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| I WANT THIS ON MY CAR. NOW. |
So I wanted to write about church. Yup, I go to one. That seemed like a way scarier statement to make when I lived on the West Coast, than now, where a lecture on campus given by a priest was very nearly standing room only... that was weird for me! Anyway, I think because I did my undergrad and master's on the West Coast, where things are just a *bit* more liberal in general, I kind of have this skewed vision of how science and religion get along, which may or may not conform to reality. It actually seems pretty normal at Mines to be religious, at least moderately so. We don't seem to attract any traveling fire-and-brimstone preachers, anyway. I kind of miss them... It's way too quiet on this campus without an atheist vs. traveling preacher stand-off now and then!
I've probably just completely undermined my point here, but I wanted to write about the whole I-go-to-church thing because I do think there is a pervasive perception that science and religion aren't compatible. I think that's true in some cases, for some strains of religious belief, but not for mine. I think if you believe that the Bible (or other holy text of your choice) is literal, unfailing truth...yeah, science is going to be a bit problematic for you. That whole "the Earth is 6000 years old thing".... going to cause some issues.
I'm a progressive United Methodist. I grew up in this church (the "progressive" part came more recently), and I was lucky enough to not grow up in churches that were particularly prone to fire and brimstone. No one in the church ever told me I couldn't be a scientist! To be honest, the churches I grew up in were pretty mum about anything controversial. Oh, there were the usual calls to slow down, spend time with God, be nice to people, but nothing you could really argue with. I often wishes the churches I grew up in could have been just a little more feisty about...something. Anything.
The messages I heard, that you couldn't be a scientist and be religious, always came from outside, usually from the world of science. I'd often hear statements like "Oh, those Christians and their young-Earth ideas"... and I'd always kind of bristle because no church I'd ever attended had preached such things! But I can definitely understand where science might be just a bit skeptical of faith, Christianity in general. Though it is now centuries past, the Church's treatment of Galileo still rankles. And let's not even start on evolution. Oh dear. But it's also just a bit hard to swallow, how can a person of faith profess to believe outlandish things like a virgin birth, water from rocks*, and people coming back from the dead, and then still do good science, which rests on the foundation that things must be able to be tested and proven?
*Well, okay, I can see that one being some divinely-inspired geological know-how on Moses's part....
My personal answer to this is that my faith is not just a checklist of things I do and don't believe. I'll be 100% honest, I have a really hard time wrapping my head around the physical reality of the virgin birth, or Jesus' resurrection, two events that are pretty dang essential to my faith! I do believe in God, though, that I'm pretty sure of. For me, the belief in God is the sense of a presence that I simply know to be there. Even when I realize I'm probably never going to accept the resurrection as physical, unassailable fact, I know I can't shake the feeling that there is a God. I've come to accept that there are certain elements of my faith that I'll probably never be able to come to terms with, but this doesn't mean I can't have a faith. I am also lucky enough to have found a church here that makes it very clear that there is no litmus test of faith required to be a part of the church - I am allowed and encouraged to think, reason, and disagree.
Speaking of my church brings me to discuss the real reason I'm often nervous to share with people that I'm Christian and that I attend church. The church I currently attend is a Reconciling United Methodist Church, meaning that this is a United Methodist Church that is actively working to fully include LGBTQ+* persons in the life of the church. This means they are welcome to church, to communion, to being married in the church, to everything that any straight, cis-gendered person person would be able to access in the church.
*Please forgive me if I use any incorrect terminology for the rest of this article. It is not my intent to harm by using language that has become hurtful over time, but I'm not always as on top of things as I should be. If I have used any language that is now considered hurtful or offensive, I welcome any corrections in the comments.
This, for me, is huge. I'm cis-gendered and straight, by the way. But for a very long time, I was reluctant to openly identify as Christian because, as far as I knew, all Christians were supposed to be against homosexuality or anything of that sort because it was a sin. This seemingly institutionalized hatred, to me, always seemed far more of a sin than being born gay or lesbian, or being trans. This also seemed to fly in the face of how my parents had taught me to treat people. So, for a long time, it seemed to me that to be Christian was a form of sin in itself, because to be Christian required to me to exclude certain persons in a way that seemed very out of touch with what I had thought Christ had taught. I have friends and family who are gay or lesbian, and the last thing I wanted was for them to feel unwelcome, excluded, dirty, because of my faith!
So for most of undergrad I stayed away from Christianity, although I missed the hymns and ceremony of the church services that had been such a consistent part of my childhood. I also never quite gave up on God - I stopped really thinking about Him much for a while, but I never quite lost the feeling that He was there.
I'm having a hard time remembering when this started to change. I think some time around the beginning of grad school, I began to hear bits now and then that a different kind of Christianity existed. I had a few friends from high school who were openly Christian, and I think they may have posted a few things on Facebook suggesting a different interpretation of the relationship between homosexuality and Christianity. I think the watershed moment was when I ran across the documentary "Fish Out of Water". I was quite literally bawling when I came to the end of the film, in fact, I'm tearing up now having watched only the trailer! The film documents the struggles of Christian gays and lesbians, but most crucially, offers alternative interpretations of the Biblical texts used to condemn homosexuality in the church, and documents the works of churches already working to fully include gays in lesbians in the church, including allowing them to marry the people they love. This film showed me a way out.
The way that was shut to me now seemed open again. I could be Christian and not be evil! It may sound ridiculous to some to say such a thing, but before I learned about this new progressive Christianity it really did seem to me that to be Christian was to be forced to be evil, was to be required to be unwelcoming and hurtful. Now I had learned that I could practice my faith, and actually follow the teachings of Christ, not in shunning or trying to reform "sinners", but rather in welcoming those who had been previously marginalized and shut out.
