At my book launch on campus last week, when responding to a question during Q and A, I used a visual that I have frequently used when describing my current way of thinking about Christianity conceived broadly.
Imagine a large tent. Make it a three-ring circus tent, since inside the tent I am imagining things both entertaining and silly happen regularly. This gigantic tent is not for the entertainment of spectators, though; rather, it is a place for groups of people who call themselves “Christian” to stake out space and set up shop. Baptists occupy one section of the tent, Catholics over there, Presbyterians in a third location—overall, there are dozens of groups who call the Christian tent home, and within these larger sub-groups there are often sharply defined sub-sub-groups. 
Those within the Christian tent know that there are other tents within shouting distance—the tent of Islam and the Judaism tent, for instance—but few groups in the Christian tent are familiar with what goes on in the other tents, and neither, for the most part, are they interested in knowing.
One might expect that while recognizing their important differences, the various groups inside the Christian tent would celebrate their common, shared name and home, but this often is not the case. Some groups have open borders around their area of the tent, and frequently converse with people from different parts of the tent, but others erect fences, barriers that tend to become more complicated and impenetrable over time. Many groups have gatekeepers tasked with ensuring that no one enters their section of the tent without satisfying various, often complex and intricate, criteria verbally and/or in writing. Over time, many groups within the Christian tent have come to believe that their own section is the only place where real Christians are to be found. Groups in other parts of the tent are posers, “Christian” in name only and, perhaps, also recipients of God’s displeasure and headed to hell.
Around the edges of the tent there is a lot of interesting activity. Imagine the walls of the tent rolled up or, at most, see-through like the walls of our gazebo, easily zipped open to allow easy access in and out. This is where I hang out. There are people just outside the tent who are both attracted to some of what they hear and see inside, but are equally repelled and appalled by other things they hear and see inside the tent. Other people are just inside the tent, attracted to and appalled by the very same sorts of things that those just outside the tent are attracted to and appalled by. These are my kind of people.
Regular readers of this blog know that I come from an inner section of the tent, an area whose residents consider themselves to be the exclusive, favored “real Christians” as opposed to everyone else who doesn’t really belong in the tent at all. Over the years I have wandered throughout the tent, venturing closer and closer to the edges, often appearing to others—sometimes to myself—as having at least temporarily ventured outside the flimsy walls altogether. But this is where I’m most at home, conversing with those for whom the life of faith is not defined by a commitment to dogmas, doctrines, or prescribed rituals.
I heard poet Padraig O’Tuoma on a podcast the other day–he read one of his recent poems that strikes me as appropriate for those on the edges of the circus tent, either just in or just out. Ir’a called “Do You Believe in God?”
I don’t believe in God, I said, and she said, Oh?
Somehow I thought you’d managed to keep that going
even though I haven’t. She asked if I’d told others.
Yes, I said, I have. I mean, it’s not lie I’m
saying I Know About What Is. It’s just that the burden
of belief isn’t on me anymore. God it feels nuch freer.
I believe I’m in the room next to belief. I hear
the sounds of prayers coming through the walls. I like
the smell of incense. And the sound of fabric rustling fabric
as the people stand or kneel. Sometimes I can tell
the text by the intonation of the reader. I mutter
the responses underneath my breath. Lift up your hearts.
And do you? she asked. Lift up your heart?
Yes, I said, I do, but I don’t know to who.
Whom, she said. Let’s get started on the soup.
I love that. I can hear myself correcting someone’s “who” to “whom.” You can’t take the professor out of the professor.
One of my philosophical and writing heroes, Michel de Montaigne, spent much of his final years in a top floor library room in a turret on the corner of his family castle, writing and thinking.v He considered himself to be a faithful Catholic, but did not allow that faithfulness to interfere with his studying and writing life. One floor down in the turret was a small chapel where mass was said every day. Michel often couldn’t be bothered to go down the stairs for mass, so he simply opened a trap door in the library floor, listening to the words and smelling the incense.
Sometimes that’s enough.
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