One of my favorite Dean's World denizens, Dave Mercer, recently challenged me in the Gay Christians thread to reveal my religious views.

Part of me doesn't want to answer. Such things give people an excuse to pigeonhole you. "You're only saying that because you're (fill_in_the_blank)" is the sort of reasoning that drives me up a wall. You can say all sorts of things to me that others would consider confrontational, provocative, or insulting, and I probably won't even quiver. But if you want to get under my skin, try to tell me that I only think something because I'm (fill_in_the_blank). I see that as a cheap shot and a sign of intellectual desperation--indeed, it's a signal that productive conversation has probably ended. I try to apologize immediately when I'm caught doing it, and I resent it when others do it to me.

Besides, isn't this kind of an odd question? If I defend Jews from anti-Semitism, do you assume I'm Jewish? If I defend Muslims from Islamophobes, am I a Muslim? If I deplore gay bashers, do you suspect I'm gay?

Still, with all that said, Dave's a good bloke and I don't think he was trying to do any of that. People do have a natural curiosity about these things. I've been defending Christians, so, where am I coming from with that? Fortunately, my religious views are sufficiently complicated that it's probably not easy to stuff me into a convenient mental box.

The short answer: I am an agnostic, skeptical liberal. For many of you, I think that answer should suffice.

But if you're genuinely curious about the long answer, I'll give it to you. Just be forewarned: it's a Den Beste-ish response. If you really want to know this stuff, you're going to be reading for a while:

For much of my childhood, religion was pretty much nonexistant. When I was very young, my mother did teach me to pray before going to bed, with that well-known "Now I lay me down to sleep" prayer. It was never instilled as a nightly habit, it was just something she liked me to do once in a while. We did not otherwise have much religion in the house. We did not go to church, we did not read the Bible, we did not pray regularly, and did not much discuss God.

Around the age of 9, my mother and stepfather decided that religion should be a bigger force in our lives. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I was thrust into Sunday School and worship services almost every week at Evergreen Park Presbyterian Church, in Evergreen Park, Illinois.

To say that I resented this would be an understatement. I hated school, and this robbed me of time spent away from class. But at least it was only a couple of hours. Sometimes the singing was nice. I did volunteer for a while to be in the children's choir, and was a pretty darned good boy soprano. But I didn't get along with the other kids, and eventually dropped out.

I did like the pastor. I only remember him as "Reverend Gene." He was a really good guy. Some time during our first year, Reverend Gene baptized me, my younger sister, and my mother in front of the congregation. I remember it being a strongly emotional experience, even though I had only a vague idea what was going on.

Most summers, I would fly back to El Paso, Texas to spend a month or two with my father. Religion was very important to him. Although I did not know this at the time, most of the Esmays are either Mormons or Episcopalians, but he was neither. Instead, he was an evangelical Christian. He was a big fan of Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart. He watched them, and some other televangelists, quite a lot.

Those of you who are smirking should cut it out: my father was not poor, not an idiot, and did not slavishly send huge sums of cash to them. Nor did he parrot everything they told him. He'd argue with the television sometimes while watching them. Those Hollywood stereotypes are just that: stereotypes. Stereotypes may usually have a kernal of truth, but they're still just cheap generalizations.

Dad would sometimes go to church, sometimes not. When he did, it was to some charismatic evangelical church I can't remember. Quite frankly, it creeped me out. I did not like it at all, although it was important to my father so I tried to be pious. More often we just watched church on TV. We would read the Bible and pray together fairly often--usually with the original King James. When we watched TV, Jimmy Swaggart often bugged me, but Pat Robertson and his 700 Club I kind of liked. Keep in mind, however, that this would have been the late 1970s, and I was between 9 and 12 years old.

At one point, around age 10 or 11, I sat down by myself in my father's house in Texas, knelt down, and sincerely prayed and asked Jesus to enter my heart and be my personal savior. Mostly I thought it would please my father, who was very hard to please, but oddly enough I think I didn't mention it to him. I did await a miraculous change in my life and my outlook. I never noticed one. I did it again a few other times that year.

