thread: 2007-01-04 : Self-identification vs. Membership
On 2007-01-05, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
I was baptized Episcopalian, went to Episcopal schools, got confirmed in the Episcopal church, and I'm an Episcopalian now. Also no arguments in the shower. But I did fall away from the church in my adolescence—I almost said, "from my faith," but I didn't really have faith at the time. The thing is, I came back.
Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor at New Republic when I interned there (and who told me, "Sydney, you're an old person's idea of a young person"), once wrote:
In one of his discourses Kierkegaard says that it is easier for somebody who is not a Christian to become a Christian than it is for somebody who is a Christian to become a Christian. I am always at a disadvantage toward my own tradition. I am not only quickened by my intimacy with what I have been given, I am also dulled by it. I lack the wakefulness of the stranger. I should conduct myself toward the tradition to which I have fallen heir like an actor who has played a scene poorly: I should go out and come in again.
