Interfaith Group
In reply to the discussion: Who the hell are you and why are you here? [View all]okasha
(11,573 posts)I come from a multicultural and multi-regligious background. My mom was Southern Baptist before the SBA went off the deep end with Anita Bryant and the increasing regimentation about interpretation of the Bible. My dad was Episcopalian. I went to Catholic schools both in Mexico, where I was born, and after the family returned to the States. My cousins and I spent part of summer each year on my maternal grandparents' farm in North Texas. Grandpa was a practicing adeweh, a Cherokee holy man, as his own father had been. We learned our people's tradition and ceremonies from him.
Long story short, the Baptist church never "took" for me. I didn't like the shouting, pulpit-pounding preacher at my mom's congregation, and the music was awful. The Ursuline chapel, in contrast, was a quiet, contemplative and beautiful space, and made an unlikely comfortable fit with native ceremonial practice. As an adult, I became an active Episcopalian, partly because of my liking for Catholic worship, and was involved with the parish's various ministries. My grandfather had died when I was a teen, but I still kept up Native practices with with a local intertribal group. Gradually I realized that while Native religion could accommodate Christian beliefs, Christianity as I then understood it had no place for traditions and teachings I was unwilling to give up. I had to step away from the church, but it was a sideways step, into a faith that incorporated not only Native beliefs but Christian liberation theology, and later, process theology.
Along the way, I developed an interest in comparative religion and took some formal classes. I tend now to see more of what various faiths have in common and to discount differences that don't bear on human rights questions. I'm here because I like to talk about the subject and learn more about it, preferably with the sort of intelligent and tolerant people who post in Interfaith.