My parents were members of the First Presbyterian Church of Union New Jersey. Every Sunday my Mom and Dad would attend services there and drag me along. Twain summed up the experience well with his description of Presbyterianism.
I do not take any credit to my better-balanced head because I never went crazy on Presbyterianism. We go too slow for that. You never see us ranting and shouting and tearing up the ground, you never heard of a Presbyterian going crazy on religion. Notice us, and you will see how we do. We get up on a Sunday morning and put on the best harness we have got and trip cheerfully down town; we subside into solemnity and enter the church; we stand up and duck our heads and bear down on a hymn book propped on the pew in front when the minister prays; we stand up again while our hired choir are singing, and look in the hymn book and check off the verses to see that they don’t shirk any of the stanzas; we sit silent and grave while the minister is preaching, and count the waterfalls and bonnets furtively, and catch flies; we grab our hats and bonnets when the benediction is begun; when it is finished, we shove, so to speak. No frenzy, no fanaticism –no skirmishing; everything perfectly serene. You never see any of us Presbyterians getting in a sweat about religion and trying to massacre the neighbors. Let us all be content with the tried and safe old regular religions and take no chances on wildcat.
– “The New Wildcat Religion” – Mark Twain
This is a perfect description of the Sunday services I attended as a boy. And I was bored to tears every Sunday morning when I was dragged along to attend. Later as a young teen I befriended a few of the Catholic kids in my neighborhood I would accompany them to nearby Saint Michael’s Parish to celebrate Christmas mass. I found this a lot more interesting and exciting. They had smoke, fire, holy water, elaborate costumes and all in all it was a much better show. The pageantry didn’t make any more sense to me than the Presbyterian routine, but it was far more entertaining and kept me awake for the better part of an hour. The Catholic church also had the CYO which organized dances, or ‘sock hops’ as they were called back then, on Friday nights. An added benefit for teenage boys just starting to get interested in the fairer sex.
It was probably in my late teens when I really began to contemplate the actual meaning of religion and regard it as something more than simply a mandatory obligation. I recognized a lot of it was based on pure and simple blind faith. That bothered me a great deal. It was a conundrum. There was no way I could imagine to test the theory or deduce a logical explanation for creation and salvation. You just had to accept it on face value. I had my doubts. The personal philosophy I finally arrived at which satisfied my curiosity about where we all came from and where we were going had already been defined in the 17th and 18th centuries. It had a name I just didn’t know at the time what it was. I do now. It was deism.
Deism isn’t a religion but rather a point of view on religion. Deists believe in God as the creator of the universe but don’t accept the concept of divine intervention. From the deist’s point of view once God created heaven and earth, he took a hands-off approach and had no further participation in the project including any involvement with the creatures in it. This view leads to inevitable conflicts with all the major religions of the World. For example, for deists there is no need for organized worship. Since God created the universe and then took a hands-off approach there is essentially no point in organized worship. Deists regard organized worship as simply a social event as I suspected growing up amongst the Presbyterians.
This perspective also rejects the notion of prophets. Knowledge of God comes through our own understanding, experiences, and reason, and not the prophecies of others. It also rejects belief in supernatural events. Basically, God got it right when he set up the universe in the first place and thus there is no need for prophets, seers, visions, or miracles and other supernatural events. Our time is better spent in understanding the natural world rather than obsessing over supernatural events for which there is no rational explanation. We can read the Bible ourselves and draw our own conclusions.
I also regard religion as an intensely personal affair. Organized religion provides little value in helping me understand God or the physical universe. In fact, it has the opposite effect since it frequently layers on popular myths that raise more questions than answers.
I am aware this view of organized religion would strike many of my friends and associates as a radical outlook, if I ever chose to discuss it with them, which I don’t. However, it is not as radical as it seems. I eventually learned a number of famous people, some involved in founding the United States were actually thought to be deists. These included George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Maybe so or maybe a myth. But I believe the view has merit and is evident in the fundamental principle of freedom of religion in the first amendment to the constitution.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
I believe that if the framers of the constitution were dogmatic in their religious beliefs they would not have been as tolerant of other religious points of view. As a result, they would not have established religious freedom as the first part of the first amendment. This is very much a deist point of view.
Even though I am not a very pious person I firmly believe that living a virtuous life is a simple matter if you follow the ten commandments. I have studied the St. James version of the Holy Bible. (It was assigned reading for one of my college courses in English Literature.) And my conclusion is the principal “take home message” is embodied in the Ten Commandments. Follow them and you can’t go too far astray.
The Ten Commandments
- I am the Lord, your God.
- Thou shall bring no false idols before me.
- Do not take the name of the Lord in vain.
- Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
- Honor thy father and thy mother.
- Thou shall not kill/murder.
- Thou shall not commit adultery.
- Thou shall not steal.
- Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
- Thou shall not covet your neighbor’s wife (or anything that belongs to your neighbor).
So, as I said, the Presbyterian church all in all was a pretty boring affair. The Catholic church put on a much better show. I never had the occasion to attend a predominantly Black Church but from what I could see from TV and movies they put on the best show of all. Especially with the gospel music. However, I did have occasion to attend Christmas service at a very small church on the Caribbean island of Saint Maarten.
While living in Alberta, Canada, Shu Mei and I decided to take a Caribbean holiday in Saint Maarten over Christmas and New Year as a respite from the ice and snow in western Canada. We were settled in in our hotel near the French side of St. Maarten and Shu Mei suggested we attend Christmas service at the small local church a short walk from the hotel.
So, early Christmas morning we walked over to the church and found seats in a pew near the back of the church. It was already nearly filled with local residents and we were lucky to find seats. The preacher began his sermon and the church continued to fill and then overflow. People were standing outside and in total there must have been a couple of hundred parishioners most of whom were now standing outside. The sermon took about ten minutes and when the preacher finished, he introduced the band.
It was a local reggae pan band and they started to play Christmas carols to a reggae beat on the steel drums. The parishioners both inside the church and outside as well started to rock. Soon the kerchiefs came out of the back pockets and were waved overhead to the reggae beat of the pan music. This was the best Christmas show I ever experienced bar none. Shu Mei and I stayed for the entire morning enjoying the music and the impromptu show. When we finally left at noon locals were still coming in and surrounding the church. Wow, what a show. These folks really knew how to have a good time.
How people of various beliefs respond to the question does God exist?
- Atheist: “Nope.”
- Christian: “I want to introduce you to my best friend . . . Jesus Christ.”
- Jew: “If he does then he’s got about 3,000 years of explaining to do!”
- Muslim: “I don’t drop what I’m doing five times a day to pray for nothing.”
- Scientist: “Haven’t figured that out yet, we’re still doing the math.”
- Hippie: “Our Mother Earth, Gaia.”
- Buddhist: “Do you think God exists?”
- Stoner: “Do . . . like . . . any of us really exist?”
- Polytheist: “They all do.”
- Feminist: “Yes She does!”
- Agnostic: “Maybe.”
- Sci-Fi: “God is an alien!”
- Criminally Insane: “I am God!”
- Joan Osborne: “What if God was one of us?”
- Greek Philosopher: “What if God did exist? Then what?”
- Aquinas: “Yes, and a good thing, too.”
- Paine: “Yes, but we’re still screwed.”
- Sartre: “No, so we’re still screwed.”
- Nietzsche: “No, and a good thing, too.”
When I reached my early teens church attendance was no longer a family requirement. First, I believe my Dad never wanted to spend his Sunday mornings dressed up in suit and tie in Church. He did it for my Mom. And Mom, I discovered later in life, was never devoutly religious. I believe the whole church routine was orchestrated by my Mom on my behalf because she felt it important that I was grounded at an early age in a religious tradition.
Good bye, good luck and have a nice day!
Long Story Short: A Collection of Stories by Hal Gunardson 