My Religious Journey

Part One: From a time before I was even able to put sentences together, I was taken to Christian church on Sundays. My earliest memories of church were of choir members dressed in robes and other children, a group of which I was a part of. The very first church my parents took me to was Lutheran. The services were subdued, solemn and ritualistic in nature.

There were pictures of a man holding a lamb and sometime with children in his lap and of a woman who seemed content and blessed. This was a form of human worship where people of remarkable character were deemed holy and worthy of praise.

My mother was very active in the Lutheran Church and she was also a worthy matron in the Eastern Star. My father was a Shriner (which he seemed devout) and a person who grudgingly attended Lutheran church. He was Norwegian and came over in 1920 on Ellis Island and a free thinker and took religion with a grain of salt. His favorite writings even into his old age were those of Thomas Paine.

My great grandfather on my mother's side was the “second” editor of the BLUE GRASS BLADE.

The Blue-grass Blade was irregularly published in Lexington, Kentucky, from 1884 through 1910. One of several rare free-thought newspapers in the United States, it was Kentucky's most controversial turn-of-the-century newspaper by far. According to its irreverent editor, Charles Chilton Moore (1837–1907), the Blade was published on Sundays to give the public thoughtful reading material on a day when it was most needed.

http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/ndnp/blade.html

My great grandfather was the editor after Charles Moore left the paper.

Though our family had roots in rationalism and skepticism regarding religion they still practiced a mild version of religious belief.

When I turned 5 years old our family moved to a small town in Maine where there was no Lutheran Church and no Catholic Church, so our parents chose the Congregational church for us to attend.
This church was not unlike the Lutheran church in many ways. They still seemed to worship this man who held a lamb in his arm and was often accompanied by little children.

There was a glorious pipe organ and sometimes a piano that would fill the acoustic area of the large church with its vaulted ceilings and towering steeple.

A choir rehearsed and sang every Sunday and children were assembled into Sunday school. Music seemed to be the way they communicated emotion and was the cohesive bond that connected the people to one another.

This was my earliest memories of a “minister”. A man who would stand facing the congregation and speak as if he had more reason to speak than anyone else.

He was always wearing a black robe and was young and charismatic.

He spoke softly and with a reasonable and gentle tone of voice.

In Sunday school we also sang, and we were instructed in the ways of the church. There were three main pillars of reason all surrounding this man Jesus. That he loved people, he fed and healed people and was somehow connected to this thing they called “God”.

He not only loved people, but he loved all people regardless of who or what they were, specifically, he loved people of ALL races and countries.

Though the church seemed to be filled with only well to do people they represented a compassionate and loving mission and duty to the world…

This was the only time in my life when religion perhaps was a worthy vocation.

From that time on religion became more restrictive and began to exhibit rules and exceptions to its policy of love for all.

My first exposure to this was when my mother decided that maybe the Mormon church might be a viable alternative to our regular church. Perhaps it was because they held child church services a different day and might have given her a break from our large family of 6 children.

We went to a few services and I remember only one “pillar” of this church that was spoken of nearly constantly and it was “reverence” (whatever that means). I understood it to mean respect or perhaps it was a way to keep children calm.

After only two times at their version of Sunday school my mother abruptly ripped us out of the church. She learned they had a doctrine that Black people were “cursed” to be black and if they were really good, they would turn white again. My mother could not get past that doctrine and immediately upon hearing it removed us from the church.

We went back to the Congregational church.

I was pretty much forced to attend church and church youth services into my early adult life. I realized I was gay and got bullied a lot by other boys, often at the behest of the minister who on a few occasions singled me out and spoke homophobic remarks directly to me. He happened to also be my boy scout leader and no matter how hard I tried to earn my badges and show my sterling character it seemed to always come down to me being not worthy.

But the time I reached 20 years old I had turned my back on the church. Not that I consciously decided to leave it, but I just simply blocked it out of my mind. It was too painful to even think about.

In the back of my mind I felt the Bible was some higher piece of literature that held mysteries and great learning, but many of the people evolved into narrow minded and judgmental instruments of the faith.

Religion had left me wounded, bewildered and hating myself.

My mother tried to rationalize the whole experience.

She had only two reasons why she continued down the road of faith. One was that, “God is love”… and the other was the comfort that there were “many ways to God” and that our own religious experience was only one of them. She did not believe that Jesus was the “only way” to God…

Music became my chosen profession, it seemed to be my only solace and my guitar was my only true friend, it never judged me or questioned my love.

Please come back for part two, I will post it here, once I write it.

You are all welcome to post your own experiences.