Debates with Mommy Dearest: Church attendance and Other Nonsense

Some things never change...

I just finished having a heated debate with my mother about the value of Church, especially for children. This came about because of a newscast on a conservative channel about the loss of church attendance in the Church of England, and across the globe. This debate obviously did not make me feel better about the state of the world. But it did make me feel more secure with my own choices in life.

My mother's mother was a devout Nazarene. As a result of this, my mother attended church basically from birth regularly into her teens. She then proceeded to give birth to me out of wedlock at the age of barely 18. I do not mean this statement as any sort of judgment about her, I have never felt the slightest inclination to be ashamed of it, and have never felt the like against other single mothers.

By the time I was born, my grandmother was very sickly, and in truth she passed away when I was three without leaving a memory of herself with me. The best I can rummage are the few scraps of experience I had attending church, and in all honesty the emotions I felt were terror at the stark and austere darkness of the chapel, and absolute boredom listening to smiling women in Sunday school who seemed almost drunk to me in their ridiculousness.

At five I attended Church for the last time. I was barred from Sunday school for being a disruption, and asking too many impertinent questions. The story of Jesus feeding the thousands with a few fish and loaves of bread was unacceptable to me. I told the teacher that the story was stupid and impossible. I asked how what made Jesus so special, so much better than everyone else, and made him possess superhuman powers? The answer that he was God's son incarnate was about as reasonable to my mind at five as the phrase," because I said so."

Anyway, back to debate. I was infuriated by this news program, and its biased views on politics and OWS movement, and the bit about the Church was the breaking point. I stated that the entire newscast was ridiculous. Why? My mother asked. It was then that the newscast stated the obvious, that many no longer attend church because they feel the institution to be irrelevant and hypocritical, and proceeded to condemn the secularization of society as a reason for this. Which basically negates any assumption of knowledge-ability of the process of secularization, but I digress.

My mother expressed that she felt attending church as a child gave her a sense of morality that she felt is absent in the younger generations of our family who did not attend church. She expressed that she felt their selfish and egotistical nature was a direct result of this. I felt the argument itself was unfair. I stated that morality itself does not require a belief in God or church attendance. To which her answer was the always encouraging, "Well, it sure helped me."

I stated that I wasn't claiming that attending church wasn't helpful to her, simply that morality itself can't simply be ascribed to whether or not one attends church or believes in Christian dogma. As a student of humanities and sociology, I simply cannot bear such simplistic arguments. I told her that I believed it was family member's individual ummm.... mental capacity coupled with a lack of parental discipline and wisdom which led them being a selfish and self centered individual, rather than the lack of church attendance.

At this point came the dreaded word...right. The church taught my mother what was right. My instantaneous thought...right is an objective term...nearly came out. But of course I understood that the argument was over. The debate was negated. I listened as she went on about how people need church, and how most people are not like me, they don't read or collect information like I did, they have no source for morality. All this is why the Church is necessary.

Since the debate had turned to an airing of opinion, I stated my own. That people in general are not stupid, and to state so was simply a cop out. That the Church was losing ground because many people do feel that spirituality is irrelevant, and/or that the church is hypocritical. Take the issues in the bible about homosexuality, compare them to those which command men to refrain from consuming pork. What made one acceptable to forgo and not the other? People are not lacking a belief in divinity, I said. They have simply lost faith in institutional religion, because it is man made and inherently hypocritical. People are tired of ignorance and bigotry in all forms. People are tired of injustice. That is why the Church has lost ground.

This was met with silence, signaling the end of conversations. We parted ways, each returning to our own comfortable space.

It is disheartening to hear such views from ones family members, but for me it is also is reaffirming as well. Because in her silence, my mother expresses her own pride in me, just as much as her frustration. Had we not agreed to be of two separate and conflicting minds years ago, we probably would have strangled each other, or worse. But in her subtle way, even in disagreeing with me she affirms me. She listens with a frustrated frown and and wide eyed gaze. She is terrified of me, and yet she loves me beyond even what I know I deserve.

It makes me thankful. Thankful to have been born with a mind of my own, even if it approaches madness at times. Thankful that I had her as a mother, as lesson in struggle and forgiveness. Thankful that I had a mother   who allowed me to be free, and be myself, even in continual disagreement. Thankful for a mother willing to teach and also to learn from a strange heathen child thrust upon her.

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.  ~Spanish Proverb