religion

i was in a church today (actually, yesterday. but i haven't gone to bed yet so for me it's still sunday). i was raised in the baptist church, but haven't been (except for christmas eve) in years. in high school, i started having doubts about god; i didn't know the word 'agnostic' at the time... about the time of high school graduation, i had a brief flirtation with faithfulness, though not in the traditional old-man-with-a-white-beard kind of way. for several years now, i've known definitively that i don't believe in god, or any of the stuff that goes along with (heaven, hell, or an afterlife of any kind, actually).

so what brought me to church today? misha, a post-doc at work, plays the flute. we've been "jamming" together (as much as a flautist and a cellist can jam, which, as it turns out, is not much), and she suggested that we play a flute/cello/continuo (organ, in this case) piece (vivaldi's pastorale, op. 13 no. 4) during her church service sometime. sometime was today.

st. peter's episcopal church, at 3rd and lombard streets in old city philadelphia, is a lovely old church. one of the first churches in philly. the only room is the sanctuary; there are no hallways, no classrooms, no offices; all the doors open to the surrounding graveyard. george washington apparently used to sit in a pew near the front. [side note: this is the kind of thing that i love about the east coast--history runs into you as you walk down the street.] anyway, this church has boxes instead of pews. each family had a box, with torso-high walls and little doors. it's very "historic north east." quaint. WASP-y.

belief: i'm a scientist. god, the bible, the afterlife, souls, rebirth, karma, and miracles are nice metaphors, but nothing more. everything that we are, everything that exists, is just an awesome combination of chemicals and electrochemical responses. and *that* is more amazing to me than any god-based belief could ever be.

i took some internet quiz recently that labeled me as a secular humanist (think kurt vonnegut). while i might agree with the secular humanist position on things, i don't want to be associated with a belief group at all. i usually call myself an atheist, but i mean that only in the literal i-don't-believe-in-god sense, not with any extraneous attached worldviews.

organized religion: organized religion often makes my blood boil. in the name of organized religion, muslim women are made subservient to men. in the name of organized religion, gay men and women are banned from the boy scouts. in the name of organized religion, some citizens of this country want to tell me what i can and cannot do with a group of cells in my own body.

i understand the place that religion occupies in many people's lives. i understand the desire to believe that there's something more than what we see every day. religion is comforting, and allows people to conveniently explain chance. random chance scares most people. *religion* scares me.

i've come to this opinion of organized religion based not so much on *my* church experiences, but on what i know of the history of the church and what i see and hear people do *today* in the name of the church. i quite liked my childhood church (vienna baptist church), and i'm very glad i had a childhood of personal church experience on which i can refer. i have had enough of an exposure to church and christian beliefs that my decision to leave it all behind has been an actual *choice* and not just the status quo.

church: churches are nice places. serene and friendly. i quite like church buildings, and even have a fondness for some services (e.g. the xmas eve service at vienna baptist) and some congregations. vienna baptist church is not a footloose-style southern baptist church. women are allowed to be deacons; teenagers are allowed to dance. if i were inclined to go to church, i would want to go to a church like vbc.

the baptist church in general and vbc in particular is a place where one can worship, to great degree, in the style that one chooses. there's no book of common prayer--you get to make up your own words with which to pray. baptists believe people should be able to choose for themselves whether they want to be baptized; i approve of not forcing christianity on people. also, in a baptist church all members of the congregation are ministers of the church; communion is therefore served to each member of the congregation by another member. the (now retired) pastor used to say "this is god's table. it is not our place to invite anyone, nor turn anyone away." apart from the bit about it being god's table (recall: i'm an atheist), i think this is a great sentiment. it's not our place to invite anyone, nor to turn anyone away. if only we could all live this way...