I guess it's a sort of odd coincidence my mother and father decided to turn religious at just about exactly the time. They did not get along at all, rarely talked, and lived over a thousand miles away from each other. But, there you have it: it was summers as an informal mostly-TV-sometimes-church, King James reading, at-home praying, informal evangelical charismatic. Then it was fall, winter, and spring as a fairly placid, middle of the road Presbyterian, reading the old Revised Standard version of the Bible.

The evangelical/charismatic stuff always disturbed me, even as a child. I liked some of it, but was desperately frightened and resentful of other parts. Some of it even gave me nightmares. The Presbyterian teachings seemed more interesting. I remember that every year we noted the importance of things like Passover in church, the role of the Jews in Christianity, even learned some Hebrew and sang some short Jewish songs in church.

At the age of 13, things got more complicated. The public schools in our neighborhood were not good. My stepfather had to pull some political strings to get my little sister into St. Adrian's, the local Catholic grammar school. I stayed in the public school through 8th grade, but he wanted me to go to a Catholic High School.

My standardized test scores were quite high, and I was offered entrance to the all-boys Saint Rita High School. I was admitted straight into the honors program, based solely on those test scores (my grades didn't otherwise justify it).

I have a weird juxtaposition of memories of St. Rita. There were lots of positives, and lots of negatives.

On the negative side: I was subject to the fiercest hazing of my life. To be blunt, Catholic schoolboys are a bunch of brutal little shits, especially in High School, and especially toward Freshmen. Furthermore, some of the teachers were sadists. Mind you, the school was run primarily by Augustinian monks, most of whom were interesting and decent men. But, while corporal punishment was officially against the rules, some teachers used it regularly. They would paddle boys for misbehavior, with paddles varying in size from about a foot and a half long and a couple of inches wide, to about the size and shape of a cricket bat, but flatter and with holes drilled in them. "Misbehavior" was defined as virtually anything. One teacher in particular, a Brother Frank, seemed to make it a policy that no one would get through his class for a year without being paddled at least once. He had one of the biggest paddles in the school.

Anyway, as it happens, I was also a fey, bookish, intelligent boy, the exact same sort who a wealthy man during the heyday of ancient Greece, or a Leonardo Da Vinci, would have been attracted to. Once, when we were alone in the monastary, Brother Frank sexually came on to me, hard, in a way that I know now would be considered sexual molestation in court. It was just the one time, although he invited me up to his little room again. I always demurred and eventually left the school--for completely unrelated reasons, because I would never have told my parents. Overall, it was not a horribly traumatic event, but it certainly confused me, especially since he was the first gay man I ever encountered.

In his classroom, I tried desperately to avoid getting into trouble, but I'll never forget when he paddled me. It was very obvious that it was a trumped up excuse to just do it. It hurt, a lot. Everybody, of course, laughed at me, and kept talking about it for several days.

I once had a very loud argument with my lovely wife over whether or not to send our son to a Catholic school. I made it very clear that I would examine such a school very thoroughly. I also made it very clear that if a teacher ever took a paddle to my child without my express authorization, then I would beat the living shit out of that teacher, and would likely go out of my way to do so in front of the students.

I've gotten over that, somewhat. Not that I still wouldn't do it. I've just been assured that there have been reforms, and that the schools around us here in Michigan aren't like that. We can't afford it now anyway, so we'll see what comes.

Also, for those smirking about how this is a Catholic issue, the next year I transferred to a public High School, where my non-Catholic music teacher, a man named Larry Mack, developed an even more intense sexual attraction for me. He hit on me and played quite a few rather sick sexual head games with me. Gay men who like teenaged boys seem to have been attracted to me like a magnet, although you wouldn't know it to look at me now.

Because of all that, I certainly watched the events with the chuch in recent years with some interest. I have a "hmm" reaction when someone tries to insist, loudly and repeatedly, that this particular problem is not one of gay men going after boys. Anyone who's been through this, or knows the history of men who like boys, knows that's either a politically convenient or a terribly naive assertion (Kiss of the Spider Woman, anyone?).