Around the same time, I encountered a fellow graduate student in Earth sciences who let slip that he was actually an Evangelical Christian. Wait, what?? That was possible? To be Christian and a scientist? An Earth scientist??? That was allowed?? Suddenly more Christians in our department appeared from the woodwork, and we actually had a small Bible study going, still the only one I've ever attended in my life. It was awesome - we had three Evangelicals, three Catholics, a Serbian Orthodox, and me, the random United Methodist. I was absolutely terrified to bring my Bible to campus, and oh, the walk down the hall to the little room where we met, trying to hide the little black book all the way, oh that was awful. I was quite literally in a cold sweat the whole time.
But it was worth it - for the first time, I was finally able to ask questions, and even if they often weren't answered, we at least had discussion, questioning, talk, the kind of conversation I'd never had when I was growing up. I'm sure that was at least partly an age thing, but I think it was also the church I went to - as a youth, Christianity seemed to be presented as more about rock and roll church and singing praise songs than discussing faith and learning theology. I was always the weird one, so I never felt included or confident enough to ask questions. Yet now, I had a small community of faithful just as weird as me, who weren't afraid of my questions, and didn't force their own faiths down my throat, as I'm (still) always afraid of when meeting other Christians. They shared their views, and I mine, and we had long, winding discussions, and it was wonderful.
I eventually found a church in Vancouver, where I was living at the time. It ending up a rather hilarious situation... Because I had never felt comfortable in modern churches, I purposely sought out a more traditional church. Having an organ was a requirement! The first church I visited in my area, I think one person talked to me. The second church I visited was in a completely different part of town, but I ended up staying there, because immediately at the end of the service I had about 5 people coming over to talk to me! In hindsight, this was probably mostly because I was a 23 year old who had just showed up in a church where the average age was about 65....
That was a wonderful church, though. I loved the old-style hymns they played, I was recruited into the choir my second week there by the choir director who had the most amazing dry wit, and the sermons were both progressive and mentally stimulating. Best of all though, I found what I had never experienced before in a church - a community. Even though I was about 40 years younger than most of the people at the church, I felt included in a way I had never before. Despite the older demographic, I was also in a welcoming and accepting church - the second pastor who came while I was there was openly gay, and the head of the United Church at that time was also openly gay. The people at the church loved the pastor, and didn't hide it. They also loved me, and didn't hide that either!
When I moved back to Denver for grad school round two, I knew I needed to find a church like the one I had left behind in Vancouver. By this time I had heard about the Reconciling movement in the United Methodist Church, so I knew this was where I needed to search. My search algorithm was pretty simple - Reconciling, and has an organ.
I found what I was looking for at Christ Church United Methodist. This is actually the only church I ever visited in Denver, but I've never felt an urge to look elsewhere. Just as with my church in Canada, I was recognized as new on my first visit and welcomed by several people. And, oh, they had a real pipe organ! And they played it, too! I also got a good read on the culture of the church my first Sunday - it was Super Bowl Sunday, and all the choir had made orange stoles to go with their blue robes, and I think there may have been confetti... The sermons were intellectually engaging and morally stimulating, engaging with Biblical texts in ways I had never heard before. I think it was on my second or third visit that the pastor reminded the congregation that he would be performing same-sex marriages, in defiance of the official doctrine of the United Methodist Church. This is the church I'll be joining, officially, on Sunday.
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| These amazing women have actually gotten married something like 7 times now, as marriage laws have changed over time in the different places they've lived. I think this photo is likely #6, at my church! |
I'm getting a bit better about being scared to announce that I'm Christian, because I'm much more comfortable about what that means now. It doesn't mean I sweep under the rug all the pain that has been caused by my religion both now and in the past - I acknowledge it, and it grieves me deeply. I do not deny that to call myself Christian connects me with countless acts of hate and cruelty across the ages. What I know now is that it is my duty as a Christian to undo what I can of that pain, by trying to live out what Christianity should be - welcoming, loving, and affirming of all peoples. I need to witness to the reality that my faith can be welcoming to those that have been marginalized in the past, that we can do our best to listen and make better.
Claiming my identity as a Christian also gives me that much more purpose in my work as a scientist. Because I am Christian, I am charged to make the work that I have been called to do the very best I can. This means I must be ethical and honest in my work, and give accurate results that will be good and useful for others. It means I must support my fellow scientists. It means that as a female scientist, I must stay the course so that I can hold open the door so that others like me can follow, and keep it open for others for whom it is now only barely opening. Science isn't just something I do because I love it and it pays a decent salary, it's something I do because I feel called it.
And oh my goodness, science is where I have so many of my religious experiences! Fourier series, GCV, wavelets, inversion, VOLCANOES, agh, to think that we have a world where these things work! Isn't that amazing???
....*Hem*, okay reigning in the slightly crazy religious fanatic here. Although I suppose raving about God in the context of Fourier series is slightly better than eternal damnation?
I hope I haven't come across as trying to convert anyone with this post. That wasn't the intention. I simply wanted to share something I'm really excited about, and if it's something that makes you excited too, great! We can go babble about the holiness of inversion together. But more seriously, I wanted to share my story because I've realized in this past year how important stories can be. Stories give us options, stories give us understanding, insight onto new perspectives we might not have encountered before. Before I started to hear stories about progressive Christianity, I despaired of ever being able to practice my faith with integrity again - now I don't. More recently, before I heard the life stories of some of the amazing women in my field, I feared getting stuck on an oil and gas track for life - now I don't. So I hope this little outburst of mine perhaps helps someone out there realize - there are options. There are alternatives. There are many stories to be told.
