Religious Major: Undeclared [Racialigious]

by Latoya Peterson

“What do you mean you don’t know what Easter is?”

I appraised Best Boy with all the understated annoyance I could muster at the ripe old age of fifteen.

“Again,” I said with an eye roll, “not raised with a religion.  And all that comes out around Easter time is new patent leather shoes, dyed eggs, and ham.”

He would not drop the subject.

“How do you not know what Easter is?”

“Did the Rugrats make a special about it? Then no, I don’t know.”

Since I had opened up the lines of fire, he launched his own smart ass attack.

“How do you not go to church, anyway? What kind of black person are you?”

His words struck me deeply, and from time to time I’ve revisited that short conversation and wondered about his motivations and beliefs.  This is not a new idea, but one I am starting to hear more and more often:

What kind of black person am I, if I grew up without a religion?

I’m sure that if that had been an off-handed comment, outside of any sort of  context, I wouldn’t even remember that story.   But as it stands, it was the first articulation of how others would perceive me later – as something strange and stateless.  When Atlasien wrote her piece asking if Buddhism is the anti-Islam, there was one passage in particular that resonated with me:

If the phrase “culturally Christian” strikes you as jarring, it’s actually a pretty simple concept. It reflects the fact that when it comes to cultural institutions, the United States is very much a Christian nation. Hey, I mean this in a sociological sense, not a legal one… I love secularism and I donate to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. But when you’re raised within a majority culture, you become fluent in that culture’s idioms and ways of making sense of the world, no matter what you believe on an intellectual level. Even if you were raised in a family that never even went to church, you’re almost certainly a cultural Christian. I’m a Buddhist, and I’m a cultural Christian. If I spill a hot cup of coffee on myself, I say “Jesus ****ing Christ!” not “Amida ****ing Buddha!”

For me, cultural Christianity is like a stream I’m standing in. I have to stand inside it in order to live in this society and understand its values and language. I don’t have a choice. It isn’t good or bad, it just is. But I’m also outside the stream, to some degree… I can reach out my arms towards other streams and pools.

I could relate.  I, too, pepper my speech with references to Jesus, though I would be classified as an unbeliever by many Christians. And I understand a lot of morality and society through the Christian lens it is often presented through.  But I still hold back from committing to Christianity as a religion.  Partially, it is because I share my mother’s distrust of organized religion – the hard sell, the profiteering pastors, the obnoxiousness of the sanctified trying to inflict their moral authority.  It’s all equally grating to me.

However, I’ve been standing in this stream long enough to absorb some of its water.  I am loosely monotheistic (in that God is in everything kind of way) and I have a lot of trouble rejecting that frame, even when I acknowledge that growing up in the States probably influenced that way of thinking.  I, like atlasien, default to using a lot of Christian phrasing and framework. But I am always aware I am not a part of this stream, and there is some disharmony when I begin to walk against the current.

I do not hate religion.  I see religion as a tool, kind of like a knife. A knife can be used to provide sustenance, to free people, to protect one’s self against those that will do you harm.  And it can also be used to inflict damage.  Neither of these is the inherent nature of the knife – it all depends on the wielder.  In this way, I disagree with some atheists who believe that all religions are harmful.  I have seen religion become a positive focus and direction for men of my acquaintance, both through the paths of Christianity and Islam. So I am not willing to chuck the entire idea of religion, part and parcel.

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