As college progressed, I found myself completing a degree in film with a very liberal interdisciplinary studies minor. And I loved it. However, the freedom of exploration that I carved out for myself in my undergraduate career led to a new discomfort with the absolute certainty I found in my Baptist church.

I began attending an Episcopal church with some friends who had begun their search for a new kind of Christian expression. They, too, were Baptist exiles. They, too, had become uncomfortable with the spiritual places from whence they came. So, I fumbled and flailed and copy-catted my way through a few Episcopal services with the grace of the ballet-dancing hippos from Fantasia. I learned to bow and kneel and cross myself. I became comfortable with my female vicar and even the taste of real wine during communion (which is taken EVERY WEEK!).

I'm not entirely comfortable in the Episcopal church, though. I do not think it is the Anglican Communion that makes me uneasy, though. I think there are deeper personal and spiritual issues. I think that the fire in my soul, the fire of a love of God, is down to a faint ember. I can't really put my finger on it, but I am lost in a way that has shaken me. There are so many questions of belief as opposed to symbolic understanding. There is a sort of non-literal truth and community tradition reality that has made my Baptist-rooted consciousness uncomfortable. I'd thought that if you took any of the pieces away, the whole house of cards fell. But maybe the house isn't made of cards at all, and these crazy Episcopalians are trying to tell me that it's something else. That God isn't as worried about that one magic prayer as God is worried about how we treat others. And it just adds to my confusion.

So, I'm starting something different. I'm going on a pilgrimage of sorts. It isn't a pilgrimage to a physical place, but it is a pilgrimage to the farthest reaching places my soul can go. I'm going to visit houses of worship, meetings of practitioners, and have conversations with true believers of all different stripes. My hope is to genuinely connect with people of different backgrounds and traditions, and to see what it means to these people to believe what they do. I want to see this fire in others, regardless of what it's rooted in. I want to see if people actually are what they say they are, or if everyone is just spinning his or her wheels. I may even talk to some fervent atheists and agnostics along the way, you know, for perspective.

Brace yourself, though, because I get the feeling that this could be truly weird as I tramp through churches and temples and Kingdom Halls and synagogues and covens and circles and mosques. I'm sure I'll blunder through the majority of it, but I'll do my best not to be some sort of ridiculously insensitive asshole. My promise is to try.

The point of this is not buffet-style religion or some Po-Mo amalgamation, but to experience what it is that makes people believe. What keeps people coming back, and what orders the worlds of these believers? Is there something else out there?

So, hold my hand. It's time to go to church.

T

Baptism by firing squad

I grew up Baptist.

Not just Baptist, but in a small association of Baptist churches in the south. We were a family proud of our deep roots in this association. Both of my parents' fathers were Baptist preachers, and my father grew up in Alaska as the son of a missionary who was sent from this same small association.

I went to the same church in my hometown the entire time I was growing up there. It never occurred to me that there was any reason not to go to that church. We knew everyone and had our spots and our ministries and our friends and our jobs. At different times in my adolescence, I took up the offering for the Sunday night services, I ran the sound board, I ran the projector. Sometimes I was called on to pray aloud. I had been saved and baptized in this church. I outlasted a handful of pastors, youth ministers, music directors, and the like. It would not be overstepping to say that I was a rising star of exemplary church membership in this particular congregation.

Except, I wasn't.

I had questions. I had concerns that gnawed at my insides. I had issues and desires and guilt and disillusionment and ethical problems. So, I went to my spiritual mentors. I talked to them about the failings I found in myself, and they offered advice and reassurance. I was told more than once that salvation is not an emotion, but a state of being, and that nothing could take it away. I was also reminded that I could continue to pray for forgiveness and continue to read my Bible and commune with God through my daily life. So that's what I did.

I moved off to college. I created a new social circle and decided upon a church in my new locale that was in the same association as my home church. I struggled with a decision to join it or not, and decided to retain the voting and communion privileges at my parents' church.

I found a girlfriend and we went to college ministries and churches together. We pushed the limits of our chastity and almost died with guilt. Repent, fail, repeat. We talked about how amazing it would be if we were to grow up into godly people and work in a church and be able to share love and peace with the world full-time.

We even ventured into a non-denominational church regularly. Once, we got tricked into joining a friend in going to a Charismatic church. As one might imagine, my parents were mildly scandalized.

Then, in the midst of all of this, I fell into a deep depression. I knew that I was a guilty, dirty soul. Not only was I pushing my own limits with sex, but I was leading my girlfriend into sin, too. And that was the tip of the iceberg.

Internally, I was struggling with the battle of my life. I had dealt with the temptation and predilection and anguish of the deepest darkness. I had begun looking at gay pornography when I was in high school. And I liked it. Not just that, but I was beginning to realize that I might actually like men. You know, sexually.

So, in the midst of this, I prayed and studied and hoped that God would change me. And God didn't. But that isn't to say that it was all in vain. My personal understanding of God was pretty healthy, and I was happy to be a super-Christian. And then I was selected to go on a year-long mission to China. I hoped that this would be just the break I needed. It was not.

Instead of making things better, living abroad, learning a new (and difficult) language and culture was stressful beyond what I could have possibly anticipated. And some things went down. Fast-forwarding through an extremely formative year in my life, I returned home to the States. I had my heart so tightly wound about a wrongly found target that I could hardly tie my own shoes without thinking about him. And I got to tell the panel of white-haired preacher-men who were in charge of my time abroad about my homosexual experiences on their dime.

This sent me running into the arms of a mentor who I knew would be non-judgmental if not completely accepting. We talked through it, and we wrestled with what it meant, where it could lead, and how to move forward. It was truly a breath of fresh air. In the end, though, the ultimate answers were that I had to change. God could change me (though I'd been trying that for years), or I could be celibate.

This led me to question the efficacy of this Baptist tradition. There had been lots of claims to truth that were sort of unsubstantiated. And the fundamental beliefs were sometimes hard to swallow. How could a good God be all-powerful, and yet horrible things happen to innocents? This one question is probably my biggest hang-up of all. I know Nietzsche has answered this one, but his answers don't work, either.

So, I'm embarking on a journey. I've loved God before. I've felt God before. And I knew God to be good. I knew God to be love. I knew God to be the bringer of peace. But I've lost that God. That God has been replaced with an angry God who disapproves and gnashes teeth and banishes and damns. I'm not sure the exact process through which God was transformed to me. But God was and is, at this moment, changed.

I want a new God. A new breath of life. I want to dance before a God that delights in me. I want to revel in my humanity and the goodness of a creator who sees the beauty I do. I want to rekindle the fire. I want to suscitatio incendia.

And that's what I hope to do.

T