Losing, and Finding Your Religion

It was 2007 when I could keep it in no longer.  

I’d avoided the issue long enough.  I’d downplayed my feelings, guarded my intuition.  I’d kept a lot of my favorite things and even my friendships, on the down low.  But I couldn’t hide it anymore, from myself, or from the world.

One Sunday late that year, a few months after I’d started seminary, I preached a sermon and officially came out – as religious.  I called it, “The Scarlet R.”

In some ways, coming out as religious was more difficult for me than coming out as queer.   In the circles I run in, being religious carries more baggage, and causes more confusion than any term about sexuality might.

So much so that I could finishing up my first semester in seminary, and still not be convinced that I was a religious person.

Like Lauren wondering if she might be a church person if you hum church songs to yourself all week, I was like….I guess I might be religious since… I’m in seminary? Kind of like, I might be religious if you gather with others on a Sunday morning, kindle a flame, sing hymns, sit in silence and in gratitude.  You might be.

You’ll notice that when I described my hesitancy to come out as religious, I told you how I assumed other people would respond.  

But just like with sexuality, what I’ve realized about religious identity is the real demon you have to confront is in here.  Your own fears, and prejudices.  Your own sense about what sort of person you are –  your limitations of imagination, your own stereotypes – I’m not one of those types of people, you, or I, might say. 

I remember the first time I read the bible in public.  I was like….(cover up) 

I mean, it was like I was reading pornography. Except I think I was even more embarrassed to be reading the bible. 

Despite what the Supreme Court might have you believe, more and more people have in the last few decades come to share my reluctance to claim religious identity. 

Anecdotally, what I see in our newcomers here is that we have two main sorts of people showing up –  the first, are those who were raised in religions they ended up leaving – like Cheryl’s story. They are mostly – though not all over age 40 – Gen X, Boomers, Silent Generation.Many in this group carry wounds similar to those Cheryl described, while others arrive after having been a member at another UU church where they did some work to claim a new religious identity.    

And then, the second group. These are people who have had no prior experience in a religious community. They tend to be younger than 40 – Millennials, and Gen Z – but again, not exclusively.  They also tend to have a generally negative opinion of a certain sort of Christianity, or “church people” but are more neutral about any particular religious practice or concept. 

Mostly because these practices and words are not attached to any meaning or context.  It’s more like the practice of learning a new culture, or a new language. It’s not good, or bad, it’s just – new. 

There is of course a small yet mighty minority of folks who arrive here having been raised Unitarian Universalist either here – as in, returning to Foothills as adults, or they were raised UU in another congregation. This group most often aligns with the second category – but they usually also come with an added layer of confusion/irritation at those of us who show up at their religious home and then spend time debating whether it is actually religion. 

I mean, have you all seen the mural in the basement of the religious education building? If you haven’t, after the service, maybe go check it out.  We send our kids down there for children’s small groups – and there as they walk, in the hallway, they can see all the people who risked everything for their faith – including Unitarian Michael Servetus who was burned at the stake in the 16th century because he didn’t believe in the trinity.  And meanwhile, they hear most of the church being all..but we’re not really religious.  You can see how they might be confused….slash irritated.

Anyway – my anecdotal trends match with the most recent studies from the Pew Research Center, which just last year described that 3 in 10 Americans as now having no religious affiliation, with 40% of millenials identifying as not affiliated – a 13% increase in the last 10 years.  

There are all sorts of reasons why people have left institutional religion. When asked, they talk about a change in their beliefs – the “slippery slope” Cheryl was warned about – or not agreeing with the church’s stance on LGBTQ people, or women.  

Just as often, people will name a disillusionment with the idea of organized religion itself.  Whether due to abuse and cover ups revealed in the last few decades, or a more generic sense of corruption, many people have lost faith in the institutional church.

This skepticism about religion shows up in almost every new arrival to our community – even those with no church backgrounds at all.  And sometimes it hangs on for years after someone’s been coming regularly – even after they seem to me to be so clearly “in.” 

Cheryl shared about her reluctance to becoming an official member, how long it took for her to decide.  But what she didn’t and most of you all don’t realize when you’re in that state – is that this is a community filled with people who feel a very similar tension. A whole church filled with people who aren’t sure that they are church people. 

– 

When the song Losing My Religion came out my sophomore year in high school, my best friend Heather and I listened to it on repeat on my little pink cassette tape boom box.  We loved the tortured mandolin sounds, and the very cool lead singer Michael Stipe, and we happily obliged MTV’s constant replaying of his video basically once every hour for months. 

Most of all we were very proud to tell anyone who would listen that we knew the true meaning behind the title of the song – which was not actually about religion at all. Losing My Religion – do you know what it refers to? It is a southern phrase that means being at the end of your rope – as in, completely lost. Disoriented, disenchanted. So lost that you’d lose your faith in God.  

The experience of literally losing your religion is quite like this, actually.  

It happens for most people gradually, and then, all at once. Even if it is ultimately liberating and lifegiving, it is almost always also painful, as it involves a loss of community, identity, anchoring rituals and practices – which means it also often involves grief, and anger. Sometimes it includes losing your family, your closest friends, your sense of self.  

