Losing Faith in Faith

Memorial Day, or Decoration Day, has been very special to me for a long time.  It had nothing to do with the Civil War or the military.  Family and old friends came to the Boston Church of Christ on the third Sunday in May.  We had “dinner on the ground” and we visited the family graveyard and placed flowers on the graves of my ancestral founders of the Church of Christ.  This year, I continued that tradition among cousins at the Garrison Methodist Church and graveyard, at the intersection of Garrison Road and Peach Hollow, a congregation established by my ancestors and the preaching of my great-grandfather.

During my many years of teaching Sunday school in the Church of Christ, I repeated the doctrine of baptism by immersion as essential for salvation, believing that persons not baptized were destined to spending eternity in Hell.  I don’t know that I ever had any misgivings about “biblical fundamentalism.”  Over time, I came to differentiate between the “church of law” and the “church of love.” Seven decades of college and the writing of five books about theology, politics, and philosophy have not taken me from the church affiliation of my childhood.  In the last few years, I have visited approximately forty churches and shared Sunday morning worship.  I have also been fortunate to fill the Sunday morning pulpit as a guest speaker at a Unitarian Congregation.  I find no conflict in my Church of Christ membership and my fellowship with the Unitarian community, or any church I visited.

Incrementally, I have lost much of my commonality with the conservative cultural and political positions of the Church of Christ.  My involvement in the civil rights movement and opposition to the war in Vietnam were frowned upon by most of the membership. The teaching of creationism in the science classroom; the practice of religious instruction and compelled religious speech in public education; and the changing image of the fundamentalist community in matters of politics and education have often made my religious allegiance difficult to explain and defend to others.

Fundamentalists often demonstrate a fear of the less-religious, condemning religious secularists and any form of liberal Christianity.  The separation of church and state is under constant attack in the insistence that our founding fathers established “a Christian nation.” The power base of conservative religion seems to fear critical thinking, rationality, and genuine scientific investigation of academia.

I have become convinced that secularism is quintessentially the essence of religious freedom.  Secularism recognizes the complexity of a scientific and academic approach to cultural diversity, and defends the religious rights of fundamentalists as well as the religious freedom for Catholics, Mormons, and mainstream liberal Christianity.

We divide ourselves into arbitrary groups of “believers” and “non-believers.”  We speak of people of faith; we use the words spiritual and religious to define the attitudes of those people.  Somewhere in my spiritual journey, I became less attracted to the emotional and demonstrative praise and worship of Sunday morning.  I became less of a literalist and became more amenable to the metaphorical beauty of the written word of the Bible.  I am concerned about doctrinal inerrancy and literalism of Old Testament law which perpetuate recent regressive advocacy of theocratic legislation.

The political power and public image of “the Christian Right in America” caused many of us to take a harder look at extremism. The church of love that I had known and within which I grew up was a benign contradiction in its relationship to “denominationalism” and our Methodist cousins.  We loved beyond our theology.  The current evangelical body of believers seems to be based on a theology of religious elitism.  The rift between Evangelicals and religious freedom has returned in a political power struggle.  Pollsters draw lines of religious demographics to predict political preference.

A renewed emphasis on doctrines of repentance, forgiveness, and salvation has brought back the debate between faith and works.  While we all agree we cannot achieve salvation through works, the new wave of religious fervor has lost its moral compass of compassion and charity.  Morality has been redefined as doctrinal legalism, with particular emphasis on the Old Testament, and given rise to a culture of vengeance, violence, and intolerance.  Evangelical extremists have assumed a position of anti-intellectualism and set in motion a doctrine of blind allegiance to sectarian dictate.

The idea of Christianity outside of “the Church” has no biblical logic.  However, I have found that Christianity separate from organized religion has become much more meaningful for me.  We watch and listen to the backwoods pastors who echo the hatred and prejudice of a South we would like to forget.  We watch state legislatures impose religion in the classroom in defiance of academic inquiry.  We watch candidates for President and Congress who would impose religious law in civil matters.  We watch sectarian resistance to any difference of biblical interpretation.

The idea of losing faith in faith is a spiritual paradox for me.  I have found that the more I distance myself from the extremism of fundamentalism and embrace a secularist, humanist, intellectual approach to Christianity, the deeper my faith becomes.  I am more convinced there is a God, and that we are the stewards of the Earth, and the peacemakers in the human family, and I have more faith in the moral teaching of Jesus.

False Dichotomy

Dichotomies exist in theory and in syllogistic semantics; they may or may not exist in reality.  I have found very few concepts that involve only two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive categories.  Someone wrote, “There are two groups of people, those who divide people into two groups, and those who do not.”  Usually, something that is proposed as a dichotomy is an oversimplification.  Two things offered as antonyms are just that, and do not satisfy the requirement of jointly exhaustive.  Questions of religion, politics, and philosophy are not binary; they do not fit the electronic paradigm of one or zero.  When we rightly interpret a word, idea, or theory, then either can be stated in juxtaposition to everything that is not that entity.  That is then a valid dichotomy. A and B do not make a valid dichotomy; the designations A and not-A satisfy the definition.

Most frequent among this fallacy is the false dilemma.  Of this, someone wrote, “The lesser of two evils is still evil.”  Metaphorically this is often expressed as “between a rock and a hard place.”  An option that is obviously undesirable is made less offensive when a similarly painful phenomenon if offered as the only alternative.  This is often used as a referendum of subjectivity rather than a valid choice.  The false dilemma provides a superficial method for expression of affinity or aversion without the immediacy of a choice, or logical comparison.

In the fields of philosophy, we speak of thesis and antithesis, both of which are usually too speculative to constitute a dichotomy.  The fields of politics and religion are more easily expressed, accurately or not, in terms of accepted mutual exclusion.  For example, some word combinations constitute a dichotomy by simple definition, such secular and spiritual, citizen and non-citizen, member and non-member, legal and illegal.  In religion we have defined this in “thou shall and thou shall not” from which we have designated sins as either commission or omission.  However, this dichotomy is valid only within the parameters of specific religions, with a mutually accepted governing document, without contravening or conflicting jurisdictions.

In politics, in civil law, we specify legal or illegal, constitutional or unconstitutional.   Either is a valid dichotomy within a singular legal framework.  In reality, the stratification of state and federal laws, basic human rights, majority-based legislation, judicial review, and voter initiatives often create conflicting definitions of legal and illegal.

In the field of religion, we have found that moral and immoral do not constitute a predictable dichotomy, in that religion and morality have little correlation, and religious morality is not the same as secular morality. The same would be true of righteous and unrighteous which encompass and span a lifetime commitment; saved and lost are transitory conditions of repentance and forgiveness; saint and sinner are based on the preponderance of behavioral miscellany; and believer and non-believer relates to literal or symbolic acceptance of the incomprehensible.

Other fallacies come into play in false dichotomies.  The anecdotal fallacy is a single narrative from which is derived inductive reasoning that the specific incident suggests a general or universal rule.  Similarly, deductive reasoning assumes that the general law would apply to all specific examples.

Among the valid dichotomies is something called ontological inertia.  We often refer to “un-ringing” a bell, or making something un-happen.  The line of demarcation between past and present is a non-dimensional point in time.  The past is not changed by the subjectivity of revisionist history; the future is continually elusive and incrementally irretrievable.  In most options, the “road not taken” is lost in the dichotomy of life’s crossroads.

Part of our pitfalls of fallacious reasoning is our improper use of synonyms and antonyms.  Words are intrinsically imprecise enough that synonyms are not easily fitted into an enclave of commonality.  The same is true of the absolute exclusion of antonyms.

False dichotomies ignore or omit the philosophical middle ground. A valid dichotomy must have absolutes to define the mutually exclusive parts.  Truth and fact are elusive, subject to interpretation and bias.  Religion, which is based on faith, by its definition, is neither bound by fact or truth.  Politics, which is based on referenda or preference, is also bound by neither fact nor truth.

