For a child living deep in the Bible belt, it was impossible to discount the influence of religion on daily life. My Alabama town was part of the solidly conservative and Democratic south, so political labels weren’t much good in characterizing people.
Church affiliation was a more useful shorthand, and churches exerted enough power to ensure a friendly environment for Sunday School and other religious activities.
In the public schools, days routinely began with prayer, and “Religious Emphasis Week” at the high school gave local preachers a chance to strut their stuff in daily assemblies. No one seemed to think this odd — except, of course, the children from a Jewish family who were allowed to spend that time in the library.
Three decades later the relationship between religion and civic life is far more complex everywhere in America, and rightly so. The comfortable assumptions that sought to cushion my childhood were much too comfortable.
But they served a purpose. For me and some of my friends, those assumptions inspired a habit of asking questions that must have seemed somewhat perverse to the well-meaning lay people who volunteered to teach us Sunday School at the First Baptist Church.
One of our favorites was: “If we believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible, then why do we serve grape juice instead of wine when we have communion?” We never got a good answer.
As much as anything else, those non-answers began to shape the role religion plays for me: not as a set of answers but as a way of spurring and shaping the questions — especially the big ones.
And since asking the right questions is an essential skill for a journalist, I consider those irreverent Sunday School questions part of my professional training.
After enough years of writing editorials questioning the status quo, the wisdom of a public policy or just the motives of a stonewalling politician, I find there are days when it would be easy to let healthy skepticism turn to outright cynicism. That’s where religious values and tradition make an important difference for me.
Respect for the dignity of each person and a fundamental belief in fairness are values that don’t necessarily depend on religious faith. But those values alone aren’t enough to stave off cynicism. For that, it takes a sense of hope and a belief that even an ugly world can get better.
Yes, religion can be a straitjacket, as can any rigid orthodoxy, including skepticism. For me, religion helps make hope possible, even against the odds.
How? In large part through good stories. The lost paradise, Noah and his ark, the tribulations of Job, the parable of the prodigal son-those old stories and themes provide an endless trove of insights and images for understanding the world. After all, the questions we ask so often in our civic debates are really echoes of the questions at the core of all lasting religions: the yearning for meaning, the quest for values, the need for ways of understanding and addressing the problems we face each day.
At its best, religion doesn’t hand us those answers the easy way. For me, it provokes the questions, while offering a framework that helps me make sense of the world and its endless search for answers.