Lots of change and new directions

Lots of things have happened since my last post in the summer of 2011.

Shortly after my last post, and in very quick succession, I lost my job, separated from my wife, got a new job, and moved to a new town. I had many things competing for my attention and the blog got neglected.

Also, a few other concerns were mulling around in my head:

• My new town was much smaller and more rural. 

When I started all this, I was living in the Toronto area, where millions of people I had never met and would never meet again were all a short drive away. It would have been a lot harder to anonymously blog about religious communities anonymously. Also, being in a much more religiously homogenous area, there was a shortage of "interesting" blog subjects (or subjects I found interesting, anyhow).

I've since moved again (though not back to Toronto), so this is less of a concern, but still there. Where I am now isn't as multicultural as Toronto.

• I wasn't sure how to broaden the blog to include other religions.

As unfamiliar as Christian churches feel to me, I have at least some background with the religion to give me a background knowledge. I don't want this blog to only focus on Christianity, but I'm also a bit daunted at the idea of just showing up at a synagogue, mosque, or mandir. In a Christian church, I can blend in. In a Buddhist temple, I wouldn't have the first clue of where to go, what to do, and when to do it.

• I started to feel drained. 

As you probably know if you read my introductory post, I'm an atheist. Not only that, I have major problems relating to religious points of view. When my ex and I would go to Mass together, I'd often leave feeling depressed at best or angry at worst. Either way, the energy would be sucked out of me. I wondered whether this was something specific to her church... but my experience since then suggests it's not.

• I worried about how what I was doing would be taken.

Around when I launched the blog, we got into a discussion on a discussion forum I participate on about a podcast where two atheists "infiltrated" the LDS Church. While I knew that this blog is quite different - I wasn't misrepresenting myself, for one - it still got me to thinking about how the people in the congregations I visited would feel if they knew I was blogging about it.

So... with all that, I'm struggling to decide on what sort of direction I should take this blog. If you have any thoughts on what you'd like to see or on the points I raised, please chime in below in the comments.

Oh, Blogger. Why won't you let me comment on my own blog?

I'm not sure exactly what's gone on, but apparently getting a new cell phone has messed up my ability to post comments to my own blog.

It's weird, I know.  Here's the long version: I just got an Android phone.  I signed into the Android Market with my Google ID and my phone decided that I needed a Gmail account.  Since I saw no harm in it, I punched in an address for myself and now I can post blog entries but not comments.  Blogger says that my Gmail account doesn't have the ability to post blog comments.

Arrgh.

Anyhow - this is mainly a long-winded way of apologizing for the fact that I'm not responding to comments at the moment.  Hopefully I can get this sorted out soon.

3: Little Trinity Anglican Church

I gave myself a project this time: I was going to seek out the oldest place of worship in Toronto.  After a bit of online research, I learned that the oldest surviving place of worship in the city is Little Trinity Anglican Church, which opened its doors in 1844.

When I stepped in the building, the first thing that I noticed was that it felt oddly familiar... for more ways than one.

My exposure to Christianity as a child was through my grandmother's church, which my family liked to joke (even though 8-year-old me didn't get it) was "rather Anglican" for a Baptist church.  More recently, thanks to my wife, I've gained some familiarity with the Catholic Church.  What I found at Little Trinity felt for the most part like a mix of the two: a "transitional form", if you will... or, to use what's probably a more accurate analogy, a hybrid.

I'd only been in an Anglican church once or twice before, but only for weddings and always at much more modern, 60s- and 70s-style churches.  This building had much of the feel of older Catholic churches I'd been in, only "Protestantized": stained glass windows, but with geometric patterns rather than images of saints; an altar at the head of the church, but with a plain cross rather than a crucifix; a layout that might lend itself to having stations of the cross around the periphery, but in their place, engraved tablets giving the names of the prominent members of the community who helped pay to build the church.

It was these tablets that gave me another sense of familiarity, because most of them were adorned with names like "Gooderham" and "Worts": names that are immediately recognizeable to anyone from Toronto and that still adorn the buildings in the now-trendy Distillery District, where the barrel warehouses have been converted into fashionable restaurants and condos.

