For the past 5 months I have been on Church Tour, reading the Gospels, and trying to open myself up to Christianity. Trying to set aside my previous beliefs about Jesus and see where this new path would take me. Allowing Christian religious services and practices to touch my heart.
I have been a regular congregant at a Unitarian Universalist church, visited a Southern Baptist church, an Episcopalian church, Quaker Meeting, a United Church of Christ, and a Roman Catholic Mass. The original proposed schedule was 6 months of Church Tour. I’m not sure if we’ll continue it but I know I’d like to see a Methodist church before we stop, and Marie wanted to see a non-denominational church.
I like aspects of various of the churches: the service ethos of the Episcopalians, the love preached from the pulpit at Catholic mass, the contemporariness of the UUs, the seriousness of the Baptists, and the connection to God at Quaker meeting. There’s no one single place where I felt completely at home, but the place I find myself returning to is Quaker Meeting. Because I feel God there. It’s become my default place to worship on Sunday mornings.
To be honest, I had a plan for Church Tour. I expected at the end of this Tour to convert to Christianity and settle in at a mainstream congregation. I expected to resolve my doubts and differences for the sake of fitting in and finding a church home. I have found instead that my original theological differences with Christianity are alive and well and, at least right now, I see no way around them.
At the age of 16 I declared before God and a Muslim congregation that “I believe there is no God but God and Muhammad is His messenger.” I cannot get to a place where I believe in the divinity of Jesus, even 30 years later. I do not believe Jesus died for my sins; my sins are on me. I do not believe that Jesus was any more or less a prophet than Abraham, David, or Muhammad.
I still desire a liberal, feminist, culturally comfortable place in which to worship God but I’m going to have to accept that that means I hold a different theological perspective on some very key points. That’s not what I wanted initially. It’s not, to be honest, what I want now. I want a place I can fully embrace as home. Instead I am going to continue to pray, and to trust in God, and to wait on His time.
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