YOU DON’T HAVE TO THROW OUT ALL OF WHO YOU WERE TO BECOME WHO YOU ARE: REFLECTIONS ON CHANGING RELIGIONS/SPIRITUALITY

Over my career and spiritual journey, I have made changes to my faith, what I believe and how I practice – including religious/spiritual groups I associate with. One memory sticks out among many, however. I was raised in two black church traditions, but after a series of unfortunate events, I entered into the predominantly-white denomination known as the United Church of Christ. The process of switching was not difficult. It happened organically. I just left the AME Zion ordination process and was attending a house church in NYC. I assisted with worship from time to time as a seminary friend was working as an intern. When her internship came to an end, the pastor of that church approached me, told me several members recognized my gifts for ministry and they all wanted to sponsor me for ordination in the UCC. Before this happened, I wasn’t sure which denomination I was going into. My roots in the black churches of my childhood ran deep. Being exiled from them was extremely painful. But it was very healing to have this church community embrace me in this way, to help me work through my sense of rejection from my own people. I learned the hard lesson that as my people say, skinfolk ain’t always kinfolk.

My challenges continued during my UCC ordination process. The end of that process culminates in what’s called the Ecclesiastical Council. Clergy peers gather with you for dialogue after you undergo a psyche eval, background check and write an extensive paper on your beliefs. I have served on these Councils when I was a pastor too. These are not to police a minister’s personal beliefs, but rather opportunities to insure a coherence to of one’s beliefs, so those beliefs support them through the challenges of their ministry.

But my Council was NOT that. There were two Southern Baptist converts who, if it were not for the fact that they were gay (they stated this strongly and weirdly when arguing with me), they would still be Southern Baptist. They were clear they towed the ultra-conservative party line in the Reformed theological tradition. I knew Reformed theology because I went to a Presbyterian seminary. I enjoyed most of my studies even if I did not personally buy into Reformed theology. I was still working through which parts of my Black Churchness were going to stay with me, and which parts of me were going to embrace this new UCC thing. It was never an option to reject my roots to become UCC. But for these two men, that was the only way.

The thing they had a problem with was me calling myself a Christian Panentheist. Panentheism embodied a way to retain my Blackness and African/indigenous faith expressions and beliefs while staying within the Christian tradition. A God Who was both within and above nature made more sense to me than the radical transcendence the Reformed tradition insists upon.

The people against me were practically foaming at the mouth to prove me wrong, but I stood my ground because these were my beliefs. It also helped that the pastor of that church also explained to them my background and his sense of my commitment to the core values of the UCC. It was also ironic that the thing my future colleagues were giving me shit for was something they were doing as transplants from a related but different Christian tradition. It is often the case when we deal in absolutes that they blind us to the subconscious ways we hold onto our past.

This issue has continued to be a fight in my spiritual journey, to be honest. Even when I found my way to Lucumi and espiritismo, I had elders, usually who are American, who have their own biases and issues with religions like Christianity and cannot see their intolerance affecting their godkids’ development on their own spiritual paths. Instead of living in that tension and remembering that everyone has their own spiritual path, such elders pressure godkids in subtle and not subtle ways for that godkid to leave that former faith or practice completely behind.

I had such an elder do this to me when I was in the recovery period of making my Ocha. They said they did not understand how I could be Christian with the history. I told them I knew the history well and do not argue that Christians have and continue to do evil things. That I saw the remnants of that evil in the slave castles on the coast of Ghana. But that I was Christian and Lucumi because I CHOSE to be. I did this also because many of my ancestors were Christian. Being Christian thus connects me to them. I was honestly disappointed in them that I had to tell them that, because this person was an espiritista.

What I observed over time is that there is an intolerance lodged within most spiritual traditions. Some are more explicit than others. Newly-arrived people come to understand that they are expected to put behind whatever they were to become what they are. In some religions this is hardwired, such as the Apostle Paul’s articulation of being a new creation in Jesus Christ meaning putting away old things, which he considered childish. People text phrase these scriptures, and in doing so rip them out of their original context.

I am aware of this intolerance of absolutism in the faiths and traditions I carry, or have carried, within me. And I reject it. It is a weaponized tool of control designed to shame us for doing something I consider to be natural to just growing in life. Not every life experience has a silver lining, but not every life experience is doom and gloom and despair either. It’s grown people behavior to look back at something we went through and realize there were still good times. All or nothing beliefs limit our ability to integrate our experiences and evolve. A big part of spiritual development DOES happen from what is hard and what almost broke us (or did break us).

The last thing I want to observe is that I find it ironic that devotees of a religion or path often do not reflect on the fact that their exemplar (e.g., Jesus, Buddha, Abraham, etc) were not the religion that was birthed from their witness. They were something else, a part of something older, more established and itself a living tradition that fed and inspired that figure to evolve. If we spent more time meditating on this aspect of the human spirit, we might understand that we all come from somewhere, and that somewhere shaped, formed and influences how we see and think and believe. That’s not automatically a bad thing. It can be a source of our compassion toward others unlike us.

You don’t have to reject all of who you were to become who you are. Those who insist you do are working out their own internal issues. Don’t make their issues yours. It’s okay to be free!