Welcome to My Preface - Why Can’t We All Just Get Along? (or At Least Agree On Who to Hate)

Excerpt from Understanding My Religious Person: A Memoir for the Tolerant


This book is meant to alleviate the companion volumes of fear and ignorance regarding religious people in America or, more specifically, fear of people who subscribe to the evangelical Christian religion, often lazily lumped together with the Religious right. There are a lot of misconceptions about what it means to be a born again Christian. It’s pretty simple really. You just bow your head, say a short prayer and when you open your eyes – you’re a registered Republican with a firearm. That’s the thinking anyway. It’s enough to make me take my rod to my child for no good reason. (More commercial free, stereotypical behavior from a Bible-believer.)

The other night in my hotel room, all 360° of Anderson Cooper popped up on the television screen with pundits in tow biting their nails over Pastor Rick Warren saying a prayer at then President Elect Obama’s inauguration. The word of the day on 360° was outraged. These fine thinking people were outraged, accusing Warren of preaching a gospel of fear, which is kind of like accusing Britney Spears of modesty. (Or singing.) Even the most cursory reading of The Purpose Driven Life will show Warren’s brand of evangelicalism to reek of winsomeness, the pages smiling back at you. The Purpose Driven Life is to hellfire and brimstone preaching what the word fiddlesticks is to cussing. For anyone vaguely familiar with Rick’s book and preaching, it is the intentionally friendly sort of evangelical Christianity. Rick Warren is the Smiley Face of evangelicalism. (Joel Osteen was disqualified due to heresy.)

Warren was then called ignorant by two of the three guests. The third guest just gagged whenever Warren’s name was mentioned. They were sound bite arguments, ad hominine political speak, hopefully not the language of the truly tolerant person, yet two of the guests were CNN political analysts, a job that doesn’t go to just anybody who feigns objectivity. No, it has taken years for these people to perfect feigning objectivity. Calling Rick Warren a preacher of fear is, at best, showing oneself completely unaware of the religious landscape in America or, at worst, a blatantly dishonest remark. Ignorance or fear, maybe a little of both. Does the general populous misunderstand the nature of the religious mind as much as these analysts? Or is it just the media? Isn’t that argument played out already, this idea of a liberal media conspiracy? I certainly don’t believe there’s a conspiracy in the media. The conspiracy’s in the spiritual realm where demons control the media and the principalities and powers that… okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. The point is, there seems to be some misunderstanding of how religious people think, why they believe what they believe and why they sometimes act the way they do when they have homosexual tendencies (i.e. Ted Haggard). Personally, I believe there is a large section of Americans (and possibly Canadians) who are truly tolerant and want to understand religious people. And that’s the issue of this book: why evangelical Christians scare Katie Couric.

There are sincere and tolerant people who don’t share this faith (or perhaps any faith), who would like a better understanding of where these religious people are coming from, if only so they can turn and run the other direction. Still, some people want to know why evangelicals think the way they do about important social and political issues in our country. This book is one messy, personal memoir of religious thinking, of evangelical Christian thinking. There is no hidden agenda to convert the unconverted (so if that happens you have only God to blame), but only an attempt to explain why this author was converted and how it changed my thinking, the advantages and disadvantages it brought to my life and bathing habits, intentionally and unintentionally. This will only be a spiritual memoir, so I will only concentrate on the details of my personal life as they directly relate to my spiritual journey. (And hopefully that’s enough of an explanation for friends and family who don’t get mentioned.)

Being that I consider myself an evangelical Christian, despite protests to the contrary, I now interpret many of my past experiences through that lens. Your life may lead you to interpret my life experiences differently, but the goal is that you, the person tolerant enough to spend some time with me by reading this, will at least gain some understanding of how an evangelical interprets life. If you really want to understand a religious person, my religious person, this is an attempt at full disclosure, as frank and blemished as it may be. I may not understand my story myself, but maybe by putting it out there it will make some sense in light of your story. No matter how different we think or live, maybe we’ll see the common thread of humanity in each other. The hope is that we can face each other with a little less fear and ignorance. (See you at Thanksgiving, Auntie Lisa.)