You can take the boy out of the country, they say, but you can't take the country out of the boy. For reasons that baffle me - well, not so much baffle as tickle and humble me - to this day, my aversion to religion has not stopped me from grooving on the hymns I knew and loved when I was young and very much in the church's embrace.
I've had some serious teeth-grinding encounters with the Mormon Church, particularly during the early 2000s when they joined forces with San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer to remove the right of gay people to marry. The Mormons represent, for me, the perfect example of how power corrupts. A church once persecuted for its unorthodox beliefs gets out from under that persecution and what do they do? Forget their days of being bullied and outbully the bullies in spades. Like they say, bad guys take naturally to doing bad things; for good guys to do bad things, that takes religion.
We remember it as the dark days of Prop. 8, when members of authoritarian Christianity in the U.S. united to impose their religious view on people who do not share their religious affiliation. A nasty bit of bullying that has returned, also in spades, of late.
But through it all I refuse to paint all the good folk of Salt Lake and elsewhere around the world who believe the Garden of Eden is located in Missouri with the same brush. I still find common ground with anybody who stops to listen for a quiet inner voice, no matter whether they take it as a divinity talking to them or a thought force making them aware of the beauty and richness of life and the importance of humility.
I also note that I find myself among a large number of folk who have learned from the Jews how to distinguish between religious faith and the culture which grew up around it. Hitler was not the only one to make the assumption "once a Jew, always a Jew." The many Muslims who have emigrated to Europe and left places like Saudi Arabia where to be a Saudi you have to claim you are a Muslim have followed suit. Europe is home to many Muslims who have shed their religion but insist on identifying with the Muslim Community. Listen to this guy on an anti-Mormon religion site who insists on keeping his Mormon identity even after chucking out the religious dogma.
The distinction between a religious Christian, which I am not, and a secular Christian, which I remain, is a very useful one. It recognizes the reality that no large group can be reduced to a single set of types of people, and that most definitely includes religious groups. I try each Christmas to join a group singing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, and whenever I hear Ave Maria, whether it's Schubert's version sung in Latin by Pavarotti, or in German by Jessye Norman, or another version entirely, I shut everything down to listen.
I cannot identify with the folks who have been manipulated by the Trumpists into worrying that their once ruling class white protestant tribe is at risk of being wiped out. The reason for that is I couldn't possibly care less about the so-called white race. I identify as a (cultural) Jew, a (cultural) Mormon, a (cultural) Catholic, a child of immigrants, a citizen of a mixed-race nation - to name just a few of my many identities - because I grew up among these people. I've written elsewhere about how a cantor in a synagogue made me an instant convert to Jewishness the minute he opened his mouth.
One of the things I think the Mormons, some of them religious, some of them cultural, have done that is worthy of admiration is build a musical center in Salt Lake City with five - or maybe it's four full-time and two part-time - organists and a magnificent choir and orchestra which, among other things, attracts people such as this delightful Norwegian soprano, Sissel:
Here's what I was listening to this morning.
It's only 90 minutes long, and I hope you can listen to the whole thing.
If you can't, at least zero in on the highlight piece, Slow Down.
YouTube has made that available separately, here.
Stay safe.
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