist Episcopal.) The first hymn was Holy, Holy, Holy [listen], and when I was younger, I mistakenly believed that the phrase “Blessed Trinity” was a reference to my church, rather than to the preceding phrase, “God in three persons.”

The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) initiated the process of creating a new hymnal in 1928, with Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MEC,S) joining in 1930, and the Methodist Protestant Church (MPC) soon thereafter. The hymnal has a 1932 original copyright date. Not incidentally, “The Methodist Church was the name adopted by the Methodist denomination formed in the US by the reunion on May 10, 1939, of the northern and southern factions of the MEC with the MPC”, the three entities that had created the hymnal. Ironically, since the split within the MEC had arisen over 19th-century treatment of blacks, the newly-formed Methodist Church created a segregated entity known as the Central Jurisdiction as a compromise.

Still, the hymnal was of such quality that the black Methodist churches (A.M.E., A.M.E. Zion, C.M.E., and others) often adopted it.

But once the United Methodist Church was created in 1968 by the union of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, getting rid of the Central Jurisdiction, I suppose the powers that be decided that the UMC needed a hymnal of its own.

When I started attending the United Methodist Church in Albany in the mid-1980s, coincidentally also called Trinity, they were using a different hymnal (the red one). Still, many of the congregants at that time referred to the hymnal I grew up with as the “real Methodist hymnal,” such was the universality of its use, due to the quality of its structure of the Christian life.

Still, the black hymnal may not be my favorite. That title might fall to the one pictured below; the one to the left looks more like mine, in terms of condition. It has an 1849 copyright date. In the mid-1980s, my girlfriend at the time bought it for me for the handsome sum of $2.50. It has a LOT of hymns by Charles Wesley, many more than in subsequent iterations, starting with O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing [listen] on the first page, and including Hark! the Herald Angels Sing and Christ, the Lord, is Risen Today, plus a whole bunch with which I am not familiar.


And I don’t know how many of those hymns were meant to be sung, because – I neglected to mention – there is no music in the book, only lyrics! Evidently, “everybody” already knew the tunes.

It too had a structure, but in addition to those in the 1932 hymnal, it also included Duties & Trials, and Humiliation. Fun stuff!

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

X is for…

We all have at least one X chromosome.


I marvel at the versatility of the letter X.

It can be used as a signature that is printed in lieu of an individual’s signature…”Typically, individuals sign their full names when executing legal documents. Sometimes, however, individuals use only their initials or other identifying marks. For illiterate, incompetent, or disabled people, this mark is often the letter X. Documents signed with an X sometimes raise questions as to their validity and enforceability.”

Related, the X refers to a kiss. “The first mention in the literature of XXX for kisses at the bottom of a letter was in 1901, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The X itself is very old.

“The custom goes back to the early Christian era when a cross mark or ‘X’ was the same as a sworn oath. The cross-referred to the cross of Calvary and the first letter of the Greek word for Christ, Xristos.” (Which is why Xmas does not bother me in the slightest; it actually has sacred roots.)

“Even as little as a hundred and fifty years ago, not many people could read or write. The ‘X’ at the bottom of a document took the place of a signature. They would kiss the ‘X’ as a crucifix or bible was kissed to emphasize the importance of the mark. It was this practice that led to the ‘X’ representing a kiss.”

Yet, X-rated is “vulgar, obscene, or explicit in the treatment of sex: an X-rated novel; X-rated graffiti.”

X is an algebraic meaning ‘unknown quantity’ (1660 in English). Yet X also means the specific, known location of the buried treasure; “X marks the spot.”

Finally, HISTORIANS of mathematics attribute the first use of the cross x as a symbol for multiplication to William Oughtred (…London, 1631).

And since we all have at least one X chromosome, one could argue that we all are unknown AND knowable, sacred AND profane.
ABC Wednesday – Round 8

Roger Answers Your Questions, Tom the Mayor and Jaquandor

Presbyterians are much more deliberative than Methodists.

Jaquandor, the Buffalo area’s finest blogger, asks:

1. Are there any words you dislike, just because of the sound of them and not necessarily the meaning?

Used to be that German words I tended to dislike as too guttural. The K sound would get stuck on the roof of my mouth. But I’ve mellowed, and nothing immediately comes to mind.

2. Are there any subjects you really want to know more about and yet never seem to get around to learning about?

Oh, yeah, dozens, everything from various sciences, such as astronomy and botany; to languages, which I do not seem to have a talent for, starting with Spanish and Latin. But I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I probably won’t do anything about it unless I give up something else, and evidently, I’m not willing to do that.

