To Believe or Not to Believe

Do you think we'll ever elect an atheist as president in this country?

The babe posed the question this evening. Before I had a chance to answer, she posed a second one.

Would you vote for an atheist for president?

It was honestly something I'd never thought about before, and I had trouble figuring out how I felt about it.

My first instinct was that I'd prefer someone who's not an atheist - I characterized this as someone who holds some belief in a power greater than themselves.

After that, the conversation went in all sorts of unruly directions, involving discussions about the merits of a number of our 3L friends' possible performance as President of the United States. The babe was surprised by my response, her vote being clearly for an atheist president. And I guess in some ways, I was too.

I'm still not sure where I stand on this - it's hard to separate out a single trait like this and make any reasonable statement. Any person running for president is so much a package that I'm not sure I would ever make a decision on it (when she asked whether I'd still have voted for Obama if he had been atheist, there was no question - yes). But that doesn't really make sense, because I feel so strongly that I never want to vote for anyone who characterizes themselves as part of the religious right - so I'm obviously able to separate that part out. Except that I guess that's the point - I'm not separating it out. Fair or not fair, I view it as a sign of the kind of person they are - conservative, intolerant.

So I guess the issue here is that I associate religious belief or non-belief with traits that I want or don't want in a president. In trying to explain this to the babe (who, just for reference, basically grew up in a home-grown moot court competition), I identified humility. I think believing in something greater than yourself (and humanity in general) evidences a sense of humility that I appreciate. But then we talked about nature or science as being that thing, and I would say that any person could be equally humbled by the power of nature or science.

So is it just that I want someone who believes like I believe? Am I just operating under my own scheme of intolerance? I'm not sure. I can't for the life of me seem to figure out what my spiritual beliefs are, but I think I value some sort of mysticism associated with the belief in a god. I'm not sure whether that matters in a president - at the end of the day, will the country be affected by whether the president believes or doesn't believe? Especially when we're talking about these religious/spiritual beliefs that fall so far on one end of the spectrum - i.e. somewhere between believing in some sort of amorphous all-encompassing god and no god at all.

There's so much more to say on this, but it's almost so much that it's overwhelming. Also, there's a decidedly non-philosophical vibe in the living room now as the babe turns to me and says, "Andy Reed drafts linemen like it's his job." Although I guess football is a religious event - judging from the number of times people cry out god's name or pray for assistance. And of course, there are the receivers who point him out after every good play.

At any rate, mostly this is just on my mind, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Vermont, Part I

I grew up going to church every Sunday. The church was small - not the building itself - but the membership. During its peak (the one while I was alive at least), an average Sunday saw something around 75 members.

My whole family was very involved. My dad was the assistant pastor, which basically meant that he led some prayers and preached a few sermons every year. He helped with the youth and vacation bible school and led the adult sunday school class. Both of my parents were in the choir, and my mom and aunt often did special music on holidays. I went to sunday school and then to youth group (I think there were 3 of us), and when I was 12 or so I joined the choir (since there weren't enough young people for a youth choir). My sister ran around with the other young kids. A lot of women had apparently decided to have children at the same time because there were a bunch of kids her age.

We had potlucks about once a month. There were annual church retreats which involved camping, hiking, and singing songs around a fire. There were friendships and families. I knew everyone. I loved church and all of the people there. It was like seeing all of your best friends, including multiple sets of grandparents, every Sunday.

I felt very spiritual, very close to God.

We moved away - out of the city. We started off driving back in on Thursday nights for choir practice and then on Sundays for church, but it got to be too much. Slowly we quit going, and we started going to the big Methodist church with lots and lots of members and a youth program and a youth choir and several childrens choirs and more than one service every Sunday. There was lots to do for all of us. We made friends and found our niche in the giant membership. It wasn't the same.

Our old church began losing members. Some of it had begun before we left - people moving out of the city and into the suburbs or small towns, like us. Some people died. It wasn't the same when we went back to visit. It felt somehow like we didn't fit anymore. We were simply visitors.

I went to college and quit going to church. I was angry with the conservative sermons at the big church in our small town and couldn't seem to care enough to get up to go while I was at school. I missed it, but nothing else felt right. And then I came out and didn't know whether church had anything to offer me anymore.

Once I moved up to DC for graduate school, I started going to a Unitarian church and thought I'd found a home. I made friends and got to know some folks. But still, it didn't fit.

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it was about that beautiful church I grew up in that felt so amazing - what was I actually looking for? Was it something that only existed for me because I was a child? Because I hadn't really seen the world?

This year on New Years Day I sat in a rocking chair in front of a fire in a beautiful house in Burlington. There were about 15 of us singing - Indigo Girls, Simon & Garfunkel, Dar Williams, children's songs, campfire songs, some religious, some not. The guitar was being passed around, and one girl was playing the fiddle. One guy sang a gorgeous song that he wrote as all of us melted from the beauty of it. I remembered sitting on those hard pews during a sing-a-long at my home church next to all of the people who meant so much to me - watching my mom and dad lead us in song - dad playing the guitar, mom singing. My favorite was Fill My Cup - "Oh fill my cup. Fill my cup, let it overflow. Oh fill my cup. Fill my cup, let it overflow. Oh fill my cup. Fill my cup, let it overflow. Let it overflow with love."

Sitting in the rocking chair in Burlington, tears streaming down my face, I was overflowing in this space that seemed to pulse with warm energy, with the presence of a loving community.

A loving community.
Which, to me, feels like basking in the presence of God.