From Right to Left: My Political and Spiritual Journey

I've remarked that I'm not the conservative that I used to be. An online friend asked what made me NOT conservative. Since it's such a long story, and I'm a lazy typist, I thought I'd copy it here. Not that anyone's going to read it, but at least it's here and I don't have to type it again.

I was conservative right up through 9-11. I watched Fox News and Bill O' Reilly, and listened to John Boy and Billy in the mornings on WQUT. I supported Bush while standing on the rubble with the rescue workers. I supported Bush when he sent troops into Afghanistan. Locally, I was just finishing up my first year of teaching, and Tennessee was going through a budget crisis. the Republicans in the state were willing to slash the education budget, which would have included cutting mine and about 100 other teaching jobs in the NE Tennessee region alone. Anything to avoid the dreaded income tax. At that point, I thought maybe it wouldn't hurt to vote democrat when it came to local and state levels.

Around the same time, Bush passed "No Child Left Behind", which at first glance looks good, but the more I heard about it and the deeper I dove into it, the more it dawned on me that it was essentially a sabotage of the public school system.

Also around that same time, Bush was picking a fight with Iraq, with a half-assed attempt to link them to 9-11. That really concerned me. But probably the straw(men) that broke the camel's back was the administration's reaction to mere questioning of their policies. They in turn, along with Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, John Boy and Billy, and other supporters would question the patriotism (and Christianity) of those asking the questions. That's a very dangerous attitude to have regardless of which end of the political spectrum it's coming from. It was then that a lot of things were starting to make sense, and I started to see through the veneer of God, guns, and gays that the GOP uses to rally the base and saw them for what they really were: rich, corporate, corrupt men who were determined to keep everybody else down. As silly as it sounds, I felt betrayed.

I reluctantly started looking more into the Democartic Party. I still was uneasy with them, with the perception that they were wishy-washy, and more concerned about hurt feelings than getting something done. The deeper I looked, the more I saw that perception wasn't as widespread as the GOP made it out to be.

Through all this, we weren't attending church regularly. When we did go to church, we would go up to my Dad's church 30 miles away. Because of the distance, we just weren't going, and we were starting to feel the void. We decided we should start looking for a church closer to home.

I grew up in the Christian Church/Chuch of Christ, the middle branch of the Stone-Campbell movement between the more liberal Disciples of Christ and the more conservative (noninstrumental) Church of Christ. Even in being in the middle branch, it's still pretty conservative and exclusionary (i.e. "We're the only one's saved"). My dad's church was conservative and fundamentalist, but thankfully, not exclusionary. That's to their credit. And I knew they were more the exception than the norm. We concluded it would be easier to be conservative in a liberal church than be liberal in a conservative church (that's not entirely true, but oh well...). So we decided we would use this as an opportunity to explore other, more mainline denominations...Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran...and even though they're entirely too liberal, we might even explore the Episcopal Church.

On Christmas Eve, 2002, we were both in bed by 10:30, she was asleep and I was wide awake quietly watching TV (very typical for us). At 11:00 I was flipping through the channels when I came across a church service. It was very high church...and I found myself really spiritually moved by it. If I had ever had a spiritual "a-ha" moment in my life, that was it. I'd spent my life turning up my nose to Catholic-like worship, a typical attitude of someone in my denomination. But I'd never experienced it firsthand. At first I thought it was Roman Catholic, but then I saw a woman priest, so then I thought it was Episcopalian. Finally at the end, they announced it was a presentation of The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Wow! The Lutherans?! I never knew. I woke my wife up and pointed to the TV and said, "This is what I want."

In my research on these denominations, I came across Beliefnet. Well, my wife found it, actually. There I lurked alot on the Lutheran board, the A/E board, the C2C board reading the discussions/debates/arguments, eventually finding my voice and chiming in on occasion. I think Beliefnet helped me move to the middle and beyond politically and theologically as well.

The policies and attitudes of the Christian right were becoming glaringly hypocritical to me. My new viewpoint in Christian beliefs changed my political beliefs in other issues besides the War in Iraq and education. In turn, my new political beliefs helped shed a new perspective on the teachings of Christ.

When we finally visited churches, we went to a Lutheran (ELCA) church, a Lutheran (LCMS) church, and an Episcopal Church. Out of the three, the one we liked the most was the ELCA church, so we joined them and became Lutheran. Denomination wise, however, I was ironically being drawn more and more to The Episcopal Church. I can't logical explain the appeal. I guess The Holy Spirit.

When we moved to Pittsburgh, we looked at Episcopal and Lutheran churches...with more emphasis on the Episcopal. But we never found any place we really liked. Now that were here we've pretty much found an Episcopal Church we think we'll really like. And our long journey on the Cantebury Trail will be complete. And I feel like a proud member of the Christian Left.

So if I have any old friends who in a one in a million chance come across this, maybe they'll understand a little better about "what on earth happened to me."