Gettin' Political: Bill Moyers, DOMA Overturned

 Yesterday's episode of The Colbert Report reminded me why, from the still few things of his I have read, I am a fan of Bill Moyers.

Moyers was on the show to talk about his new Frontline documentary Two American Families, which profiled two struggling families representative of America's shrinking middle class (Stephen Colbert: "Wow, he talked to both of them!").

One of my favorite parts: "The problem is not why so many people fall through the cracks; the problem is why there are so many cracks."

In bigger political news,  the talk of the town was the Supreme Court's over-turning of DOMA. On my facebook feed and on the interwebs themselves, opinions are all over the place.

But I think this article best explains why the SCOTUS decision is a victory.

It doesn't affect people's heterosexual marriages. It certainly doesn't affect the state of the family unit at-large. If anything, the institution of marriage and the family unit are strengthened by granting equal benefits to already existing gay- and lesbian- headed families.

But it does affect people like Kelly Costello and Fabiola Morales, now allowed to apply for permanent residency for the foreign-born spouse.

“This means that gay and lesbian couples across the country and the world can plan for their futures and not have to live with uncertainty month after month,” said  [lawyer] Steve Ralls.

 “Now we will finally have the security and stability we always wanted as a family," said Costello.

Security and stability: things that strengthen all partnerships and families, whether hetero- or homosexual.

So thank you, SCOTUS.

Wordless Wednesday: Messing Around With Muzy.com

 

Christianity isn't a Club

I've been reading some good things lately from Christian bloggers talking about how they struggle to live out their faith and spirituality when they see it reduced to a bunch of superficial precepts designed to easily identify who is in and who is out. Things like this and this. These posts really resonated with my own experience, and they came as a relief after a post I read essentially calling out Christians for treating the faith as a "fandom."

This post, written by an evangelical Christian woman I have followed for years first on livejournal and then on facebook, obviously touched a nerve in me, but I felt it would be defensive and a little presumptuous on my part for me to address it. But then I read those posts that so well expressed the frustrations I had been feeling. And I decided that if this blog is going to be me at my real-est, that I myself need to put into words the frustrations I have with modern Christianity.

My online friend likened some Christians as viewing the religion as a "fandom" where we "pick and choose" the teachings we want to accept and to reject (her analogy actually worked better when she explained it, as much as I was bothered by it...), but in my experience it has been seen more as a club, where people's lives and lifestyles are scrutinized to see if they measure up to how a Christian "should" live.

If Christianity were a club, I would have been long gone. I know I don't fit in to that club, and I gave up trying to years ago. But it's Christ, the living son of God, who keeps calling me back even as I would run from some of His followers...

My faith journey has been a unique one, but that's how I have discerned that it is God calling me on this path, and not me trying to fit in with modern Christendom. I was baptized Catholic but never confirmed, and I attended an Episcopal middle school and Catholic high school. My parents were pretty "lapsed" in their Catholicism by my teenage years, but attended the Episcopal church connected with my middle school on Christmas and Easter. In college, due partly to my feelings of loneliness and isolation, I started attending a charismatic evangelical Christian group on campus after my freshman-year hall mate invited me. While in some ways my spirit was nurtured, I never felt truly comfortable there for multiple reasons.

A major one was feeling like I had to talk, dress, act, believe etc. a certain way in order to fit in; there was a sense that I was always being judged to see if my faith were "bearing the correct fruit." Part of that feeling could have just been my own paranoia and tendency to be a people-pleaser, but apparently I'm not the only one within Christian circles to have felt this way.

I would never have been a "good" evangelical Christian. I think most Christian music is, from a music-lover's standpoint...well, crap, and Christian film is even worse. Four-letter words do come out of my mouth on many-an-occasion, which apparently surprises some of my friends. While I've never been a huge drinker and don't drink to get drunk, I do consume alcohol. I would wear bikinis, if I were more comfortable with my stomach, and I have plenty of shirts that show cleavage. My political beliefs are solidly to the left, especially when it comes to issues of poverty and social and economic equality, but I also firmly support gay equality and think that the decision to abort should be in the hands of the mother and not the government.

If those things are the litmus test for how good a Christian I am, according to today's definition I most certainly fail. But it's Christ who seeks and knows my heart, and it's Christ who will judge me, not "man who looks upon the externals." And as I said, it's Christ who has beckoned me to follow Him and Christ who continually calls me back.

I'm back to attending an Episcopal Church (though I also identify culturally with Catholicism), and I'm thankful to have found a church body that is filled with accepting and non-judgmental people. But I get frustrated when I see Christian culture reduce Christianity to the externals, when only God can judge the heart. I'm not picking and choosing just because I come to a different interpretation than you; I'm merely prayerfully examining scripture through my own experience and understanding.

So, instead of rejecting Christianity-as-fandom, let's reject Christianity as a club, and seek to follow and serve God as we understand Him, rather than expending so much energy judging the lives of others.