No Closure

My Uncle passed away last summer and I went with my son and my parents to Chicago for a memorial service. I would like to say the service happened and my uncle's ashes were intered at the family plot but that would be too simple of an ending.

Uncle Jay always dated large boisterous and controlling women who had money. He wanted to spen his paycheck on his boat and to drink every night at his favorite bar. He even knocked up the neighbor lady and when the kid came out looking like him the cuckolded husband sucked a tailpipe in the garage. Many years later he had the garage rebuilt and finally parked his car in there after shacking up with her many years before  the funny thing is the old garage seemed fine to me, so he must have been a little superstitious.

After this long term gal passed away my uncle met a new broad at the local watering hole named Pattie. She looked like Ellen Griswold's mom in Christmas Vacation and was 100% less charming. She moved Uncle Jay to her winter home in Florida and he mooched off her until his death.

My uncle died broke and Pattie needed some cash for the cremation and wanted to dump his ashes in Lake Michigan. We drove 10 hours up there thinking there would be a service and boat to take the ashes out to deep enough water to dispurse them. We met this broad at a restaurant and she said Uncle Jay's ashes were lost and might not be there until the day after we were to leave.  We also were going too meet her at the local haunt to remember my uncle later that night.

We leave the restaurant and sight see for the day and meet up at the revered haunt for dinner. When we arrive it is clear Pattie left our earlier meeting and went straight to the bar and started piunding vodka tonics. When we finally all got seated for dinner she dominated the conversation and was especially rude to my mother and I. I snapped back with some witty jabs but lost interest and just let her blabber. I left that gathering with a huge headache.

We left the next day and the ashes finally arrived. My uncle's final resting place ended up being a stream in a forest preserve because nobody wanted to splurge for a boat. Kind of ironic how all those years my uncle had a boat and couldn't get one last ride on one.  When we are selfish, use people and leave no legacy we truly do die alone.

Ecumenical Gathering

In an effort to force myself to get out of the house I attend an ecumeical gathering from time to time. This is always interesting as a new person usually visits for the first time and you have to see where they stand on theological and social issues. Tonight a new guy showed up and right away I smelled the stink of the type from my past.
I played nice and tried to avoid him but for some reason I look like a nice guy to talk to. He sat down next to me and asked where I went to church. Once I told him elca Lutheran of course the smug apology for my current church affiliation and then the gay issue had to come up. After that blew over he was asking for the name of an arthritis drug and I offered up activia as the name. When he didn't get the joke I said you know I was joking it is shit yogurt. Right then he quit talking to me I learned a new tactic, curse in front mr clean the pious pca schmuck. It works better than Raid on a cockroach.

I really try to be nice but the constant slamming of my denomination is getting old. I am going to fight back creatively and make my accuser feel uncomfortable in a relative way. One way to do that is use a curse word. To quote judge Smails from Caddyshack " I didn't want to it do but felt I owed it to him." No longer am I going to get mad and fume anymore, I am going to have a little fun and give back. Our locale is to friendly toward the narrow mindedness of discounting an entire denomination because they dare include all of us in humanity equally.

#1 History

Since historical inquiry was one area that lead me to realize  evangelicalism was no longer for me, I will discuss just history in this article. Instead of recounting my sordid history in Christianity and bore all that read it, I will address the need for historical perspective in our lives.

I read books and watched documentaries about history in my free time and saw how people were uninformed throughout history. This allowed the populace to be manipulated by the governmental power structures that were in control at the time. In the church setting I grew up in and went back into as an adult, historical perspective was a glaring omission. All studies were focused on the bible only, with little or no perspective on how this revered book came to be. It was like the Bible was handed down from heaven and was perfect in every way, that is until you read some Bart Ehrman and see that isn't so.

In my experience, fences are put up in evangelical circles to keep outside perspectives and information out. For the rank and file, this is no longer a problem since they are content where they are. For those of us that expand our worldview and interact with those outside the fold, this shallow pool becomes a prison. Through the lens of history, American Evangelicalism is a young movement with no roots and is not any different from current culture.

