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ninanevermore.
.
.
I often find myself thinking about how my mother used to rate other Christians as well as religious people who were something other than Christian using three broad classifications: "okay," "different than us," and "weird." A denomination or religion could fall under more than one category (for example, followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon were both "different than us" and "weird"), or it could come with a modifier ("a little bit weird" or only "sort-of okay.") As open-minded as I try to be in my adult life, I still find myself using her same rating system for other people of faith, and still regard many religions based on my mother's assessment of them when I was growing up, in part because it is so easy and convenient.
As a child when I first noticed Pentecostal women walking around with their long hair and long skirts, I asked my mother why.
"Because they are Pentecostal," she said, "and they're weird."
I took one look at the big beehive hair styles and their stern dissapproving faces, and found myself agreeing with her.
She gave more leniencies toward people of other religions who dressed differently, though. When I asked about the headscarf I saw on Muslim women, she said it was because "they are different than us, and that's how they dress."
I think she judged conservative Christian groups a little harsher because she was also a Christian. She gave other religions the benefit of the doubt about any perceived oddities, because she didn't feel she knew enough about them to form a good opinion.
My mother was raised a conservative Baptist, but she married a Methodist and we kids were raised in the United Methodist Church. Methodists are moderate branch of Christianity, and we are expected to figure out the scriptures for ourselves rather than let the church dictate them for us. There are conservative Methodists as well as liberal ones. To illustrate this point: George W. Bush is a Methodist, but so is Hillary Rodham Clinton.
My parents figured out early in their courtship that if they were going to raise the kids in one church, my mother would have to become a Methodist because my father was physically incapable of being a Baptist. It would have given him back problems.
My father took her to his church while they were dating, and she didn't find it objectionable. It was more low-key than she was used to, but the people seemed very nice. The next Sunday, she took him to her church.
The Baptist church my mother grew up in was one of those washed-in-the-blood, Hell-fire-and-brimstone kind of churches. My poor father was not used to being yelled at on Sunday the way my mother's pastor yelled at his congregation. A few minutes into the sermon, she noticed that every time the preacher shouted from the pulpit, my father sank a few inches into the pew. By the end of the sermon, his knees were pressed against the pew in front of him, and his head shoulders were practically pressed into the seat cushion. She never asked him to go back; he obviously wasn't cut out to be a Baptist. The idea of giving up beer didn't sit to well with him, either.
"Jesus' first miracle in the bible was turning water into to wine," he pointed out, "If he had a problem with drinking, why would he have done that?" She couldn't argue with this, and so she converted. In truth she was a good Baptist girl, but not a great one. She knew she liked a little wine now and then herself. It was a relief to cross this off her list of shortcomings and move it over to her list of benign personal preferences.
Her rating system was pretty generous, and she didn't demand that people believe exactly as she did to make the "okay" list. Baptist, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and pretty much all the main-stream protestant churches were okay, by her book. Catholics were "a little different from us, but okay." She thought the Church of Christ folks "might be a little weird," but only because she'd heard they didn't use musical instruments (including pianos and organs) during their church services, and music was her favorite part of worship. I once attended a Church of Christ church when I was visiting a girl who belonged to that church, and I found them to be okay. They still sang, it was just all a cappella.
I once asked my mother why some people believed one way, and other people believed another. Who was right and who was wrong?
"I think Heaven is like a big city," she said, "And big cities have different roads that lead into them. The roads come from different directions, but they all wind up in the same place."
I assumed this meant that even people on the weird roads had a chance. To be classified as weird, you had to earn it. Anyone who went door to door trying to convert people automatically got this label, so Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses were tossed into this box without her even having to look at their core beliefs. Any church that assumed a member writhing on the floor was "overtaken with the Holy Spirit" rather than having an epileptic seizure was weird, and ditto the ones who encouraged "speaking in tongues." Pretty much all TV preachers were weird, and if they wore eyeliner and rouge that made them even weirder.
