{"id":1359,"date":"2013-06-24T07:37:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T07:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/06\/wrestling-with-organized-religion-should-christianity-be-a-solo-pursuit.html"},"modified":"2013-06-24T07:37:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T07:37:00","slug":"wrestling-with-organized-religion-should-christianity-be-a-solo-pursuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/06\/wrestling-with-organized-religion-should-christianity-be-a-solo-pursuit.html","title":{"rendered":"Wrestling With Organized Religion: Should Christianity Be a Solo Pursuit?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
I seem to always be trying to fit in to something, somewhere.<\/span><\/div>\n
Shortly after I had my daughter I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans\u2014the big ones. No luck.<\/span><\/div>\n
Once my daughter started school I tried fitting in with other mom\u2019s\u2014in Pre K they were artists and organic farmers who made their own clothes.<\/span><\/div>\n
In other words, I didn\u2019t fit in.<\/span><\/div>\n
Now that my daughter is in grade school the mom\u2019s I meet are all different\u2014which makes fitting in sort of a non-issue. Unless of course, I join the PTA, which I will not likely do. Mostly because I\u2019m sure I just wouldn\u2019t fit in.<\/span><\/div>\n
Lately I\u2019ve wondered why I didn\u2019t leave this desire to \u201cfit in\u201d behind, in the cafeteria in seventh grade when I definitively decided teasing my bangs was a line I just wouldn\u2019t cross.<\/span><\/div>\n
I thought I\u2019d given up \u201cfitting in\u201d once and for all.<\/span><\/div>\n
When I first became a Christian I unwittingly rekindled my love affair with \u201cfitting in\u201d when I joined the church.<\/span><\/div>\n
The first church<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
The first church I joined was easy for me to fit into. It was comprised of a bunch of ragtag twenty-something artists in NYC, of which I could\u2019ve been the poster child. It wasn\u2019t until I moved south, to Texas, to the buckle of the Bible Belt that I became conscience of a struggle to fit in.<\/span><\/div>\n
In a recent session with my Spiritual Director (see my\u00a0last post<\/a>\u00a0for more on that), we talked about religion being something I put on, like a dress. It was a dress I fit easily into at the time of my \u2018conversion,\u2019 but which, lately, has been feeling a little snug. Like, two-sizes-too-small snug.<\/span><\/div>\n
I became a Christian in my mid-twenties, and in the years, months and even weeks leading up to my baptism, I was flirting with disaster.<\/span><\/div>\n
It was the sex, drugs and rock and roll version of disaster, and I thought Christianity would shoehorn me out of a destructive lifestyle. I put it on like a dress; it covered my past transgressions and gave me purpose and identity. But there was more to my decision to become a Christian.<\/span><\/div>\n
I had begun to develop an awareness of God\u2019s presence and activity in my life.<\/span><\/div>\n
This awareness grew in power and frequency the deeper I dug into my community of Christian artists, and the deeper I dug into learning who the God of the Bible really was.<\/span><\/div>\n
But more than 10 years later, I\u2019m realizing that this dress I put on, the religious aspects of Christianity, is not necessarily what Christianity is about. In my attempt to fit in, I seem to have squeezed myself into something I am now outgrowing.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I seem to always be trying to fit in to something, somewhere. Shortly after I had my daughter I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans\u2014the big ones. No luck. Once my daughter started school I tried fitting in with other mom\u2019s\u2014in Pre K they were artists and organic farmers who made their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWrestling With Organized Religion: Should Christianity Be a Solo Pursuit?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I seem to always be trying to fit in to something, somewhere.Shortly after I had my daughter I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to fit into my pre-pregnancy\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/06\/wrestling-with-organized-religion-should-christianity-be-a-solo-pursuit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wrestling With Organized Religion: Should Christianity Be a Solo Pursuit?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I seem to always be trying to fit in to something, somewhere.Shortly after I had my daughter I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to fit into my pre-pregnancy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/06\/wrestling-with-organized-religion-should-christianity-be-a-solo-pursuit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-06-24T07:37:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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