I mentioned previously that I have had some strange influences this week, and this comes in my trajectory of my faith journey, which spans decades now. I suppose I can start with an overview if it helps provide context for the events of recent years and this week. Knowing that both of my novels explore topics that traditional "Christian publishing" would not approve, it has been hard to find my space in the publishing world with these issues.
My mother was occasionally practicing Catholic, and these beliefs in her life looked outwardly confused and confusing. She married a Presbyterian agnostic man. I spent grade school in Catholic school until I was 11, and what I remember is learning about seemingly pagan practices of putting bits of "holy people" bones in altars to be worshiped, and being required to write a paper on this when I was 10. I remember things like not cussing and sex was bad as well I am sure somewhere along the line. However, school was the only time I went to church, so when I changed school - to a private Christian school - I had classes in learning about the Bible, but I had no regular corporate worship participation. Though every week, we did have a week where the schedule changed and a Religious leader gave daily addresses, following which we would have an hour of voluntary participation discussion group. I recall these hours mostly watching an evangelican and an aethist men on the debate team argue with one another without hearing each other. There were many friends in the school who were Jewish and were absent on their holidays.
When I was 15, I attended a weekend skiing with a group of people who seemed to speak more authentically about their faith journeys, so this intrigued me, having so little exposure to any real discussion about beliefs growing up. In fact, following that experience, I marched into the youth group at the Catholic church where I had really not been present for years, and asked them to explain their beliefs to me. The response was to point to a bookshelf that went floor to cieling and to be told it was all in there somewhere, so I left and never went back. Until my mother found comfort on her deathbed from a very pastoral priest from that church, I had no peace or reconciliation about my experience there. That recognition of the comfort a very caring man brought my mother, in a belief system she recognized, brought me minimal peace that ended when I brought the themes that my mother had faced during her illness to the planning of the funeral to be told only 5 or so songs or pieces of Scripture were allowed in the funeral litergy, non of which matched the things on my list.
The more significantly fucked up experience as a teen was my parents behavior toward me as the rebellious child for chosing this path of exploration into self-discovery. A chaplain providing some guidance and mentorship advised me to keep my head down, not to explore avenues of corporate worship that my mother did not recognize, while I was living under their roof. My mother was abusive to me about this period of my life, repeatedly telling me I was in a cult. Because of that experience, I found freedom at university finally to attend churches outside of my mother's strict ideas of acceptable, to invest in course work into ancient Judaic history, Roman history, theological history, church history, to being putting structure together for myself. The groups at my university were split in focus, one being extremely socially oriented, which helped me less just face my own questions head on, and a more academic group, mostly made up of Koreans who asked questions about how to reconcile study of science with beliefs, which were never at odds for me. It would me amiss not to mention that my interview was about the practices of the private school's approach to teaching beliefs, and I responded with critical thinking about these experiences watching people debate who did not listen to each other, and my discomfort, contrasted with the exposure I had been able to gain in how to approach authentic discussion and approach to belief.
Following University, I invested further in myself in my language and literary studies, in addition to investment into a church community, also heavily intellectually focused, and knowing and understanding Hebrew and Greek texts well, not far removed from Jewish understanding. However, this community held toxic elements. There was a very strange social component among the men and women, which was fine for me in years recovering from sexual assault and preferring not to be alone in a room with a man. Until a friend who was engaged to a man in the group was victim blamed by the white male elders for the man breaking their engagement without an explanation. She was provided years of counseling by Redeemer church in Manhattan, and following that and other strangeness, I also found myself unable to stay in that environment. Not the least of those strange situations being the man who broke off his engagement to my friend then having an interest in me, and appearing in very strange places like a private party in my home to which I had not invited him - all concurrent with the manager in my workplace harassing me and the situation I have written about previously.
Next I went to a church in the presbyterian tradition, where I knew a lot of friends, and really enjoyed that community. However, it was followed quickly by a move cross-country, where I found myself in the early stages of a now scandalous church in Seattle, with a focus, at least, on asking men to take responsibility. It however was mixed with very legal debates about what "role" women should have. The approach to theological questions I found to be a much better fit for myself personally. Bonhoeffer had been a big influence for me during my years of self-investment. With parents becoming ill, I returned closer to them, found myself in a very large traditional church in the Southeast US. Where I experienced the toxic situation with a man who was stalking me, and creating a love triangle by stringing their favorite "perfect Bible girl art teacher" along, and the church again targeted me for blame of responsibility for the situation rather than the man. This was the same man who told 1000 mutual friends on social media the same kind of narrative he created in his mind where he got nowhere with me by appearing every day to watch me without ever talking to me, and I was of course to blame for this. Despite my attempts to approach him to talk being met with him literally running away. He also destroyed my family dynamic, which wasn't hard to do given the twisted situation with my mother which has already been described.
This led to very dark times for me in my faith journey, because I had been betrayed by everyone close to me, with the exception perhaps of one friend from university, but including someone I had thought was one of my closest friends. I could not participate in faith communities who kept repeating these patterns, particularly in deciding that all women were supposed to be given anything like the same kind of role. I did find one group which had a different approach, and was more fearless. In addition, a grief support group at a large way-too-lavish church that served the affluent white community, was at least led by a woman with a PhD and zero biological children, who could at least speak a similar language. Those communities helped me through the year following my mother's death, and supported my move to Europe, in addition to the community who had known me growing up.
This provides the context of my faith journey that brought me to Europe, thankfully, without any obligation to any religious group or expectations to fulfill any religious agenda. My current project explores a lot of the religious philosophy I have been able to develop since that point in time. This week I heard women scratching the surface of things I had been free to observe being very far removed from the toxic conglomeration that is religion at this moment in time in the American Evangelicalist tradition, which spans much of the global conversation because of the prolific efforts of missionary support from churches in the US in the past century. It seems to me not that vastly different from a previous moment in history in Europe where church wealth controlled a lot of the culture, centered in Rome, and a man who lived not far away from my home now who challenged it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k78xyVE_wYQ&fbclid=IwAR2rizkS8V6VZfuoqkZec1QnAzIgwRO_-sySpo28QVwMBG75xEdiXlW5Zjo
Since meeting a German pen pal in university, I had been involved with discussing attitudes about religion with Germans for nearly most of my faith journey. I had been in Germany and connected with groups supporting each other to try to provide authentic encounters of faith for people in Germany, as well as attending a lecture about the woman who was previously the head of the German church before she resigned following a DUI charge. I discovered, like most of West German culture, many of these were propped up by American puritan ideals, funded by Redeemer Presbyterian in New York. The same church whose minister John Piper had his video banned on YouTube for saying the pandemic was punishing homosexuals. However, moving to East Germany was a completely different culture than the cultures of Western Europe which have been so heavily influenced by AngloSaxon British/ American sensibilities.
One day early in living here, I was on the canal in the summer, looking up and could not escape seeing naked people everywhere. I knew what people from these American cultural, particularly, religious groups, who cannot separate their culture from their beliefs, would say about how East Germans were godless because of communism, and that is why they do not have the sensibilities about modesty that must be outlined in the Bible. Living in Europe, one of the first things you are asked are why Americans fixate on what other people did in their bedrooms. Now I should explain where I live and the philisophical history of this region.
Leipzig is where Bach composed a lifetime of masterpieces, and Goethe spearheaded the German Romantic literary tradition. It was where the publishers printed disruptive theological tracts from Martin Luther, despite heavy handed opposition trying to silence him. The mayor of Leipzig was one of the worst persecutors of the Jewish population and committed suicide upon losing the war, and then the region did not recover under a functional government, but had an unsustainable government for decades. However, the city focused on rebuilding their cultural community first as a higher priority than the business or economic strength, and their investment has made the city the fastest growing city in the country.
I mentioned the FKK culture for which East Germany is known, and I was intrigued about the philisophical origins, since the sexual attitudes are more organic. I tell everyone that there are two things I find similarities in attitudes between European and American contrasting attitudes. Alcohol and sex are both parts of life in Europe the people experience, mostly in moderation, and consider a natural part of life, while American counterparts (frequently with heavy handed religiously driven laws about them) have a very unhealthy all or nothing attitude, and binges being hidden due to no healthy outlet and shame surrounding the desires. These are things most people are well aware. However, I was most interested to learn about the logical philisophical connections about the Naturalist philosophy which was German, not East German, prevalent at the turn of the twentieth century across the whole country, and only pushed aside in the West by the heavy presence from the American and British more prudish sensibilities.
My conclusion was that being in East Germany, though set back economically, I was experiencing the evolution of German cultural and philosophy as it would have continued naturally, and that in the West, I was experiencing German culture through the lense of British and American mores. A friend with a similar educational background was visiting Leipzig in the fall, and was a student primarily of German philosophy. Since our discussions about Tolkein were about how he wished LotR had talked about sexual desires and urges more authentically, because he found the text so inspiring, but fell short in providing a discussion on these topics with which he wreslted, and my discussion of The Song of Ice and Fire comparative religious discussions that happened while people were riding horses across the country, not unlike the Canturbury Tales. I kept trying to get him back to the burning questions I had about German philosophy and the direction it could take in theology if there were ideas pulled away from the heavy handed American and British influences the way these other areas of culture had been. He agreed that to see a German church evolve free from American influence built on the innovative logic of German ideals would be magnificent.
Europe is known for having many churches, which mainly thrive from tourist interest in their representation in history and architecture, less on providing meaningful community for locals to intersect life and faith authentically. Anthropologists refert to Europe as "post-Christian" and being in a place like Leipzig with such a different and separate philisophical evolution, this catch all phrase chafes me. Germany has a very different religious and church history than most of the rest of "Christendom." In the 1930s, Germany lost an entire generation of religious leaders, because the religious leaders of the church in Germany were not lacking backbones. They were all killed as a result of standing up to the horrors being committed against humanity by the government. Today, in the city, one church is led by a neighbor across the street who is from Hamburg. One is led by an Anglican minister who is a white man born in Africa. One is a shot off of loud music brand. The first group I met when moving here is a group who held community throughout the Communist government. I met another group which is completely German born, started in Stuttgart entirely on Jewish traditions. The Catholic church was given prime real estate to build a large structure at the middle of the city, and held their three day conference here recently, which made my friends who were native very angry given the history of the city driving out Catholic teachings from Rome and no population of church members in the region. (the year before the city very proudly celebrated their 500th anniversary of participating in the reformation) However, I met with someone from the English church to ask questions, to start by saying that something is foul in Denmark, and there was no room to question any positions on certain issues.
In contrast I have witnessed two large corporate American church entities who have systems of "church planting" replication focused on meeting metrics of growth, send married couples to Leipzig in these attempts. One was a young couple from Kansas in their 20s. They were employed by a large evangelical group who had a leader who trains church teachers call the sitting administration something like the Messiah. The second was an elder couple from a large Southern corporate group from Texas or Oklahoma. I met this couple through my (remember agnostic Presbyterian) father when he was here to help me in the hospital recovering from my nearly fatal illness. He was introduced them by a neighbor. He had lunch with the husband, and reported while I was in the hospital about this couple coming here and having trouble meeting their growth metrics. Both couples came from regions and traditions which have never involved any critical thinking traditions. In fact, I was so infuriated by my father's report that I spent all night in the hospital on my mobile phone writing irate emails. After being released, I met the couple and suggested having lunch together to thank them for keeping my father company, when my real agenda was to see how badly they behaved. It was worse than I had expected. This was following friends in Glasgow reporting that American church planters there had in depth blogs about the horrors of Glasgow and how the people there in Glasgow were in such bad shape. Everyone I know from Glasgow represent the best of humanity and are very proud of the diversity and hospitality of Glaswegians.
The husband seemed easy going enough, but the woman was a nightmare. She could not talk to me to get to know a single thing about me or my story, or who I was as a person. She could not talk to me about my goals or life being here. She launched into an emo overshare about this tragic childhood of abuse and a church saving her from her misery in college, where she also met this "Christian man" who saved her. I just listened in disbelief, as she looked expectantly at me for a reaction, as if I was supposed to jump in at some point with "evidence" of my "testimony" to prove anything to her about my long, deeply personal, journey of my relationship with my beliefs and faith had anything in common with hers. My father was much more forgiving of her, telling me later, because he grew up with church ladies like her, which also left me astounded at her sense of arrogance that her story was going to work like magic on him, and decades of the dance he and I have had around these topics would all vanish.
The connections that the world of my book project had with the Persian moment of innovation has taken me down an exciting path that has been truly pre-Christianity, in the ideas that influenced the entire mesopotamian world view of the divine, and created the context of Abrahamic religions, and the shift away from appeasing a divine entity of wrath, that set the stage for teachings of Greek scriptures. These are ideas I have spoken about to native East Germans, who are fascinated and want to talk more about solutions to bad human behavior which might come about through connecting with a different kind of divine than the 2000 year old Roman model. All of which has only diverged from the original sources of inspiration, and been used to justify toxic attitudes about certain elements of society, and lost any real sense of meaning or connection to the realities of humanity. The most recent iteration of US religious history has involved the spreading of theology from south eastern branches, which all formed their focus on purity as means to salvation in the Jim Crow south as written about.
My response to seeing that the foundation was built on something so evil and poison reminded me of some words from those texts about where you look and your vision being blocked by darkness, and turning everything else dark, and this feeling like an accurate description to the product I have seen.
"The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but ifyour eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"
One woman from the area asked me to tell her about my beliefs. I said they were in transition. That basically the only thing I knew was that whatever was being packaged and sold commercially under this strand of evolution was poison, and that somehow we had to go back to the start to understand anything. This was something she felt excited about and energized about engaging.
The women in the podcast I heard this week scratched the surface. I sent it to another native East German man I met at church who appears only to care about anything to do only with straight white men. He couldn't be bothered to watch more than twenty minutes to hear ideas that women had to say. Despite the calls we have had which have consisted about him ranting for two hours about how the world isn't fair and doesn't treat him right, and I have listened to any ideas he wants to explore on finding solutions. Despite this, if people on the other side of the world are starting to make the same observations independently, we appear to be noticing a reality that the corporate church structure finds it more convenient to ignore, and that has gone so well historically.
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