A few minutes before the service began, I heard something that used to be common but I hadn't heard in ages: a church bell.  The church is one of the few that I've personally encountered that still has a functioning bell that they ring for the call to worship.

As the time approached for the service to begin, I looked around and noticed that the pews were only sparesly populated.  It seemed like the priest agreed with my assessment, as opened the service by asking everyone to move to one side so that we wouldn't be so spread out.  "Worshipping together rather than all worshipping alone in the same room", as he put it.  I would later find out that he had other things in mind in doing this.

Just based on my general impression of how similar the trappings of the church were to what I was used to in a Catholic church, I expected something like the Catholic type of ritual and solemnity, so I was a bit unprepared when the priest introduced the pianist, who proceeded to explain to the audience his point of view about the meaning behind the hymn he was about to play.  I didn't realize how much I'd been "Catholicized" until a voice in the back of my head said "this is all wrong!  The musicians shouldn't be talking!"  When the pianist referred to the priest as just "Chris", that was the icing on the cake.

"Chris'" (gee - that feels weird even to type) sermon dealt heavily with the Gospel reading, Matthew 16:13-20. He spoke about how Jesus asked Peter "what do you say I am?" and then put the question to the congregation, asking us what we thought Jesus was.  People gave various answers ("messiah", "saviour", "redeemer", etc.), but he kept asking.  As he walked up the aisle near to where I was sitting, I got very nervous that he might call on me.  I thought to myself, "don't pick the atheist!  Don't pick the atheist!"  I was rather relieved when he turned back toward the altar and what would have been a rather awkward situation was avoided.

The priest then spoke about another familiar Gospel passage: Peter's denial of Jesus.  He asked us how a person like this could be the "rock" that Jesus had spoken of, when he proved to be so unreliable later on.  It was an interesting point that I'd never heard before.  According to the priest, the answer was that Peter did the will of God.

Following the ceremony was Communion, and this is where my sense of vague familiarity was shattered: the priest called up the congregation, and most of the people present kneeled at a rail that circled the altar.

After the conclusion of the service, I left the church unsure of its relationship with its surroundings.  It was obvious that the church had seen tremendous change over the past 167 years - after all, when this church was founded, Toronto had only been a city for a decade; Canada didn't exist as a nation.  The church's web site remarks that it is "plugged into its neighbourhood", but at the same time, it seems to me that other aspects of Little Trinity are at odds with the changes that have taken place around it, both in terms of the physical neighbourhood around the church as well as the religious "neighbourhood" of the larger Anglican Church.

All in all, though, I think that Little Trinity is different from surroundings in one important respect. The century-old industrial buildings that surround it are now nothing more than facades: antique veneers around a new structure.  Whatever the relationship between Little Trinity and the trendy neighbourhood that now surrounds it, the church is probably a better reflection of those 19th-century business and community leaders who founded it than the restaurants and bars of the Distillery District that still bear those leaders' names.

Messing around with things

I've heard from some people that my original theme didn't work well on some browsers, so I'm trying something new.  Let me know what you think about the new look of the blog.  Do you like it?  Hate it?  Are you indifferent?

2: Toronto Monthly Meeting

For this week's post, I wanted to find something that would contrast with my visit last week to the Prayer Palace, and what immediately came to mind was an unprogrammed Quaker meeting.

Unlike the loud and sometimes frantic service at the Prayer Palace, Quaker worship tends to be quiet and contemplative.  The Toronto Monthly Meeting has no band or gospel choir, and with about thirty people in attendance, it's definitely not on the scale of a megachurch.  Also, on a personal level, while the Prayer Palace was a new environment for me where I didn't really know what to expect, the Toronto Meeting feels much more familiar to me: I had visited the meeting years ago a handful of times, and I have a fair number of Quaker ancestors in my family tree, so I've felt more of a historical connection to the Quakers than to most denominations.

At the Toronto Meeting, the seats are arranged in rings all facing the centre. A glass wall forms one side of the meeting room, looking out on the meeting house's small garden. The room itself is an expression of the Quaker emphasis on simplicity: no artwork or religious symbols adorn the walls, and the closest the room has to decoration is the large circular wooden table in the centre, upon which one of the members placed a small bud vase holding a sprig of a leafy green plant I couldn't identify.

