TinkerX

I grew up Methodist in suburban Boston. Methodists are nice, regular, maybe-a-bit-boring-but-wouldn’t-you-rather-have-boring-neighbors type people. Dogmatically, we believe that Jell-O should always be served with something suspended inside; tiny marshmallows, mandarin orange slices, pineapple chunks, little plastic army men, what-have-you.

Think white bread, Miracle Whip, Ford Taurus and The Carpenters.

Which was why my friend Dave’s theory about LSD in the communion juice was so astounding to me.

That whole time growing up, I never once associated Jesus with politics. He’s the Son of God. He loves the little children, healed the sick, came back from the dead, taught in neat parables and ran the show. Most of my friends and all of my family were reasonable, friendly, helpful Methodists.

It was only years later, at college, when I learned that my Protestant upbringing and beliefs would tend to get me lumped in with "conservatives." I wasn’t quite ready for that, as I’ve been a serious liberal since the age of 11 when I found out who was paying for my public school education. Hanging out with singers, musicians, artists, writers and actors my whole young life probably sealed the deal. But, again, I hadn’t associated my religious beliefs with my political beliefs; they were compatible, to me, and nobody ever brought it up in a way that made me question their logical relationship.

Until 1984. I was a freshman at Cornell. Many types of people not found in Needham, Mass were stuffed into cinder-block dorms built by a guy who’d only ever designed prisons before he got the Cornell gig. I’m not kidding – my room was a sherbet orange 12′x15′ cinder-block box. It was, in the parlance of 1984, "heinous."

I met kids in U-Hall-5 from all over the country and the world. Rich identical twins from Texas. An audiophile from one of the Whatever-Stans in the USSR. A Chinese guy who never, ever talked to anyone. A hairy, ribald weigh-lifter from New Jersey who we wished would take a cue from the Chinese guy. A Belgian surfer.

And there was Dave. My dad would have described Dave as "a long-haired hippie weirdo freak." Frankly, that was probably how Dave would have described himself. He was a very mellow dude who came across as much older than 18. He seemed wise, worldly and slightly mysterious. He walked with a slow, measured stride. I could picture him as a monk or sensei of some kind. He once threatened to beat the crap out of me if I killed the spider I had been about to squash.

When Dave found out that I was not only a Christian, but would admit it, he asked me if I’d ever had any "religious experiences." He was an atheist, raised by atheists, and actively believed in the non-existence of God. If it’s possible to be an evangelist for the absence of deity, that would be Dave.

 "What do you mean, ‘religious experiences’ ?"

 He shrugged. "I don’t know. You’re the Christian, Andy. You tell me."

 "Well," I said, "I spent every Sunday morning for 13 years in Sunday School and every Thursday night rehearsing with the choir. I’ve been bike riding on Martha’s Vineyard and beach-partying on the Cape with my youth group. I’ve gone caroling at nursing homes, have helped stock soup kitchens and washed cars to fund our activities. Do any of those count as a ‘religious experience?’"

 He shook his head. "No. Not ordinary experiences related to your religion. An experience that transcends the mundane. Have you ever experienced the divine?"

Since I had, I answered, "Yes."

 He nodded quietly. The thing about hippie weirdo freaks is that they respect all types. Folks from outside the mainstream have a refreshing tendency to develop tolerance.

 "Have you ever considered," he continued thoughtfully, "that maybe the clergy spiked your communion wine with LSD or some other hallucinogenic substance?"

The clergy? Oh. Rev. Guinn. A very large, very warm man whose stories of Christian missionary work in communist China were pretty thrilling. But that was about as exciting as it got at church.

"Dave," I explained, "Rev. Guinn couldn’t have spiked the communion wine."

"Why not?"

"First of all, it’s not wine. It’s Welch’s grape juice. Officially, Methodists are tea-totalers. Second of all, I’ve seen Mrs. Guinn pour the juice into the tiny cups. I’ve even helped a few times. It’s juice. No acid."

"Jim Jones’ gang didn’t know they were drinking poison, either, Andy."

OK. This was getting bizarre.

"Dave," I explained, "My most deeply felt religious experience did not involve communion at all. I had an epiphany while on a mission trip in Montana the summer after 10^th grade. It was on this trip that I was, to use a sometimes touchy term, ‘born again.’"

He winced. All my liberal friends wince when I cop to being born again.

