Why I Left the Church...and Still Am Grateful I Did.
I think about religion. A lot. Particularly in these days when ultra-conservative religious people are trying to take over my government and legislate their beliefs--beliefs that, in the main, I used to hold, but did not think should be law but that I believed were matters of personal faith and lifestyle--I find myself thinking about religion and faith and deity.
I am no longer religious, and as I become more and more angry with the didactic, hateful, misogynistic, gay-hating, other-religion-bashing rhetoric that comes from so much of the outspoken "Christians" in the United States, I find myself angry and scared. And I realize that, although I still believe that religious ties and faith and religious practice can be uplifting to individual, while I am still happy for those who find solace and support and joy in their experience of deity while not heaping hatred or vituperative disapproval on others who do not share that faith or practice, I find that I no longer have faith. What I DO believe is this:
We Do Not Know. We Cannot Know. NO ONE KNOWS.
Again, FAITH, by my favorite definition (Hebrews 11:1) is the "substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." However, faith provides evidence ONLY TO THE FAITHFUL, not to anyone not sharing that faith and it is, by definition of "faith" a leap past logic, past fact, and into accepting something "hoped for," "not seen" and NOT KNOWN.
I believe it is the height of arrogance and megalomania for anyone to claim that their faith is fact, and that it flies in the fact of EVERY Earth religion's beliefs about faith and deity to try and command or mandate faith, which is, by its nature, a movement and choice of an individual within that person's own heart and conscience.
This is how I went from faith...to not, and why I don't regret it.
I was a very VERY devout member of the churches of Christ (the article I've linked to capitalizes "Church" in a way the church would disagree with, but otherwise has a fairly accurate discussion and description of the church as I knew it) until age 22 or so, and I wanted very badly to go to Harding University, and I wanted both to get a good education AND to get my MRS. degree. Unfortunately (fortunately, as it turned out), I wanted to (and did) major in German, and Harding only offered 2 semesters of German--less than I'd had in high school--and would have cost me a LOT of money, while SIU-C was offering a full scholarship that allowed me to live at home and not have to pay dorm costs and deal with Lots of Close-Quarters Humans ZOMG Panic, so I ended up staying home and going to a State university...where I got a much better and more rounded education (and LOTS MORE FREE CREDIT HOURS!) and was able to double-major, have no debt...turned out very well for me.
And I BELIEVED in all those rules, and LIVED by them, and was COMMITTED to and SUPPORTIVE of them. I believed it was reasonable for my elder-less congregation to have a "Men's Business Meeting" once a month with no equivalent for the women. And I tried, tried, OH, how I tried to function as a very VERY well-read and intelligent woman (with no father or husband to "speak for me") in a space where, when I asked how I could serve, was offered the "opportunity" of dusting the pews and straightening the song books once a week. I volunteered in the nursery. I prepared communion (but couldn't serve it in worship, even silently). I taught a little-kids' Sunday School class, even though it kept me out of the only enrichment I got from church, which was participating in the college level Sunday School classes with academic Bible study and discussion. I tried to nurture a deaf worship program...only to have one of the men question whether my self-taught--and excellent--interpreting services violated the "women shall not usurp authority over men" commandment since no one else signed so they could not monitor to see if my signing choices were a doctrinally and linguistically accurate transmission of what the male preachers and offerers of prayers were saying, especially since a sign translation would not be word-for-word, meaning I would be inserting MY interpretation of the message by my sign choices.
I think that was the beginning of my leaving; I'd found something I could DO that wasn't ME TEACHING MEN, something where I could SERVE, as they told me was my role...and then that was questioned.
Then my dad left after decades of infidelity...and the members of the church that had helped my parents adopt me, where I'd grown up, where my mom had taught Sunday School for 25+ years avoided us, didn't ask us over, stopped asking how we were doing after 2 weeks. My loss and loneliness were completely avoided because it made people uncomfortable to think that a 40+ year member whose parents still attended there could have been amongst them and yet not adhering to the behaviors dictated by the faith and the church and its holy text, while still himself offering prayers and reading scripture. I realized that all the years I'd BEGGED for help dealing with my dangerous and damaged brother, BEGGED for guidance from men and women and teachers and preachers and members...that in ALL THAT TIME all I'd been told was that I wasn't trying hard enough, that I wasn't being loving or giving or faithful or prayerful enough, that I should consider whether I was being selfish or demanding or un-Christlike in my thoughts and actions and attitudes and despair. I was told by half a dozen people that I needed to count my blessings, that I needed to "set a better example," and accept the lessons that I was being given the opportunity to learn, and to remember that I would "never be tempted above that which I [was] able to bear" and thus if I was feeling it was unbearable, I was not trying hard enough and not finding the "way of escape" that was promised.
