Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Bedside Baptist

I, for one, got sick of those jokes about people sleeping in instead of going to church and making awful jokes about going to "the church of the Holy Comforter" or hearing "Pastor Pillow" preach. People who make jokes like that are the worst kind of insufferable.

I guess that is the worst possible introduction to say that a friend of my was ordained into the Anglican church on Sunday. Even though I went to a very Christian liberal arts college, this week was the first time I had been to church in multiple years.

Freshman year of college, I roomed with a very nice, very faithful churchgoer. I went to church when the weather was nice, and, basically because I was following the herd. But as the nice summer and early fall dissolved into the classic Chicago winter, and any motivation I had to go to church was shot to hell (so to speak).

The truth is that I really haven't been to church regularly since I was about 16. I grew up in a family where we never missed a Sunday at church- never. It's not that my parents were tyrannical about it, but that was just the understanding- on Sunday, you went to church. We didn't know better, so we would have never thought to dispute this weekly tradition, or even really ask the reasons behind it. I guess you would classify us as a religious family. Besides the church every Sunday, my siblings an I went to Christian schools all the way through high school (except for my sister, who went to high school with a huge lot of fish-eating, wine-drinking Catholics. I can't tell..... is that offensive? Note to self: take informal poll of Catholics to see if that's offensive).

But religion was never a topic of discussion. Ever. I guess that's a marginally WASP-y quality about our family, but I think we're also a family that doesn't talk a huge amount emotional, irrational subjects.

But in my teenage years, I just no longer saw the point of church. By no means did I then (or do I now) reject what I grew up believing about religion, but I never made the emotional religious connection that seemed to be so key in the evangelical church and the Christian summer camp that I went to every single summer. So around the age of 16, I just stopped going to church regularly. I don't remember there ever being a discussion, and certainly not a fight with my parents about this.

Since then, I haven't really been back to church. In the back of my mind, I think that I will go back someday, but probably not soon. I want to believe- I really do. But I can't stand the thought of blind acceptance based on emotions that seems to be so characteristic of what I've seen in evangelical churches and in college. Religion has to make sense to me intellectually, and until then, I'll be sleeping in on Sunday mornings.

It was good to get back to church on some level. I like the Anglican service- I love the history behind it. But going back to church usually sparks all this in the back of mind. We'll see.

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