Christmas
Why I'm not Christian but I love Christianity: The Redux
In late October I re-looped a mental loop that I experience sometimes, where I started wondering whether I ought to officially convert to some form of classic Christianity. (Obviously, if I were ever to actually do this, then selecting the form would be a whole nother kettle of fish, but let’s not go there right now.)
At the time, I ended up having so much anxiety about this that I took some dedicated time to pray about the question. The answer I got back during my prayers was unequivocal: That Christianity isn’t the place for me right now, even though I believe in God and I have plenty of psychological-spiritual overlap with the sincere Christians in my life.
I was interested in some of the epistemic questions raised by this process, so I posted on Twitter/X about it to see if any of my Christian followers had thoughts.
(Immediately above this sentence should be a clickable representation of the tweet in question. If you’re interested, then you can click through to read the whole thread and the replies that I received. However, if it is absent for some technical reason, then you can click here to go to the Twitter/X thread in question. As a side note, that tweet surprisingly attracted a number of rationalists who wanted to argue about whether God exists, so I made a separate thread to talk with them.)
If I try to translate my sense of this question into words, then here are some words. My basic spiritual project is to be a good person while simultaneously understanding reality. This includes seeking community with other people who are doing that. If I’m thinking about this question rather than asking God about it, then my thoughts are as follows:
I don’t trust any Christian churches of my acquaintance to be as, or preferably more, morally upright and cohesive than some other spiritual communities of my acquaintance. I assume most will be corrupt and/or have nasty traps lying in wait for newcomers, if only because I assume this of basically all organizations religious or otherwise. Again, just to be clear, I start by assuming that basically all organizations have serious problems, and furthermore that it takes work to get to know those problems, work that will consume time and energy. I’m busy, so if I’m going to make that investment, I need a strong reason to do it.
I have specific, strong concerns about how most Christian denominations (and some Christians I know personally) approach sexuality, as well as women’s role in society. In many cases, this isn’t a judgment of Christian individuals in their personal lives. It is simply a judgment that I don’t feel it would work well for me, emotionally or spiritually, to adopt similar ideas. If I thought those ideas were actually morally superior, or even effective for purposes I share, then I’d bite the bullet and take them on. But I don’t.
I don’t accept Christian “maps” of the spiritual “territory” as anything other than maps. I have a pre-existing, hard-won set of friends who think of spirituality in a similar way. Few of them are Christians. Some of them are! But few.
I was raised Unitarian Universalist (something I wrote about a bit in an essay that previously touched on this topic, from 2022, “Why I’m Not Christian Even Though I Love Christianity, Or: Spirituality And BDSM”). I realized recently that this doesn’t necessarily come through in my writing, even though I mention it occasionally. I was chatting recently with someone on Twitter/X and she was surprised to learn that I was raised in a religion at all, and she is someone who has read essays of mine where I mention it, including the one about starting to believe in God. To be fair, this is partly because Unitarian Universalism is about as secular as you can get while still being an “organized” religion.
I have some serious critiques of Unitarianism, which will likely provide fodder for a future post. I don’t expect Unitarian churches to necessarily be less corrupt or have fewer traps than any other religious community. There are days when I feel honest rage, even contempt, towards the religion I was raised in. Maybe that’s normal, nowadays. As my friend Abraham Burickson once remarked to me, in my favorite interview I’ve ever published about spirituality, “I suppose lots of people end up feeling alienated from the religion that they’re raised in, and speak about the hypocrisy of it” — I never would have expected to feel this way about Unitarianism, yet here we are.
Still, I was raised celebrating Christmas. I love it, and as an adult I love it more, even more than Halloween, which was once my favorite holiday. I love the iconography and the mythos, the Christmas tree and Christmas presents, carols and choir music and pop Christmas music (including the Wham! song “Last Christmas” that many people make a show of hating, but I can never get enough of it; I’d keep it on loop if those around me would let me).
I love mythology in general, too, and a lot of artists and writers I follow posted about the Solstice: The return of the light after darkness. One of our simplest images, and also one of the most complex in the world.
Last night, Christmas Eve, my parents and I attended a late-night Unitarian Christmas service. During the service, someone read a poem by Lynn Ungar called “Annunciation to the Shepherds.” I don’t like the entire poem, but I liked the end a lot. It’s about the moment when the shepherds received instructions from the angels: To attend the birth of Jesus Christ. Their confusion is described, and then:
“Where are we supposed to go?”
Poor guys. They wanted directions,
a purpose, some sense of how
the story might end.
And all they got,
all any of us ever get,
was the sound of angels,
somewhere beyond the din,
singing “Glory, Hosanna”
across the improbable night.
During the service, the woman leading it said that she thinks angels typically come to tell of a great incoming change. A transformation. And she reminded us of the words angels are said to say when they appear:
Do not be afraid.
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Have you looked into Nadia Bolz-Weber's very heterodox variety of Lutheranism? It might appeal to you, or might very much not, but there is enough that rhymes between her account of her life and beliefs and yours that I'd be surprised if you didn't get something worthwhile out of engaging with her stuff.