3. Are you surprised that gay marriage passed in New York? (I am, a little….)

Heck, yeah. It failed miserably some 600 days earlier when the State Senate was controlled by the Democrats. OK, “controlled” is probably an overstatement, since it was pretty chaotic. The last two governors supported it, and it didn’t matter. And it passes with a Republican-controlled Senate? More like shocked.
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Tom the Mayor, once a mail order whiz at FantaCo, among other attributes, asks:

Are all the members of your church as Liberal as you are? could you be a good Christian, yet disagree with the beliefs of your church’s leaders?

Tom asks simple questions which I will complicate in answering.

Somehow, as a result of singing in my old church choir at my grandmother’s funeral in May 1983, it got me to decide to start attending church again, after more than a decade of mostly not going. But I couldn’t just go back to a church like the one from my childhood, which I loved then, but found that my theological development was not in tune with that church’s theological positions.

So I went church shopping.

When I first attended Trinity United Methodist Church, it was June 13, 1982. I remember this quite well because the day before, I was at an anti-nuke rally in New York City. The minister, the late Stan Moore, said something quite positive about the rally in his sermon, and this endeared him, and the church, to me. While the shopping continued for some months, I decided I wanted to be there by the end of the year, though I didn’t actually join until December 1984.

In that congregation, I did have leadership roles, first as vice-chair, then chair of the Administrative Board, which was the church’s meeting of the whole, then chair of the Council on Ministries, which was the chairs of the major service committees. I left, not because of theology, but autocracy, involving a change in church structure under a subsequent minister which made it less accountable to the congregation.

I started attending First Presbyterian in the spring of 2000 and joined in 2002. At some point, I was an elder there, but didn’t enjoy it; I think I’m all meetinged out.

So to your actual question: if by the church, you mean the congregation, most of them are as liberal as I am, though by no means all of them. I remember having a conversation with one of them at the (late) YMCA, where you used to work. He mentioned that one of the Clintons, Bill or Hillary, was having a book come out, and he, who reads the New York Post, a conservative tabloid, every day, said he was sure that I would be buying the book from that “liberal”. I surprised him by stating that I didn’t think the Clintons were liberal at all.

If you mean the Presbyterian Church USA, our congregation is definitely more liberal than some. But of course, this depends on your meaning of liberal. If feeding the hungry, clothing the needy is “liberal”, then it’s almost the whole denomination that is liberal. If it’s something such as the role of gays in the life of the church, the Albany Presbytery, which represents our church, is more progressive than others. But given the fact that the PCUSA denomination in 1997 created MORE restrictive language re participation of gays as ministers, elders, and deacons, then in May 2011 agreed to less restrictive language, not many people bolted the church when either event occurred.

Presbyterians are much more deliberative than Methodists. The fact that our Presbytery was at odds – no, too harsh, disagreed – with the PCUSA on gay ordination for over a decade was surprisingly not a big deal.

Oh, one other thing: I wanted Trinity UMC to take more of a stand on gay rights issues when I was involved there in the 1990s. It was downplayed because the church had “made a proclamation” back in 1979 or 1975, or whenever, which preceded my tenure there, and that seemed, to some, to be enough. So it’s not just a matter of beliefs; it’s acting on the beliefs, regularly. My current congregation participates in the Gay Pride parade annually, with our rainbow tapestry hanging from the bell tower as well as over the entrance, as an ongoing, living, breathing statement of faith.

Did I actually answer the question?

MIRACLES post

went home, never heard from any of those people again, and this event had almost no long-term impact on my life.

Copyright 2006 by Sidney Harris

Have you ever experienced something that no rational explanation can describe? I did once.

I was living in Schenectady near Albany in the spring of 1978, and I asked out this amazingly beautiful young woman who worked at Albany Savings Bank; at least one parent was from Brazil. Her response was that I could go to church with her sometime.

So one Sunday afternoon, she and some friends picked me up and took me to a church in Troy, a really eclectic group of congregants.

At some point in this LONG service, the pastor went around and asked each person if they had been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. Though I had had a “saved” experience when I was nine, I was in my theologically doubting period, so I didn’t raise my hand.

After this, the folks converged on us unwashed folks. We went to the altar, and they began chanting GEEEE-ZUS GEEEE-ZUS. And in a relatively short time, I was talking in a language I did not understand; apparently, I was speaking in tongues! And they gave me some clothes to change into so that I could have a full-emersion baptism downstairs.

I went home, never heard from any of those people again, and this event had almost no long-term impact on my life.

So do you have any events in your life you cannot explain?

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The Miracles－Love Machine

 

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