Sister Gina Welch Doesn't Quite Explain it All

I recently came across a former classmate of mine from Berkeley High on the internet. Geez that’s an awkward phrase. Is there a better verb for that? The thing is it wasn’t on Facebook or a social networking site. It was actually randomly on the general internet. Anyway, her name is Gina Welch and she’s has gone on to become a writer and professor at George Washington University.

(If she ever reads this I hope she’s not offended by my use of “classmate” and “Ms. Welch.” I still have a hard time using the title “friend” for people I haven’t heard from in 15 years. Besides, though we were friendly and spent a lot of time together one semester while working on a play I don’t know if we she would consider us old friends. Though she might acknowledge the play, Christopher Durang’s “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You,” as an influence in her later work, thus implying that I gave her her start and all her subsequent success is a result of my casting decision. Also, I’m hoping to keep some analytical distance for the purpose of this column. But then who knows, now that we're in touch maybe we'll be friends again. Or at least that version of friends you get as busy adults who live on opposite sides of the country. Yikes, this digression has gone on for quite a while. I think I’ll give it its own paragraph.)

Ms. Welch has a book due out in March this year called “In the Land of Believers” in which she does a sort of Jane Goodall routine in Jerry Falwell’s church. She also writes a column for True/Slant. Through all this Ms. Welch has become a proficient observer of the religious right. Now, I’ll preface this next bit by saying that I am a big fan of Ms. Welch’s writing. I find her style engaging, I agree with her views a vast majority of the time, and I can’t wait to get a copy of her book. That said I am surprised at how one sided her view of religion appears.

In a True/Slant piece from October 31st, 2009 she discusses the book “Good Without God: What A Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe.” When addressing Brad Hirschfield’s response to the book she states, “something that has always bothered me, always will bother me about religion: the suggestion that without someone to answer to, without the presence of some omniscient force waiting to judge and punish us, we would want to behave very badly.”

I can relate to this sentiment. When my little brother was in preschool he learned not to do certain things because “it makes the baby Jesus cry.” At the time it drove me crazy and today I still think it’s a misuse of religion. I told him, it shouldn’t matter what the baby Jesus thinks, he should do the right thing and be nice to people because it’s the right thing to do. Today I still believe that teaching children to modify their behavior based on God watching or to avoid upsetting baby Jesus lays a terrible foundation for future behavior creating fundamentalists who can’t make any decisions tat aren’t based on doctrine.

Where I diverge from Ms. Welch’s statement is in her blanket use of the word “religion.” In her writings Ms. Welch seems to use “religion” and “Christian” as a catchall ignoring the differences even among followers of Christ. It makes me feel that for all of her research Ms. Welch has only gone half way into the pool. Living in Virginia, infiltrating Falwell and basing all views on religion on those experiences is like living next door to Michael Vick and deciding you don’t like dogs. There’s too much variety beyond what the vocal religious right keeps putting out.

I would challenge Ms. Welch to continue her exploration. Not because I think she’ll see the light or find God or anything silly like that. After all, we’re not evangelicals and she’s happy with her beliefs. But I wonder if she sees those of us who don’t go to church out of fear but out of love. Church for the Christian Left isn’t about fear based morality. It’s about the liberation of forgiveness. Not forgiveness from God for our misdeeds, but for the capacity to forgive others. For many of us church is not place where we go to learn how to please God. We go because it’s where we learn how to please people. The God I know isn’t angry or vengeful. The God I know is loving and forgiving.

That’s the whole reason I’m there. And it’s not that I seek out God’s love because no one else loves me. One look at my wife and son and I know I’m loved. Heck, scroll down one column, I know I’m loved here on earth. I’m also not there for the promise of some great reward after death. I love the life I have here on earth. The reason I’m a member of the church is because it’s helped me learn to love the people around me in a way that I never got in the secular world. As an adult the church has helped me reinforce my idea of trying to be good because it’s the right thing to do rather than because I’m being watched.

The difference between my view and Gina’s is that I know my church believes I’m good already. The church provides structure for me. It’s a touchstone, something tangible I can use to check myself when I need to summon the ability to forgive someone, or drop an argument, or not actually run some a-hole off the road. Maybe other people get by using Aesop’s Fables or Vonnegut. Is that any more or less valid than using Jesus? I’d say no. I do believe that if you really get to explore someone you’ll find that they have something external that they go to when faced with a moral or emotional dilemma.

In another article Ms. Welch muses on the motives behind Christian rock. Her conclusion is that Christian rockers are counter-counter-culturalists taking that which was once rebellious and making it rebellious again by flying the face of a permissive and tolerant American ideology. It’s an interesting idea, but again my thoughts diverge and I wonder if Ms. Welch is working an angle or if this smart and erudite person can really have overlooked all of the nuances in the American religious landscape.

I wasn’t drawn to the church in an effort to rebel against homo-loving atheists. I was drawn to the church because the church reflected the values I already had and enhanced them with something I needed and wanted. I was confirmed by an openly gay bishop. One of our acolytes serves with a Mohawk, we specifically requested her for our wedding. What I gained is the understanding that my problems aren’t unique. Thus, I don’t need to find wholly unique solutions. Jesus already provided a pretty good model of how to go about things. I think that’s the interesting thing about right wing Christians. Their dogma relies so heavily on the Old Testament I can hardly see how they call themselves Christians. My understanding is that Jesus basically said to love and forgive everyone all the time. It’s not a bad model and the great thing about my church is that they present it as something you can take and elaborate on and make your own.

So what’s my point? It’s the same as always, Ms. Welch’s writing is evidence that we on the Christian left need to be louder. We need to stand up and reclaim some of the religious dialogue back form the extreme and very vocal right. We need to show the world that we are here and we want to be counted. I hope that writers like Ms. Welch can become, if not allies, then at least public acknowledgers of our existence. I hope we can, at the very least, get the people having these conversations to use phrases that distinguish a line between the right and the rest of us rather than using blanket words like “religion” or “Christian.” Because the fact is that the Us vs. Them split she seems to endorse doesn’t exist in that way. There isn’t a unified group of “religious people” who all think and act and believe the same way. Ms. Welch should know that based on her own experience with Judaism. Which is not to say Gina’s a bad person. And it’s not her lack of religious belief that seems misguided. This isn’t about her views on God. It’s about her views of us. Ms. Welch does have one column which suggests that she does know we’re out there which threatens to undermine my entire screed here except that she also says this:

“I sympathize with the writer’s tendency to worriedly nose around for something to criticize, and in fact I often fall into that trap right here on True/Slant. Writers, like comedians, need trouble to ply the trade. Every story needs the spark of a problem. Even better if trouble comes with a face on it. And an extra pellet of satisfaction if the trouble snaps into an existing narrative.”

So I know she’ll forgive me and expect you to do the same dear reader. The thing is, the quote above shows that even though she’s educated and informed about belief she can’t seem to break away from labeling all religious people as “other” which is especially disappointing because she knows she’s doing it. So, though I can accept her slant the same way I accept off color humor from a comedian I invite her to come and get to know the rest of us. Maybe together we can build the accepting and loving America I think we’re striving for.