A CRITICAL DEVOTION TO GOD
I have a complex and colorful relationship with religion and spirituality. I was raised primarily by my father, who is an ardent Buddhist, but I grew up in Winder, Georgia, a Bible-thumping small town. Bible studies and church youth groups were a bedrock of the social scene among my peers, so I assimilated, even though I never felt the true faith my friends apparently felt. When I left Winder for college in Atlanta, I quickly let go of this Christian roleplaying and allowed myself to be comfortably atheist, drunkenly (and annoyingly) bitching about the imperialist control Christianity had over Western culture every chance I got.
Through the discovery of tarot (about which you can read more on page 14), I moved away from atheism to a New Age-y “God is love, I am the universe” form of spirituality, which was immensely influential in establishing a healthy sense of love inside myself and still in many ways makes up my current spiritual understanding and practice (although I am now far more skeptical and critical of the narcissism often endemic to the online spiritual community, but that’s a discussion for another editorial).
While I am not religious, the heart of my belief system aligns closest with two people in my life who are: one who is Christian and another who is Jewish. That is because, despite their beliefs being culturally different, they exemplify both humility in not only believing in, but revering God, and bravery in, despite that reverence, still criticizing the religions they are a part of. I think the balance between humble devotion and critical examination is the sweet spot where faith thrives.
Devotion is a slippery slope to indoctrination when you do not regularly question what you believe and the others who believe it. Religious leaders and politicians take advantage of this fact to enable and encourage homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny. Christianity, being a religion based entirely in the belief that your salvation is guaranteed to you not by doing good deeds or abiding by your duty to others but by virtue of simple belief in Jesus, can enable the persistence of harmful behavior when you don’t want to look critically at the consequences of your actions. I recently read Melissa Chadburn’s “A Tiny Upward Shove,” in which (spoilers ahead) a mother loses custody of her daughter, who then has to live in a group home. Instead of going to the classes necessary to earn custody back, the mom turns to religion and abandons her daughter, as she has already been perfectly forgiven by Jesus for her transgressions in a way her daughter will never be able to. Her daughter becomes addicted to heroin and is murdered.
This is a real aspect of organized religion that alienates many, with good reason. But, as the people featured in this issue prove, that is not all that religion is. Finding a truth to revere and devote yourself to can be transformative, especially when you consciously create that space for yourself where you can bask in the love of whatever god you worship without the pressure to alter what is true about you.
“There is no such thing as not worshipping,” the late author David Foster Wallace said in his famous “This is Water” speech. “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”
It is no secret that organized religion has been historically hostile toward the LGBTQ community. While my intention with this issue is not to explicitly encourage religiosity or spirituality among the queer community, it is to encourage reflection on, like Wallace says, what it is you do worship and to celebrate the queer people fighting against the notion that religion has no place for us.