Mike O. asked for this a couple weeks ago. Thanks to Helen for allowing me to post it here; sorry it has taken so long!
I accepted Jesus into my heart at age nine in a Presbyterian Sunday school class. I went on to be baptized (sprinkled in the Presbyterian tradition and then dunked in the Pacific Ocean by Greg Laurie, who was then an assistant pastor at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa and is now an internationally famous evangelist ). For the next 20 years, I belonged to conservative evangelical churches, attended bible studies and did Christian outreach work both locally and supporting missionaries overseas.
I had questions and doubts about god’s existence off and on, principally during my young adult years, but I managed to repress them until I went through a midlife crisis in my late 30s. It was at that point that church activities and sermons began to feel dull and repetitive. Wasn’t I supposed to have peace and contentment as a follower of Christ? Why did I feel resentment and confusion? All the adolescent rebellion I’d never experienced in adolescence (I was the “perfect Christian girl”) bubbled to the surface and I began reevaluating my life, both informally and in therapy.
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I stumbled upon a story the other day and it initially made me laugh.
Britain’s first interfaith game show is to be launched, pitting Jews against Muslims, Sikhs against Christians and Hindus against Buddhists, with contestants competing for cash prizes.
The idea of a game show, a tawdry spectacle and weak entertainment at the best of times, representing the dialogs between faiths seems unusual and possibly insulting for believers.
Faith Off, the working title of a series on the Islam Channel, will attempt to promote good relations and mutual respect between Britain’s religious communities. Two teams of four will go head to head in each episode, answering quick-fire and general knowledge questions in the eight-part series hosted by the Muslim comedian Jeff Mirza.
Then, I thought, maybe it’s not such a bad idea. Religions do tend to see themselves as separate and better than their rivals. They do tend to take themselves very seriously. Maybe a game show will actually help religion’s followers to see some of the funny things about their faiths. Maybe they’ll see similarities between their own faith and the faith of others. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll actually make people less hostile to different views of religion.
“You learn about religions at school and then you forget, so it’s about transferring the basic blocks of knowledge … It’s also about learning the similarities between religions, instead of focusing on the differences.”
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Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Jason | 7 Comments »This isn’t the first time I’ve told this story.
I’ve got a few gay friends. People I’ve worked with, people I went to school with, people I just bumped into a got talking. Anyway, friends who also happen to be gay. For some reason I know more lesbians that gay men. A statistical anomaly perhaps or maybe some of my friends are still in the closet. That’s their choice if they are and really none of my business. They are my friends first and gay second.
About eight years ago and went to the wedding of two of them, Sarah and Tracy. It was a lovely family ceremony conducted by a local vicar from their church. The ceremony wasn’t in the church. The diocese had decreed that they could not support the wedding of two women to each other. The vicar, himself a gay man, had offered to conduct the ceremony in the local pub. A gesture that made Sarah, who I worked with, very happy.
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