I was raised Presbyterian, and still think of myself that way, although I stopped going to church in high school. I feel a connection to the Presbyterian church, because it’s how I grew up; the denomination’s focus on scholarly analysis of Scripture appeals to me, and I find its tenets of inclusion, redemption and justice admirable. When people say America is a Christian nation, I think, “Cool. Can it be Presbyterian?”
But the church I attended as a child in my hometown of Mobile, Alabama, with its stodgy pastor and 1970s wall-to-wall burnt orange carpet and pews, didn’t speak to me. Except maybe, sometimes on Christmas Eve, when the darkness outside turned the sanctuary’s arched windows into glittering mirrors, and the soaring refrain gloria, in excelsis Deo welled up inside of me, a feeling it didn’t seem possible could be made or contained by a human body.
When I became a parent myself, I started to wonder if I’d abandoned church too hastily. If, maybe, humans have sought religion for as long as there have been humans because it fulfills a need as basic as food or water, and whether we ought to be worried that as Americans have rejected religion at a record clip, we haven’t replaced it with anything else…