Some redundancy
I forgot I had written this previous post about religion, but this new one has church reviews.
I grew up going to a Christian Scientist church until I was about seven. In first grade I became friends with some kids that went to an Episcopal church and I told my parents I wanted to go there instead.
My mom was questioning the Christian Science dogma and my dad was an ex-Catholic. They also had some friends at that church so we started going there. I was an acolyte (altar boy) for several years, went to Sunday School, and played on the youth basketball team there. I was very involved.
When I was 13 it was time to do confirmation classes. By this time I had read enough history and world culture stuff that I knew about other religions and I did not want to get confirmed at the time. I wanted to spend some time reading and dealing with issues of faith before I made that commitment. I was given an ultimatum that I could no longer acolyte if I did not get confirmed. So I stopped, but the attitude upset me and I stopped going entirely, except on Christmas Eve with my folks.
Then I went to college and got a double major in Political Science and Philosphy. Reading several thousand years of thoughts made me recognize that I did not believe in God because there was no evidence for any one religion compared to another. After that I stopped going to Church at all.
I got married to a wonderful girl who grew up Catholic. However, she went to a Quaker-based school and a secular college and never expressed much interest in church. She would go with her parents when she was visiting sometimes, but we got married and moved to California. I don’t think we went to or even talked about church for 4 years. Then we moved back east, ended up in Portland and eventually had a kid (using IVF).
When she was around a year old, my wife mentioned that she wanted to start going to church again. I guess her very-Catholic mother was putting pressure on her about why the kid was not baptized yet. I thought it might be a good way to reexamine my thoughts on faith as well, so we started church shopping.
I had a couple of ground rules;
1) Nothing Catholic – Between their stance on IVF, treating women as second class citizens and the disgusting way they dealt with pedophiles in their ranks, I would not bring my daughter there.
2) Nothing Fundamentalist – The rampant homophobia and anti-science malcognizence were clear signs we should not go there.
3) I wanted a women pastor/reverend/etc – I thought if we ended up going to some place for a long time, it would be a good model for my daughter to show her women can lead a church just as well or better then men could.
So, with that in mind we went to lots of places, I will try to recount them here.
1) Unitarian Universalist on Congress St.
Way too hippy dippy for my ex-Catholic wife. Plus the random city folks made it feel a bit weird with a baby. Hard to park (we live off the peninsula).
2) Saint Luke Episcopal cathedral – Pretty church, but very gothic. Cold stone floors to kneel on. Songs in latin, very high-mass feeling. My wife thought it was more Catholic than some Catholic churches. Too stark for me.
3) St Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cape Elizabeth. Very pretty church, had driven by often on the way to the beach. Thought might be a nice community.
Showed up, could not find the right door. Finally got inside and nobody ever said hello. Not one. Left soon after.
4) Clark Memorial United Methodist Church – We ended up going here for around three years on and off. The pastor when we started was a young woman (28?) who had just started a couple of months before we visited and we thought it might be interesting to sort of grow into the church as she grew into her role as Pastor. There was a group of four or five families with young kids and while the rest of the congregation was generally older, they were friendly. Eventually they started doing an informal second service on Sunday where you could drink your coffee and the kids could run around. It was great and made going to church much more fun. The music was a bit more contemporary and we liked it. However, the older folks were having a hard time adjusting to a woman Pastor and since half the church was going to each service, things got pretty polarized. Eventually they worked with the UMC organization to force her out and get a new pastor. During this time, I spent hundreds of hours reading the bible, the Skeptics Annotated Bible, lots of books on Evolution and comparative religion and realized that what I had recognized 25 years ago was still true. I thought the whole thing was bunk and really was not interested in it or in teaching my children these fairy tales.
With that, we lost the cool service, the lady they brought in grated on me and we pretty much stopped going. We debated going back about a year ago, but due to some health issues my wife could not go and now we are pretty far removed from it. I would skip it completely at this point, but sometimes my wife wants to try again. I think she is recognizing her own doubts, but is also looking for some form of comfort in the face of Cancer.
5) Unitarian Universalist on Allen Ave – We went here after leaving Clark UMC.
Probably my favorite one. Big enough to have appropriate kids stuff and coffee hour and such. Very welcoming. No problem for me being an atheist, allowed my wife to work on her faith, while not being all fire & brimstone Catholic.
I think that is all of them, not including craft fairs and such.
