What are the choices when a loved one leaves the family faith (or non-faith)? Though we might like to imagine that we're far beyond the silly religious bickering of our forebears, our choices in the West have in fact remained much the same since the Reformation, when the modern practice of individual conversion emerged on a massive scale: that is, we can reject, tolerate, or accept other-believers.
Erratic sources and fluctuating emotions make it unlikely that we will ever know just exactly how many families confronted such choices, or how many behaved in this way or that at a particular time. But years of study have convinced me that families who completely rejected other-believers, sometimes through killing them but usually through severing ties, have been a small minority, including in the Reformation.
Far more common, I'm convinced, has been for families to find the great messy middle of the spectrum and to adopt some form of tolerance. This tolerant super-majority isn't as rosy and cozy as it sounds. For all of its appeal in the modern West, tolerance was a dirty word when it emerged in the Reformation -- much inferior to religious unity, and preferable only to killing someone or cutting him off. No more. Even today, the root meaning of the word tolerance (to bear, to endure) suggests the inherent limits of the concept: when you tolerate, you put up with someone's unfortunate choice, someone's inferior religion, and you hope for his return to the truth. The other-believer is not an equal, but a misguided soul requiring pity and help. Full fellowship and equality can occur only through the convert's rejoining the family religion, or the family's joining the convert's new faith.
In short, tolerance was not (is not) the opposite of intolerance, but the other side of the same coin. Tolerance implied intolerance. Again, in practice tolerance has taken many forms, ranging from uneasy coexistence to highly peaceful interaction, and for peace-loving families coexistence is an improvement on rejection. But what all tolerant families have had in common, even the most peaceful, has been the wish that other-believers would change, that they would be other than they are. In this sense, tolerance too is a form of rejection.
A third choice for families confronted with religious difference, and again probably a minority choice both today as well as in the Reformation, has been for family members to fully accept the religious decisions of others. In these families, the other-believer's decision has been respected, not regretted, and any hope of change has been relinquished. Most of all, the goal has gone beyond coexistence to an equal and satisfying relationship. Such families have not agreed on every religious point, obviously, but they have found a way to make their relationship the highest expression of their faith.
Two examples from many found in my research, one from seventeenth-century Europe and one from modern America, give these abstractions some flesh and blood, not to mention show the continuing relevance of the challenges presented by Reformation-style conversion.
In 1654, Jacob Rolandus, son of a Dutch Reformed preacher, secretly converted to Catholicism, then ran away from his family forever. His parents and sister tried to persuade him to return, through long, emotional letters that lamented his most assured damnation. Jacob in turn wept that he would be separated from his family in the eternities because of their false religion. This uneasy state of mutual tolerance soon turned into total alienation, however, as Jacob's family gave up their efforts and never responded to his letters again, for the remaining 29 years of his life.
In 1973, the young Californian Michael Sunbloom (not his real name) broke his parents' Evangelical hearts by converting to Mormonism. His parents did not cut him off, but Michael's new religion severely strained their relationship and was not to be mentioned around them -- a classic Reformation scenario. Then came the modern twist to Michael's story, which still highlighted the old, old dilemma: how to reconcile convictions and relationships? After three years as a devout Mormon, Michael realized he was gay. He quit his new church, which delighted his parents -- until they found out why. This new revelation tested their relationship even more severely than Michael's Mormonism had. In the end, however, they found a way to accept their son, on religious grounds, concluding that their love for him was a stronger imperative than any other aspect of their faith.
Family disputes have always involved more than religion, though the disputes take on new forms over time. But the Reformation's disputes over religion still have much to teach families today, whatever the particular subject. Moreover, with more than 40 percent of American adults now reporting that they have changed religions at least once in their lifetime, and with an increasing number of religions to choose from, old-fashioned struggles over religion have hardly disappeared. Indeed the need to understand the meaning and consequences of our reactions to the religious choices of loved ones, or for that matter of strangers---not to mention the need to understand the limits of tolerance---is arguably greater than ever.
Craig Harline is a professor of European History at Brigham Young University, and author of the just-released Conversions: Two Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America (Yale University Press, 2011)
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Humans aren't chimps. We are territorial in far more complex ways. We are adaptive in far more flexible ways. We are aggressive in far more warlike ways. But are we free from nature? Can we even demonstrate that we have choices, in that way? Is human behavior rational? Do we do what we think of doing, or what we feel like doing? Where do the feelings come from? Rationalism depends on the idea of the self as a real decider and controller, and not just a view of the organism surviving created by the organism surviving. It is a leap of faith that we are free from our own nature. It is unscientific.
