Why I don’t go to church anymore

Let’s see. My earliest memory.

Well, I’ve seen a home movie from my parents’ starter house in Laurelhurst, so I was probably three. My mom is leading a procession to church in her white gloves and a pillbox hat. Laura’s skipping behind in her lemon meringue flouncy dress, utterly compliant and sure of Sunday School success. Maybe it was Easter. She waved at my dad, who was manning the camera because he sure as hell wasn’t going to church. He’d give in on Christmas and go to church—some years—but Easter Sunday was just another day at the links for him. Besides, Easter was so sunny—so feminine. My mom was doing her Christian duty as the believing parent in this union. She knew the odds were against her when it came to forming us into Good Christians, as my dad, a trial attorney—so, a professional arguer—would poke fun at religion in general and my mom’s church in particular whenever the opportunity presented itself.

He was a man of few words, but he made them count.

My mom was doing her Christian duty as the believing parent in this union. She knew the odds were against her when it came to forming us into Good Christians, as my dad, a trial attorney—so, a professional arguer—would poke fun at religion in general and my Mom’s church in particular whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Bringing up the rear, there I am, in my Brown Coat, which I pronounced Blown Coat—Blown as in Clown not Thrown. I’m in tears, for all the good it was doing me. One of my dad’s nicknames for me when I was little kid was Meyer The Cryer. (Instead of comforting me, my dad called me a name.) How come Dad gets to stay home and here I have to go to church? How is this not a Girls Thing? Eventually, as the years wore on, I stopped crying about being dragged to church, but I never liked it, so when my mom announced on my 16^th birthday, that I was “old enough to make my own decision” about religion, I chose the well-rutted trail—my dad’s attitude toward religion.

I wanted to be like my dad, after all.

What was he? A heathen? No, not a heathen. Heathens still believe in . . . all that nonsense. Also, heathen kind of carries a sense of moral laxity. My dad was a very moral, upstanding guy. They didn’t let schleps into the country club. Or homos, as far as they knew.

What was he? A heathen? No, not a heathen. Heathens still believe in . . . all that nonsense. Also, heathen kind of carries a sense of moral laxity. My dad was a very moral, upstanding guy. They didn’t let schleps into the country club. Or homos, as far as they knew.

My dad could tolerate Episcopalianism. He’d still make fun it, yes, but he saw that it had some value. There were religious men at the country club. They weren’t the ones who played gin rummy after a round with my dad. Oh, they might come over to the card game and exchange pleasantries briefly—but always in passing on to some duty. Charlie Church. My dad and his buddies couldn’t understand why a man would hamstring himself with religion. The country club members who went to church to find customers for their insurance agency or some other job—those guys he could let pass. He’d still make fun of them, though. When Charlie Church would walk away, my dad and his gin rummy buddies would exchange knowing glances with one another over their cards.

Dumbass.

My dad was a dedicated realist. Life was hard, and religion wasn’t going to make it any easier.

He went to church on Christmas. What more do you want?

I can see now that my dad’s cynicism rooted its way into my heart deeply—just bore right in there and began leaching poisonous impulses to my larger brain. I think it’s what laid the groundwork for my eventual de-conversion, after 35 years of zealously “walking with Christ.”

I can see now that my dad’s cynicism rooted its way into my heart deeply—just bore right in there and began leaching poisonous impulses to my larger brain. I think it’s what laid the groundwork for my eventual deconversion, after 35 years of zealously “walking with Christ.”

For example, from the get-go I never believed that Adam and Eve were real people. Somebody call the Spanish Inquisition! Adam and Eve were just a myth meant to teach us about our relationship with God and how it needed fixing. Already by the time I converted—19—I considered myself a “writer” and I knew a fable when I saw it. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Sounds like something you’d see en route to Candyland.

Also, snakes don’t talk. Never did.

In most churches I attended during my 35 years as a Christian, I was the only parishioner who believed that Adam and Eve weren’t real historical figures. It led to a lot of heated arguments.

“Do you think Jesus thought Adam and Eve were a myth?” my fellow believers would snap at me.

“Do you think Jesus thought Adam and Eve were a myth?” my fellow believers would snap at me.

Shortly after I moved into my first one-room apartment after I graduated from college, I “felt led” to go around my apartment complex and invite everybody to a Bible Study I would lead. No one showed, except Suzanne, the only other Christian in the complex, a woman who likewise just had graduated college. She was entering her first teaching job at a church-run school where corporal punishment was enforced on all students, K-12.    

“That’s ridiculous,” I said at our first study, sitting on the carpet with her, our Bibles on the floor in front of us.

“The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother,” she countered, proof-texting me.

I was impervious to proof-texting.

“That’s an Old Covenant concept that doesn’t translate over to the New Covenant,” I said.

I was full of shit like that.

We actually got along really well, despite our many scriptural disagreements, despite the fact I would have no qualms ordering a beer on those times we’d go out for something to eat so we could argue in public. (In fact, I’d make a point of ordering the beer.) We had an identical passion—Jesus Christ—that kept us fast friends. We liked each other, even if we didn’t really understand each other. A big reason we got along so famously was that we were both engaged at the time. We were a third sex with each other. Grey.

When she would tell people at church that she actually knew a Christian who disbelieved in Adam and Eve, they’d insist I couldn’t be a real Christian.

“Oh, he’s a Christian, all right,” she told me she would say, wryly.

I was just wrong. You see, she knew what God thought.

Nope. Nobody does. And that’s why I don’t go to church anymore.

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