Jill of Feministe wrote an excellent article in the Guardian last week:<\/p>\n
Giving Thanks for My \u201cChurch\u201d, Where the Civic Meets the Spiritual<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Whether you believe, whatever you believe, we need churches \u2013 space for reflection and nourishment \u2013 and they deserve support\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
This\u00a0Thanksgiving<\/a>, I\u2019m grateful for my church.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m grateful I have a space that offers moral guidance, that reflects and builds upon my values, that pushes me to be a kinder and more generous person and that offers me a sense of purpose. I\u2019m grateful for the warmth and support of a like-minded community. I\u2019m grateful my church is a space that is available to me every day, whenever I need it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m grateful that, like so many other young, secular people across the globe, my church isn\u2019t a religious institution or a hierarchy. It\u2019s not even a church, technically. It\u2019s the weekly dinner with the friends I\u2019ve had for more than a decade. It\u2019s the candle-lit yoga studio where I spend an hour every day quietly looking inward. It\u2019s the comment section of my\u00a0website<\/a>, where a ragtag bunch of gender studies nerds, political junkies and social justice geeks have found each other, and where we argue and laugh and have a little reprieve from a real world where things are often ugly, painful and marginalizing \u2013 even while we talk about things that are ugly, painful and marginalizing.<\/p>\n
The holiday that for me is the most spiritually rewarding, the one where I learn the most and reassess my path and give thanks and feel simultaneously peaceful and energized? It\u2019s the annual New Years trip I take with my three closest friends, to somewhere new every year, with no boyfriends or partners allowed.<\/p>\n
Almost all of us have a church. It just might not\u00a0get a federal tax break<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Can I say how much I love Jill\u2019s bait and switch?<\/p>\n
In this article, Jill has an argument. She wants readers to expand their definition of \u201cchurch\u201d and give credit to the other ways people fill their needs for moral guidance, community, and purpose. In a sense, she wants to deprivilege\u00a0religion and challenge the myth that religion fills some sort of need people have in a way nothing else does. And interestingly, she doesn\u2019t challenge that myth by arguing that people don\u2019t have the needs that religions claim to fill, but rather by arguing that religion isn\u2019t the only way to fill those needs.<\/p>\n
Fewer Americans than ever before\u00a0attend formal religious services regularly<\/a>.\u00a0Religion<\/a>\u00a0is also waning across the rest of the western world. But that doesn\u2019t mean that non-religious folks aren\u2019t seeking out moral and spiritual teachings. We\u2019re just recognizing that the traditional benefits of a church \u2013 community, advisement, charity, service, tradition, inspiration, confirmation that you\u2019re a good person \u2013 don\u2019t have to come along with values like casting non-believers to Hell, marginalizing people who don\u2019t fit a particular ideal, subjugating women to secondary roles, or even a believing in a higher power.<\/p>\n
Of course, there are some formal religious institutions that also embrace these values, and plenty of folks still rely on a church-church or on religious tradition. That\u2019s great. But church-church no longer has a monopoly on church-like functions, and those of us who aren\u2019t religious or those who, like me, feel alienated from the religion of our childhoods because of that church\u2019s backwardness and bigotry, aren\u2019t nearly as adrift or solitary as traditional church leaders seem to believe.<\/strong><\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just that we the un-churched have whole and fulfilling lives without religion; it\u2019s that part of what makes our lives whole and fulfilling are the non-religious institutions we have created and invested in.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Can I say how much I love what Jill is doing here?<\/p>\n
Religion, like any other manmade philosophy, belief system or undertaking, can be good or bad; it can serve or it can damage, and it often does both at once. Many religions claim to offer a Truth that the institutions I value don\u2019t. Many of them rely on hierarchies that too often lead to abuses of power and abuses of other humans. Some discourage rationality and inquiry, and instead, claim to hold all the answers. Many of them exclude and scapegoat some of the most vulnerable in society. Many of them give their members an inflated and narcissistic belief in their own righteousness, and a dangerous sense of entitlement \u2013 to political power, to a particular social model, to a place in the majority, to a piece of land, to a seat in heaven.<\/p>\n
Religion necessarily requires faith \u2013 and some religions demand that the faithful not only believe, but adhere blindly and unquestioningly to the doctrine handed down.<\/p>\n
Yet, religion also fosters community. It\u2019s a way to make sense of a hectic and confusing world, and to find people who are making sense of the world in the same way. It\u2019s a gathering of your own people. It offers absolution. It gives us rules to live by and helps to create a set of the shared values and beliefs that keep a society functional. It can encourage academic and spiritual exploration. It offers hope and light when we feel alone and lost. It promises to answer \u201cwhy,\u201d to give us a reason for our existence and a justification for the hardships we face. It maintains traditions, sometimes thousands of years old, through which we can understand who and where we are, connect to a past and situate ourselves in the long trajectory of human existence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I think Jill\u2019s point here is important, and it is one that I\u2019ve seen made before. Lots of bad things happen in the name of religion, but good things happen in its name as well. Religion may often come along with\u00a0hierarchies, but it also provides community. And so on. There is bad, and there is good. This is not to say that religion is necessarily neutral, but rather that regardless of what one thinks of religion it does serve a function and play an important role in many people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n