All that said, my year at St. Rita was interesting theologically. The honors level theology and history classes were, quite frankly, better than what most people will ever get in college. The theology teacher--the very same Brother Frank, as it happens--was exceedingly knowledgeable, and the textbooks excellent. You might expect that it was rigid Catholic indoctrination, but it was not. We learned about atheism, agnosticism, deism, the basics of Judaism, the Eastern Orthodoxy, Luther, Calvin, and the Reformation, and the major and some of the minor Protestant sects. Yes, we learned the basic tenets that separated Catholicism from those other religions, but we also had it explained where the differences came from.

Mind you, like I said, this was High School, but it was more educational than most adults who go to college will ever get. Indeed, it was in many ways more comprehensive than the 400 level comparative religion class I took at University this year.

By coincidence, it was also decided by my mother and stepfather that I would be confirmed as a Presbyterian that year. Note how I phrased that: it was decided for me. When I once had the audacity to suggest to my stepfather that I might not want to, I was seriously afraid he would hurt me physically. It was made clear, in absolutely no uncertain terms, that I would go through the Confirmation process, and that I certainly had better not make any trouble about it.

Confirmation is something done by Catholics, the Orthodox, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, and some other Christian groups. It is not practiced by many (maybe not any) of the evangelical/fundamentalist sects. It is similar to a Bar Mitzvah for Jewish kids, in that you do it at around age 13-14, and it's supposed to mark you as an adult member of the faith. It's not quite as profound or as formal as the Bar Mitzvah, but that's the way to think of it: you are declared an adult in the eyes of the faith, and publicly affirm your role as a member of the community. There are also elements involving sacraments and the Holy Spirit that are more complicated than we need to get into here.

The nice thing was that at Evergreen Park Presbyterian, the Confirmation process involved substantial education in church history and doctrine. We had to take special classes for several months. Lo and behold, I discovered that almost everything overlapped perfectly with the Catholic theology class. Because Presbyterian belief is shockingly close to Catholic belief on most issues. There are some differences, but to an outsider it's almost laughable how few.

Of course, here comes the down side: all this education increased my doubt. I soaked most of it up like a sponge, hoping to have my faith strengthened. I came out on the other side less convinced than ever.

I decided I did not want to be confirmed as a Presbyterian. At the final confirmation ceremony, the pastor gathered all the young adults together in front of the church, and had us swear/affirm certain core beliefs in front of the whole congregation. It was part of the generally quite beautiful ceremony. I stood there with the other kids, but instead of repeating the words, I simply made "glah blah rah nah" noises, but in the same tones and syllabic patterns as the other kids. In other words, I wanted it to look and sound like I was being Confirmed so I wouldn't be punished. I just didn't say a single word, and affirmed nothing. Everybody clapped, and that was that. I'm sure they still have a record of me as a "confirmed" Presbyterian there in Evergreen Park, or wherever Presbyterians keep their records of such things.

I have many fond memories of the adults who ran that church, by the way. It was my parents who I resented, not them.

By the age of 15 my conflicts with my parents reached the boiling point. I frankly hated all of them--my mother, my father, my stepfathers, and most of the rest of my family. I most particularly hated my father in Texas' religious beliefs. I ran away from home several times and, to make a long story short, I left them all for good a month or so before my 16th birthday. I stayed with friends and got by until I was 18 and legally free. I didn't see a single member of my family again for almost ten years.

I maintained an interest in religion. For a while I flirted with New Age religions, stuff like Edgar Cayce, Gnosticism, Buddhism, Hinduism. I was highly taken with the Unitarian Universalists for a while, but eventually decided they were very nice, mostly harmless flakes. Not much different from the New Agers, when you got right down to it.

I believed in reincarnation for a while, in my teens and early 20s. I had a dentist who was a Hindu who I always loved talking religion with. I actually went and visited the home of some Indian fakir once with my friend Thom's dad, back before I left home.

I read countless books on these subjects. I would pray sometimes to see what would happen. Eventually I got into a Bible Study group with some Fundamentalist Christian friends of mine. They were working very hard to convert me--while I was, secretly, working to convince them that their faith was utterly wrong. I'm now a bit ashamed of myself for that.

Years later, I made other friends who were fundamentalist Christians. It was tough for me, because I wanted to question them a lot, and I know I got hostile with them at times. But they were always willing, even eager, to talk to me, and very decent and generous souls. For a long time I was very angry with them, because I just couldn't fathom how they could believe some of the things they did.