When this corner of American culture becomes no longer the place for you the road map out is difficult. Most of the people you know are fellow Evangelicals and don't understand why you are unhappy there. The loudest voices that are contra to your position are the New Atheists, but after a while they become as dogmatic as your old position.

When you start to look at the history of the church and see that there is so much more there between Paul and Martin Luther. Studying the church fathers, the Carmelite Mystics and Aquinas mixing Platonic philosophy with Christian thought were a wake up call that I was ignorant of history once again.

Studying church history has given me understanding of the church I grew up in and how it was a mixture of Calvinism and the Wesleyan pietistic movements. The result of this kind of upbringing causes either a strict adherent or a serious doubter/none. It made me realize I was rejecting a form of Christianity that I had outgrown and I needed to give a more historical version a chance before I punched my "none" card.

I made a list of what had to be gone from Christianity before I could believe again. At the top of the list was biblical inerrancy and end times eschatology that needed to be gone for good too. From there I had be in a place where culture wars were no longer an issue since they never get resolved and merely polarize a voting block. Inane modern day praise music gone too, I never sang at church in my past because the songs were meaningless and trite. No more unspoken rules or fences around intellectual inquiries either.

At the time I made the list in the paragraph above I thought that is what being a Christian was based on my past. Thanks to friends and visiting all kinds of different denominations, I realized I could find a church home somewhere. I have joined an ELCA Lutheran church and have found a new home. Questions are encouraged in our discussion groups and my pastor continually presents a historical perspective there and in his homilies.

For me I had ruled out Christianity as an option because the one I knew was wrong. As fun as it would be to bash certain groups, or hold those in my past accountable the responsibility was on myself. With getting married so young anf juggling family and career I never had the time to look at my own history and see why I was where I was. Once I turned inward and looked at myself it inspired change and growth.

Paradigm Shift

You hear about it occasionally,  an Evangelical becomes Catholic or even an Atheist. To make the change from the Evangelical position a paradigm shift must take place. Christian Smith, a Notre Dame professor and sociologist, covers this in the appendix of his book entitled "How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in 95 Difficult Steps". In my experience, I could only do about 85 of these steps which made me a good Lutheran.

 John Loftus also addresses this issue in a different manner with his "outsider test of faith". He is a former pastor whose book " Why I Became an Atheist" explains that we need to look at the faith we hold from an outsiders perspective and evaluate if it is true or not. This was also helpful to strip away what was programmed into me not by my choice and look and see if there was anything left. We all inherit faith traditions, political views and other cultural traits by the environment we are born into.

A paradigm shift is what happens when see problems with our current theological position and begin to find answers in a different theology for example. I know as I went to pastors and leaders I knew in my evangelical realm, I was not satisfied with the answers there and I had to read church history, theology, philosophy and anthropology to start to make progress. In this first article, I will highlight some key things that popped the Evangelical bubble I was living in and what caused the cognitive dissonance in the first place. Then I will do an article further explain each point with more information and where I got it from.

1. History and Evolution. Being an avid reader of history I noticed that the Evangelical tradition I was in had no historical roots prior to when The Fundamentals were published around 1915. My evangelical experience pretty much followed everything out of those volumes and church history between Paul and Martin Luther was ignored. Knowing the theory of evolution allows you too see everything around us builds and develops over time. When you start to back convert the political and evangelical culture in light of history you begin to see it is a modern invention married to our consumerist culture.

2. Politics. It felt like everybody around me was a 100% card carrying Republican. I didn't have to listen to any of the right-wing political talk shows because it was parroted all around me even walking though the courtyard in between services. Being constantly surrounded by this rhetoric is tiring and only lead me to further isolation. Dissenting opinions were discouraged and actually you were talked down to for not buying in to their conservative way of thinking.

