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Left wing religion
I have been doing a lot of comfort eating in the last few days, which is not my usual pattern, but it seems right. I walked to Kieran's over the lunch hour and gorged on their pot roast sandwich and bread pudding with whiskey sauce. I will doubtless fall asleep at my desk this afternoon.
As some of you know because I've been commenting in various people's journals, I have been brooding with a great deal of pain over this last election, and especially the set back to gay rights, which feels like a blow to the core of my Christian faith. I had taken along a copy of Lavender Magazine because I was hoping that Jacob Reitan's column might offer some comfort (Reitan writes about matters of faith for the gay community). The column was written before the election, but it was amazingly prescient. As I ate, I read the column, and Reitan's words were exactly what I needed. Talking about one of my greatest personal heroes, Paul Wellstone, Reitan wrote:
As some of you know because I've been commenting in various people's journals, I have been brooding with a great deal of pain over this last election, and especially the set back to gay rights, which feels like a blow to the core of my Christian faith. I had taken along a copy of Lavender Magazine because I was hoping that Jacob Reitan's column might offer some comfort (Reitan writes about matters of faith for the gay community). The column was written before the election, but it was amazingly prescient. As I ate, I read the column, and Reitan's words were exactly what I needed. Talking about one of my greatest personal heroes, Paul Wellstone, Reitan wrote:
Wellstone’s faith focused on action. One need look only as far as his conception of the Almighty to understand why.That's the kind of faith I can believe in, that I can get behind. I want to find other believers who think the same way. Where are they, and what can we do together?
“I think the prophetic tradition of our faith is that to love God is to love justice. And, hey, I don’t meet that goal, but I try to do everything I can to live by it,” Wellstone once said to the Rabbi Laureate of Temple Aaron Synagogue in St. Paul.
That theistic understanding is the root of the religious left. Unlike the religious right, which focuses on what particular theistic tradition to believe in, and what citizens should not do, the religious left embraces different beliefs in the name and cause of justice.
The religious left is neither pious nor exclusionary. It does not damn or spread fear. Rather, it evokes hope and compassion.
Primarily, the religious left calls individuals to personal accountability, and criticizes persons only when they do not share the load of society’s burdens. It understands that all members of society are God’s children, and all deserve to experience and live out the glories of Her world.
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Also wish I had that bread pudding.
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The biggest disappointment is that the services do nothing for me. In three churches in three parts of the country, they feel like sitting in a lecture hall.
I grew up Lutheran and I miss the liturgy, the words and music and the way the congregation becomes an important part of the service rather than just an audience.
I also miss the holidays and the seasons of the year. In UU it seems that every Sunday is the same unless it's a holiday, and then that holiday exists for one hour Sunday morning. There's no sense of flow, no sense that next week is important, that two weeks ago was special.
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Perhaps I should have said spiritual.
I'm a birthright UU myself, and actually pondering going into the ministry, but I have many of those same issues. I would essentially call it a religion without spiritual passion. It's frustrating.
(On the other hand, if I go into the ministry, perhaps I can do something about that, at least on an individual level.)
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I've never been to a non-liturgical Protestant service and for all I know they would also leave me cold.
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I do know several progressive religious folks who missed, in particular, the celebration of communion after attending UU churches for a while. One was raised by fundamentalist Baptist missionaries, if you can believe (!), so she ended up going to a very progressive ABC (American Baptist Church) congregation.
Although the UCC and UUA are probably some of the most progressive churches around there ARE conservative congregations in these denominations, too, so look into the particular church--don't just assume. And there are radical/progressive Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Reformed Jewish, Reconstructionist Jewish and even Conservative Jewish congregations out there.
One of the projects we've worked on for a while is a directory of "welcoming" congregations in the Philadelphia area (specifically welcoming GLBTQ people, their families and friends), but it would be fantastic if there were a national directory of such congregations. I don't know how many friends have moved away from here and left our congregation, only to write back to the church saying they've still had no luck finding a church home because they ended up moving to a rather conservative area. It's no fun to spend an entire service biting the inside of your cheek because you're afraid of reacting negatively to it while it's still going on.
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They all celebrated the holidays, but I really like the lead-up to them you get with Lent and Advent and the whole "Second Sunday of Easter" concept.