So, beginning this week I’m co-facilitating part 2 of the UU adult religious ed class that I participated in last summer. This time around, one of my colleagues from the library is taking it too so, y’know, no pressure.
One of the exercises for the first class is to take the Belief-O-Matic What Religion Are You? quiz at Beliefnet.com. Let’s go over my results.
First off, let me say that I considered the quiz questions very carefully. Also, this is a rather famous Internet quiz-so much so that many UU churches put it on their websites and my fellow co-facilitator reports walk-in traffic who report that Belief-O-Matic recommended Unitarian Universalism for them so they came by to check us out.
Furthermore let me say that Hubby ranked much higher on Unitarian Universalim than I did, ironically enough. All that agnosticism.
In any case, Belief-O-Matic reports that my number one match is Reformed Judaism.
As unhappy as I currently am with UU Lansing, and as devoted as I am to the concept of monotheism, there is absolutely no way that I’m going to seriously consider Judaism. Judaism is as much a culture as a religion and I don’t want to go about co-opting somebody else’s culture when I’m not doing something like marrying into the faith. Also, I’m not on Israel’s side and I’m pretty sure that even among reformed Jews there’s an affinity there. And I just couldn’t convert from Islam to Judaism. That’s pretty self-explanatory.
Recommended for me in short order are Sihkism and the Bahai’a faith. I know of one fellow librarian who is Bahai’a, and I went to high school with someone of that faith; I don’t know any Sihks. But let me just put my cards on the table. I’m too old and dull and conventional to convert to a religion that is as culturally removed from me as those two are. I’m not Indian. I’m not Persian. There’s more to picking a faith than believing in one God, traditional prophets and progressive social values.
I do get that I converted to Islam and so am hardly in a position to throw stones about converting to non-Western religions. And believe you me I’m already weird enough for my family, friends and colleagues when it comes to religion. Sometimes it’s even a bit weird for me. The saving grace is how much of it I have internalized. How much of it I genuinely believe. How much of it I rely on. How much prayer means to me. How much Ramadan means.
But if I change faiths it will not be to go from a major world religion steeped in grandeur, beauty, discipline and history to something I couldn’t spell the first time I tried and had to look up in Wikipedia. It’s just not going to happen.
Also recommended for me were liberal Christian Protestantism and liberal Quaker. But I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus or pacifism so I think a couple of key questions were missed.
Islam ranked 6th and the UU faith 8.
Belief-O-Matic, you were interesting. And maybe if I was 16 again and without a care in the world for what anyone thought I could take your advice a little more to heart. But I’m 45 and getting progressively more conventional, if not conservative, and I need a faith where I can feel at home. I think I need more than an Internet quiz to figure out where I’m going to land.
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