Religious Musings: Community

I've been thinking about writing about religion for a while now, but I've been putting it off. I don't really feel qualified; it's like someone who can't tell a preposition from a participle deciding to write a grammar book. I also hesitate to show other people what a spiritual mess I am--can't I at least figure a few things out before I start to write about this stuff? I’m afraid of being a sort of boring Anne Lamott, without the colorful, drug-using past, the funny one-liners, or the full religious conversion. But I've been reading other people's religious and spiritual musings on their blogs, so I'm going to jump in.

I thought I'd start with the concept of community, because it seems fairly straightforward and doesn't involve thorny theological issues. When I went to church last weekend, I was shocked by how much I fit in after only three months. I walked in with Ben and saw two of the local La Leche League leaders and their kids. They greeted me, and the minister said hi. I took Ben to the nursery--we had tried keeping him with us the week before, but all his books and toys and snacks were not enough to make him happy sitting quietly during the service. Once in the nursery, Ben started playing in the familiar room he knew from La Leche League meetings. After church, I talked to a mom from my neighborhood whose daughter is exactly Ben's age; her daughter also goes to Ben's day care. I chatted briefly with the lesbian couple who are expecting a baby in three weeks. (I had been joking with Tom that the pregnant woman is my oldest friend in St. Louis; I sat next to her in church the first Sunday I went, and then I saw her at a La Leche League meeting two days later.) As I left the church, I was overwhelmed by how quickly I had formed a web of connections with the congregation.

One of the big benefits of religion is giving people a community to be a part of. Even people who don't agree with the central tenets of Christianity can agree that people are happier when they're part of a group. You don't have to believe in the divinity of Christ to see that it does people good to be visited when they're sick, or to go to a discussion group, or to do community service.

For those of us who grew up without going to church, religious communities can seem strange and intimidating. We want to belong--or do we? Before I moved here, I went to a church in Philadelphia for half a year, sometimes alone, sometimes with my friend Kaela. (It was the kind of liberal church where people just assumed we were a lesbian couple until we mentioned our husbands.) The minister had to cajole us into staying for coffee; usually, both of us were eager to walk briskly out the door when the service was over. We finally stayed for coffee the day the Girl Scouts were selling cookies in the fellowship hall and I needed a Samoa fix. The minister came over and talked to us, and we asked him how one goes about joining a church. We were ambivalent about being drawn in, but the church did so gradually.

But the more I think about the concept of community, the more it becomes the kind of thorny theological issue I hoped to avoid. Just who is allowed to be a member of the community? The church I've been going to in St. Louis is part of the United Church of Christ's Still Speaking movement, which designates churches open to practicing gay and lesbian people. Even churches without strict admissions standards tend to gather like-minded people. And when we say "community," do we mean a particular congregation? All members of that denomination? All Christians? All people?

Last week was World Communion Sunday. The pastor broke and blessed different kinds of bread to represent the breads of the world. The words "community" and "communion" both go back to the Latin root for "common." This week in the service, one of the readings was from the Didache, an early Christian text that predates the gospels but never made it into the biblical canon. It discusses communion: "As this broken bread was scattered over the mountains, and was gathered together to become one, so let Your Body of Faithful be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Your kingdom." I love the image of bread starting out as grain, but being pulled together to form a single loaf.

Communion, though, is definitely a thorny religious issue, even if one leaves aside the whole transubstantiation debate. Who can take communion? I chose my current church partially because it offers open communion, which means that I can participate even though I haven't been baptized. Churches with open communion stress that all people are welcome at God's table. Is that true? Are the admission standards of Christianity so low that I can be allowed in without professing anything in particular? Is my desire to take communion without being baptized a sign that I'm moving closer to God, or am I a fraud who should be stopped until I get my religious act together?

When I was in grad school, my mom underwent a religious conversion and became a member of the Orthodox church in America. My dad, an atheist scientist for most of his life, ignored that part of my mom's life for a while. Finally, something softened in him and he decided to go to church with her. As someone who wasn't a member of the Orthodox church (even though he had been baptized in the Protestant church), he wasn't allowed to take communion. This upset him, so he would leave at that point in the service and go down to the fellowship room in the basement. When he told me about his religious conversion, he said that he realized he was choosing to exile himself, choosing to be down below when he would have been welcome upstairs. He decided to join the church, and he was baptized again.

I’m planning on making this post the first of an occasional series of religious musings. Each paragraph I wrote today brought up other issues I’d like to explore: church shopping, parents and religion, religious rituals. I wish I could promise great insights, but I can only describe where I am on my journey right now.

Photo by drp on flickr.com.