People come to Unitarian Universalist congregations both hoping to heal from this kind of loss, and also clinging to it as a kind of stand-in for the identity and belonging their religion used to give them. 

Which is how it can happen that a person can continue to identify as not-religious, even while also regularly attending church, serving in a church, singing in the choir, sending their kids to religious education programs, and participating in small groups. Continuing to understand yourself as not-religious, or not a church person provides an incredible armor, a protective device – because to let go of your non-religion is to risk being rejected and lost in all the same ways, all over again. 

It’s just that, not letting go of your non-religious identity is also a way to make sure the healing never happens. Or, the gift.  

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about the ways that at the deepest level, our habits are connected to our sense of our identity. 

He gives the example of smoking – how often someone who is trying to stop smoking will say – I’m trying to quit.  Which sounds reasonable. 

But behind that statement is often still the self-understanding – I’m a smoker who is trying to quit.  

He suggests that instead of “I’m trying to quit,” a person should say to themselves and to others, “I’m not a smoker.” 

So that the work is to change your identity, which in turn will shape your habits.  

But I wonder, how it works in reverse.  As in, if you never change your identity, but you do take up new habits – can those habits really impact you at a deeper level? 

I mean, is there a point where – no matter how often we may show up at church, or participate in the practices of church, if we aren’t willing to let these practices correspond with a deeper shift in how we understand ourselves, then it seems likely we are holding the community, and its real possibility for impact, and change, at arm’s length.

This reality came crashing down on me as I was finishing up my first year in seminary – when I was serving as a Chaplain intern at the Denver Women’s Prison.  

Some of you have heard me tell this story before.  How church at the Women’s Prison worked is that every Friday night we’d gather for worship.  Which I quickly learned meant gathering around a CD player that was blasting some call “Jesus is my Boyfriend” music.  

The music would fill the room, and the women would sing along with all their hearts, raising their arms, filled with passion, swaying together, singing Jesus, Jesus…

As for me – well, I stood in the back, my arms firmly crossed, hoping to demonstrate to all who might look my way, this was not my thing. I was not – after all – religious.  

More than just feeling personally uncomfortable, I felt embarrassed for the women, and for all this cheesy superficial theology they had somehow embraced.

And from this distanced and defended place, I watched.

My stance in the back of the worship space was like my own little force field that had me thinking about “systems of oppression, economic injustice, generational poverty, etc. etc.,” and therefore protecting me and my body and my heart from any deeper engagement with the life in the room. 

But then, between each worship service, the women would come and talk with me – and I started to get to know them, arms unfolded.  I heard their stories – of greater loss than I could even fathom, more struggle than you’d think a single person could survive.

Then, Friday night would come again, and they’d sing.  And they’d cry, and laugh together, and release from their bodies just a little of the stories I knew lived there.  

One Friday night, I was standing there, and this song was playing, 

“Change my heart O God.  Make it ever true.  

Change my heart O God, may I be like you.”  

Suddenly it just hit me.  

I mean it hit me who should really be embarrassed in the room – 

and in case it’s not clear, it wasn’t the women singing and swaying.  

In that moment, it hit me, the words, they didn’t matter.   

The theology – Jesus-as-my-boyfriend and humanized Father-God centered as it was – didn’t matter.  

Because the room was filled with life, and there was just one person in the room who had failed to experience that life, 

embodied there in the fellowship of women singing about the possibility of healing and goodness and forgiveness and transformation.

And so, I started singing.  

“Change my heart O God.” I stepped in closer, and I started singing louder. “Make it ever true.”

OK yes, I was still totally uncomfortable, but I was leaning into my discomfort, learning from it, letting it just be.  

“Change my heart O God, May I be like you” 

Actually, it wasn’t just uncomfortable, it was terrifying.  

To let down my defenses like that, to invite these words into my mouth without clarifying what I really did or did not actually believe, to sing with full voice about God, and then in the verses – Jesus! – and how I believe in him and his love for me, how it saves me.

It was terrifying to give into the experience, 

knowing I too had experienced pain, and shame, 

beyond what I was willing or able to name.  

It was terrifying to just be present, in the midst of all that discomfort, in the midst of all that love. Terrifying, and transforming.  

After that night, I could receive more people, more fully, be with more people more fully, love the world more fully, and receive love more fully.  

This is – as Cheryl said – my understanding of what is possible when religion is at its best.  When Unitarian Universalist church is doing what we are called to do, and when we are who we are called to be.  

When we let down that protective armor and let life simply be, to receive it all, arms unfolded. 

To meet it all with love.

In a world where church people, religious people – have done so much damage – continue to do so much damage, and bring so much death – it makes sense why we would all continue to be skeptical of proudly wearing the Scarlet R.  Our caution is warranted, even, ethical.  

But it is this same world that needs Unitarian Universalists who understand ourselves and what we are up to in our congregations with a deeper seriousness, and a greater commitment – a religious commitment that orients us at our deepest and most unshakable levels. 

Our world needs us to let down the armor and declare ourselves proudly, clearly church people, showing up religiously with open hearts and open arms, ready to partner with the work of courageous love, wherever and however it calls us – ever on.  

Change my heart O Love, Make it ever true. 

Change my heart O Love, May I be like you.

Amen.