Sometimes when atheists urge people to leave religion behind they don\u2019t seem to realize what they\u2019re asking. Leaving religion does not just mean stopping believing in \u201can invisible sky fairy.\u201d It means so very much more than that. And that, I think, is, as we shall see, why Jill\u2019s project here is so important.<\/p>\n
This column, then, isn\u2019t meant as an affront to religion. It is meant to say that the world is better, kinder, more interesting, more progressive and more widely-serving when religion isn\u2019t the only game in town.<\/p>\n
I think about the gay teenager in a small conservative town whose internet access opens up a world where she can find other people like her, and even more people who will offer the support and friendship she might not get at home or from her peers.<\/p>\n
Or the woman in rural Bolivia whose knitting collective provides not only an income for her family and the families and her co-workers, but an intimate circle of women who help each other thrive and who have each others\u2019 backs.<\/p>\n
Or the Tunisian kid who finds his truth at a rap show. Or the man who sees God\u2019s face in his regular stroll through the woods. The sports team, the marathon, the meditation practice, the artists\u2019 collective, the hour spent painting, the journaling, the corner bar, the annual fishing trip, the quiet dinner, the weekend hike, the internet community \u2013 there are myriad places we \u201cgo to church\u201d. There are myriad ways to feed our souls, to gain knowledge, and to discover something divine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Now it is true to some extent that Jill is playing fast and loose with definitions here. Words like \u201cchurch,\u201d \u201cspiritual,\u201d and \u201cdivine\u201d have traditionally been inextricably tied to God-belief. But I also think that\u2019s the point. It is this tie that Jill is challenging.<\/p>\n
My husband Sean was raised in a religious family, but he has never had what he would call a \u201cspiritual experience.\u201d I tried to explain to him what it felt like to be so lost in prayer as to feel at one with God and through him the universe, or to be enraptured during a particularly moving hymn in church. Because he had never had them, he couldn\u2019t understand what I meant by a \u201cspiritual experience.\u201d Then he and I went to a concert together and I watched as the music transformed him. We took a walk in the woods and I watched as nature thrilled his soul. I explained to him that the feelings people have when they have \u201cspiritual experiences\u201d are the same feelings he gets at a good concert or during a walk through a patch of wilderness, or while looking at the stars or studying physics. And then he understood.<\/p>\n
Finding support and friendship, feeding our souls, forming meaning and purpose \u2013 these are all needs we have, and they are all needs that can be met by churches but can also be met elsewhere<\/em>. Transcendent experiences, community, discovering the \u201cdivine\u201d \u2013 Jill\u2019s point is that in today\u2019s world none of this is at all limited to what we generally call a \u201cchurch.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are so many of us who benefit far more from the churches we\u2019ve found and built than from those that long claimed a monopoly over the spiritual. There are many of us who benefit from both the traditional church and our non-religious spirit-rejuvenating spaces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Jill\u2019s task is one of de-centering. I\u2019ve often heard atheists speak of the problems with privileging religion. Jill is making this same argument, albeit with slightly different rhetoric.<\/p>\n
When people have the power to choose their church, they increasingly steer away from the religious ones. Unfortunately, in too many places around the world, religious institutions are the only acceptable churches. As that hegemony is challenged by an increasingly interconnected world, and by transparency, and by women\u2019s rights, and by development generally, religious institutions either adjust or, more often, dig in, fostering extremism and losing more moderate followers.\u00a0The Catholic Church\u2019s recent admonishment of nuns<\/a>\u00a0who focused their efforts on serving the poor rather than on political opposition to birth control is a good example.<\/p>\n
Societies are better-off when they have multiple avenues for community participation, intellectual inquiry and spiritual growth. We are all better served when we can find \u201cour people\u201d, and when we seek out a time for quiet and for reflection. That nourishment is a human necessity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And then Jill delivers the whammy:<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s why we need more than sentimental Thanksgiving columns celebrating secular institutions. We need real investment in these institutions, in the US and abroad. Religious churches in the\u00a0United States<\/a>\u00a0are exempt from paying taxes; instead, they should be treated like any other nonprofit organization, and have their service arms remain untaxed while the rest of the business pays their fair share. The\u00a0billions of dollars<\/a>\u00a0in tax revenue from that change could be reinvested in all sorts of charitable groups and services, both secular and religious, to make sure that\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0Americans have a space to flourish. Internationally, fostering community organizations like women\u2019s collectives, writing groups, sports teams, art classes and educational initiatives allow for social participation and leadership from wider swaths of the population. It allows for people to feel invested and proud in what they\u2019re building, helping to stymie extremism and promote peace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n