Religion Accident of Birth

I was born into the Epis­co­pal Church - that is the US ver­sion of King Henry’s break­away from the major reli­gious insti­tu­tion based in the Vat­i­can City. For my first eigh­teen or so years, I was reg­u­larly involved. Really just what I did because that was what I was born into. Went on to col­lege, got involved with life, approach­ing grad­u­a­tion met Still Here Too, whirl­wind lead­ing to mar­riage, mar­ried in the Epis­co­pal Church (look­ing back, biggest rea­son may have been the absolute beauty of the build­ing more than other rea­son), lived life, com­pli­cated dis­ease, recov­ery, son, short re-engagement with church, …

Along the way, two spe­cific inci­dents stick in my mind that just makes me ques­tion the whole issue of orga­nized reli­gion. This is totally sep­a­rate for any ques­tion of con­flict between ratio­nal sci­ence and unknow­able issues of the exis­tence or non-existence of higher, other, or what­ever forces (bor­der­line agnos­tic lean­ings show­ing through).

The first inci­dent involves a dis­cus­sion some fif­teen years ago with an Epis­co­pal priest. We were dis­cussing sev­eral books I was read­ing at the time about the early ver­sions of the New Tes­ta­ment and also Karen Armstrong’s “A His­tory of God”. The con­ver­sa­tion was one of inter­est­ing exchange, almost aca­d­e­mic in nature. It was focused on just how much the teach­ings of the early Church var­ied and the some­time vio­lent argu­ments that arose over what was “gospel” or not. How­ever, it ended with a com­ment that has stuck with me as a prob­lem with orga­nized reli­gion that I find dif­fi­cult to over­come. He added, almost as an after­thought at the end of the con­ver­sa­tion, “Of course, you can never study the his­tor­i­cal facts too closely or you will inevitably lead your­self to a cri­sis of faith.”

The sec­ond inci­dent occurred dur­ing a lunchtime con­ver­sa­tion at my work­place. This was one of those times when I found myself “bit­ing my tongue” and not expos­ing my actual thoughts in the work­place that rep­re­sents exactly why this Blog is writ­ten anony­mously. I have to main­tain good work­ing rela­tions with these peo­ple, but find that there are way too many that I just do not agree with on many per­sonal issues, even thought we may agree on the mis­sion of the busi­ness. The major­ity of my imme­di­ate co-workers are active in Chris­t­ian churches. Many are active in fun­da­men­tal­ist branches. The par­tic­u­lar con­ver­sa­tion I remem­ber involved sev­eral mem­bers of the more fun­da­men­tal­ist branches of the Chris­t­ian church. The con­ver­sa­tion, which I qui­etly lis­tened to, but did not par­tic­i­pated in, went some­thing like this. If some­one is born in a part of the world where they are never taught the words of Jesus, can their soul ever be saved and will they go to Heaven. The group con­sen­sus was “No”.

From two very dif­fer­ent points of view, these two con­ver­sa­tions totally amaze me. When you con­sider the bil­lions of peo­ple in the world, and the beliefs that exist among those bil­lions of peo­ple, it seems deter­mined more by where they were born than any­thing else. But the pas­sion that each belief is right and all oth­ers are wrong is so strong. And yet, just like my con­ver­sa­tion with the Epis­co­pal priest, many would not be able to study the his­tory of the devel­op­ment of those absolute beliefs with­out a cri­sis of faith. But what brought each indi­vid­ual to their par­tic­u­lar start­ing point. It was an acci­dent of birth. Even if they have moved to a new faith, the path has been from that start­ing point. Each per­son was born and formed by the cir­cum­stances into which they were born. It amazes me that so many can have this cer­tainty of faith when there are so many with so much con­flict­ing cer­tainty of a dif­fer­ent faith. None of this is prov­able, defend­able; it is just true because they believe it. But the totally dif­fer­ing view is just as true to the other per­son, born under a dif­fer­ent acci­dent of birth, just because they believe it.

How many died in Europe over the offi­cial broth­els of the Roman church. How many died in Eng­land over King Henry’s divorce? In Islam, Shi’a and Sunni are often still in major con­flict over issues started within one gen­er­a­tion of the start of the reli­gion. The con­flicts between Islam and Chris­tian­ity started in the Cru­sades con­tinue today. Judaism is made the scape­goat for the ills of the world through­out his­tory. Judaism decides to recover its ances­tral home, cur­rent occu­pants be damned. But each knows they are right and the oth­ers wrong. And we are just left caught is the mid­dle whether we believe or not.