A valid dichotomy requires a wall, real or ideological, a specific linear demarcation.  In religion, politics, economics, and the arts we draw lines between affection and aversion, between the virtues and values we embrace and the evils and labels we reject.

As I read my facebook page and the reader comments to my blog entries, I seem to find dichotomies within my circle of friends.  Politically, they seem to be defined in two mutually exclusive groups—those who like President Obama and those who do not like President Obama.  In matters of religion, there are those who do not believe in God and those who believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God.  From this we are tempted, and must resist, the fallacious reasoning of assigning labels of derogation and labels of assumed virtuous designations.  Individual affirmations of wisdom and morality and the prejudicial accusations of ignorance and evil are the things of which false dichotomies are contrived.

Babel Revisited

“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.”  The people of the plain of Shinar embarked upon building a city and a great tower that would reach unto Heaven around which all of humanity would assemble lest they be scattered abroad over the face of the whole Earth.

For reasons known only to God, having a single language was not His purpose, “lest nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” He then chose to confound their language, “that they may not understand one another’s speech.” And the name of the place was called Babel.

Whether you believe in a literal Biblical narrative, or if you believe that geographic separation and regional commonality of speech evolved into the myriad of languages, dialects, idioms, accents, and nuance of linguistics and semantics, the fact is we do not communicate with each other very well.  Still it was no less the handiwork of God.

I am blessed with a wife and three daughters who are proficient in language arts. My wife was born to deaf parents, and was trained and certified as a career professional interpreter in American sign language.  One daughter taught first grade students with very limited reading skills, and enabled those children to develop language skills to compete in a classroom with their age peers.  She and another daughter are librarians who work with K-5 students, exposing them to carefully chosen books and developing advanced reading skills.  Another daughter, an English major with graduate certification for language arts, taught seventh grade students the importance of grammar, punctuation, syntax, sentence structure, and the art of composition and expository.

In spite of the efforts of those of us who are involved in public education and language arts, or who sit on school boards and write books and blogs, it seems that God’s purpose to confound our language has not been undone by our challenge.

Globalization has mandated a degree of multilingual education–for diplomatic relations, international commerce, immigration, missionary and humanitarian efforts, and recreational travel.  Fortunately, for Americans, English is spoken in many countries.

Many of us who majored in English feel compelled not only to write, but also to proofread the typographic foibles of our friends.  We often make jokes about the misplacement of punctuation, errors of verb agreement, and modifiers and antecedents that convey unintended irony. We choose the precise word to effect unmistakable clarity or metaphorical artistry. We choose simple words for populist empathy, and we choose esoteric words to reach an elitist few.  We choose words with glowing imagery to give credence to our thoughts and ourselves, and demonic words to castigate opposing ideas and the people whom we tend not to like or respect.

I will share my experiences from a literary perspective.  My 1964 letter to the editor, which many of you have read, was written to voice the thoughts of a minority of readers who were involved in anti-war and civil rights movements. It was also read by persons in a culture of segregation, World War II patriotism, and an antebellum south.  It was blatantly biased and divisive.  My first book, a play performed by local theater, was a conflict between a retired Army Colonel father and a campus radical son.  It was adversarial, but it was written in such a way that my readers did not detect my bias and identified with one of the characters but felt empathy for the other.  My second book was a young boy of eight, caught in the conflict of fundamentalist religion and precocious logic. He was raised in a rural culture that did not trust the knowledge of the outside world contrived by some who were not their kind of people. He told his story in the innocence of an eight-year-old which no one questioned.

In the writing of the essays of books three, four and five, I tried to write the things I believe and the things I do not believe in a way to be understood by those who share my beliefs and those who disagree. I tried to write the things I understand with as much factual clarity as my language allows, and to write the things I do not understand with some combination of faith and humble admission of uncertainty.