3. Culture Wars. Homosexuality is a big one here for me. My wife and I met a gay couple whose son wanted to be friends with our son. At first, they were afraid to approach us because of the church we attended. This did not sit well with us and made us understand how conservative Christianity has not been very welcoming to the GLBT community. I have come to find that those who are the most judgmental of homosexuals don't know any. Meeting a long term committed couple and getting to know them made us realize they were awesome people and we are lucky to have them as friends.  Actually, volunteering at an independent film festival and being exposed to documentaries that addressed the GLBT and other cultural issues that helped sink this part of my evangelical piety as well.

4. New Calvinism. As I became more theologically aware, I realized there was a neo-Calvinist trend sweeping over conservative evangelicalism. To me it feels like doctrine, control of the flock and the bible become idols.  At least now I could identify what I disagreed with in my former branch of evangelicalism and quit feeling like I was the only one who didn't get it. Knowledge is power and enabled my family to move to a more historical faith tradition.

5. Anthropology.  I started reading Anthropology after reading "Breaking the Spell" by Daniel Dennett. When you start to evaluate belief systems without the fear of hell and look at it from a geographical perspective, things change. I see most denominations in Christianity as need for us to still have tribes to belong to. I then realized I needed to go find a new tribe to belong to indulge this need in my human nature.

These 5 topics were key to causing the paradigm shift in my journey and everybody's is unique. It is a big jump that most people don't make it and are filling the growing rank of "nones" in our midst. My experience with church up to 2 years ago left me wanting to quit as well. My quest for answers allowed me to see jumping to another evangelical church wasn't the answer and it was time to try something totally different.

Reaction

Recently, the ELCA the denomination my church belongs to, elected a gay bishop in the California area. Al Mohler, the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) is no longer a church and the only thing in their initials they hold to is the A for America in the denominational name. This is a typical response from the conservative leadership of American Evangelicalism that identifies more with the pharisees than Christ's teachings in my opinion.

If the playing field is level, then I can point the finger at the Al Mohlers of the world and make blanket statements about their denomination without knowing all of the facts. All churches in America are losing members at a level that makes one wonder if the church will be an afterthought in future. The only Christian denomination that has maintained their membership numbers is the Catholic church and that is due to immigration from Mexico and South America. Most Southern Baptist church plants don't even have the name "Baptist" in their name and they try to have a hip and cool name. Al sees the troubling trends in his own denomination and is trying as a defense mechanism to point out the faults in the more "liberal" denominations as he sees it.

Coming from a church tradition that is very similar to the Southern Baptists, I know many great followers of Christ in the conservative realm. Never would I call the churches they attend invalid just because I disagree with some theological points they make. It is sad when religious leaders buy into the liberal vs conservative paradigm in politics that has trickled down to churches. I would like these conservative leaders to concede that there are followers of Christ in the more liberal congregations as well.

So back to the ELCA voting in the first gay bishop, the main point of my article. The ELCA is a huge church body made up of conservative, moderate and liberal congregations. The locale that voted this bishop in agreed he would best represent their local synod. What works in one part of America may not work in another part and Mohler wants to paint the whole denomination as being on board with a certain agenda. From what I have seen is the ELCA is a big tent that allows for differing opinions on issues of the day. Most of the mainline denominations have tried to include the GLBT community in a polar opposite way of more conservative denominations.

So where do members of the GLBT community who want to remain Christians show up to worship? Clearly, they aren't welcome in the conservative realm of Christianity and some can't "Pray the Gay Away."  The believers that proof text the letters of St. Paul and Leviticus overlook quite a bit of the Mosaic law to make their faith fit for them. How can they sit in the pew with people who tell them their lifestyle is sinful when the person pointing the finger is a glutton, materialistic or self righteous. It seems like judgement falls on them when the jerk calling them a sinner gets a free pass.

I guess it boils down to that the conservative leaders view any denomination that is not on board with them as a different religion altogether. Even though Baptists and Lutheran worship the same God, there is wide gap in biblical interpretation and church practices. I have no problem with the Bishop who was elected in California and neither did the congregatios that elected him in. A denomination that makes sure there is a place for everyone is one I am proud to be a member of.

