Those who are reading this may or may not know that I was raised as a Christian. My mom took me - and later forced me - to go to church and pray before dinner and things like that. When I transferred from college in Montana to a college at home in Oregon, I dropped the identifier of "Christian" and began to refer to myself as "spiritual" - specifically, spiritual but not religious.
The school I attended in Montana was affiliated with the Catholic church. Some of the people I knew here were a bit confused by my decision. Catholics and Christians don't always get along very well because of the differences in their belief systems. They have the same base beliefs - that God created the world and then sent his son to save humans from their sins in the ultimate sacrifice. After that things start to get blurry and the two split away from each other. Coming from a Baptist church, my experience is that Catholicism is more ritualized and focuses on doctrines whereas we focused on forging a relationship with God and developing a strong Christian family and reaching out to those around us. Not that that made us better, of course. In some ways, we were worse.
Montana was bad for me. I never should have gone. I experienced things that no person should ever have to experience. But I also experienced some spiritual attacks that originated in the Catholic church. Now, I want to be clear that I am not saying Catholics are jerks, or wrong, or bad. I know some awesome, loving, faithful Catholic people who deserve all of the good things in the world and a place in heaven with God someday. The goal of this is to simply share some experiences and observations that I made while experiencing the tensions between two religious groups that share the same history.
I went on a retreat through my college that was supposed to be open to all women of all walks of life. Being Catholic was not required. I wouldn't have gone if I had known what I would be dealing with. I already felt left out because there were so many things I wasn't allowed to participate in because I wasn't Catholic, communion being one of them, and perhaps the one that pissed me off the most. But on this retreat we had a guest speaker. I'm sure she was a great person and all, but some of the things she said were absolutely unacceptable. Ultimately, though in less direct terms, she said that if you weren't Catholic then you weren't Christian. I checked out of the retreat at that point and hid in the basement where everyone was sleeping. I got a lot of homework done that weekend. The sad part is, that wasn't the first part of the retreat that made me feel unwelcome.
That was the only direct insult to my faith during the time. The other insults came indirectly from policies within the Catholic church that controlled who could do what. I already mentioned not being allowed to take communion, so I'll use that as my example.
Transubstantiation is the idea that the wine and bread actually physically becomes the blood and body of Jesus during communion (which resulted in Christians being seen as cannibals during part of history). The Catholic church still believes this and holds onto this idea. It is one of their doctrines. I'm not an expert on Catholicism and their beliefs, but I did have this one explained to me. A significant number of protestant denominations do not hold on to this belief, instead believing that the bread and wine are merely a representation. Essentially, this is why Catholic churches do not allow other people to take communion. It may not be the intent, but the basic message is that other Christian's believe the wrong thing if they do not believe in transubstantiation. There are, of course, the classes that Catholic members have to take before they are allowed to participate in communion, but other churches have similar classes. As long as someone understands the purpose of communion and believes, they should be allowed to take it.
This, at least, is how I was made to feel. I could, of course, go up and be blessed by a priest, but why would I want to do that? If I was at a mass it was because I wanted to commune with and worship God, not be blessed by someone who was just as human as I was. On top of that, it singled me out as different, when really I wasn't. I had to show everyone that I wasn't like them by crossing my arms across my chest. That was exactly why I never got up for communion, and part of why I left mass early multiple times or refused to go at all. I participated in maybe three or four when I was in Montana, at least one of which I had to leave early so I wouldn't burst into tears.
This is a big part of why I no longer identify myself with a religious term, such as Christian or Baptist. I am spiritual, and for me that is enough. I made the decision once before, when I was in high school, but that was typical teenage questioning. Even so, there was one important person who treated me like I was a disease for that short period of time. That hurt more than anything and is yet another reason why I am no longer religious. The final reason why comes in the form of the isolated cases in which I was looked down on after coming out as bisexual several years ago.
There was at least one person who, upon seeing my Facebook page, where I openly display my values and my identity, did not think that I should be allowed to work with the kids at church. At the time I had volunteered to help teach Children's Church during service, so that the kids didn't have to sit through boring sermons and distract everyone. I would have been teaching them about God's love, miracles, different Bible stories, and more. Nothing to do with bisexuality at all. The sad part was that the people who had a problem with it didn't even have the balls to say it to my face, to put it bluntly. They hid behind my mom, who in turn came to me. While she is not completely accepting of what I identify as, she loves me and she was angry that anyone would say things like that about her daughter. I was just angry that they didn't say it to my face.
Religion opens up too many doors for discrimination, judgments of people, and hate. There are too many complexities and too many reasons for people to fight and argue and hate each other. Spirituality is simple. You believe what you believe because you value it and because you believe that it's the truth. No rules, no doctrines, no necessary rituals. It is what you need it to be. And though God and I have some issues to straighten out, I feel closer to him now that I do not view myself as part of a church.
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