secular saints

[trochee]

I was having a conversation about family religions with some lab colleagues. One told a story of her Roman Catholic father and Protestant German mother, and how she was raised with some question about whether Protestants were really Christians. Another lab-mate shared his story about an old high school classmate who is now a Republican organizer, who claimed that "90% of Christians who attend church every Sunday are Republicans", but when pressed, conceded that he was talking about Protestants, not Christians.

I realized that I don't have this perspective on family religion. In my house, I was raised with a collection of venerated icons on the walls of the house, as I imagine that some families might put up small shrines to Saint Michael or Mary Mother of God. Except that in my house, the icons were selected from the radical pantheon: Mohandas K. Gandhi, Emma Goldman and Che Guevara; Bernice Johnson Reagon, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger; Fanny Lou Hamer, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Junior.

I'm lucky -- most people who find their way to this pantheon have to reject the family line, whether that be faith in government, religion, or sexism. I am blessed by being born into a family that already sees the way of engaged compassion as something to strive for.

Comments

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

You know, i'd be surprised about the familial icons, except that you've mentioned growing up near L5P =)

[trochee.livejournal.com]

heh. and we were there at the beginning, before it became the hip urban shopping center that it is today.

[lapartera.livejournal.com]

What's even more amazing is that the family icons haven't changed that much from those your parents grew up with in their families of origin (at least some parts of those families!). Red diapers x2 generations.

[isolt.livejournal.com]

Though I'm not longer Christian, I was raised Protestant (although I come from several generations of staunchly liberal Protestants, which is nice), and I didn't think the Protestant/Catholic divide was a big deal until I got to know pfrank really well. Of all the cultural barriers that might impede our understanding one another, the biggest and most frequent issues all seem to go back, at their root, to the difference between the Protestant and Catholic worldviews.

It's funny -- and kind of scary -- how deep some of the basic ideas and mindsets can go, even when neither of you has believed a word for it for a very long time.

Being raised Protestant, though, my family was definitely not much for the concept of saints, secular or otherwise.

[alice-ayers.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a very warm, thoughtful home to grow up in.

I'm Jewish but was raised without too much of the religion of the religion, though alot of the community (I grew up in a nice, educated liberal Massachusetts area north of Boston, on the shore). Oddly, I've been pretty fixated on female saints lately.

[damidnara.livejournal.com]

I really didn't appreciate the Protestant/Catholic divide until I had a good friend from Belfast (who was raised in a Protestant family). Whenever I mentioned anything that could be considered Catholic Irish she mostly bristled, or related how her family would bristle, to be more precise. Her family was very proud to be Protestant, displaying the Father's Orange Order certificate on the wall. She would tell me things that an I as an American (generally percieved to be oblivious to struggles outside the US) did not previously consider. I got a greater understanding of how passionate people can get when they believe that not only are they right, but that others are evil for not agreeing with them. This arrogance really frightens me.

My parents raised me in a pretty atheist way, my dad pointing out how wacky he thought christianity was, and my mom feeling so guilty for her Original Sin (which I never understood) that she couldn't go to church. My dad created his own "church" which was a handy tax-write-off and his own personal protest against the rhetoric that was instilled in him by the Episcopalian church and my mom began to feel a little better about herself when she got involved with the Quakers. That was how they could cope with what they had struggled with.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dkg_/]

IIRC, the photo of a young Castro in the hallway was more than once confused with dad by visiting friends!

[trochee.livejournal.com]

heh. yes, I remember that. "I didn't know your dad ever smoked cigars."