Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir has been out for not quite a month, but in that time I have received more letters about the book than any book I have ever written. I am not sure why that is the case, but it seems that I have struck a nerve. That I come from the working classes evokes for many a sympathetic reading. Others respond to my having lived for over twenty years with a wife that suffered from bipolar illness. The significance of friendship for sustaining my life also seems significant to many readers. The response I find most surprising is the surprise many express about my surprise that I am a Christian.
That a theologian should be surprised about being a Christian may seem strange, particularly among folk who have little sympathy with Christianity. They often assume that theologians by definition must believe in what they think about. That, of course, is a deep mistake made, particularly in recent times. Many who become theologians in our time think their task is to try to determine how much of what has passed for Christianity they still need to believe and yet still be able to think of themselves as Christians. I discovered, however, that I did not know enough about Christianity to know what I was disbelieving.
There are good reasons for me not to be a Christian. Hannah's Child begins with the story of how I came to be. My mother, who came from dirt poor Mississippi folk, and my bricklaying father married late. They had trouble having a child. My mother had heard the story of Hannah and Samuel, so she prayed that if God would give her a son she would give that son to God. That was a perfectly appropriate thing for her to do, but as I observe she did not have to tell me she had made such a promise. In particular, she did not have to tell me when I was six. That she told me was surely grounds sufficient for me to have nothing to do with Christianity.
Moreover being in the "trades" makes one very suspicious of the "nice" people who are Christians. I was taken out to the job by the time I was seven. I labored for bricklayers for many summers, finally learning to lay brick in my teens. "The job" is not exactly a place for those that think what it means to be a Christian is to model middle-class morality. I was not attracted to a church that seemed filled with people whose manners legitimated their presumption that they were my superiors.
I became a theologian because I could not "get saved." I was raised in an evangelical Methodist church. Evangelical meant that though you had been baptized and made a member of the church on Sunday morning, you still had to be "saved" on Sunday night. I wanted to be saved but I did not think you should fake it. So finally sometime in my middle teens, while we were singing during the altar call "I Surrender All" for the twenty-fifth time, I surrendered. That is, I dedicated my life to the Lord assuming that if God was not going to save me, I could put God in my debt by going into the ministry. That has never happened, but it did put me on the road to college.
By the time I had got to college, I had begun to read and had decided that most of what Christians believed could not be credible. So I became a philosophy major at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. It was by reading philosophy that I discovered that I did not know enough about Christianity to know if it was true or not. So I went to Yale Divinity School not to study for the ministry but to find out if the stuff was true. God help me, I fell in love with theology, and in particular the theology of Karl Barth. I have now spent a lifetime thinking about God.
That I have spent my life thinking about God, moreover, has gotten me into a lot of trouble. I did not expect to discover that being a Christian might put one crossways with the assumptions that shape "normality" -- assumptions that make war unproblematic -- but like it or not, I became convinced that Christians cannot kill. I even think that Christians must tell the truth -- even to those they love. As a result, I have never found being a Christian easy.
I observe in Hannah's Child that most people do not have to become theologians to be a Christian, but I probably did. I still find it surprising that I am a Christian. God is just not there for me the way God is there for some people. I am not complaining. I assume that that is the way God works to make some of us have to think hard about what it means to worship God. I use the language of worship rather than belief because I am never sure if I believe in God. I do not trust myself enough to take what I believe seriously. But I do worship God, and I do so with joy.
Theologians seldom write memoirs. There are many good reasons we do not. No doubt the main reason is that we, academics that we are, have not lived lives interesting enough to write about. Yet people tell me that Hannah's Child is a page-turner. I am glad they think so, but I am not surprised. I am not surprised because it seems to me that the God who raised Jesus from the dead is full of surprises.
They gifted us with a Godless Constitution and displaced the Bible from being the law of our land.
Are you jealous of Theocracies?
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MY BLASPHEMOUS BLOG
In the East God Won - The high cost of organized ignorance.
Michael Pieracci, Ph.D., Religion Instructor: “Holy heretic’s insight is indeed profound.”
http://whengodwins.blogspot.com/
My homosexuality does not interfere with my ability to understand what reality is. Reality is that the normal homosapien animals should be able and willing to procreate. I tried it once and it was icky to say the least. I am willing to admit that my homosexuality is abnormal but there is nothing I can do about it. My homosexuality does not require that I suspend rational thought and believe in ridiculously absurd.