Then my grandmother (who, in 1984/1985, had told me during the Ethiopian famine that "You know God's punishing those people for being black") told me that my parents' marriage ended because "your mother was never truly submissive to your father in her heart"...because my grandmother suddenly had special powers of telepathy??? Then when my mom remarried, this same older man called her and her new husband into a closed room to question whether the husband had been "correctly" baptized and whether their marriage as two divorced people meant they were committing adultery against their first spouses. Then a men's meeting was called to discuss whether my mom and her husband should be allowed to continue to worship at this congregation. I was in a PANIC and went to the one man I trusted to speak for me, He tried to reassure me that OF COURSE the church wouldn't disfellowship my mom. I demanded, "Why not?? If they believe she is bringing shame to the church by her membership due to what they decide is adultery, what CHOICE would they have? And I LIVE with her...how could I disfellowship her?" This good man assured me that the church wouldn't expect that of me even if the congregation disfellowshipped her. And I demanded again, HOW there could be an exception if I was, as a member of the congregation, to participate in trying to bring someone back to fellowship and union with God, as per that congregation's understanding.
I've learned, sadly, since, how to do this and that, no, removing fellowship does not (surprise, surprise) cause someone to change their actions.
But that disconnect nagged at me. The church did not disfellowship my mom at that time, but she and her husband, feeling unwanted and lacking acceptance in that congregation, moved to a different congregation of their own accord. I tried to do the same, but it was too late.
I would enter the auditorium, sit down, and begin to sob. Slowly, writing notes to myself, trying to figure it out, I realized that this had become a place of mourning for me. A place to mourn the family I thought I'd eventually have that had dissolved into something unfixable.
I'd always hoped that the promises people made that, "When all you kids are adults, you'll get along better" were true...but that was not to be. I'd believed that the conviction my parents taught me was theirs as well. In my mom's case, it definitely was. My dad, however, never did apply love and compassion to all, but fostered racist attitudes and comments, used and denigrated women rather than caring for them, and used others wrongly as well. He was helpful and did for others, to be sure, but only those he approved of...and not even for his own family except financially.
Church was a place to mourn my lost sense of safety or support in my childhood. My mom did her best to do both...but was torn between her children's toxically-opposed needs. We all lost. Church members only counseled me to work on ME...and did nothing to "interfere with the family" in a way that would help. Few would even ask us to dinner because no one wanted my brother in their house, so loud and destructive and clumsy and dangerous was he.
I found no solace in prayer, only despair. I felt I was sending a sonar ping out into the universe, but unlike in Hunt for Red October, there was no ping-back for me. I had friends in the church who tried, who supported me, who sat by my while I shook with sobs, unable to hear the sermons.
And I realized that, in over two years, I'd heard NOTHING NEW in church. Not a new Bible verse, not a new interpretation, not a new thought, not a new combination of verses to reveal an idea that I could chew on. And the intellectual in me realized that the church was as intellectually dead for me as it was emotionally dead, and that staying was toxic. I walked away in stages, but I did leave, and my connection with the divine grew in my 20s more than it had in the decade before, even as my mental health deteriorated from still trying to re-vision how things could have been better.
It has been in the past five years that I've come to believe that the toxic combination of children in my household was exaggerated by the rigid expectations of the church, the patriarchal indifference and avoidance of "interfering" with another man's household, the way that the church demanded that the husband be put first and his demands be enacted first, no matter how misguided and damaging they were, no matter the consequences. The tattered remnants of my family are still facing the outcome and consequences of that misuse of power and refusal to intervene when others--in another man's house--are in need.
This is the patriarchy to which both Republican candidates for the White House have vowed loyalty and espouse as a model for United States law. This is the position from which they make decisions and introduce legislation. This is the lie they tell themselves, that the church and the family will protect their own. Even the best-intentioned, under these rigid restrictions to action, cannot do so consistently, and to dismiss broader safety nets and dismantle them abandons even more Americans to a worse outcome than my family and I have faced.
ETA: Okay...this is fascinating: There is a Support Group for Ex-church of Christ members. Most interesting to me are these sections:
Spiritual Abuse, which talks about the double-bind of much church of Christ teaching, as well as the "guilt is the only acceptable emotion to feel" aspect of being a devout member of the church.
Black and White Thinking, aka How To Feed The OCD Present In Members to Try To Feel Safe.
And NONE of these things comes from any god or deity described by any major world faith (the Egyptian deities or the Greek ones...they might have enjoyed this...but not the major world faiths today). Are people flawed? Definitely. Will any organization, faith-based or otherwise, be similarly flawed? I believe definitely. Does this create an excuse/reason for religion/church/faith to be necessary? No. It explains why churches are as flawed as universities, corporations, and neighborhood associations, but it doesn't make the underlying beliefs any more inherently true. Those beliefs, at the end of the day, are still faith, not fact.
I am no longer religious, and as I become more and more angry with the didactic, hateful, misogynistic, gay-hating, other-religion-bashing rhetoric that comes from so much of the outspoken "Christians" in the United States, I find myself angry and scared. And I realize that, although I still believe that religious ties and faith and religious practice can be uplifting to individual, while I am still happy for those who find solace and support and joy in their experience of deity while not heaping hatred or vituperative disapproval on others who do not share that faith or practice, I find that I no longer have faith. What I DO believe is this:
We Do Not Know. We Cannot Know. NO ONE KNOWS.
Again, FAITH, by my favorite definition (Hebrews 11:1) is the "substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." However, faith provides evidence ONLY TO THE FAITHFUL, not to anyone not sharing that faith and it is, by definition of "faith" a leap past logic, past fact, and into accepting something "hoped for," "not seen" and NOT KNOWN.
I believe it is the height of arrogance and megalomania for anyone to claim that their faith is fact, and that it flies in the fact of EVERY Earth religion's beliefs about faith and deity to try and command or mandate faith, which is, by its nature, a movement and choice of an individual within that person's own heart and conscience.
This is how I went from faith...to not, and why I don't regret it.
I was a very VERY devout member of the churches of Christ (the article I've linked to capitalizes "Church" in a way the church would disagree with, but otherwise has a fairly accurate discussion and description of the church as I knew it) until age 22 or so, and I wanted very badly to go to Harding University, and I wanted both to get a good education AND to get my MRS. degree. Unfortunately (fortunately, as it turned out), I wanted to (and did) major in German, and Harding only offered 2 semesters of German--less than I'd had in high school--and would have cost me a LOT of money, while SIU-C was offering a full scholarship that allowed me to live at home and not have to pay dorm costs and deal with Lots of Close-Quarters Humans ZOMG Panic, so I ended up staying home and going to a State university...where I got a much better and more rounded education (and LOTS MORE FREE CREDIT HOURS!) and was able to double-major, have no debt...turned out very well for me.
And I BELIEVED in all those rules, and LIVED by them, and was COMMITTED to and SUPPORTIVE of them. I believed it was reasonable for my elder-less congregation to have a "Men's Business Meeting" once a month with no equivalent for the women. And I tried, tried, OH, how I tried to function as a very VERY well-read and intelligent woman (with no father or husband to "speak for me") in a space where, when I asked how I could serve, was offered the "opportunity" of dusting the pews and straightening the song books once a week. I volunteered in the nursery. I prepared communion (but couldn't serve it in worship, even silently). I taught a little-kids' Sunday School class, even though it kept me out of the only enrichment I got from church, which was participating in the college level Sunday School classes with academic Bible study and discussion. I tried to nurture a deaf worship program...only to have one of the men question whether my self-taught--and excellent--interpreting services violated the "women shall not usurp authority over men" commandment since no one else signed so they could not monitor to see if my signing choices were a doctrinally and linguistically accurate transmission of what the male preachers and offerers of prayers were saying, especially since a sign translation would not be word-for-word, meaning I would be inserting MY interpretation of the message by my sign choices.
I think that was the beginning of my leaving; I'd found something I could DO that wasn't ME TEACHING MEN, something where I could SERVE, as they told me was my role...and then that was questioned.
Then my dad left after decades of infidelity...and the members of the church that had helped my parents adopt me, where I'd grown up, where my mom had taught Sunday School for 25+ years avoided us, didn't ask us over, stopped asking how we were doing after 2 weeks. My loss and loneliness were completely avoided because it made people uncomfortable to think that a 40+ year member whose parents still attended there could have been amongst them and yet not adhering to the behaviors dictated by the faith and the church and its holy text, while still himself offering prayers and reading scripture. I realized that all the years I'd BEGGED for help dealing with my dangerous and damaged brother, BEGGED for guidance from men and women and teachers and preachers and members...that in ALL THAT TIME all I'd been told was that I wasn't trying hard enough, that I wasn't being loving or giving or faithful or prayerful enough, that I should consider whether I was being selfish or demanding or un-Christlike in my thoughts and actions and attitudes and despair. I was told by half a dozen people that I needed to count my blessings, that I needed to "set a better example," and accept the lessons that I was being given the opportunity to learn, and to remember that I would "never be tempted above that which I [was] able to bear" and thus if I was feeling it was unbearable, I was not trying hard enough and not finding the "way of escape" that was promised.
Then my grandmother (who, in 1984/1985, had told me during the Ethiopian famine that "You know God's punishing those people for being black") told me that my parents' marriage ended because "your mother was never truly submissive to your father in her heart"...because my grandmother suddenly had special powers of telepathy??? Then when my mom remarried, this same older man called her and her new husband into a closed room to question whether the husband had been "correctly" baptized and whether their marriage as two divorced people meant they were committing adultery against their first spouses. Then a men's meeting was called to discuss whether my mom and her husband should be allowed to continue to worship at this congregation. I was in a PANIC and went to the one man I trusted to speak for me, He tried to reassure me that OF COURSE the church wouldn't disfellowship my mom. I demanded, "Why not?? If they believe she is bringing shame to the church by her membership due to what they decide is adultery, what CHOICE would they have? And I LIVE with her...how could I disfellowship her?" This good man assured me that the church wouldn't expect that of me even if the congregation disfellowshipped her. And I demanded again, HOW there could be an exception if I was, as a member of the congregation, to participate in trying to bring someone back to fellowship and union with God, as per that congregation's understanding.
I've learned, sadly, since, how to do this and that, no, removing fellowship does not (surprise, surprise) cause someone to change their actions.
But that disconnect nagged at me. The church did not disfellowship my mom at that time, but she and her husband, feeling unwanted and lacking acceptance in that congregation, moved to a different congregation of their own accord. I tried to do the same, but it was too late.
I would enter the auditorium, sit down, and begin to sob. Slowly, writing notes to myself, trying to figure it out, I realized that this had become a place of mourning for me. A place to mourn the family I thought I'd eventually have that had dissolved into something unfixable.
I'd always hoped that the promises people made that, "When all you kids are adults, you'll get along better" were true...but that was not to be. I'd believed that the conviction my parents taught me was theirs as well. In my mom's case, it definitely was. My dad, however, never did apply love and compassion to all, but fostered racist attitudes and comments, used and denigrated women rather than caring for them, and used others wrongly as well. He was helpful and did for others, to be sure, but only those he approved of...and not even for his own family except financially.
Church was a place to mourn my lost sense of safety or support in my childhood. My mom did her best to do both...but was torn between her children's toxically-opposed needs. We all lost. Church members only counseled me to work on ME...and did nothing to "interfere with the family" in a way that would help. Few would even ask us to dinner because no one wanted my brother in their house, so loud and destructive and clumsy and dangerous was he.
I found no solace in prayer, only despair. I felt I was sending a sonar ping out into the universe, but unlike in Hunt for Red October, there was no ping-back for me. I had friends in the church who tried, who supported me, who sat by my while I shook with sobs, unable to hear the sermons.
And I realized that, in over two years, I'd heard NOTHING NEW in church. Not a new Bible verse, not a new interpretation, not a new thought, not a new combination of verses to reveal an idea that I could chew on. And the intellectual in me realized that the church was as intellectually dead for me as it was emotionally dead, and that staying was toxic. I walked away in stages, but I did leave, and my connection with the divine grew in my 20s more than it had in the decade before, even as my mental health deteriorated from still trying to re-vision how things could have been better.
It has been in the past five years that I've come to believe that the toxic combination of children in my household was exaggerated by the rigid expectations of the church, the patriarchal indifference and avoidance of "interfering" with another man's household, the way that the church demanded that the husband be put first and his demands be enacted first, no matter how misguided and damaging they were, no matter the consequences. The tattered remnants of my family are still facing the outcome and consequences of that misuse of power and refusal to intervene when others--in another man's house--are in need.
This is the patriarchy to which both Republican candidates for the White House have vowed loyalty and espouse as a model for United States law. This is the position from which they make decisions and introduce legislation. This is the lie they tell themselves, that the church and the family will protect their own. Even the best-intentioned, under these rigid restrictions to action, cannot do so consistently, and to dismiss broader safety nets and dismantle them abandons even more Americans to a worse outcome than my family and I have faced.
ETA: Okay...this is fascinating: There is a Support Group for Ex-church of Christ members. Most interesting to me are these sections:
Spiritual Abuse, which talks about the double-bind of much church of Christ teaching, as well as the "guilt is the only acceptable emotion to feel" aspect of being a devout member of the church.
Black and White Thinking, aka How To Feed The OCD Present In Members to Try To Feel Safe.
And NONE of these things comes from any god or deity described by any major world faith (the Egyptian deities or the Greek ones...they might have enjoyed this...but not the major world faiths today). Are people flawed? Definitely. Will any organization, faith-based or otherwise, be similarly flawed? I believe definitely. Does this create an excuse/reason for religion/church/faith to be necessary? No. It explains why churches are as flawed as universities, corporations, and neighborhood associations, but it doesn't make the underlying beliefs any more inherently true. Those beliefs, at the end of the day, are still faith, not fact.