I admit I kind of hold on to these prejudices to this day.
On the other hand, I wasn't taught to fear or avoid people of other religions. My father was good friends with a Hindu at his work, and they often had congenial discussions about religion. This friend gave my parents a little carved relief of 5 Hindu deities, and my mother hung it on one of the walls in our house, not as a holy object but as a work of art. I was fascinated by these little ebony figures when I was a child, with all their extra arms and the two little goddesses with their full breasts and perfect hourglass figures. When my father married his current wife, she took the relief down because it didn't go with her new decor and she objected to the fact that the little goddesses were topless.
My parents also had Muslim friends, including the couple I babysat for when I was a teenager. I was taught that we were Christians, and they were something else, but this was fine. I was even allowed to play with the kids whose families belonged to the weird groups, like the little Jehovah's Witness girl who down the street, and the Mormon kids the next street over (due to their mother's fertility issues, there were only two of them).
I was an adult before I learned that Christians are all assumed to be self righteous jerks by a lot of people. That we are seen as a monolithic group, despite all our differences. At first, it hurt my feelings. Then it irritated me. Now, it does both.
My own belief's have grown and shifted and evolved over the years, but some things have remained constant: I believe that it's important to respect other people and let them believe as they wish, provided that they are sincere and that their beliefs to not harm anyone else. I believe that if I treat my fellow citizens of this world with respect and tolerance, this is what I should be able to expect in return. I believe that it's a big world, and the divine can be found throughout it, if you open your eyes and look.
If these beliefs make me weird, then so be it. Because when it all comes out in the wash, even weird people are okay.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
I often find myself thinking about how my mother used to rate other Christians as well as religious people who were something other than Christian using three broad classifications: "okay," "different than us," and "weird." A denomination or religion could fall under more than one category (for example, followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon were both "different than us" and "weird"), or it could come with a modifier ("a little bit weird" or only "sort-of okay.") As open-minded as I try to be in my adult life, I still find myself using her same rating system for other people of faith, and still regard many religions based on my mother's assessment of them when I was growing up, in part because it is so easy and convenient.
As a child when I first noticed Pentecostal women walking around with their long hair and long skirts, I asked my mother why.
"Because they are Pentecostal," she said, "and they're weird."
I took one look at the big beehive hair styles and their stern dissapproving faces, and found myself agreeing with her.
She gave more leniencies toward people of other religions who dressed differently, though. When I asked about the headscarf I saw on Muslim women, she said it was because "they are different than us, and that's how they dress."
I think she judged conservative Christian groups a little harsher because she was also a Christian. She gave other religions the benefit of the doubt about any perceived oddities, because she didn't feel she knew enough about them to form a good opinion.
My mother was raised a conservative Baptist, but she married a Methodist and we kids were raised in the United Methodist Church. Methodists are moderate branch of Christianity, and we are expected to figure out the scriptures for ourselves rather than let the church dictate them for us. There are conservative Methodists as well as liberal ones. To illustrate this point: George W. Bush is a Methodist, but so is Hillary Rodham Clinton.
My parents figured out early in their courtship that if they were going to raise the kids in one church, my mother would have to become a Methodist because my father was physically incapable of being a Baptist. It would have given him back problems.
My father took her to his church while they were dating, and she didn't find it objectionable. It was more low-key than she was used to, but the people seemed very nice. The next Sunday, she took him to her church.
The Baptist church my mother grew up in was one of those washed-in-the-blood, Hell-fire-and-brimstone kind of churches. My poor father was not used to being yelled at on Sunday the way my mother's pastor yelled at his congregation. A few minutes into the sermon, she noticed that every time the preacher shouted from the pulpit, my father sank a few inches into the pew. By the end of the sermon, his knees were pressed against the pew in front of him, and his head shoulders were practically pressed into the seat cushion. She never asked him to go back; he obviously wasn't cut out to be a Baptist. The idea of giving up beer didn't sit to well with him, either.