Why then can English speaking people who live in the same area code, educated in the same schools, not understand one another’s speech?  Language has many barriers.  Labels and simplistic assumptions are major impediments to communication.  Associative reference to ideology or expressions of affinity for public political or religious figures may be misleading.  Stereotyping a speaker or writer by profession, gender, apparel, or ethnicity may rightly or wrongly anticipate his or her speech and opinions. Concurrent with that, is the specious assumption by the speaker or writer of knowing the belief systems and thought patterns of an audience or readers.

When choosing a title for book, blog, chapter, or introducing a speech, or the next sentence after “hello” it serves no purpose to alienate your friend or offend your adversary.  But unless you attract attention to your writing or speech, you have no audience.  Writers and speakers have to learn the art of seduction.  Not deception, seduction.  Do not show any blatant anger or undue adoration of specific persons or ideas in your opening statements.  If you too quickly align yourself with Ayn Rand or Jesus in the first paragraph, you lose some readers; also Nancy Pelosi or John Boehner; Rush Limbaugh or Rachel Maddow; Joel Osteen or Jim Wallis.  Also, it is helpful when juxtaposing assumed contrasts, it is good to include obvious, conflicting, and elusive comparatives to obscure your intent.

When I was in college, I reluctantly carried a Baptist girl whom I loved very much with me to a Church of Christ on a Sunday night.  Your understanding of my reluctance validates some of your own preconceptions.  We exchanged smiles of disbelief when the preacher announced his subject “Pragmatic Idealism” and we came away impressed, enlightened, and still very much in love.

I have been fortunate to be part of a family with whom I have no conflicts of religion, politics, or philosophy, spanning six generations in the Church of Christ and the Democratic Party. I feel very comfortable living in Williamson County among Conservatives, Fundamentalists, and Republicans.  Neither of those labels would I want in my media status profile, or written across my forehead, or on a pin in my lapel, or on a bumper sticker.  But these should never be barriers to conversation, friendship, respect, or fellowship in matters of faith.  I would not be one to question the writer of Genesis, but I don’t think God in all his wisdom ever intended that we not understand  another person’s speech.

On Defining Marriage

Politicians and voters seem not to understand that the federal government has no jurisdiction over the religious institution of marriage.  Marriage is a religious ceremony performed by an ordained minister within a religious denomination.  Marriage also is defined by biblical rules as interpreted by church officials from governing religious documents.  Within our many Christian faiths and political dialogue, we continue to define traditional marriage as a monogamous union between a man and a woman.

Christendom embraces the marriage of the Genesis story as the essential biological element of reproductive continuity of the species.  The Old Testament addresses this with many laws including brothers required to marry a brother’s widow.  Much of this was for providing progeny for perpetuation of name and property.  Polygamy and bigamy were common in the Old Testament, with divine sanction of multiple wives and concubines.  Two of God’s chosen heroes, David and Solomon, were blessed (or cursed) with many wives.  Some scholars insist this practice caused their fall from grace and favor with God.

Marriage is also a civil contract, within a secular legal system, which codifies all of the civil rights of marriage, and contractual obligations and privileges of marriage.  Designated civil office holders are empowered to perform a marriage ceremony without any reference to holy matrimony.  If a man and a woman are married without an official church ceremony, should the union be designated as marriage or are they in a civil union?  Polls indicate that the majority of our citizens approve civil unions, but are reluctant to grant the implied ethereal equality of marriage. The political and religious opponents to same-sex marriage cite religious prohibitions from the Old Testament with one or two references from the writings of Paul. Regardless of what we call this, to deny the civil rights of marriage to any person is an injustice.

The recognition of a civil right of another does not diminish or negate the rights of others, nor discredit the institution to which that right is included.  Persons whose sexual orientation leads to a physiological and emotional attraction to a person of the same sex should have all civil rights included in opposite-sex marriages.  The simple granting of the right of same-sex marriage does not warrant political images of perversion; nor presage a decline in our morality or our Christian tradition; nor threaten the status of anyone’s traditional marriage.

In our principles of democracy, we avow that all persons have equal rights. Yet we deny those equal rights to persons designated as lesbian, homosexual, or gay with an attraction to persons of the same sex. We have difficulty in sorting the components of marriage—the blessings of God, legal rights, cohabitation, and sexuality.  We tend to make judgments about marriage based on our own sexual orientation, our religious heritage, and the totality of our personal experience in marriage. A civil marriage contract does not mandate or prohibit expressions of affection, sexual intimacy, reproduction, or adoption, and should respect the emotional and physiological bonds of such a union.  A celibate marriage, or a non-procreative marriage is no less a marriage. Catholics may be more restrictive than Protestants in religious dictates on birth control, annulment, consummation, and divorce in governing traditional marriage.

I grew up in a small rural community in a time when no one that I knew had any concept of same-sex marriage.  We all had aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors who never married and we often wondered why.  We knew people we called “old maids” who may have chosen not to love, honor, and obey men for whom they felt no attraction.  Some families in religious, rural communities included women who bore children and stayed with men with whom their only bond was the cultural expedience of a traditional marriage.

As I have grown older, I have developed friendships with and respect for persons who enjoy relationships of fidelity and emotional attachment to partners of the same sex.  Who would want to deny them the marital rights of property, financial decisions, medical and end-of-life decisions, adoption, insurance coverage, and the rights in common that the courts have recognized throughout our history?   If they are denied by law the right to a marriage certificate then whatever is written on the document filed in the Court House should give them no fewer rights.  I have concerns when families and church congregations, and state legislators and voters close the eye of reason because of an archaic tradition or judgmental religious interpretation.  We live in a world of domestic violence, divorce, infidelity, and bullying. Why would we deny anyone the right to love someone “until death do them part?”  More importantly, if we are people of faith, if we are people who respect constitutional rights, how we can deny equal rights to those with sexual orientation derived at birth from a loving and indiscriminate God.

Our history has proven that the recognition of individual rights for minorities has taken a long time when left to the vote of the majority.  While we recognize the right of states to enact laws not reserved to the federal government, we have learned that unless rights are allowed to cross state lines none of us are really free.  No one should have to leave family and friends to share a home with a life partner because of a legislature or ballot initiative that would deny the right of marriage.  Elected officials and those who aspire to public office should have the courage to embrace and defend the basic principles of human rights without fear of a divided religious and political constituency.

Unrelenting Nostalgia

At one of the meetings of Franklin Tomorrow, each of us completed a survey sheet from which we compiled data about our group.  One of the questions was:  How long have you lived in Williamson County.  The options were:  Less than a year, 1 to 5 years, 5 to 10 years, 10 to 20 years, and more than 20 years.  I turned the page to see if there were other options.  When you consider that in the 1990 census the population of Franklin was 20,098 and the population in 2010 was 62,487 [72,639 in 2015] that is a realistic question.

As a second generation Main Street retailer, I came to Historic Downtown Franklin at the age of 18 months, when my mother began her retail career at Rose’s Five and Ten Cent store.  I was continuously employed on Main Street from 1951 until 2003. From my sophomore year in high school until we closed Pigg & Peach, at no time did I not have a job on Main Street, from stock boy in a dime store at 45 cents an hour, to a junior partner, to a minority stock-holder, to our family owned business.  My oldest daughter, Rebecca, and I graduated from MTSU together in 1988.  She told someone I had worked my way through college for 34 years without a student loan.

It is hard to explain being an eighth generation Williamson County resident and having been a retailer on Main Street since 1951.  Another daughter, Dea, worked part time at Barnes & Noble on Mallory Lane.  One day in the break-room, another employee initiated this conversation:

How long have you lived here?

All my life.

You mean you have lived in Tennessee all of your life?

Yes ma’am.  I have lived here all my life.

In Nashville?

No ma’am, here.

In Franklin?

Yes ma’am.

Then, you were in Franklin before there was anything here?

There is a line from a Joan Baez song, “If you tell me you are not nostalgic then give me another word for it.”  For many in Williamson County, nostalgia is a sentimental longing for the past, a bittersweet memory of the way things used to be.  When I first came to Franklin, I was overwhelmed by its homage to the monument and the cannons.  I was immediately caught up in the fascination for two wars—one which we had just won at the tragic loss of so many young men from Williamson County, and another from which we were in some degree of denial of having lost some 100 years earlier.

Those of us who live in Franklin live in a world of nostalgia.  The good news is that we have used our nostalgia to build what we now have.  To understand Franklin, you have to appreciate the multiple perspectives of its residents.  For those who might wonder how we became the poster city and paradigm for the ideal southern quality of life, the answer is a complex one.  It is best understood in the visual and inscribed content of Streetscape.  It was a joint venture of City government, property owners, merchants, community leaders, and the Heritage Foundation who saw the past and the future not as adversarial, but as inextricably linked in the continuity of who we are now. New residents joined us giving money and love to light a theater marquis, to buy historical sites, for Festivals and fund-raisers, for schools, for churches, for parks and recreation, for the visual and musical arts.

I talk about the days when we had 5 or 6 grocery stores on Main Street, 2 hardware stores, 4 family department stores, at one time 3 men’s clothing stores, and many dress shops.  During the 28 years that we were at the corner of 4^th and Main, eleven stores that sold men’s clothing closed.  Franklin was the destination for everyone in the county.  There were no malls; no strip centers; no big-box retailers; no corporate stores.  The owners came to work every day.

For me to wish for the “olden days” is as unreal and illogical as the political and religious call for returning to a former time.  I remember Franklin with diagonal parking, with broken sidewalks, with tattered and broken awnings.  I remember Franklin when its attitude toward the Civil War was only a generation or two removed from slavery, and entrenched in segregation and bigotry.  I remember Franklin when fighting was common on Saturday nights, when “country folk” brought their family feuds to Main Street.  I remember policeman who carried night sticks and subdued drunks coming out of Main Street “beer joints.” I remember a balcony in the Franklin Theater for “blacks only.” I remember when families had only one car and they came to Franklin once a week, on Saturday, to buy groceries and household needs.

I find great delight in sharing my memories of Franklin with new people that I meet who have recently moved to Williamson County.  I had a conversation yesterday with a man and woman who recently moved here from Idaho.  Coming from a red-state, they were delighted to find a Democrat in Franklin.  I did not tell them that when I was growing up south Williamson County we only had two Republicans in our voting precinct.

Much of my nostalgia goes back to a one-room country church in Boston, Tennessee.  My grand-father’s uncle founded the congregation; my great-grandmother and grandmother baked communion bread; my uncle was an elder and led singing and kept the building and grounds clean and neat; and I taught Sunday school.  The church building was about 100 feet from the school which I attended in grades one through eight, to and from which I often walked a half mile.  And I don’t envy or question those who feel the presence of God in the praise and worship of a mega-church.

Life is good in Franklin.  In my retirement I sit in Merridee’s , drinking coffee and reading.  My Lipscomb book-bag from my most recent class in 2010 sits in a chair beside me, filled with books to read and books to sell.  I use Merridee’s on Thursday nights to meet with some of the many local authors who have written books. Our Socrates Café meets once a month and discusses the complexities of the universe in a Bible-belt community in a state governed by a legislature stuck in a previous-century. I walk the streets and read the names of friends, past and present.  I pause on the corner of 4^th and Main and read the brick paver “writer and philosopher” a gift from my favorite daughters for my birthday.  Farther up the street is another with my mother’s name and mine celebrating our combined 80 years (as of 1990) of retail on Main Street. Years ago, I watched the tragic burnings of Franklin Elementary School and Franklin High School while local firemen fought to no avail to save them.  Never could I have dreamed that my name would be on the plaques on 12 schools in the two school districts.

As I get older I cherish my memories of Franklin, from my childhood sitting on the wood floor in a five and ten cent store playing with toys, to my conversation with the couple from Idaho yesterday at Merridee’s.  Surely, the “goodness of nostalgia” follows me all the days of my life; it is not something that I drag behind me; it constantly pushes me to give it more room to grow.