Question Three

Who's Driving? Me. Who's that? I'm trying to answer that here. Why? Well...

Here's the next question:

What church do you call home?

This one may take a bit. Bear with me.

I don't have a church. I have churches that I like. I have synagogues I feel comfortable in, places that fill me with peace. There are communities I commune with. But I don't have a fixed home.

That's unfortunate, right?

I've mentioned a few surveys about the "unchurched." There is the particular flavor that made headlines a couple of years ago - depending on the source, anywhere from 20-30% of Americans think of themselves as "spiritual but not religious." Barna just released a survey a few months ago which said that 33% of Americans - which includes mostly self-identified Christians - don't have a place where they hang their hat, spiritually. Whatever you call us - the unchurched, the spiritually homeless - we're the fastest growing religious group in America.

A damn shame.

A shame, because religion is something you are supposed to DO with other people. It's having a "community of meaning" - people who see the world tied together in the same way you do. They are not just there for the weddings and blessings, but for times of crisis: funerals, sickness, catastrophe. Ironically, when you turn to God is when you also turn to other people.

Even on the most deeply personal level, the level of searching for truth, we need a spiritual community. The Buddha said that enlightenment - the bullseye of psychological release from all your hang-ups in this world - was something that was almost entirely the child of the Sangha: the organization, the community around you. American philosopher (and devout Christian) Josiah Royce went so far as to say that the very kingdom of heaven promised by Jesus is no more than the community created in his wake.

The psychological consequences of this isolating trend seem dire to me. Unchurching seems like the newest form of Bowling Alone, that particularly American vice. It says: communities are tough. Easier to choose a gated community of one.

I clearly disagree. So why don't I have a home?

It took a few days of digging around this question to come up with anything really satisfying. On the one hand, there's that journalistic mindset, everything I learned at Columbia: keep your judgment open to all good arguments, and never join one side. I've also told you about my folks, both of whom hold deep ambivalence about institutions. I was raised to think of religion as personal, not public.

And it's not as if you can suddenly "church" yourself. In fact, having to choose a "home" is kind of awful. For one thing, there is an unreasonableness to a deeper faith that rarely makes sense from the outside. Faith is what we achieve without reason. An example: the current Harper's magazine lists the beliefs among the Mandaeans, an ancient gnostic-type sect being decimated in Iraq. They believe that the alphabet was once at war with itself, and that children born on the sixteenth of the month will suffer from constipation. Sounds kooky, no? But to the utterly unchurched, the idea of the Virgin Birth, the night ride and the burning bush seem equally fantastic.

And the smorgasboard is vast - especially here in America. We invented it, we feed it, we revel in it. Church marketing has a history older than Saul/Paul, but you have to feel that the megachurch moment and the New Age have brought things to a new level. Snack bars in church? Astrology at the check-out? Venerable religion sociologist Peter Berger has a few great comments on the long-standing "pluralist" state of American religion at a recent Pew Forum talk. In our religious lives, as in everything else, we live in an age of agonizing choices.

Choosing a tradition is also fraught with ethical choices. As a child of my age, I have strong beliefs about the equality of women, the place for science, the equality of gay men and women. Most of our heritage around religious practice in the west stem from an ancient Middle east where these ideas are tenuous, at best.

I marveled at the pronouncement from the Archbishop of Canterbury the other day. He was trying to say that the anti-gay voices in the Anglican Communion were misreading the Bible. He quoted the passage from Romans, "Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion," trying to defend the modern western view of homosexuality, saying that the passage was actually a warning against self-righteousness. Come again?

As someone at least culturally Christian, I am particularly fascinated by the spectacle of Christianity and homosexuality in the arena. Surveys show show that our ideas about homosexuality are only going to become more tolerant as the current generation grows up. The Bible is unambiguous about the sin of gay men and lesbians. Who - or what - will emerge from this clash of absolutes?

History is full of these cultural battlefields. Norms change, wills bend... eventually. But where is home in the meanwhile?

Ahem. What church do you call home?

You may have noticed that I sign my posts "ttaylor," though my name is Jason Anthony. Thomas Taylor is a hero of mine. He was one of the original Seekers. I think they have something to teach us - and, for what it's worth, can offer a home for people like me.

The Seekers? I'm not talking about modern "seeker churches" - Christian churches that bring in wavering souls through savvy outreach. No, the Seekers I'm talking about have them by almost 400 years.

Taylor's "Seekers" were the product of the religious chaos that followed the Anglican break from the Catholic church. Throwing off the traditions of 1,000 years must have been psychologically overwhelming. If you know your English history, there were upheavals and religious wars for the next century. Scores of new groups were formed, including the Quakers, our forebears the Puritans, and other less well known groups like the Levellers, the Diggers... and the Seekers.

These guys weren't very explicit about their beliefs. Their organizational was shambolic (I'll save you a trek to the dictionary - "utterly disorganized"). A few landed in jail, and they didn't last too long. Their great contribution was to recognize that they were not content with the options that they saw in the torn-apart world they lived in - and that, not being content, they would wait.

So they waited together. When Seekers met, they met in silence. You can see remnants of this observation today among the Quakers, who absorbed most of the Seekers by the 1640's. Many considered themselves Christians. Some did not. Some sources indicate that their ambivalence even embraced possible truths in "Heresy, Blasphemy, Catholicism, non-Christian religions, and even Atheism."

It's not the only time in history when people have studiously honored a kind of holy expectancy about the bigger mysteries of life. When Paul preaches at Mars Hill in the Acts of the Apostles, he points to the altar devoted "to gods unknown." I get a shiver of recognition when I read that verse. I could see a Hellenic version of myself taking a look at that altar when I passed, always somehow throwing a few drachma to the priest. Then, as now, I see myself thinking - who can be sure of the answers? Mysteries are too big for names.

The Seekers were the reemergence of this idea in the modern world. Like unstable isotopes, this kind of uncertainty doesn't last long.

But in honor of Taylor and his ilk, I've convened my own Seeker church, in its way. Every month, I lead a group of New Yorkers to different temple, synagogue, or church in the City. We've spent Cheesefare Sunday praying with the Greek Orthodox in Grammercy. We've heard the Hebrew school singing cowboy songs in Central Synagogue. We've sat with urban Buddhists in Chelsea, learning about the mind.

And afterwards, we sit and have coffee. Some people already have a faith they cling to, and they refute. Other times, we'll just sit and question. If we're lucky, someone from the church will tag along with us to share a view from the inside. It's our own way to pray and ponder, as best we can, until the dust settles.

This, I guess, is my home. If you're interested, come along for the ride.

Stay tuned.

PS - Thanks for your patience as I s l o w l y churn these out. It's obviously taking a lot longer than expected - partly because of my everyday workload, partly because, well, these are tough questions. Right now, I'm planning on posing five questions in all, finished this week. Cross your fingers.

UPDATE - There are also lots of statistics showing restlessness even among the "churched." Accordingt o the 2001 ARIS survey, 1 in 7 Americans change their religious affiliation - that is to say, leaves "home" and goes shopping. I''ve seen other studies up that number to 25%. In USA Today this morning, a study sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention about those people. It's here.