Reflections on Religion

February 27, 2005

Reflections on Religion

American Military University

HM 230, Introduction to World Religions

by James Landrith

My relationship with religion has evolved much over the short thirty-four years I’ve spent on this Earth. In that time, I’ve shifted from Mennonite to non-denominational Protestant Christian, back to Mennonite, to Southern Baptist and finally to agnosticism.

My childhood in Central Illinois was spent primarily in the small village of Deer Creek, midway between Bloomington/Normal and Peoria. My father had long been a member of a small Mennonite congregation in Pekin, Illinois. I attended this church for several years with my brothers and parents. As this church was over twenty miles away, I did not participate in their Vacation Bible School or similar programs. Instead, my parents opted to enroll me in Vacation Bible School and Know Your Bible (KYB Club) programs at local churches.

At about age 13, I began attending a few local non-denominational Protestant churches with classmates. In high school, I began to attend a local Methodist church with one of my best friends. The congregation’s new pastor was energetic and eager to shake things ups, so I also participated in their revitalized youth program. For reasons I cannot recall, I opted to follow my friend and his brothers to a Mennonite congregation in a neighboring city. I participated in this congregation’s youth group until I left Central Illinois to enter the United States Marine Corps.

During basic training, I was issued the standard Gideon’s New Testament. As outside reading material was restricted to religious Scriptures during boot camp, I read from the New Testament nightly. On Sundays, I attended the inter-denominational chapel services with other recruits.

Following my graduation from basic training, I was sent to my military occupational specialty school at Camp Johnson in Jacksonville, N.C. I didn’t attend chapel or any local churches for the duration of my training. Upon graduation from Camp Johnson, I was issued orders to report across town to Camp Lejeune.

Being single, I lived in the bachelor enlisted quarters (BEQ). Within six months of reporting for duty at Camp Lejuene, another BEQ resident invited me to attend services at a Southern Baptist church in Jacksonville. Feeling out of place and looking for a connection to home, I took my friend up on his invitation to attend services. Eventually, I was baptized in the church and my attendance on Sundays extended to a few weekdays, and eventually to nearly every night of the week.

Eventually, I stopped attending this particular church after a series of sermons in which the pastor questioned the faith of every member of the congregation who didn’t immediately disenroll their children from public schools and then enroll them in the church’s K-8 school. This offensive declaration by the pastor and the church’s continued encroachments on my personal time lead to my decision to stop attending services altogether.

Soon after this experience, I was deployed to Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Spending several months in an Islamic nation and as a result of my experience with the Jacksonville church I began to examine my own beliefs in greater depth. In 1994, I was married in a church near my wife’s home in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. The first pastor assigned to our ceremony was rude and completely unwilling to allow my wife and I to include her eight year old son in the ceremony via the presentation of family medallion following the exchange of vows. After my wife complained to the head pastor, he assigned another pastor to perform the ceremony. While not confirmed, our belief is that the first pastor was less concerned about tacking on an addition to the ceremony, as he was about the fact that my wife was black and I was not. The second pastor was the complete opposite of the other pastor and not only agreed to perform the family medallion ceremony, but also retained a copy of the family medallion ceremony script for use with a future couple and child.

My next experience with religion involved the debate surrounding Bob Jones University and their use of Scripture to condemn interracial marriages like mine as contributing to the rise of one-world government and the anti-Christ. In the autumn of 1998, I contacted Bob Jones University to inquire about their policy and beliefs with regard to interracial relationships. I received a politely worded letter from the school’s public relations director regarding this policy. I posted this letter on my website and it very quickly made the rounds in both secular and spiritual circles worldwide. Much of this attention was due to the fact that Bob Jones University resisted officially posting the justification for their policy online or in print. My website’s posting of this letter was the only resource online that outlined the school’s justification for the policy. My involvement with the Bob Jones University scandal contributed to my further evolving religious beliefs.

I began to learn about the history of anti-miscegenationist views in American religious institutions. At the same time, my own beliefs began to evolve from that of confident and secure individual who always believed to that of someone who doesn’t know what to believe. I currently view the world not through Mennonite, Methodist or Southern Baptist eyes, but through the eyes of an open-minded agnostic. I no longer know what I believe and I continue to educate myself on the topic to better inform myself.

Having shifted from that of lifelong believer to undecided I do believe that a person can be a former participant of a religion and still be critically objective. However, I am not sure that one can be an active adherent to a particular belief system and be critically objective. That said, I’m not confident that an active adherent can’t be critically objective either.

I do not believe that a religion can be truly understood by an outsider. I believe it is possible to understand the basics or the origins of a belief system. I believe it is possible to paint a fairly complete picture and a particular belief system, but I do not believe it is possible to fully comprehend said belief system without experiencing it firsthand.

{mos_sb_discuss:8}