Regarding “freedom from human natureâ€, it appears, however reasonably or accurately, that human understanding of human behavior beyond certain patterns and certain basic concepts has not yet been achieved. The source and initiation functionality of human thought appears widely and scientifically suggested to be unknown. Knowledge regarding objective human thought-related phenomena concepts such as choice, rationality and human nature appears to be based upon the nature of the initiation of human thought and, therefore, appears to be similarly unknown. Achievement of this knowledge appears, at least, potentially “complicatable†by the apparently reasonably-suggested theoretical limitations of using the tool of human perception to assess using the tool of human perception.
This appears to be a topic full of potential for the intellectual exploration of the understandings and limitations of the understandings of human reality. I welcome your thoughts.
I would also point out that the bible is chock-full of violence, murder, rape, incest, mutilation, torture and other atrocities, often prescribed or directly committed by god himself.
History appears to include reports of “non-coercedâ€, positive behavior changes.
I would be grateful for the logic and reasoning for the “sustaining†perspective.
If your neighbor steals, it isn't an excuse for you to steal as well just because he did it.
If clicking the links does not launch the blog, copying and pasting the URLs into the browser address bar might. In addition, Huffington Post comment post display appears to include extra hyphens in the text. These might alter the URL and cause “Page Not Found†errors. Comparing the pasted URL with the original might reveal such occurrences. If the blog still does not launch, trying at a later point in time might achieve better results.
In an attempt to reply to you this evening, I unintentionally replied to my very own comment and not yours. My response was lengthy and divided into three parts, of course, not at all in order. You should be able to go onto my HP page and comments to read...if you are still inclined. Will I ever understand the simple computer technology?
Ann
This doesn't really impress me on the part of Michael's "devotion" or the exclusion of gay people from most religions.
Fortunately, most of my family is comfortable with my change, and some have changed with me. Some of my children are not quite so understanding, partially because they have very close friends in the other church and they don't want to leave. So there is going to be a time in which they will still be able to go to their church. Hopefully they will eventually want to accompany me and other family members. I am prepared to be patient.
Converting isn't easy. There are a range of relationship issues that converting impacts. What is important is that those who "convert" not reject other people and keep lines of communication open. If someone on either side closes the lines of communication because of a conversion, there is something unhealthy in their new belief system.
We won't all believe the same things. But we can try to make sure that others know different beliefs don't mean rejection. That's important.
I wasn't searching for belief, the Gods sought me out. As I learned more about the Old Ways, I discovered that my wife had learned much the same thing as a young woman from a shunned old woman in her village--being shunned herself for acts committed by others, such a minor friendship was natural.
In their old age, my parents have become more devout church goers, though I remain uncertain if that is belief or societal conditioning. Whether they understand that I follow different Gods than they believe in or not remains uncerain as well. I make no secret of it, though I do not shout from the rooftops my believe in the All Father and the Storm Bringer.
I can't imagine having to deal with a family being torn apart solely because of something that doesn't even exist in the first place! Thankfully, the world is becoming progressively more nonreligious every century. There will come a time in the future when our civilization evolves past the need for supernatural deities.
Also, I once had a remarkable stepdaughter. :)
Anyway, we like our non-proselytizey ways: has a few drawbacks, (like the fact that we're always being misinformed about in the first place, but there's advantages, too, and it's not like we don't usually have all the new people we can handle. (Sometimes I'm pretty wowed that we're talking millions here. So much for that 'quiet little religion no one's heard of,' that I thought I signed up for, but the more merrry met, ;) )
It'd probably do interfaith relations a lot of good, if some of those 'One True Religions' (some forms of atheism included, at this point, ) would concentrate more on what we can accomplish together than trying to 'prove everyone else is wrong,' 'convert the world' or whatnot.
I am not telling you this to try to scare you into accepting Christianity. I simply wish you to understand why at its heart Christianity lends itself towards evangelism.
I should also point out that if you excluded him from family interactions, you were hardly being tolerant, much less accepting of his decision, which included a spiritually-driven need to share what he'd discovered. I completely understand why you would do this, but perhaps you've given yourself too much credit for being "accepting."