Losing my religion

That's me in the corner... that's me in the spotlight

Consider this:
Patrick spent Sunday morning reading Philip Pullman's new short story "Once upon a time in the North" and fannying about on Facebook. Enitrely suitable Sunday morning fare for an atheist you would think. And you'd be right. But he was only up so absurdly early because I had woken him up to buy a new parking ticket for his car before some officious warden slapped a £60 on his ass, and then sodded off to church. Me that is, not the traffic warden.

I had invited him, if he wished to go, the main attraction, other than God, being the chance to see me looking like a meringue in a royal blue cassock and white surplice in my weekend persona, a chorister of St Laurence's Church, Ludlow. I joined the choir for selfish motives: I was lonely and wanted to meet people, for personal and professional reasons. I also like singing and I have a background in (for simplicity's sake) "classical" music. And the part of me that was a practicing Christian for the first 19 or so years of my life idly wondered if getting back into regular contact with religious types might help me resolve my inner turmoil as far as religion is concerned.

I thought that I heard you laughing, I thought that I heard you sing, I think I thought I saw you try...

I've not attended as religiously (hah) as I'd like. Weekends represent golden opportunities to get out of Ludlow (lovely people, very beautiful town, no one between the ages of 20 and 27 in evidence) and I often book them up miles in advance. But recently, I've been trying to be around more. I made a commitment to the choir and they need me to turn up, at most there's only ever four or five people on the alto part, including me. We're the second largest group, but often there's only two or three of us. And very often, as I trip over the hem of my cassock while trying to sight-read the alto line in the processional hymn while we walk between the pews and up into the choir stalls, I wonder what I'm doing there.

My childhood Christianity was not something I had a choice in, but I loved it completely. I was baptised when I was 4 months old. I was admitted to communion when I was 7 (a strange rite only my church seemed to do which let young children have a piece of bread but not drink wine. But yay! Inclusion and a sense of maturity!) and confirmed when I was 14. We were Anglo-Catholic. I think, technically, high church CofE. We believed in seven sacraments (baptism, ordination, marriage, confirmation, communion, extreme unction, reconciliation) not two (baptism and ordination) but we only used incense about three times a year and we sang music from all over the world and from throughout time. When Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa, we learnt the South African National Anthem, in South African. When we got a new vicar from Zambia, we learnt the Agnus Dei in Zambian. It goes like this... Kambelele ka mlungu, muvimyapo viipa, vya vyalo vyonse, tipe tendere wanu, kambelele ka mlungu muvimyapo viipa, vya vyalo vyonse, tichitile lusungu. Though I might have got the verses the wrong way round.

The congregation was a good mix, people of every ethnic background you find in Sarf Eeest Lunnon. Africans, Asians, Europeans. I knew everyone, and a lot of people knew me. All the old ladies cooed over me at my christening. By the time I was 10 I had no idea who they were, but they would comment on every stage of my life as if they were relatives. My mum was very involved in our church and got ordained when I was 12 or 13. I was very proud of her. No one else's mum was a priest. Though I grew tired of fending off questions about whether she was a "priestess" ("Yes, she sacrifices bulls in temples"), was my dad a priest? Do priests have to marry priests? ("Er no, and no."), and "I thought priests couldn't marry/have children?" ("That's Catholics").

I loved God and God loved me. I never knew where I got this image from, but when I was 5, I thought God was a denim-wearing, ginger-haired man with a low-grade buzz cut who drove around the universe on a giant motorbike. A sort of benevolent biker dad if you will. I had a kids' bible that showed God sitting on his throne as a white figure, featureless, shining. A silhouette in reverse. My ginger-haired, extra biker dad fitted right into that outline as a far as I was concerned.

When I reached 16, I stopped going to church. Everyone my age left and GCSEs took up more and more time. Choir practice on a Friday evening and first thing on Sunday got in the way. But I still called myself a Christian, would still have said I believed, and I went to Southwark Cathedral on feast days to hear my sister sing in only the third all girls cathedral choir in the country. She can get married in that cathedral (Lucky cow. I want to get married in a cathedral dammit).

And then, in my first year of university, I went out with The Scientific Atheist. He was supremely confident in his worldview, had read a lot more books than me, debated a lot more than I did and thought Richard Dawkins was lord. After one conversation where he had pretty much destroyed everything I had ever believed in, ("Alright you can say there is room for a god in the creation model as impetus for a big bang but it makes no sense that he'd be a personal god, even if he did exist as a starting force..." The argument was a lot longer than that, but we're coming up for six years ago and I'm hazy on details..) I asked if there was anything else he wanted to add. He said: "I'm a little disappointed you're not taking on board what I've said and have decided to live your life accordingly."

I told him he was just as bad as a religious fundamentalist. And he, who had said discussing these things was all about rationalism, not emotion, was hurt and offended. But I pointed out destroying everything I'd lived my life by up until that point was hardly going to cause me to turn round and embrace him, tears of thanks streaming down my face. "Oh. I didn't think of it like that." Evidently not.

Every whisper of every waking hour I'm choosing my confessions, trying to keep an eye on you...

And in later years, when I actually started reading the work of Richard Dawkins and seeing him on television, in much the same way that moderate Christians cringe when they hear evangelicals advocating the burning of homosexuals, I decided I was never going to call myself an atheist while Dawkins was guiding that particular bandwagon. He doesn't seem to understand that telling people they are stupid, that they are automatons whose emotions are controlled by chemical reactions, is not going to convince them. He may be correct, but he's never going to convert anyone by insulting them.

The Scientific Atheist expected me to pathetically grateful that he had removed the blinkers from my vision. But too often, I just find myself lost. I'm working out my own morality, piece by piece. It's not self-consistent yet, and it may never be, but I hope one day it will be. And so, we come back to me, in church, on a Sunday. Wondering what's it all about, when you get right down to it. I usually ignore the service, for the most part, unless the preacher grabs my interest immediately. This is not a reflection on the quality of the worship, but I'm having my own communion with God. If He's not there, the Christian framework that I was brought up with, that our country's legal system is based on, at least gives me a good basis for working out my personal dos and don'ts. And if He is there, I know He'll understand why I think what I think and do what I'm doing.