For those who aren't familiar with the Quakers: an unprogrammed Quaker meeting is quite different from other forms of Christian worship.  A typical meeting is mostly silent, and there is no priest or minister... or, perhaps more accurately, there is no laity.  As a guide on the Meeting's web site puts it:

A Quaker Meeting for Worship is based on silence. It is a silence based on
expectancy. During the Meeting for Worship the expectant waiting is an attempt
to bring us nearer to God and to each other. Meeting for Worship starts as soon
as the first person enters the room and sits down.

A Meeting for Worship is a public event, to which anyone is welcome and may
share. In Meeting everyone has a part to play; the visitor is welcomed, the
regular attender is cherished, the member feels at home. All are part of the quiet
waiting upon God: anyone present is free to minister verbally when moved by the
Spirit, or continue in silent worship.

Quakers describe this form of worship as "unprogrammed", which means that
there is no one who leads the meeting through a set form. Therefore the practice
of silence places responsibility for any outcome on each person present. The
silence provides everyone with a chance to discern "God's will" individually. Do
not be anxious about distracting thoughts. Give way quietly to your awareness of
God's presence in us, among us, and in the world.

The way I've heard it put to me before was that the early Quakers were very concerned about discerning God's will.  Their concern was that ritual could be self-perpetuating: that some aspect of the worship service could end up being present because it was how things had always been done, not because it was how Christ wanted his church to worship.

The approach that the Quakers came up with to deal with this is - in theory, at least - to allow Christ to lead the worship service directly.  The congregation would pray for guidance in how to worship, and would follow whatever guidance they discerned: if someone felt guided to speak, he would speak.  Or sing, or read a passage from the Bible, as the person felt guided.

After I sat down, while I reflected on things in the silence, I found myself wondering how much this attitude was still present in modern Quakers.  While the founders of the movement were virtually obsessed with maximizing their obedience to the Christian God, what I've seen from modern Quakers often tends to be much more liberal and accepting of other religious points of view.  The meeting house bulletin board even had a posting for an upcoming nearby Buddhist meditation workshop.

I began to lose my sense of exactly how much time was passing, but we sat in silence for what seemed like quite a long time.  At first, I found it somewhat uncomfortable: any time someone would shift in their seat, I'd think to myself "this is it!  Someone's going to get up and speak!"  But they didn't.  After a while, though, I stopped worrying about it.  I thought to myself that this may be one of those meetings where nobody spoke at all, but then finally someone rose.

I suppose he was thinking about the silence as well, because that's what he spoke about: silence.  He talked about how words were limited, but silence is not... and how connecting to silence meant connecting to the divine.  He closed with "thanks be to God", sat down again, and the silence resumed.

A few minutes later, the elderly woman next to me rose to speak.  She talked about silence as well, but from a different perspective: she talked about how her friend (both a personal friend and fellow member of the congregation) had died earlier in the week, and how as she grieved, she found that her biggest regrets were found in her moments of past silence: the things she had wanted to say to her friend, but never did.  She sat back down, leaving the room in silence again.

Another few minutes later, a man rose, saying "it is said that the truth shall set you free, but history has shown that this is not always the case..."  He went on to explain how while the truth can result in painful consequences, it sets one free from fear.

While I was still mulling this over, the meeting ended: two of the members turned to each other and shook hands, signalling to everyone else to shake hands with those around them.  And with that, the silence was broken and the world that had seemingly been held at bay for an hour rused back in again.

1: The Prayer Palace

When I saw that the man sitting next to me in the pew was holding a tambourine, I knew that today's experience would be quite different from my expectations.

The Prayer Palace is Toronto's version of a megachurch: with a capacity of 3,000 people, there are larger churches in the US, but it's one of the largest - if not the largest - in Canada.

I always assumed that a church this size would have an impersonal feel, much like the Ikea, Wal-Mart and factory outlets of the large commercial area just up Highway 400 from the church: "Big Box Religion" to go along with the big box stores.  However, it didn't feel that way once I actually got in it.

