Freedom From Religion

More family stuff

Originally published on January 26, 2019

My cousin Dyllan and I are very much alike and get along very well. This is interesting, since we are related by marriage (he is the grandson of my American dad’s sister), I’m more than old enough to be his mother, and we had virtually no contact with each other during his formative years. We also share the title of Family Weirdo.

There’s a huge area in which we differ, however: Dyllan is an atheist/pagan and I’m a Christian. And for irony’s sake, he grew up as a devout Catholic and served as an altar boy, while I grew up with almost no Christianity in my home.

Nothing-ists is how I refer to the old versions of my immediate family. We never talked about God. I was well into adulthood and far away from home when my parents became Christians and I followed suit without any pressure from them when I was in my mid-30s.

With these things in mind, Dyllan suggested that I write about the idea of “freedom from religion” and I warned him that my idea of this might be different from his, but he knew that. Dyllan is also a writer, so he will probably give his perspective on the topic, especially if I badger him about it.

So here we go.

If one listens to a number of sermons from Christian nondenominational clergy, one will sometimes hear the term “religion” spoken in a pejorative sense and here’s why: what many Christians and former Christians think of as Christianity is, in reality, man-made tradition. And these types of traditions are what religion is.

Case in point. At the funeral service of Former President George H. W. Bush during President Trump’s first term, it was noticed that the latter did not recite or read along with the Apostles Creed as the Episcopal clergy conducting the service led the mourners in the recitation. This led to the usual then-Twitter Outrage Mob finger-pointing.

My favorite response was this one:

“Recite the Creed, you degenerate!”

Since deleted, it was from a foe of DJT on X and what cracked me up was the demand to say the religious word juxtaposed with the ad hominem. What would be the purpose of a “degenerate” reciting words? How does that honor God? Answer: it doesn’t. It’s just a religious tradition for the Episcopal Church of which, to my knowledge, President Trump is not a member.

Anyway, the howlings and screechings of HERETIC!!!! far outnumbered the voices which pointed out that many, if not most, evangelical, charismatic, and fundamentalist churches - read: protestant non-mainline - don’t conduct liturgical services and don’t have a formula as to how services are to be conducted.

The demand that one must do certain things other than the things explicitly stated by Jesus the Christ in Mark 12:28-31 is what I think of as “religion” - as opposed to relationship, that is, relationship with God via Jesus the Christ. (And because all too many are wont to read into what’s said rather than receive ideas with good faith, I don’t see anything wrong with liturgical services.)

Therefore, when I think of Freedom from Religion, I think of freedom from allowing human beings to forcibly insert themselves between me and my God and to dictate the terms of that relationship.

Included in that number are the human beings who dictated the terms so long ago that many of us Christians have come to believe that those traditions are essential to Salvation. It’s like bringing a third party into a marriage.

So what say you?