Imam Butt

I don't truly believe I was born into a faith, although my parents did go to church - religion is something I feel free to question and explore how ever I wish to. Every so often I come across a part of the religious experience which chimes, where I feel I can empathise fully with the beliefs of the faithful.

Imam Butt found a chime between his western 'hippie' beliefs in the 1960s and Islamic scholarship, going to live out his adult life with the Pashtun tribes of the Hindu Kush, awed, he suggests, by the extraordinary topography of the area and the peaceful, thoughtful form of Islam practiced there.

Around him times changed, the Swat Valley became dangerous, violent and home to a new breed of extremist Islam. The Imam didn't change with it. A man able to explore his core beliefs through a programme of intense and demanding Koranic study did not change them in the process but found them reinforced in scripture. He took up the struggle against violence and extremism, preserving the way of life he had always believed in.

Picking and Choosing - the Episcopal Church, Part II

Theo Hobson replied to my post below and said this:

<<I wrote about a visit to a Quaker meeting in the summer for this site. I said they throw out the baby Jesus with the bathwater of dogmatism.

Christianity is, at root, a cult of this mythic personality.>>

I replied with this:

<<A note - Quakers are not a Christian denomination, they are a group of believers who hold in common an approach to religion that cherishes different sources of truth and believes in the importance of personal revelation. They don't necessarily worship the 'mythic personality' of Christ, but they can do, if that is the truth revealed to them.

If you want to have Christ-worship in common with all your fellow believers then I suppose Quakers are not for you, but if you want a radically liberal approach to religion, which I think you do, and are willing to believe in Christ when those around you may not, then it might be what you are looking for.

This is just a thought, otherwise I'm pleased that the Episcopal Church can give you something of what you are looking for although I suspect more of it was to be found in England than you say.>>

I searched out Theo's piece on the Quakers (Thursday 18 March 2010 13.00 GMT) where he writes of his disappointment with the lack of Christian symbolism and structure at a Meeting he went to.

Picking and Choosing - the Episcopal Church, Part I

Theo Hobson's article in the Guardian newspaper (Friday 28 January 2011 12.44 GMT) describes his postive experiences in the Episcopal Church after his frustration with the Church of England (C of E).

Here's my response:

I too have been very impressed by the Episcopal Church's bold, brave and liberal stance on so many important issues, but you do the C of E a disservice. The point about an established church is that it includes a wide variety of voices - some liberal, many less so - and what could be more liberal than that?

There are few denominations which are spread as evenly across race, class, age and gender divides (not that the C of E doesn't have a long way to go on some of these). The Episcopal Church is a far more middle class institution than plenty of innercity C of E churches.

Joining in willingly with a bunch of people who have a load of different beliefs about many things but share a core trust in God is one of the most positive expressions of faith I can think of. Shopping around to find the church that agrees with everything you already think seems lazy and arrogant - challenge and diversity are essential in life as in faith.

Sure you don't get what you want in every way, but you do get to exercise skills of tolerance, argument and community. I'm not suggesting you should feel obliged to go to a mega evangelical homophobic stadium church if that is the antithesis of your belief, but then very, very few C of E churches are like that.

Holding onto liberal beliefs while actively engaging and changing the illiberal beliefs of others is a commission not a chore.

Lastly - one thought, why didn't you try the Quakers? Its not a ritualistic form of faith but there are meetings with clear purpose and format, its disestablished, and exceeds even the Episcopal Church in liberalism. An organised religion where members are called Friends and every book is treated as being as Holy as any other.

Picking and Choosing - Division and Unity

Where I live there are lots of churches, for every denomination, every neighbourhood, every style, every brand, every outlook, every set of opinions and every set of beliefs that I am familiar with. Between each of them there runs a line, sometimes deeper, sometimes shallower, separating even churches within a denomination and beneath the same authority.

Here's one church: liberal, cerebral, reflective, catholic in tradition. Here's another: energetic, vibrant, evangelising, socially conservative.

And who goes? To the first: middle class families, older people, in their fifties and above, retired priests, a few ordinands. To the second: students, young people, young families.

My friend T, an atheist, loves the diversity. You can choose to participate in the religious outlook you believe in, to support the values you believe are true. Anything else is dictatorial, conservative and moralising, removing the free choice of the individual.

Here's what Screwtape thinks:

<<My dear Wormwood,

.... You mentioned casually in your last letter that the patient has continued to attend one church, and one only, since he was converted, and that he is not wholly pleased with it. May I ask what you are about? Why have I no report on the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realise that unless it is due to indifference it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.... the search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil....>>

If we choose the religious experience we like the best, as we choose our favourite brand of peanut butter from the shelf, wouldn't we be creating a market where:

<<religious institutions become marketing agencies and the religious traditions become consumer commodities>>

as, in fact, the economist Peter L. Berger describes contemporary society? The big, popular churches can hoover up worshippers from the small, local ones.

Could I remove myself from the market by choosing not the commodity which suits me the best but rather the one I am already living closest to? My local church is neither conservative evangelical nor liberal catholic. I would have a short walk on Sunday mornings. I don't imagine it teaches anything I would disagree with, or at least no more than any other place of worship. And, given that members of one outlook on Christianity don't tend to live together, it's probably a safe assumption that there would be a good mix of views and beliefs, and not a bad one of affluence and class.

But, says T, does this choice really exist? What if you lived next to a church you believed was fundamentally wrong? Now that we do pick and choose is it worth being a martyr to your local community when most of it heads off to the church they like the best on a Sunday morning? What about those churches where no one lives locally, such as in the centre of town, should they just fold?

We finished lunch and I told him I'd think about it.