At some point I came to a simple conclusion: if the God that my fundamentalist Christian friends believed in--the one my father still believes in--really was all they said he was, and if every person who did not accept Christ as his personal savior would be tortured in unending agony for the rest of eternity, then God was evil and should not be worshipped.

For the record, I still believe that. I'll still tell my Evangelical Fundamentalist friends that: if your God would really put me and most of the people I love into excruciating agony for eternity because we simply had a hard time believing in the resurrection of Christ, then FUCK HIM. I'll roast in hell and flip God off for the rest of eternity before I'll worship such a despotic, sadistic, hate-filled deity. Because nothing Hitler, Stalin, or even Satan ever did was anywhere near THAT evil. I can't blame you for trying to save yourself from such a monstrous fate; I just wonder how you can love such an evil God. Because that's not "infinite justice," it's infinite sadism.

I also never could stand the apostle Paul. Indeed, I still suspect that he was a schizophrenic who hijacked the faith of the first 12 apostles, putting things into the faith that were never there while Christ was alive. Mind you, I don't say that to be obnoxious or offensive; it's just a suspicion I have. I certainly could be wrong, and may be missing the boat somewhere.

I also tend to wonder at the Christians who take the Bible literally and at face value as inerrant, utterly perfect Scripture. The Bible makes no such claim for itself, and anyone who knows the history of it should know that most of the stuff in it wasn't written with that in mind. It often contradicts itself, and was pretty clearly, to my eyes, written by mortal humans doing their best to understand their faith. The contortions some Fundamentalists put themselves through theologically just to explain the contradictions away simply amaze me.

HOWEVER: When I stopped being scared of the Sadist God Who Tortures People Forever To Punish Them For Not Believing, I stopped struggling with fundamentalist Christianity. Over time, I also lost my resentment of people who believe this. If there is a God, and he's really as horrible as they say he is, well, they'll have been right and I'll have been wrong. I can live with that if they can. I can't fathom anyone's "love" for such an infinitely vicious and brutal being, but you think differently? Okay, that's your business. Why should it bug me?

In the meantime, the majority of the world's Christians--the Catholics, the Orthodox, the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, and most others have far more nuanced views than that. The Christians who do believe that everyone is to be tortured who fails to believe are, by and large, the North American radicals. I view them in much the same way I view Hasidic Jews, Hutterites, or Mormons: odd but interesting people. My entire attitude is: "Hey, I certainly can't prove you wrong. Peace unto you. As long as we can find a way to live together I'm happy to be your friend and let it go at that."

I am pleased to say that every fundamentalist evangelical Christian friend I've said that to has reacted about the same way: he's expressed concern for me, promised to say a prayer for me, and told me he'd be happy to talk to me some more about it any time. Most are still friends. None hate me or pester me or look daggers at me. None try little subtle tricks to fool me into showing up at church. I don't find little Bible verses snuck into my food, or veiled threats that they won't love me if I won't love Jesus.

So I am, quite sincerely, AND WITHOUT THE LEAST BIT OF SARCASM, touched by their concern, and their quite sincere love and affection. I have found most of them genuine in their beliefs, extremely straightforward in what they say, and utterly lacking in anger or maliciousness toward me. When they tell me "hate the sin and love the sinner," I know most of them are completely serious, without hidden agendas. When they speak of brotherly love, I know they mean that too. When they say they want salvation for others, I know that's exactly what they want: not to suck us into a cult, not to make us live like they live, not to force us to do anything. They just want us to live forever in happiness and peace.

Isn't that an awfully nice thing for someone to wish for you? I think it is. And, once again, if you think you're detecting so much as a hint of sarcasm or cynicism in what I'm saying, it's in your head. Indeed, you should probably ask yourself why you have such issues with other people's faith. I'm not sarcastic, I'm not cynical, and I'm not being diplomatic. It is a very nice thing for someone to wish to share with me, and I thank them for it. But: no thank you. I'll watch the teevee or argue politics with you if you want though. Wanna beer?

