Epistle From An Ex-Communicated Methodist

A group of us were drinking beer behind the local Methodist Church when the pastor came out and started in, half-yelling, half-preaching. I was baptized a Methodist but my friend John R was pure Catholic - the school, the uniform, the whole nine yards. I still remember him angrily, or perhaps only drunkenly, yelling back at the pastor, "You can't talk to this Irish Catholic that way!"

I didn't have the slightest clue where that came from, or what he meant.

In my eyes, I had been thrown out of the church. All I remember is being in Sunday school at about the age of 7 or 8 and having gotten into trouble for joking and giggling in the class. The teacher asked me to share the joke with the class. I did and was promptly sent home with some pre-graduation palm fronds and a note telling my parents I wasn't to come back. So, I never did.

I remember the day but not the joke and years later reached my own spiritual peace with my God, but that's of no consequence here. What is of consequence is the secular West's inability to relate to things religious at a time when we seem destined to be drawn into a religious war we neither want, nor need.

Increasingly, our ability to understand and discuss religion stops with an external view where we take it apart and analyze it, almost as another form of modern psychology. But individuals who seem more and more intent on dominating what the world can or cannot, not just worship, but say, publish and do are as steeped in their religion as a medieval monk.

Some might argue we need to re-invigorate our Judeo-Christian roots. I'm not sure I have strong feelings on that, good or bad, but it isn't where my thought process goes. What I find myself wondering is if civilized man can worship freedom, mutual respect, and the secular democratic state as much as some concept of God.

Our enemies have a book and the other accoutrements of religion, all embraced by a fervent faith. We have a Constitution and voting booths, but even those are under attack if they contain a machine made by Diebold, or a hanging chad.

Up until now in my life, I believed that for one and for America to succeed, all we had to believe in was ourselves. I still feel strongly about that in most ways. But when it comes to fighting Islamo-fascism as a coalesced threat, I'm not yet convinced it's enough.

Bryan Preston has a particularly interesting post on religion today at Hot Air.

Comments

[Phoenix]

Really nice post, Dan.

I think the sustaining force in a person's life is a belief in himself. One does not need religion for that. But part of that belief force entails a sense of belonging. When we lose that we become alienated from our culture and value systems. Our collective psyche has been so hammered by politics and political correctness that we're all kind of scrambling around for the glue that keeps us belonging.... to what?... a freedom and liberty we take for granted. Time to wake up and recognize the foundations that have kept us belonging to the greatest culture in the history of mankind are on shaky ground.

What a bummer.

[splashtc]

freedom yes -even more so then a concept of god. God we bring out as needed-freedom is a minute to minute daily experience.