Our new Book Group begins this Wednesday and will meet for two weeks at my house–so I’ve been reading Christopher Hitchens’ god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. There is a lot that I like about him as a writer. I like his wry witticisms. For example, in describing people who have “abandoned faith after a difficult struggle” he writes, “Some of them had blinding moments of un-conviction,” and compares that to Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus (p 5).
Blinding moments of un-conviction. I love that. It captures well that human experience when we suddenly realize that our paradigm has been all wrong and our perceptions seem to shift 25 or 50 or 90 degrees in one direction or another. We see things we didn’t see before. The world opens up before us like a flower and we see it like Georgie O’Keefe saw flowers. How could we have missed that before??
Illumination. Revelation. I do believe that getting free from a limiting idea can sometimes happen like that. And God knows 😉 many religious ideas are and have been very limiting. Many people who come to Wicker Park Grace have been deeply wounded by Christianity and we try to keep an open space there for healing these wounds.
Sometimes the wounds can only heal by walking away from the tradition. Other times people heal a bit by being accepted in community and loved and supported while they undo the bad thinking that has injured them; or while they name and renounce the explicitly or implicitly damaging ideologies they have been taught to embrace.
Sometimes, after healing a bit in community, they still have to walk away. The damage done to them by a particular brand of Christian tradition has been too deeply embedded in their psyches and it can’t be redeemed or reinterpreted enough to let them heal. They have to jettison the whole bit.
That happened to me as a young pre-teen, and it happened to author Anne Rice this week. On her Facebook page (Wednesday, July 28) she wrote,
“As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”
I support her in her decision to renounce Christianity, just as I support people who have participated at Wicker Park Grace for awhile and then decided they must walk away from Christian tradition. Hopefully, the people who have walked away from participating in our community have walked away a bit more healed in their relationship to Christianity, or to God, or to Jesus, or to their authentic self, than they were when they first attended a gathering with us.
Blinding moments of un-conviction make space for new perspectives, new insights, and even new convictions to enter us. That’s a good thing if we can maintain a spirit of humility and mutual respect in the process of unfolding knowledge within ourselves and our fellow humans.
Hitchens writes about himself and his co-thinkers: “We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake” (p5). I give him the benefit of the doubt about this and will be holding him accountable to it as I continue to consider his ideas.
Nanette, I didn’t realize you were blogging til I saw this linked from Twitter! I’m glad to know.
As a person married to an atheist, I struggle with the concept of open-mindedness. I’m open to ideas and interpretations, and I think so is my spouse, but we’re not *really* open to a change of stance. He *truly* believes there is no God, and I *truly* believe there is, even though my idea of what God is changes over time and under circumstances and for no particular identifiable reason. He appreciates that I’m not into some authoritarian version of Christianity, but also finds my theological openness illogical!
It’s challenging to live in that kind of ongoing conversation.
Thanks for your comment, Songbird. I’m glad you found my blog. I’m trying to get more consistent and visible with my blogging. Thanks especially for sharing your experience of being married to an atheist and what that is like for you.
When I quoted Hitchens on his commitment to free inquiry, openmindedness and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake, I didn’t imagine that this meant he or I would have a change of stance on “there is” or “there is not” God.
Part of my critique of Hitchens, though, is precisely this dichotomous framing of questions. And this is probably also a critique of culture and of Christianity as it has been conceived of in the past.
I’ve read parts of Hitchens’ book beginning to end, but now I’m going through and reading it word by word. So far, I don’t think his book really addresses me and Christians like myself.
The ways in which Hitchens and I speak past each other indicate some important problems. I’m hoping to better understand where we miss each other and why.
I agree with Hitchens on the content of much of his critique. But I disagree with him on his framing premises and his conclusions. I want to become able to articulate these things better.
It’s personal for me, too. Songbird. I want to understand and be understood by people that I love. Thanks for sharing.