My teenage step triggering unbelief
My own unconscious and conscious biases, including religious ones, inevitably started at an early age. I am an only child. My parents were lovely, caring people. As I grew up I wasn’t aware of belief in God playing any part their lives. Not that they were ‘unbelievers’. It’s just that as far as I know, religious beliefs just weren’t a factor for them, and thus they were not for me either.
The first time I really thought about religion was when I was sixteen and started dating my first girlfriend, who was a Christian. I joined her in going to the Methodist church and was open to her beliefs as this didn’t seem to affect our relationship. After we had been together a couple of years she went to a teacher’s training college, studying to be a teacher of Religious Education. I didn’t mind her having what I had come to perceive as ‘these funny ideas’ but the thought of her spending the coming decades ‘indoctrinating’ children made me very uneasy. I said that if she was to pursue this path we had better break up. She did continue, and we parted our ways.
We both felt a lot for each other, so our break-up stuck a knife into my heart. In my case, the Christian religion ceased to be primarily an intellectual issue. My subsequent negativity and antagonism were evident in doctrinal discussion. But the deeper issue and motivating factor, which few were aware of, was the hurt caused to and by a precious broken relationship. I had become a militant atheist.
Mum & Dad
One example of how this developed was at university (now ‘City, University of London’). I had a great time at university. However, as student body president, at the annual dinner, it was traditional for the president to say grace before the meal. I refused to do this, though my name is ‘Grace’!
I have been through many ‘belief’ stages since then including, more recently, spending thirty years at the local Baptist church, where Maria and I were baptised together – total immersion! However, with the arrival of a more dogmatically focussed minister, we changed our spiritual home to Quakers. Whatever my personal religious beliefs now, a desire to be a bridge-builder has really grown in me in recent years. When you look at the present-day world, it is quite clear that bridging conflicting gaps and trust-building is an overarching need.
A great time at university
The bridge of love in your heart must be strong enough to carry the load of truth you want to get across it.
It’s no good trying to get a ten-tonne truck over a three-tonne bridge.