Oof. It’s been a while. I apologize. I’ve had lots of topics in mind to write about, but little time to actually do the writing. But nevermind excuses, on to tonight’s topic.
A couple of weeks ago I went to church with my friend Danielle. It was an interesting experience, because Danielle is Christian. Very Christian. Her church is an Evangelical Christian church in Amherst called MERCYhouse.
I followed Danielle to church for a couple of reasons. The one that pertains to this blog, though, is the bit of this page of uua.org that says a source of UUism is “Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.”
Since we’ve been studying Christianity in Religion class, I’ve been thinking about how it relates to UUism a lot. I know a lot of people, in the UU community and outside of it, who are uncomfortable with Christianity. I was raised both UU and Catholic, and I went to CCD until I was 14, so I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the Christian side of things as well as the UU side of things.
I think UUs tend to forget our Christian heritage and inspiration. We try not to talk about God, and especially not about Jesus. The kids might do a section in Sunday School on Bible stories, but sometimes, the adults can turn “embracing all traditions” into “embracing all traditions but distancing ourselves from evil Western religions.” I think that’s unfair. Sure, there’s a lot to dislike about Christianity. But there’s a lot of value in it too, and it’s important to understand it even if you don’t agree with it or the way it’s used in society.
So getting back to my story, I went to church with Danielle. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, because for all my Catholic upbringing was worth, Catholicism is a very different beast from Evangelicalism. I’ve lived all of my life in Massachusetts, so of all the Christian traditions, Evangelicalism is probably the one I’m least familiar with. It’s also the one that gets a lot of bad press in most of my social circles- the documentary Jesus Camp comes to mind. The only reason I wasn’t more worried is because Danielle is quite possibly the nicest, sweetest, most open-hearted, honestly good person I know. She was ecstatic that I wanted to visit her church, and really enthusiastic to share her experience of religion with me.
Still, I wasn’t really comfortable when I walked through those doors. I didn’t know how the other members of MERCYhouse would take a visitor, someone who had consciously chosen to forgo Confirmation because I didn’t feel comfortable with the Catholic Church’s view on things. I didn’t know what I expected to gain from this experience, except an hour’s worth of time devoted to a Christ and a God I don’t really care about.
What I found, however, was an example of what I feel Christianity should be like. The bit I quoted up above states that we draw inspiration from Jewish and Christian teachings that “call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves”, and that is what I experienced at MERCYhouse. So maybe I didn’t really sing along to the band when they sang stuff like “You are magnificent, eternally/Wonderful, glorious/Jesus/No one ever will compare to You/Jesus” Maybe I wasn’t really sure about the passage from the Book of Joshua where they stoned Achan and all of his family to death because he took some gold and robes from the town they’d rampaged.
Overall, however, I never once felt judged because I was a visitor. No one talked about how abortion is evil, or about how homosexuality is a sin, or how Obama was a sekrit Muslim, or anything else that the stereotypical conservatives of America like to talk about. And a lot of people at MERCYhouse probably do believe that abortion is evil and many probably did support McCain in the last election- and I kind of doubt it, but maybe they all think Obama’s a Communist Muslim and only Sarah Palin can save America- but my point is, at that service it didn’t matter. What mattered was that we were all children of God and we were all there to worship Him. Maybe I just got lucky with the service I chose to attend- but that day, no one fell into that dialogue of hatred which so pervades American culture these days. The message I got from MERCYhouse wasn’t one of hatred, or division, but one of acceptance and love.
Danielle and the people at MERCYhouse exemplify a Christian lifestyle I can really get behind. Loving each other and helping each other, whether in the name of God or some other ideal, can never be a bad idea. And I think this is what UUs tend to forget about Christianity- at its best, it’s all about love and acceptance. In the Bible, Jesus hangs out with prostitutes, beggars, lepers, and tax collectors, and he brings a message of universal love to the world.
Nowadays, many may have forgotten about this, or ignored this in favor of their own agendas. These are the people we always hear about, the people who compare Obama to Hitler, who started the Birthers movement, who cling to Glenn Beck’s every word. But the people who call themselves Christian, who constantly fill the world with vitriol and hatred and fear and lies- they’re not the ones we, as UUs, should remember. We ought to remember, teach, and take inspiration from what Christianity ought to be- what I found at MERCYhouse. We ought to remember and take inspiration from this guy, whose story nearly made me cry.
I was writing this because I couldn’t sleep due to illness, but now that I’ve stopped sneezing my brains out I’m actually getting tired, so I’m going to stop it here. One of the strongest qualities of UUism, for me, is our ability to draw inspiration from many sources around the world. For all that our history is very rooted in Christianity, however, we tend to ignore it due to the overwhelmingly negative associations it gets today. Visiting MERCYhouse and talking to Danielle has helped open my eyes to all the positive aspects of Christianity, and recently that’s where I’ve been drawing my inspiration from as a UU. I still don’t think I’ll ever be sure about God or Jesus, but I think that’s okay.