The second thing that happened once I arrived (the first being that I got lost getting from the parking lot to the entrance to the main area of the church - it IS a big building) was that I was greeted personally by one of the pastors.  After I went in, while I was waiting for the service to start, I watched how people shook hands or embraced each other as they came in.  There was a real sense of community; the atmosphere wasn't that different from smaller churches I've been in... there was just more of it.

I didn't know what to expect in terms of the tone of the service.  The Prayer Palace broadcasts their services on television, but not on a channel I get, so I had never seen one before.  For starters, I didn't realize that the music would be all Gospel.

This was my first time hearing an actual Gospel choir in an actual church service in person, and all I can say is... wow.  The choir and band were crisp, tight and powerful.  For me, the music was the highlight of the service, especially the choir and lead singer.  And it's good that the music was the strong point, because there sure was a lot of it!

Now... as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, most of my religious exposure in recent years has been to my wife's Catholic church.  But at the Prayer Palace, 45 minutes into the service - when a Catholic mass would be wrapping up - the choir was just finishing the opening hymns.

This led into the first of two sermons by the senior pastor, Paul Melnichuk.  For me, this is when the tone of the service changed.  I don't know how much of it came from what the pastor said and how much came from me reading things into his actions based on what I've heard of him, but the sermon felt much less genuine to me than the hymns and musical worship.

His two half-sermons were fairly heavy on motivation and light on theology (the Bible reading of the day consisted of only two verses, Zechariah 13 verses 1 and 6), but he still seemed well-received.

This turned out to be communion Sunday, so after the sermons, things took a different - and for me, rather disturbing - turn.  I have trouble with atonement theology and imagery, so when they launched into hymns like "There is a Fountain Full of Blood", mentally, I took a step back from what was going on around me.

After several hymns, the pastor spoke again, leading the congregation in communion.  It was then that I witnessed something I'd never seen in person: as the pastor announced that he felt the Holy Spirit was present, a man in the front row started speaking in tongues.  This was followed by a woman who apparently started speaking spontaneously in something that seemed to almost be channelling the voice of God.  For me, someone who's used to staid, dignified Catholic masses to the extent that he's used to Christian worship at all, this was all very strange.

After the sermon, the congregation was invited to "visit" with each other.  This was another time that I was struck by the feeling of community in the place, as a steady stream of friendly people came by, shook my hand and wished me well.  I realized again how mistaken I was that this "megachurch" was a place where a person could rely on the anonymity of crowds.

The "visit" finished, the service turned to the offertory, which was another part of the service that didn't sit well with me.  The pastor encouraged the congregation to "show their love of the Lord" through their offering, and made allusions that their tithes were part of how Jesus' prophecies of a "prosperous church" would come to fruition.  Again, the stories I had read of the pastors may have coloured my perception of this, but I found myself taking it more than a little cynically.

The service closed with an altar call... something else I had never seen before in person.  People streamed down to the area in front of the stage from the pews, and the choir and band launched into another song... one that turned into a medley that lasted for a full hour!  At least, I think it was about an hour - it seemed to be wrapping up when I finally decided that I had to go, scarcely 3 hours after the service started.

All in all, I was struck by the contrast I saw in the Prayer Palace: it was a place full of real, enthusiastic worship from the congregation, but this was set off from what I felt was something possibly less than genuine from the pastor.  The (IMO) macabre and negative emphasis on suffering, blood and atonement was counterpointed with the life-affirming and the aspects of the service that were expressions of (from what I could tell) real joy.

But even with this contrast, none of it was what I expected.  Especially not the music: that surprise alone made the experience worthwhile for me.  While I have mixed feelings about various aspects of the service and the underlying theology, I'm not conflicted about one thing: their choir is a treasure.

Wondering when I'm going to start posting for real?

I realize that at this point, this blog's a bit of a work in progress.  My priority right now has been to get the framework of the blog set up so that it's ready once I go to post for real.

I've got a church picked out for my first Religiologue post, but it'll take a bit for me to set things up for my visit.  Look for that post in the next two weeks or so.  In the meantime, you can keep yourself amused by seeing how the layout and background changes from day to day as I settle on a "look" for the blog.