thread: 2005-08-09 : The New Open House 2: Religion
On 2005-08-12, Ginger Stampley wrote:
I was raised among but not of the Southern Baptists. My mother was the only person in her little town in East Texas who never got baptized: they got the town drunk but they never got her! The preacher told her when she was five that her dog wouldn't be waiting in heaven for her, and I think she decided not to go. I can tell I'm her daughter.
I did attend religious schools (Episcopalian & Baptist) so I've had my share of chapel and preaching and being told I was going to hell. I was never baptized myself. I was married to my ex in the Methodist church by my high school history teacher because I had to have a religious officiant to use the chapel at our university, and as my mother said, he was the only preacher I could forgive for being a Christian.
My ex was a raving atheist who would not shut up about it. I think he's the one who made me reconsider spirituality and religion because he was so obviously wrong about it.
I went through a phase of identifying as neopagan, but I am not a very good magician and I'm at peace with that. Philosophically, I'm closer to a lot of the neopagan tenets than I am to most of what I identify as Christianity based on my childhood experiences. I would call myself spiritual, not religious, and not in need of $DEITY to tell me what's right and wrong. I admire people who get Jesus (or Allah or Buddha) and lift up their own lives and other people's based on that, but it's not going to happen to me.
The tension in Dogs between modern religion/ethics and the religion/ethics of the characters is one of the compelling things about it for me, probably because it reflects tensions in my own spiritual life.