I explained how ‘born again’ means different things to different people. In my case, it was a realization that I actually believed and felt all the stuff I’d been taught. Before that point, Christianity had been for me mostly a cultural and social thing. After that, the call to follow Christ made sense to me on a fundamental, core level that has helped sustain and inform my spiritual life ever since.

Why was my Christianity so hard for Dave to fathom? It turns out he’d had some personal experiences with "Shouting Christians," as he called them. We had a few "old-time-religion" preachers up on campus every now and then, and Dave had verbally tussled with one of the loonier Bible-thumpers.

Brother Jeb – which is what he called himself – preached against fornication, masturbation, communism, socialism, abortion, homosexuality and drunkenness. Now, at a college campus in the late 80’s, five of those things are considered mainstream leisure activities. Dave tried to get a clear, reasonable, thoughtful answer from Brother Jeb on the subject of evolution. Didn’t happen. Jeb wasn’t interested in discussion; he wanted to rant.

And so, in Dave’s encyclopedia of life, the entry for "Christian" was illustrated with pictures of Pat Buchanan, Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson, Brother Jeb… and now, me. Which made me deeply uncomfortable. Still does. My politics puts me somewhere to the left of Al Franken. It really itches to be lumped in with people whom I consider politically idiotic and evil.

After talking a bit longer, I finally realized why Dave wanted to believe I’d been drugged into a Methodistic euphoria of some kind. It would explain why a liberal, well-behaved, reasonable friend of his was willing to belong to the same group as Brother Jeb.

I didn’t know enough about my own beliefs back then to clarify it very well to Dave. But if I could go back in time, here’s what I’d tell him:

"Dave," I’d begin, "Jesus was a huge liberal. In fact, he’d probably get along a lot better with you than with Jerry Fallwell." That’s the beginning of the conversation I should have had with Dave.

These days, it’s the conversation I have with my liberal friends to explain my Christianity, and with my conservative, Christian friends to explain my liberal beliefs.

Why is it that conservatives have become the presumptive Christian voice in America? The dictionary says of conservatism, "Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change." Which is fine, I guess, except for the fact that Jesus calls his followers to a life of change and renewal. He calls people to love those who are different, to forgive enemies, to be meek, to make peace, to reject wealth and to be prepared to sever any ties with family, friends and authority in order to follow Him.

I’m not (much) going to get into the almost farcical contrast between the life Christ led – the life Christians are supposed to emulate – and that practiced by many leaders of the current far-right, Republican, neo-con camp. I will, however, ask how anyone can read the New Testament as anything but a call for progressive beliefs and actions.

The answer: Many Americans are confused. On the one hand, Americans like wealth, status, comfort and patriotism We like clear definitions of "us and them." We like being the good guys and we love to open up a can of whup-ass on the bad guys. On the other hand, Christ’s message speaks of giving away wealth, giving up status, hanging out with the poor and oppressed, and loving enemies.

There are millions of people who consider themselves conservative and Christian. They either have a different definition of conservative than that in the dictionary, or they haven’t really looked at the life of Jesus. I’ll assume it’s the former. In which case, let’s take a look at the definition of "liberal:"

Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

Doesn’t that sound more like the man who ate with thieves and prostitutes? Who said that we must love our enemies as well as our friends? Who brought a message of salvation not just for his own ethnic tribe, but for everyone?

The establishment in Christ’s day were the Pharisees and Sadducees. Christ called these groups, at various times, a brood of vipers, snakes, hypocrites, blind fools, and (my favorite) whitewashed tombs. All but one of Christ’s disciples died violently at the hands of the establishment.

For the first 300+ years of its history, the Christian church was violently suppressed by conservative forces. Martin Luther and other early Protestants were hounded and killed by an established church that had become synonymous with greed and political corruption. The Puritans – whose name was considered an insult back in the 17th century – came to to escape persecution at the hands of their governments. These were all reformers. These were all groups that took the Good News out of the hands of tyrants and put it back into the hands of the poor and the oppressed. These were all liberals.

Conservatism seeks to maintain a status quo. Guess what? The poor don’t like the status quo and the oppressed aren’t ever fond of the current administration. If you’re not rooting for the "little guy," you’re probably not lined up with the Word. Political policies that favor “them that has” over “them that’s not” are almost always going to be in direct contradiction to the teachings of Christ.

Of course there are many liberal Christians and many conservative atheists; it’s not a one-to-one match up. But the predominant public persona of Christianity these days seems to be highly conservative. I think that’s a shame. Christ was (and is, for believers) a liberal. I wish my non-Christian, liberal friends had more public role-models of openly Christian, liberal thinkers.