The secular movement has to broaden itself. We have to reach back to the legacy of Greek humanism and especially the humanities, emphasizing a great respect for the liberal arts. This movement has to be about more than just science, logic, and the separation of church and state because, as wonderful as those things are, they’re not enough. We need to talk about the human tradition of literature and poetry. Nonreligious people, we need to explain, have pulled our noses from singular “holy” books and have become free to explore all books and all of life. We need to emphasize the emotion that goes hand-in-hand with such an approach to life, the terrifying and beautiful lushness of existence. We have the better way of kindling that feeling of transcendence, of discovering it, nurturing it, and expressing it. We have to emphasize the beauty and importance of doing so. We need to encourage people to keep looking as deeply as they can into their own existence, expressing wonder and amazement the whole time.
VI.
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Joe Bochinski: Consistency vs. Christianity
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
Peer pressure is a powerful force. In the ninth grade, in Warren, Michigan, it was Joe Bochinski’s turn to give himself to Jesus. A self-identified band geek, he, like many young teens, was searching for community. He was taken out of the crowd at a Baptist retreat and gave himself to the Lord.
His doubts grew as he began to learn about the differences between religions. Experiencing a fundamentalist megachurch for the first time — and watching his girlfriend’s father use Scripture to justify subjugating female family members — led to a crisis of faith. His education, particularly in science, led to what he describes as a liberating separation from religion. Knowledge fostered a growing self-confidence and a decreasing sense of fear. He began to consider that perhaps there is no judgmental, disapproving God watching over him.
I’ll start with my childhood. My parents weren’t particularly religious. They called themselves Catholic, but my dad’s pretty secular, and my mom doesn’t practice any religion. I was pretty much in the same boat. I called myself Catholic, but in reality, that identity was very superficial. As a child, my grandma had the biggest religious influence over my brother and me. She’s very devout. She didn’t ever push it on us, but she made an effort to take us to church as often as possible. In time, religion would come to the forefront of my life.
During high school I dated a couple of girls. One of them was devoutly religious. She was Baptist. We started dating my freshmen year of high school, and I went to her church’s youth group every Wednesday and sometimes on Sunday as well. At one point, after I’d been going to church with her for a couple of months, the church had a getaway for its teenage members. I went, and it was fun. There was a gymnasium set up with sumo suits, obstacle courses, and cool things for high school kids to do. After hours of running around and having fun, the adults brought the hundreds of students together. The tone changed dramatically. While sitting together in the bleachers, all of us listened to a sermon, and at one point, we were asked to close our eyes. The adult leaders asked everybody who hadn’t yet been saved to put up their hand. With my hand raised, I was plucked out of the crowd and taken into a one-on-one session with a pastor. The pastor started talking to me about beliefs and asked if I had any questions, and then we prayed together. I gave my life to Jesus. The pastors made me feel very excited, and it was a very positive emotional experience. Looking back, I didn’t truly realize what was going on. This getaway was a means to get converts.
I think I can understand why I was attracted to church and to religion generally. My desire to join that community was for social reasons, though I wouldn’t have said so at the time. It didn’t take much to convince me to embrace the community because I was rather naïve at the time. The church made me feel like I was a part of a group. The people were very friendly and welcoming. In high school, I was kind of a band nerd, and I didn’t fit in with most of the school. The church helped give me something that I was missing in my life.
After my first high school girlfriend and I broke up, I left her church, and after I started dating another girl about nine months later, I started going to services with her. She went to a big right-wing, non-denominational megachurch. They talked about politics from the pulpit, which I suspect put me on guard. I began to think critically about the messages of the church leaders. What they were preaching didn’t align with my understanding of what scientists now understand about the nature of reality.
Aside from my intellectual skepticism, I eventually found that my new girlfriend’s dad was emotionally abusive. There was a lot of yelling and fighting in their home. He used the Bible and religion to justify what he was doing to his family. In his mind, there was a breakdown in the world along gender lines. His son was the preferred child. The three women in the family, the girl I was dating and her sister, along with his wife, were secondary. He was able to sustain an abusive hierarchy because he was the sole breadwinner. That pissed me off. I had begun to see the dark side of religion and how people can use it to justify abhorrent behavior. Much later, long after we broke up, my now-former girlfriend contacted me to thank me for helping her resist her dad’s misogyny. She eventually escaped from that environment.
I continued to drift from church to church. I started talking with some of my high school friends about the religious beliefs I had learned at church. One of my friends was Protestant. I remember once we were talking about the sacrament. He mentioned that Protestants don’t actually believe that the cracker and the wine of a Catholic service literally turn into the body and blood of Jesus. I laughed it off at first and said, “Come on, nobody actually believes that. It’s symbolic.” Later, I talked with one of my other close Catholic friends and he insisted that they do, saying, “That’s actually what we believe.”
Still trying to find my place, during my freshman year of college I went to a local youth group called the Red Cedar Christian Fellowship. Their national affiliate is the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Having just moved to East Lansing to attend Michigan State University, I didn’t have many friends and was trying to build my social network. As I attended more and more sermons, it continued to be harder and harder to believe. One of my closest friends who often came with me to these services told me that he could tell I was conflicted about something as I sat through the sermons. There were meetings throughout the semester at which I could meet with the group leader to discuss “personal spiritual growth.” During one of these personal growth sessions, I tried to talk to the leader about the conflict I was feeling. He more or less tried to downplay my concerns. Shortly after that, I stopped going to the church group and started seeking other routes. After I left the youth group, many of the people I had previously been friends with no longer made an attempt to reach out to me. It felt like I had become a pariah because of my doubts.