Enthusiasm

I started to write this entry on September 12, just before I left on vacation, but I did not finish what I started and left it as a draft. This posting represents a slightly edited version of what I wrote at that time, along with some additional paragraphs tacked onto the end.

I haven't had much to say lately. I am feeling a little disillusioned with this process of seeking out religious communities. I always knew that I was going to deal with theologies that I didn't necessarily feel comfortable with, but the more contact that I have had with ostensibly "progressive" Christian churches, the less satisfied I have become with just making do.

A few months ago, at Pastor Bob Cornwall's request, I wrote an article for a journal that he edits, in which I discussed my religious journey and my experiences visiting various churches. I wrote at the time about my frustrations as a spiritual outsider looking inward, as one who was attracted to the Christian tradition and yet repelled by many of its more orthodox doctrines. What kept me going through all of that, despite the frustration, was a certain spirit of optimism, and maybe a sense that God was calling out to me. There were plenty of new faith communities left to try out, and so many churches seemed open to the ideas of people like Borg or even Spong. I believed somehow that if I kept looking I might find something at least remotely resembling I was looking for; at the very least, the novelty of visiting new churches kept me going for a while. The desire to connect with God was also a strong motivator. Bob himself had suggested to me once, before he solicited the article, that the demands that I was placing on the Christian faith were unlikely to be met, and that I was probably not going to find mainline Protestant churches that were going to offer the kind of theology that I myself was interested in exploring. I knew at some level that he was right. And yet, something kept me going. I was willing to make certain compromises, on the theory that a little bit of moderately frustrating spiritual nourishment was better than none at all. But this was proving to be a decreasingly successful personal strategy.

I could at this point, I suppose, expand my exploration and go roaming out further afield into the suburbs, in ever widening circles of church shopping exercises, but the reality is that the payoff seems dubious, especially given that long Sunday morning car rides aren't my idea of a good time anyway.

I found some of the churches I visited through their affiliation with the Center for Progressive Christianity; and others I found by doing web searches; still others were I found via a list of "progressive" churches contained an appendix of Hal Taussig's book, A New Spiritual Home: Progressive Christianity at the Grass Roots. There was so much variety in approaches and theologies and congregations, it all started to make my head spin, and meanwhile nothing was really working. One church might have an interesting or progressive pastor, but the congregation was not very welcoming, or else I felt like I was crashing a party to which I was not invited. Other churches had services that were full of orthodox creedal confessions and high Christological language that just didn't work for me.

I had for a while been sporadically attending a small but active progressive church, with a progressive pastor. At one point the church had been offering discussion forums on the eight points of progressive Christianity. I attended one of them, and the subject of prayer came up. I am not a believer in the efficacy of intercessory prayer, and I said so at the meeting. No one argued with me or vocally disagreed with me, but in some sense I felt that I was speaking as an outsider with a different perspective than that of the others. The other members of this congregation were lifelong members of the that church's denomination who were edging into progressive territory, while I was an outsider who came at religious belief from a quite different direction. I realized at that point that no matter how progressive the Christian community is, I was forever standing outside of the Christian faith looking inward. I didn't want to play the role of iconoclast in any case. It was the real beginning of my disengagement with the church shopping process, although attending church during the previous Christmas season, with its celebration of events that I didn't for once second believe literally to have taken place, had also been a contributing factor.

It is hard for me to totally give up on this process. I haven't totally ruled out attending a church from time to time. And maybe my enthusiasm for this project will pick up again--anything is possible. There are one or two relatively progressive churches in my community that I could attend if I really felt the urge. But for the most part, at least at the moment, I am not feeling the urge. This represents a big change from how I felt when I first started this process a couple of years ago; at that time, I felt a really strong urge, as if God herself were calling me to go find a religious community.

While I was on vacation recently, I realized that maintaining this blog, and participating in online discussion in general, had been stressing me out. My vacation certainly had some stresses of its own--temporarily lost luggage being a major one of those--but somehow they were a different kind of stress, because things like lost luggage were vacation stresses; and once I did get my luggage I had the time of my life. I had internet access, but I didn't want to check this blog, write in it, or participate in blog discussions here or anywhere else.

I'm still basking in the afterglow of that vacation a bit, even though I have been back for over a week. What that means for the future of this blog remains an open question.