History and My Religious Choices

For years I've been most attracted to Christian denominations which have about them an aura of tradition and history. This I attributed to the fact that I'm a historian, and assumed it was nothing more than aesthetic preference. Recently, however, I've realized there's more to it than that. It sounds like a cliche, but who you've been really is part of who you are. What's more, how we understand our own past says something about us. Given the diversity in the Christian tradition to which I belong, it's not enough to just say you're going to follow the Bible and not worry about anything else. I grew up Baptist, the sola Scriptura denomination par excellence, and almost all the key tenets are based off highly contestable interpretations of scripture. Admitting that tradition counts for something feels to me more honesty than heresy.

If I'm going to join your faith, what I want is to know what you make of the past 2000 years of Christian history, generally involving people with beliefs as pure as your own and whose experiences represent a valuable spiritual resource. I also want to know what's important to you, as seen in what you've fought for over the years and what you're likely to hold dear when the tide of history alters everything else. I don't care so much about the details of your worship service, though for purely aesthetic reasons I avoid those with modern music and such, but I do want to know why you do the things you do, and what is commemorated in all the small rituals and services scattered throughout the year. Issues like these play a large role in where we situate ourselves in Creation, and ideally in a universe of religious experience that includes billions who are not Christian at all.

For reasons I won't go into here, this year I've resolved to finally select a denomination. In a few short months, I hope to have formally hooked up with either this outfit or this one, two churches very different from each other and yet each attractive to me in its own way. I honestly have no idea which way this will break, and of course given the fact that I spent most of 2003 explaining why I wasn't a Deaniac but then wrote this, it's entirely possible that I could wind up a convinced Catholic or something. To be continued...