The belief in magical and mythical beings may indeed be genetic and a by-product and continuance of childhood fantasies. However, as a grown adult it becomes something else entirely different especially when presented overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The unwillingness to throw out the blanky even when you know the blanky provides no real safety or protection is worrisome and a little disturbing.
Religion is dying a slow and painful death thanks to Copernicus, Newton, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein,Wilson, Dawkins and many other critical thinkers and scientists.
To us, there being no God is common fact. Just as there is no Santa.
Our dilemma, more of being dumbfounded, is that so many believe in an invisable all powerful something or other.
I've watched Christians all my life, and I'm still surprised by their general level of spiritual chaos. Why on earth would you bother with a religion that obviously confuses you so greatly? The gods pick whom they will, and evidently this god didn't pick you. Yet you stubbornly persist in clinging to him.
Move it to a back burner, and open yourself to the experience of a god that invites you, or even no god. Christianity is simply not right for everyone, regardless of their mothers and their upbringing.
I wish him peace and comfort. But even if he achieves it through religion, that doesn't make a single thing he believes true.
http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Reference_Links/False_Testament_%28Harpers%29.htm
This is a 2002 Harper's article and just one one many recent articles that have shown that science, archeology and common sense has debunked and reduced the bible to a heap of scrap pages. The evidence is now overwhelming but people still cling to these ancient myths. Why?
Why, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, do people still believe in giant boats, talking snakes, talking vegetation, dead people coming back to life, devils getting your brain and all of the incredible nonsense that accompanies religion?
This is the article I want to read. I read a few books on religion and immediately realized it was all nonsense. After years and years of reading, I know with 100% certainty that it all a bunch of baloney.
Why do hundreds of millions of people believe this stuff?
In the face of extraordinary evidence to the contrary, how does one disregard facts and logic in exchange for make believe and imaginary? How does that work and why? Is there a fear element? Is it the fear of death? Is it the need for comfort figure?
Your glib response may be cute but it does nothing to answer the question.
Dawkins tried to explain this issue in The God Delusion but I would like to see studies and research regarding what is happening in the brain when Christians are confronted with facts that counter their beliefs.
As an Atheist I like my Christians to be predictable. Un-Christlike to the core. Christians who doubt but remain Christian for the sake of . . . ? Belonging? I don't know. I understand the need to belong, or to feel a part of something greater. As an Atheist it is often made clear, even as a Vet, that I don't belong in most situations in this country. The Christians have taken over.
But painting them all with a broad brush makes me feel better. Being occasionally wrong does not make me feel better. Unless most Christians were less agressive with their beliefs. Then I could feel a lot more comfortible with Christians of Doubt.
But as it is, Christians of Doubt ar are an anomoly. An entity I do not know well.
I find too many Atheists willing to cal themselves too many things, or nothing whatsoever. That is their choice.
And Humans have been around for at least 4 millian years. Your ten seconds suggest the Christian belief of Adam and Eve and an earthly age of 6000 years.
If you think Christians are predictable, your have probably only considered a few American brand Christians or perhaps you have developed a straw man Christian. Prejudice is ugly in any form. If you were exposed to Christians from across the world or even read more about Christians from the past, you'd see that we are a cantankerous, unpredictable bunch.
I like my weather unpredictable though. I love it in fact.
I care not if prejudice is ugly. When Christians stop putting their god on my money, in my schools, in my laws, all based on their own prejudices (gay marriage for example) then I will allow myself to paint all Christians with a broad brush.
When you start standing up for actual freedom of religion, even against your own religion, insisting God be taking off of OUR money then we will have common ground.
Or should I go to your churches and teach Evolution?
I care not about Christians from around the world. They do not impact my life. Just as Muslims and Jews do not.
I care about what has a direct impact on my life. It is these bible thumping, hypocritical Evangelicals.
THANK YOU for getting Prof. Hauerwas to provide an essay for the site!!!
You've got to be taught to hate and fear,
You've got to be taught from year to year,
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught