Coming out of the faith closet

Leaving one’s religion behind can be upsetting, so many folks decide that even though they don’t believe, they will keep this news to themselves and continue to "play church." You know these people; they’re everywhere. They make a show of baptizing their children and attending services on holy days, or they eat ritual foods, starve during ritual fasts, and take part in the big deal celebrations. Among their friends or siblings they may ironically scoff at their pretense of belief (“I only do this to keep Mom and Dad happy.”) or they may go along with their more devout spouse just to keep the peace. For the most part, those with false piety are harmless. Lots of families have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for their suspected infidels, and as long as they continue to eat the wafer, as it were, everything remains okay.

In some cultures, however, it’s quite dangerous to reject religion: not just because mother may be cross with you, but because the religious regime in charge might put you in jail or chop off your hands. And in some very insular religious groups the community will shun nonbelievers, expelling them both physically and psychically from their family and social networks. In the face of this kind of fundamentalist lunacy, one wonders how many outwardly religious folks are spiritual scam artists, for reasons of familial unity or self-preservation, or perhaps because they like their hands.

Though for some of us the process of coming out of the faith closet is relatively straightforward and nonthreatening, it is not always very easy. There’s no step-by-step handbook for going rational, no bumper sticker or promise ring or special handshake to seal the deal. It's hard to find a mentor or sponsor because non-religious people generally don't flaunt it in public. The really open rationalists—the activist atheists—aren't very helpful as role models as they can be just as crazy as the faithful.

The marketplace hasn’t caught up to fulfill the needs of the emerging rationalist consumer. You know that a trend has really taken hold when it becomes an enduring part of pop retail self-help culture—think immunity boosters and Chicken Soup books. But religious defectors have no shopping choices. To my knowledge, greeting card companies haven’t launched a special line for those who are announcing their spiritual emancipation, although it would be fun to see.

“Mommy was a crabby Christian, her pastor preaching death and doom, now she’s sleeping in on Sundays, let’s trust her soul won’t go ka-boom. Happy Solstice.”

Leaving one’s faith is a multi-step process. There’s the brief, cathartic act of coming out of the faith closet, and then there’s the rest of your life explaining and defending your beliefs. It’s funny how your beliefs, or lack of them, will now be considered fair game for public and familial discussion and disapproval, even though it’s considered impolite, or even an actionable hate crime, to question or even simply tease members of religious groups about their practices or garb or thinking. But now that you’ve gone on record saying that moral standards are obsolete, and that religious people should be persecuted for their acts of unconscionable political, sexual, and intellectual violence, or… no, wait, you didn’t say any of that. But you may be treated as if you did.

It would be easier if everyone who left formal religious involvement could join a non-religious surrogate or substitute entity, like a spiritual version of the Elks Club (and the Unitarian Church doesn’t count—they try, I know, but they’re hopelessly Christian-y.) Then we could just tell people, “I’m an Elk now,” and we could substitute the new belief set for the old. We could still have weekly meetings to talk about important community and personal issues, a nice building, lots of friends who care about us, and rules and rituals, but without the intellectual silliness. 

That's it: I'm an Elk now.

Grand and Beautiful Lies

Religious beliefs are among the grandest of human fallacies. They are big and broad, very public but also personal, often useful, sometimes beautiful, but mostly shameless snow jobs. And despite our efforts to convince ourselves otherwise, most of us know—fundamentally, honestly, and to our great consternation—that religions are based on myth and make-believe. Few of us, however, have the guts or inclination to turn our backs on the traditions and rituals of our families and communities—especially when the traditions are comforting and the communities are supportive.

My realization at age 14 that religion was mere fakery came about predictably on schedule. As master manipulators of human behavior, faith groups all over the world know that teenagers are going to question the validity of religious teachings. Therefore, to quell rejection by their emerging target market, faith groups deploy special forces to retain or lure back teenage defectors. In my day, representatives of the evangelical group Young Life (charismatic 20-something males, always noticeably somewhat off) hosted teen gatherings for after-school socializing and the earnest sharing of spiritual concerns. Church-sponsored camping weekends and Saturday night bonfires made faithiness fun. It was cool to be a Christian, and easy, too, as local denominations put the full-court press on teen society, complete with s’mores and opportunities to neck in the woods.

Despite this fun, a world literature class finally did in my wavering faith. The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian bodice-ripper, reflected portions of the Christian holy book so faithfully that I was floored. Hadn’t anyone else noticed the similarities? Could it really be that major biblical themes had been lifted—wholesale, in hefty chunks—from a novel penned a thousand years earlier? The words were on the page and the facts were irrefutable. The historic basis of my faith was now fully in question.

Granted, I was a small town high school kid, not a religious scholar. But I was indignant. If I were to build my intellectual, moral, and daily life around the father, son, and Holy Ghost, then I wanted authentication of the background story. I wanted scientifically supportable findings, or a credible and consistent-across-the-planet chain of oral history, or even a personal visit by a specter or a god of some sort. Lacking this, why should I or anyone else be religious?

It was one thing to be open to the idea that there might be order or reason or even purpose in creation, but it was something else entirely to create fictitious history and literature and to call it the universal truth. Yet that’s what every single religious group I knew about was doing.

So I relinquished my religion. I wasn’t alone—lots of people were skeptical about faith in the 1970s, which was an era of religious turmoil, questioning, and experimentation worldwide. Some folks dropped out. Many others were on the opposite end of the spectrum and seemed willing to believe in or do almost anything in the God department. There were orange-robed religious beggars at US airports, mass stranger weddings run by Reverend Moon, and cults galore all over the country. Indeed, the pope himself was a cult hero who paraded in his bulletproof glass encased Popemobile, surrounded by shrieking fans.

Nearly every religion that made the news in the ‘70s and early ‘80s seemed lunatic.  People were worshiping red rocks and magic minerals and adhering to the silly practices of astrology and psychic readers. An American science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard had successfully founded a new religion, Scientology, based on tiny aliens come to inhabit our earthly bodies. The Latter Day Saints were still not sure if they wanted lots of teenage wives or if they should just stick with one, today and in the afterlife. Among all this wildness, though, the most interesting thing was not the wacky practices of the more recently founded cults and New Age groups, but that if viewed dispassionately, the stories and tenets and rituals of all religions appeared crazy. To a curious observer, there simply wasn’t that much to differentiate Scientologists from Sunnis or Methodists from Moonies.

Not much has changed since that spiritually free spirited era—the cults and covens are still around, the mainstream religious groups still teach their doctrines in strident and loopy ways. A full 85% of Americans claim a religious affiliation, but according to a 2008 Trinity College study a growing minority of 15% of us do not. If you’re like me, and are keen on living spiritually and morally, within a supportive and healthy community, and yet you’re not interested in capitulating to the easy path of religion with its inherent intellectual and spiritual dishonesty, what do you do?