Churching

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.


Albert Einstein

I went to an interesting event last night. It was church sponsored training about the Anglican church and about the Christian faith. My wife and I are both new to the Episcopalian church so I am trying to learn what I can about it and share what I learn with her. I have never really been a big church goer, for a short time I went to church fairly regularly, sang in the choir, but that lasted at most 6 months.
I think this time around church and I are going to be able to stick together. Our new church feels different, it has a friendly, welcoming vibe that makes it feel more like a home than a place of business.
Being from two different religions never really seemed like that big of an issue when we were dating or even when we first got married. We got married in my wife's church, we went to my wife's church whenever we went to church. It didn't matter to me, that is until we had our daughter.
I became more and more uncomfortable with the idea that I was not able to take communion with my wife and eventually I would not be able to take it with my daughter. That bothered me. It bothered me that I would be excluded from something that I feel is important to share with my family. Not just share with my immediate family but be able to share it with my entire family. It also bothered me that my daughter would be excluded from participating in her faith to the highest extent that she wanted to. It seemed unfair that she would be banned from doing something because she was not a boy.
I thought about converting, becoming a Catholic. I went to a couple of RCIA classes, read a few books, spoke with a few priests. I stopped going to the classes because the feeling of being excluded was not going away. I felt that even if I converted I would never be accepted, never become a full person in the eyes of the Catholic church.
After some discussion we have ended up at the Episcopalian church. Sometimes referred to as "Catholic-lite". It was a compromise between the more liberal, open feel of the Lutheran church and the conservative, closed feel of the Catholic church. The Episcopal church has the same sort of traditions as the Catholic church but lets everyone take communion like the Lutheran church.
I have always viewed religious people, extremely religious people at least, with a great deal of suspicion. To believe in something that strongly, with that much compassion and fervor was scary and very foreign to me. When athletes or famous people thank Jesus or God for their good fortune it always sounds fake and contrived. It seems that some people can take something that is supposed to be beautiful, uplifting and inspirational and change it into something dark, angry and very superficial.
Being a new parent has taken my own interest in religion to a new level. As I begin this journey into religion it dawns on me that not everyone looks favorably at our decision to "churchify" our daughter. Not everyone feels that religion is important, that having some sort of spiritual foundation in life is important. To me, not bringing our daughter to church, not exposing her to that part of humanity would be like depriving her of a small part of what it means to be human. If we do not expose her to the mysteries and the beauty of faith than we have left out a part of life that she may never be able to attain. It is going to take a lot of time for me to develop the feeling of faith, of belief, that I want to have in the Christian faith. I don't want my daughter to have to work that hard for her beliefs. I only hope she is fortunate enough to have faith. Faith in the world, faith in herself and some sort of faith in something larger than herself, larger than the world. If she doesn't want to believe in the same things that I believe in that is fine with me. I just want her to believe in something, I want to ensure that I have given her the tools to decide for herself what feels right to her. She shouldn't feel forced or guilted into believing.
As a parent I hope for the best for my daughter. She should have the things in life that I don't. She will be exposed to things that I haven't, experience things that I never did. My job as her dad is to try and make sure that she has the tools to handle anything that life brings her way. I think that faith in some religion, some sort of higher power, is too important of a tool to leave out.