"Jesus' first miracle in the bible was turning water into to wine," he pointed out, "If he had a problem with drinking, why would he have done that?" She couldn't argue with this, and so she converted. In truth she was a good Baptist girl, but not a great one. She knew she liked a little wine now and then herself. It was a relief to cross this off her list of shortcomings and move it over to her list of benign personal preferences.
Her rating system was pretty generous, and she didn't demand that people believe exactly as she did to make the "okay" list. Baptist, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and pretty much all the main-stream protestant churches were okay, by her book. Catholics were "a little different from us, but okay." She thought the Church of Christ folks "might be a little weird," but only because she'd heard they didn't use musical instruments (including pianos and organs) during their church services, and music was her favorite part of worship. I once attended a Church of Christ church when I was visiting a girl who belonged to that church, and I found them to be okay. They still sang, it was just all a cappella.
I once asked my mother why some people believed one way, and other people believed another. Who was right and who was wrong?
"I think Heaven is like a big city," she said, "And big cities have different roads that lead into them. The roads come from different directions, but they all wind up in the same place."
I assumed this meant that even people on the weird roads had a chance. To be classified as weird, you had to earn it. Anyone who went door to door trying to convert people automatically got this label, so Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses were tossed into this box without her even having to look at their core beliefs. Any church that assumed a member writhing on the floor was "overtaken with the Holy Spirit" rather than having an epileptic seizure was weird, and ditto the ones who encouraged "speaking in tongues." Pretty much all TV preachers were weird, and if they wore eyeliner and rouge that made them even weirder.
I admit I kind of hold on to these prejudices to this day.
On the other hand, I wasn't taught to fear or avoid people of other religions. My father was good friends with a Hindu at his work, and they often had congenial discussions about religion. This friend gave my parents a little carved relief of 5 Hindu deities, and my mother hung it on one of the walls in our house, not as a holy object but as a work of art. I was fascinated by these little ebony figures when I was a child, with all their extra arms and the two little goddesses with their full breasts and perfect hourglass figures. When my father married his current wife, she took the relief down because it didn't go with her new decor and she objected to the fact that the little goddesses were topless.
My parents also had Muslim friends, including the couple I babysat for when I was a teenager. I was taught that we were Christians, and they were something else, but this was fine. I was even allowed to play with the kids whose families belonged to the weird groups, like the little Jehovah's Witness girl who down the street, and the Mormon kids the next street over (due to their mother's fertility issues, there were only two of them).
I was an adult before I learned that Christians are all assumed to be self righteous jerks by a lot of people. That we are seen as a monolithic group, despite all our differences. At first, it hurt my feelings. Then it irritated me. Now, it does both.
My own belief's have grown and shifted and evolved over the years, but some things have remained constant: I believe that it's important to respect other people and let them believe as they wish, provided that they are sincere and that their beliefs to not harm anyone else. I believe that if I treat my fellow citizens of this world with respect and tolerance, this is what I should be able to expect in return. I believe that it's a big world, and the divine can be found throughout it, if you open your eyes and look.
If these beliefs make me weird, then so be it. Because when it all comes out in the wash, even weird people are okay.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 04:21 pm (UTC)Of course, the schools they put me in were NOT "cool" and it took YEARS to get all that twisted fundie crap outta my system!
no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 04:38 pm (UTC)And mine.
I'm still gonna play with you, though. :D
no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 04:52 pm (UTC)I agree, respect what other people believe...and don't try to shove your religion down anyone else's throat. ^^
*HUGS*
no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 08:23 pm (UTC)It's not good to have anything shoved down your throat. Politics, diet (this goes for rabid Vegans and Atkins Aficionados alike), tastes in music, or whatever. Religion gets the spotlight when it comes to zealotry, but there are zealots of all stripes out there.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 09:27 pm (UTC)