How I Got Religion, And Then Lost It
The Break
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California had passed a law in 1963 prohibiting racial discrimination in the sale or rental of homes. In 1964 there was an initiative, Proposition 14, intended to repeal that law.3 Jim and several friends, under Ken's tutelage, decided to organize a committee to undertake a campaign against Proposition 14. For some reason, Ken and Jim suggested I join them. I agreed to attend the inaugural meeting, after which I would think about whether to continue participating.
The committee members were mostly college students with one or two still in high school. All were more or less active in one church or another, mostly Methodists and Baptists, but all of them, even the Baptists, very liberal.
The meeting was to be on a Tuesday evening. My church's Bible study was on Tuesday evenings. Excuses for missing any church meeting were limited to those such as illness that would also excuse absence from a job. And, when absence was foreseen, one was expected to call in to the pastor as one would call in to one's employer.
I had not yet decided to quit the church, but I was thinking about it - and scared mightily by the possibility.
If there had been no conflict with regularly scheduled services, I could have sought my pastor's permission to join the committee, but I was pretty sure that even then I would be told not to. There was no rule or precedent on the issue of political activism, but one fact would likely be decisive: The committee was being organized, albeit indirectly, by a group of heathen churches. Its members were motivated, for the most part, by their religion, and it was the wrong religion.
In any case, there was a conflict, and my being given leave to skip a church service in order to attend some political meeting was not even a hypothetical possibility. And so, I did not call the pastor. If I was going to stay with the church, I would have some hard apologies to make, but I would make them if I had to. If I decided to leave the church, skipping a service was not going to matter.
I went to the meeting. We began by introducing ourselves around the table, and Jim suggested we include our church and school affiliations where applicable. Being temporarily a college dropout, I was the only one for whom a school affiliation was not applicable.
Everyone claimed a church affiliation.
It was the last time I said, "I'm an Apostolic."
I became persuaded that the committee's work was God's work. I wanted to join it. But I knew I could not join it while maintaining allegiance to the Apostolic faith.
I talked with Ken again the next night.
I had been convinced for years that I would burn in Hell if I followed any path but fundamentalism. I was now ready to believe I had been mistaken - but how, I wanted to know, could I feel certain about that? This was, after all, not the sort of choice to make on the grounds that it was only probably right. Nobody was telling me I would burn in hell if I stayed with the church.
When Ken and I were through talking, I had reached the following conclusions:
- Divine inspiration can be understood to mean many things, most of which do not imiply the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy.
- We may reasonably assume that the men who wrote the Bible believed what they were writing; we should not assume much, if anything, beyond that.
- In particular, we cannot know how historically accurate any of it is.
- But its historical accuracy is not important.
- The essence of Jesus' message was not in the Great Commission, but in the Great Commandment.
- Any further commentary on Jesus' teachings is of uncertain validity, considering that the gospels didn't begin to get written until a generation after his death.
Still I wavered, but only until the following day. I was working in a factory at that time, at a task requiring little conscious attention. Sometime that afternoon, I crossed my emotional Rubicon.
In the years since, I have made other decisions as difficult, but none more so. At least, it felt at the time like a difficult decision. In hindsight, there really was no decision to make. My belief in the dogmas of fundamentalism was gone, and no act of will on my part could have changed that. I could have stayed in the Pentecostal religion only by hypocritically pretending that I still believed in it. I was not deciding whether to believe or not believe. I was only searching my soul to make very sure I no longer believed.
Having finally made sure, I started a new life as a liberal Christian.
Next: Faith Withers
Notes
3: Historical note for those interested: Proposition 14 was approved by the state's voters in the general election but later found unconstitutional by the California and U.S. supreme courts.
