First Sophomore

First Sophomore

As a parish priest years ago, my search for interesting newspaper ads to run in the Apalachicola Times turned up the “Church Ad Project” company that offered various ads one could purchase and use locally. One, not sure whether I ever used it, had the caption “You Don’t Need To Check Your Brain At The Door: The Episcopal Church.” It does actually reflect somewhat my joy in being an Anglican Christian.

“Cradle Episcopalians,” we grew up in the Episcopal Church, baptized at St. Andrew’s, family attending church every Sunday, Sunday School, monthly men and boys’ corporate communion and breakfasts, the parish our sole family social life, acolyte, youth group (YPSL), parish covered-dish suppers on Wednesday evenings in Lent. My mother’s specialty for that was always an enormous red snapper which I selected from the chill box at our fish house and cleaned, scaled, gutted, cut out the gills, ripped out the fins, and scored, and mama baked with tomatoes and onions; beyond scrumptious. Another favorite those years was Mrs. Baker’s collard greens. Confirmed by Bishop Juhan at age ten as I recall. Attending Christmas Eve services alone with my father from age thirteen; not surprisingly, my memory is clear because of the car we went in my first year, the 1948 Dodge. The risque thing was to call it -- popishly -- “Midnight Mass” -- only among friends though, never at home.

Married in the Episcopal Church, our children baptized in the Episcopal Church. Members of an Anglican parish in Yokohama, Japan. Falling away for some years, returning during a crisis with a child, becoming immersed in the church late in our Navy years, seminary and ordination.

In all of that living there were times of critical thinking versus idle acceptance from existing in a particular culture: i.e., I am this because of growing up here and not somewhere else; and if I were there I would comfortably and perhaps even certitudinously be that. This clarified in a classroom my senior year at Bay High when an uproar broke out about the newly released Revised Standard Version of the Bible.  A boy (unnamed here) was spouting off furiously in class that the RSV denied the virgin birth, changing “virgin” to “young woman” (Isaiah 7:14) and should be condemned. Asking my rector, Father Tom Byrne explained the KJV versus RSV translation of עלמה almah. It made my classmate a fool in my mind, and first stirred my realizations about being certain simply because that’s what one grew up with, and that I also could have been a fool, and indeed still might be so. Islam, taklid comes to mind. He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, he is a fool: shun him.

Later came fallings away, first during university years at Gainesville, mentally, emotionally, intellectually. It takes a thinking kid, specifically a sophomore, to explore, realize, discover, decide that he is what he is not because of the truth that is to be found at the bottom of some bottomless Well of Truth, but because of his culture -- and he decides to throw it over and be -- what? agnostic? atheist? Intellectually, it’s a sophomore’s realm that makes one feel unique, heady, smug, superior. As though he’s the First Sophomore of all time, with realizations that no one else has ever had before. Been there. Quietly contemptuous of literalists, fundamentalists, emotional religion and all who haven’t come to the realizations that I’ve come to. Anyone who hasn’t been there and never goes there misses part of the joy, pain, freedom, anguish, release, loneliness, exultation of growing up. Waking up your first morning in your college dorm room miles from home and parents, free of supervision, free to think, free to be, free to experiment with failure, brilliance, stupidity.

Anyone who doesn’t eventually grow out of it either has an intellect that will not tolerate things unseen and questions without rational answers, or regards oneself superior to accumulated human wisdom of the ages (been there), or is plain too damn lazy to read and explore and think beyond the Sunday morning ringing alarm clock. W -- the smartest, most intelligent, most admirable, highest integrity, most brilliant friend of my childhood years first through twelfth grades -- W was in the first category above. Raised RC, ultimately rational, W never ceased being too intellectual to swim in the pool or drink the wine. God has lots of people like W, for whom both creation and my own life were richer.

My comings back were not rational, but decisional: let it be, let it be so. No one need click through bits and pieces of true religion and check off each one as “Right, believe that one. Next? Yep, believe that one. Next? Dunno about that one. Next?” The whole thing needn’t be bought or chucked based on one or more propositions. One may decide to simply let it be. Perhaps because, as a seminary professor scolded our class one morning, Don’t judge the fundamentalists so critically, they may be right -- and -- That I believe does not make it so; that I doubt does not make it false; it cannot be either proved or disproved in this life; and so I am free to decide for myself -- based on -- whatever factors suit me. I can decide to let it be. Decide to accept it. Decide and commit to believing it. Decide to explore it further. Or I can decide to -- skip it. Or to deny it. When all is said and done, and barring actual persuasion or some Bunyanesque conversion experience a la Grace Abounding To The Chief of Sinners, it is, after a certain point of no return, an intellectual decision. 

Fallibilism as opposed to skepticism, agnosticism or atheism. And never certitude or finality. Keep exploring. It’s part of my adult decision to be Christian, but only and specifically Anglican Christian.

TW+