In many ways, I break the mold of typical progressive Christians. As such, I find it hard to write about the culture from an insider's perspective. Whereas many of my sisters and brothers were brought up in fundamentalist households, I was not. As such, I realize I should probably explain a bit of who I am so that readers might better understand the perspective I bring to my writing:
My parents are United Methodist, and my father is an ordained Elder in Full Connection. This means several things: I am a preacher's kid, and I was raised in a tradition which was open to the ordination of women, biblical criticism, and sources of authority outside of the Bible. My parents keep books by Neil DeGrasse-Tyson and Carl Sagan next to biblical commentaries. My parents encouraged my sister and I to take an interest in the sciences and the arts, and we were encouraged to read as much as we could. I've never been told that I was not allowed to read a certain book. Unlike many people my age, I was allowed to watch The Simpsons growing up.
My father is a military chaplain, which also means a few things. When I was growing up, we moved around a lot, and I was exposed to diversity, both on and off base. I've lived in Germany, visited South Korea, and lived in the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South.
Being a chaplain's kid also means that I grew up attending military "general Protestant" chapel services rather than UMC parishes. Military chapels are, in general, more "conservative" then my family, and while I grew up accepting evolution and believing women could be called into the ministry, many of my friends from youth group did not share these convictions. (It was a confusing and lonely time.) The diverse mix of "general" Protestantism has also led to some denominational dysphoria, and it took me several years to find a home within the Church.
Like many young Christians who grew up in the US during the first decade of the 21st century, I grew up believing that being a Christian meant being a patriotic Republican -- not for anything my parents said, but from what I heard being preached by youth pastors, at Christian music festivals, on Christian radio, and from my peers. I started watching Fox News and even the occasional episode of the 700 Club, and thus I found myself in a feedback loop.
Oddly enough, I my eventual exodus from evangelical culture to a now-defunct web forum run by the Assemblies of God. There, I began interacting with high school aged Christians from across the country and from across the theological spectrum. A few Pentecostals and an Anabaptist demonstrated that Christians could think critically and charitably about the role of government in providing for the needs of the poor, and they reminded me that this is part of the missio Dei. Throughout my senior year of high school, I started to reevaluate my hardline Republican stance -- before I ever reached a ballot box.
When I entered college, I enrolled in religion courses. Many people ask me what it was like to study religion at a state school, and I hope that it was no different from studying at a private school. My professors were almost all members of one faith community or another, and they were overwhelmingly Christian (though tended to be from liturgical traditions). At school, and through seminary, I was pushed again -- this time to resolve the tension between academic criticism of the text and the use of Scripture by the faith tradition. (Thankfully, coming from a UMC household, this struggle was not as severe as it could have been.)
And so, when I look back on my youth in the Church, I do have scars, but the they do not run as deep as some of my friends' wounds. Being a middle class white male (hetero- and cis-), my voice has never been seriously oppressed. I have never been the victim of any form of abuse. I have never feared Hell -- well, aside from the year or so when I was reading the Left Behind series. I came to the Church's progressive wing very gently, and I try to keep that in mind when I write about my sisters and brothers still healing from years of pain and anger.
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