Choosing My Religion

I've spent most of my life areligious. My mother grew up with a father who was a Unitarian minister, but she herself had (and still has) little use for organized religion. There was a Unitarian church somewhere in Pasadena that we used to go to when I was little. I think Unitarians are fine, but I tend to think of them as akin to agnostics. It's taking a position on religion without really taking a position on religion. Unitarianism is more of a hobby than a religion, I've always felt. My mother's mother was also a Unitarian, and her own father was a Unitarian minister as well. See a pattern?

My Unitarian minister grandfather was actually himself raised a Lutheran, as all old school Scandinavians were required by law to be. Lutherans are fine, I suppose. They remind me of Episcopalians in the sense that they're basically Catholics who just kind of took a different path a few hundred years ago. I actually admire Luther a lot for what he did, and how he attempted to bring what was then a very corrupt church (ahem, ahem) back to its basics, and made the emphasis the relationship between the individual and God, without all the horse and pony shows getting in the way.

My paternal grandmother was a Quaker and she took me to a meetinghouse in the San Gabriel area (Temple City?) a few times when I was little. I always liked the testimonies of simplicity and humility that Quakers adhere to, and the stripped-down stillness of unprogrammed worship has always been consistent with my personality. When forced to, I've often told people that I'm a Quaker, and they usually give me a perplexed look in return because they think I've just told them that I'm Amish. Anabaptist, sure. Amish, not quite.

My paternal grandfather and my stepfather's mother were both raised Catholic (as anyone born before 1950 who had a drop of Irish blood was required by law to be). My stepfather's mother (who I called Grammie) was a wonderful, strong woman who I have nothing but respect for and postive memories of. But she believed in fairies and thought that our pet cat was going to 'steal the breath' (a literal translation of a Gaelic phrase, apparently) from my younger brother when he was an infant (cue coo-coo clock noise). That has nothing to do with being Catholic, I realize, but furthers my argument that Irish Catholics tend to have one foot in Rome and one foot in pre-6th century Ireland when it comes to their belief systems.

I have great respect for Judaism but after living in New York for a few years I've come to the realization that culturally, I have nothing in common with American Jews and could never really feel a part of that community.

I have great respect for Islam in principle, but I don't have much use for the Islamic world. In order to get excited about a faith I have to look at its members and find something to admire. Most of the Islamic world seems hot, dusty, and angry. Also, extremists are in power in most Muslim-majority countries and I can't get around the fact that if you're a woman in an Islamic country your life just must be awful.

I have great respect for Buddhism and Hinduism on the surface, but once you dig a little deeper they both get very strange, especially Hinduism. In the same vein, I think Taosim has a lot of great principles but, at its core, seems better suited to a Chinese peasant living in the year 500, than it does for a Westerner living in the year 2009. Especially when that Westerner has already been exposed to concepts like "objective reality" and "goals".

I don't want to call myself an agnostic because I really hate the wishy-washy-ness that term implies. I don't want to call myself an atheist either, because I do believe in God, and I think there's something implicity antagonistic and anti-religious about the word.

I've called myself Protestant in the past, but, again, that has a stigma too. Put the word "non-denominational" in front of that and people assume you're a born-again.

So I guess I'll just keep calling myself Quaker and keep having people tell me that they didn't think there were any of us around anymore. So long as I don't run into any Quakers who actually attend services I should be fine.