What the heck's a religiologue?

Religion + Travelogue = Religiologue

That's the short version of what this blog's about: an exploration of different cultures and peoples, only without all that expensive and time-consuming intercontinental travel.

Now... the long version.  The "origin story", if you like:

I'm an atheist. Except for infrequent visits to my grandmother's Baptist church, I didn't have a religious upbringing.  For the bulk of my life, religion just wasn't something I thought about.  In fact, looking back, I realize that I self-applied the label "agnostic" as a teenager not because I was reserving judgement that some god(s) were out there somewhere, but because I had a notion that the term "atheist" should only be used by people who actually gave a damn about the question of whether gods existed or not.  But that wasn't me - I just didn't care.

Since then, though, various events have brought me into contact with religion, not least of which being the fact that I met and married a nice Catholic girl.  My experiences that have come from this, as well as other things in my life like watching the rise of the "Religious Right" on the news, have made me realize that practically, there's a whole other culture and way of life (or many cultures and many ways of life, more accurately) sitting right under my nose that I've never really looked into.

At this point, I've done more digging into various religions, but at a step back from them: I've read scriptures and engaged in religious discussions online, but I've come to the realization that these things don't always capture the feeling of a religion.  For example, going with my wife to Mass, it's become obvious that reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church no more tells me what Catholicism feels like than reading an ingredient list tells me what a recipe tastes like.

In the midst of all this, something else occurred to me: I bet that many people - if not most - are in the same boat as me.  While I recognize that most people are religious, my impression is that relatively few have much experience beyond their own individual denomination/faith community.  This made a light bulb on in my head: if I blog as I explore, then I can bring other people along with me... hence this blog.

So... hopefully, that gives you an idea of what I'm trying for.  My intent isn't to give encyclopaedic descriptions of different religions & denominations; it's to communicate my own subjective feelings, with each entry being a "snapshot" of one congregation in one denomination on one particular day.  Maybe it'll be representative of the larger whole, maybe it won't be, but I'll do my best to treat my subjects fairly and approach them with an open mind.