For those of you who may not know, Cafeteria Christianity is a derogatory term used by some to accuse other Christian individuals or denominations of selecting which doctrines they will follow, and which they wont. A recent conversation about this very idea got me to thinking about what cafeteria line I'm standing in.
My family is heterogeneous when it comes to religion. My father was brought up and educated in the catholic system. My mother was brought up in a Presbyterian household. So my sister was born and baptized Catholic. I however was baptized Presbyterian, in what has been described to me as the coolest ceremony ever preformed by a foreign minister visiting the church that month. Yeah, riddle me that.
Anyway, I have had multiple conversations with both my parents about their religious upbringings. My father has not attended church since, I don't even know when, but he used the hood of his jacket to hide his eyes multiple times during 'The Exorcist". Obviously something about his Catholic background lives within him. My mother will say she was brought up in home that had a strong Christian foundation. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal and always treat others the way you would like to be treated. However, in college she was told by a professor that after talking about religious philosophy, hers in particular, he believed she didn't belong anywhere. She was a malleable early twenty something at the time. She doesn't claim any affiliation to this day.
That was the household I was brought up in. Someone who stopped placing any effort in Catholicism married to a person who believed in the fundamental application of Christianity but didn't subscribe to anything specifically. Therefore, my sister and I were baptized two different sects, yet we attended the same Sunday school. The years following Sunday school, if my memory serves me correctly, was empty of religion unless I was in a place of worship for a wedding or a funeral. A white or a black dress is what my religious experience boiled down to as an adult. That is a very slight over dramatization, but for the most part it hasn't played a huge role in my life. I took a World Religions class in college to try and figure out if I did belong anywhere. It just confused me more, and that is partly due to the fact that it is more common than ever to change religious affiliation. To get more generic or more specific. To cast off the teachings of an upbringing to follow your own path. Religious freedom abounds, or so it seems.
When you take that idea and put in the context of a cafeteria line, religion is much more Central Park West than General hospital, if you know what I mean. It is like politics. Nowadays you can be the daughter of a right wing nut job and have a baby out of wedlock. You can be a staunch environmentalist but lobby for factory farming. In the case of religion, you can be Catholic and divorced multiple times. You can be Buddhist and a billionaire. You can be atheist and hate the song Imagine. It seems that anything goes, or at least is possible in a country that boasts of religious freedom. I know the indoctrinated children from 'Jesus Camp' would disagree, bless their hearts, but there are two sides to every conversation. When it comes to religion I would argue there are many more than two.
Here is mine. I once thought that religion was the opiate of the masses. That faith was something people followed blindly. It is part of the reason, as a young adult I rallied so hard against it. I used to think that I was special because I thought religious texts were just really amazing sagas, written to quell or swell the fears of mere mortals. I thought I was outward thinking if I only entertained the idea of six commandants and filled in the remaining slots with Siddhartha's four sights. That as a woman, religion was created to hold me down and therefore was something to be reckoned with. So young. So self-indulgent.
In my experience the majority of people I know are in a line at The Religion Cafeteria. In my expeirence, most people are just like me, but different. I have friends in the Catholic line, the Latter Day Saints line, the Juddiasm line, the Wiccan line and of course standing in front of the consistently empty chafers of the Atheist line. They are picking and choosing what to put on their plate and subsequently swallow, just like me.
Everyone has a different palate, and can only consume so much of any given doctrine. I'll have a serving of Halakha, with a side of The Principle and some Christian Fundamentalism for dessert. I know it isn't as simple as fusion cuisine, but I can tell someone I am agnostic and that is the end of the conversation. It is not even close to a derogatory term. A word was created in the mid 19th century for people like me, so I could confidently express a religious unaffiliation and not necessarily be judged (again the 'Jesus Camp' kids come to mind) for it.
I'm still not sure of what I believe entirely, and I am not sure that I ever will, but what I do know is that my taste changes depending on the subject and even that ebbs and flows. I am at the cafeteria but even then I would jump lines. I would mix creeds and wash it all down with a healthy glass of apprehension. Maybe that means I have no faith in faith, or perhaps I am still struggling with the idea that I have no faith at all.
I don't know. But I do know if there is a line for people like me, I sure hope Chris Farley is behind the glass with a hair net slinging dogma along with a huge helping of comedic relief because everyone needs a good sense of humor to have this conversation.
Goodness, now I'm hungry.
No comments:
Post a Comment