In my quest for spiritual enlightenment, I've read countless books. I understand Christian theology better than many of my Christian friends. I am a non-Catholic who understands Catholic theology better than most Catholics I know, and I understand the Protestant and radical evangelical offshoots very well too. I understand Judaism to a degree that tends to startle Jews, because I find it an endlessly interesting faith. I know a lot more about Islam than most Westerners, but not near as much as people who grew up with it. I understand the core of Buddhism, and the core of Hinduism. I find the historical American deists to be fascinating people, especially guys like Thomas Paine. I wish I knew a lot more about the Zoroastrian and Druse faiths. I wish I understood Shintoism, animism, and some of the other polytheistic religions better.

Some the things I would like to do before I die include: attend services at a Mosque, attend the opening of a Hindu temple, participate in a Japanese tea ceremony, attend Mass at the Vatican, and attend a Seder.

I find some value in some New Age stuff, although most of it is spiritual and intellectual cotton candy. I know enough about the atheistic philosophies of Ayn Rand and Karl Marx to know that, whatever is of value there, both should be considered rationalist religions. They are built on highly elaborate edifices of logic that cannot be objectively proven. Atheism itself is as inherently unprovable as any religion. Give me Occam's Razor (or maybe even Occam's Toothbrush) any day over the "I know the truth and you are an ignorant fool" mentality of rigid dogmatists of any faith--including the atheist faith.

Indeed, while my philosophy is often a-theistic, many atheists bug me. Too many of them take an obviously perverse pleasure in mocking believers. Such childish sadism is contemptible.

Most humans seem to have an innate need to believe in some form of God, and from what I've seen, it can't be conditioned out of them. I've come to the conclusion that some form of higher force in the universe probably exists, and that man's understanding of it is about as limited as my dog's understanding of the nightly news. I also suspect that, sometimes, prayers are answered. I know my wife was the answer to one.

I reject my father's religion, which hasn't changed much from what it was in the 1970s. We talk sometimes, but not much. I love to discuss religious matters, but I can't discuss them with him because he doesn't discuss, he dictates. I also love to discuss politics, but every time we talk, he tells me I need to educate myself, or that I am slavish party line Rush Limbaugh Dittohead Bill O'Reilly extremist right-winger who wants to destroy the environment (he voted for Gore, thought Nader had lots of interesting ideas, and can't believe I don't regret voting for Bush). Since we can't discuss religion without him getting upset, and can't discuss politics without him insulting me, we don't talk much.

I get along somewhat better with my mother, but on religious matters I think her faith is too diffuse to categorize. She went from non-religioius to Christian to New Age to Unitarian back to Christian. She now goes to a Methodist church, but also occasionally to Pentacostal and other evangelical meetings. Her faith is very important to her, and I try to respect that.

In short, then:

1) I'm an agnostic. In Stranger in a Strange Land, Jubal Harshaw said something like, "On Mondays and Wednesdays, I think the notion that there is an all-knowing, all powerful being who created and controls everything is childish and immature. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I find the assertion that the entire universe just happened out of randomness and nothing utterly silly. The rest of the week I think about something else." I'm not willing to read all the way through Stranger again just to find the exact quote, but that's close enough.

2) I am a skeptic. You want me to believe something? Show me your evidence. Don't have enough evidence? Then I will probably suspect you're wrong, but acknowledge that you may be right. I will usually maintain that I can be convinced of almost anything if you can show me good evidence. I ask tough questions though.

3) I am a liberal. I try not to be limited to, or by, established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas. I try very hard to be free from bigotry, and to encourage that in others--without demanding it of them. I try very hard to be open to new ideas, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others--within the limits of common sense and decency, and with a desire to promote the maximum in individual liberty consistent with an orderly society.

I think that if you honestly believe that religion is the primary source of war, violence, and intolerance in the world, you have a very twisted view of history. Wars are sometimes about that, but often not. In any case, the 20th century has also shown us that atheistic and rigidly secularist philosophies are potentially more violent, dangerous, and oppressive than religious ones. Such societies certainly killed and oppressed more people than theocracies did.

I have friends who are atheists, agnostics, pagans, monotheists, polytheists, Taoists, and hippy dippy new agers. I intend to keep it that way. I never require that my friends agree with each other or even like each other. The only religions I have no respect for are those like Marxism or Wahabbism, which embrace violence, absolute intolerance, and forced conversion.

So there it is. I am an agnostic, skeptical liberal.

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