As the daughter of two atheists (one a secular Jew) who was nonetheless raised in a "WASPy" enclave where, churchgoing or not, people not strongly aligned with a minority religion lived with a "Christian assumption" (meaning we celebrated Christmas and Easter in some fashion), who found a compromise as a teenager by singing in a Unitarian church , and who now is happily ensconced in a Lutheran church as a musician and quasi-member, I am constantly having to explain myself theologically.
I am not a full member of this Lutheran church because I am not baptized (and the idea of submitting to that makes me uncomfortable) so I don't take communion. For years I sat in the choir stall singing the communion hymn, often as a solo, and laughingly referred to myself as the "Shabbas goy" (of course in reverse). Lately I have not had to do that because our new pastor always announces (after explaining that there is grape juice as well as wine, and gluten free bread if it is wanted) "if you don't want to partake you can cross your arms and come up to receive a blessing", which I do.
Many people at that church think I'm a religiously observant Jew (there are a handful of such who are at the church, mostly as musicians, but one is the husband of a congregant) and will in a well-meaning way wish me a Happy Passover, or expect me to understand religious names for parts of the Torah.
If I get caught up in a serious conversation with anyone about these things, I explain that I am culturally Jewish but not theologically Jewish. And then I say that theologically I consider myself a Unitarian. (I don't like the term "UU").
When I say that what I mean, loosely, is: I believe that God is one thing, whether you're Christian, Jewish, Pagan, Muslim, Buddhist, or something else; I believe that Jesus was an important humanitarian but not divine, and I do not call him Christ; and I believe in the "inherent worth and dignity of every human being". I don't believe in the Resurrection. I see it as a metaphor. (Interestingly, the pastors at my Lutheran church believe that Hell is a metaphor - and that Genesis is a poem - but still stand by the Resurrection.) I am agnostic about the afterlife. As I am with someone who will be 84 next month, and may lose her in the not-too-distant future, I like to hope that she will go to some sort of "Heaven", probably out above the Marginal Way where both of us want our ashes scattered. And when my mother died, despite having been an atheist all her life, she looked happy, as if she was going somewhere she wanted to be going, and I heard her talking to the people who had gone before.
So, readers might ask, why not attend Unitarian services? As I have written over and over in these pages, my voice was "discovered" at my local UU church when I was 54, by a charismatic (and later toxic) figure whom I often call "Svengali". There was a sorta kinda classical music program, meaning that the choir sang classical music a few times a year and the handful of classical soloists (now including me) sang solos. After a year or so, the choir director was fired (for a number of reasons) and all the classical music was scrapped. And has never returned despite the fact that the church has had several music directors since then (this was 2005) and now has a new minister as well.
So OK. There's a lot of music that's not "classical" that I am OK with hearing in a church: gospel, contemporary Christian music, Appalachian hymns, African-American spirituals (although I prefer these when they're arranged for classical voices), even liturgical jazz. And in fact our choir (whch is known for its Bach and Mendelssohn) has sung all of those. But what has happened at the UU church with regard to nonclassical music is quite different. They still have their head in the 60s and among their favorite selections are songs by Bob Dylan and John Lennon.
If I haven't said it enough here, probably the years that destroyed me and put me behind the 8 ball forever (and I will be 68 soon) was the period from 1964 to 1972, the heyday of all that "stuff". I can't bear to listen to it, certainly not in a church, which I see as in some ways a link to old traditions. (My Lutheran church seems to have it right: it links to the past in [most of] its music, and in its rituals, and it is firmly planted in the present in its engagement with issues of today.)
To be clear, I have been happy lately and have not wanted to dwell on negative things (although any time I get a "trigger" back to "the Sixties" I silently rage and weep for the girl who could have been - an opera singer, an academic, a lawyer?), but this post was prompted by an invitation I got from a member of my old UU church to something called "Sacred Sounds and Settings". I took a look at it (this church is in a beautiful building and could host some marvelous sacred sounds) and saw that it was going to feature music by Leonard Cohen, Bobby McFerrin, The Indigo Girls, Sly and the Family Stone. Except for Bobby McFerrin and possibly the "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, I don't think any of the foregoing belongs in a church. Sly and the Family Stone??? That's disco (drug) music! (Oh, and I see the choir is now called a "casual choir".) How trendy and what a great way to pander to aging hippies. (If the church wants to attract young people, I have news for you. Young people are interested in many different aesthetics, not just that of the Sixties rebellions.) I didn't want to offend the woman who sent this to me, but I felt like checking the box "not interested". But that wouldn't even begin to cover it. Quite frankly I would rather have a root canal, and to me, anyhow, listening to a "concert" in a church featuring disco music seems blasphemous and I'm not a right-wing Christian!!
On a seemingly unrelated topic, our new pastor (speaking out against the racism of many white Evangelicals) said that the problem with many Christian churches is that they care more about the "culture" than about the gospel. Now I know she was talking about white red state American culture, which does not resonate with me (in fact, as a third generation New Yorker, I've had almost no contact with it). But might it be possible that I am really attracted to "church" because of the culture? (Not white American culture, obviously, but the culture of Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, and Agatha Christie?) I grew up reading Brit Lit where the Church of England (and its assorted vicars, curates, vergers, deans, sextons, and others) were recurring characters. I have recently begun working on a memoir (amazingly not about singing!) in which I describe the disconnect between my life growing up as an atheist and my continued exposure to the Church through literature. (And later through all the Britcoms I watched.)
I began thinking of going to church after reading an article by Gertrude Himmelfarb about the churchgoing habits of Victorians. She said that after the popularization of Darwin, most intellectual Victorians did not believe in the "supernatural" events described in the Bible (sounds very Unitarian to me!), but they still attended church regularly and considered themselves Christian because to them it was a social and moral identity (and being a member of the Church of England was also a part of British identity) rather than a spiritual belief system.
I know many people dislike Himmelfarb because she leans rightward, which certainly I don't (except perhaps in my attitudes to music, dress, and drug use), but I have to say that reading this article of hers made me feel "OK" about going to church, regardless of what I actually believed.
So what better place to begin than with the UUs. I had felt (wrongly) that this UU church on Manhattan's Upper West Side would be like the Unitarian church of my childhood: Protestant minus the supernatural. (Well, it was, kinda, until the choir director was fired. Then it went rogue Hippie with a vengeance!)
Let's just say it is a far cry from our 1965 Christmas Messiah sing to Sly and the Family Stone!
I'm glad I'm out, and will probably never be back.
I'm happy where I am. I just always have a lot of 'splaining to do. But that's OK. If I can sing, I'm willing to 'splain to anyone who's interested.
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