Goodbye to Gene Stephenson

I have been a baseball fan my entire life and have enjoyed the fact we have had a winner in my own backyard in Wichita. WSU baseball is a powerhouse and has fallen off competitively since 2008. I cancelled my season tickets after the 2009 season when there was a noticeable drop off in the quality of the program. After this introspection,  I can add that I am a fair weather fan to my list of many faults.

Gene built the baseball program from the ground up and won on a level that is amazing when you look at his record overall including this season. Gene comes from the old school where you get respect for building something and get a free pass in some ways. He should have seen the writing on the wall with all of the aircraft companies kicking long-term employees to the curb and declining season ticket sales. Gene is the last of a generation that doesn't understand that you can't rest in prior success, last year is the past and it is "what have you done for me lately?" in modern business culture.

Gene is the man as far as building a premier NCAA baseball program out of nothing. Unfortunately, he blame shifted at the end of his career. One example was that the indoor practice facility was built because there was a recruiting barrier and once it was built there were no results to rally the fanbase. The faith of the contributors to the program fell off and probably drove the winds of change. The average fan doesn't realize how they were constrained to recruit a certain number of Kansas residents and even then I don't think there were any full ride scholarships. On top of that, the MLB draft plucked recruits and successful players out of the program and the game changed from the glory days of the 80's and 90's.

I didn't want his tenure as a coach to end like this, but knowing human nature I knew it was inevitable. Gene should have taken a biology course where evolution was introduced and he maybe would have seen that those who adapt survive in the long run. The landscape of college baseball was changing in front of him and he failed to adapt. The powers that be figured that the money they were paying him would motivate him to factor this in. When he didn't for whatever reason that is his problem.

I think it sucks that it had to end this way and more of this rests on Gene for not seeing the trends in collegiate sports and the business world. Once the fiscal year you were successful in is over you have to plan to maintain for the next year. 5 years since the last super regional was generous by business standards to expect a repeat. We wanted a better showing at the regional this year but it was clear the players were no longer on board with the coaching staff.

Gene is a hero to my alma mater Wichita State University and I hope there is reconciliation between the 2 sides so there can be proper respect paid to his contribution to the university.

Autonomy is the Antidote to Fundamentalism

I read it some where on line that people in cults can't handle autonomy. They make an idol of their church experience and leadership there within. It would also explain the cultural differences between the mainline and evangelical churches too.
 
In the evangelical world you are in a bubble and surrounded by like minded people. Your world is small and if you start to wander out of your fellow adherents comfort zone they correct you. It is a defense mechanism that is necessary to the survival of the group. If you seek knowledge past the approved authors list then you will become a liberal or worse yet an atheist.

They use the social network as an incentive to stay in the fold and remain comfortable. I have always been a different kind of thinker and a bit of a loner. When I realized leaving meant walking away from people I could barely stomach to be around, I thought it was a no brainer. For some this would ruin their world and their entire social network would crumble.

I guess you just have to have enough and walk away. Sure it sucks at first, but the long term benefits outweigh the short term heart ache. I wouldn't change anything I have done during this process and realize what I done is unique in my area.

Why go to a church where most days of the week have an activity planned for you? I think it keeps you from making a difference in your daily life and also keeps you from taking in new perspectives. The church that offers everything socially is trapping you in a way. Sure they may have good preaching or whatever but they know you're not going anywhere. 

You might indulge the other evangelical or pca church on your side of town but you'll be back eventually. Unless you go to another denomination that is a paradigm shift to join. To truly leave fundamentalism behind and still have faith is no easy task. Heap on top of that you are going over to the liberal side since there is only black and white engrained in your head.

Autonomy has to be what you are willing to accept with this change.  You will find out who your true friends are and then wonder if they only want to reconvert you so you come back. Many people fill the pews as these authoritarian churches and are unhappy there. It takes a rare person to get up and walk out and never come back. Most people can't handle the responsibility and want to be lead or they shrug off things they know are wrong.

On huffingtonpost.com today a psychologist said that in the future that fundamentalist religious beliefs will be a treatable mental disorder. After my experience she is right but all it takes is education. I don't think the pharmaceutical companies can put education in a pull as of yet.