{"id":2389,"date":"2008-03-18T11:49:02","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T11:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/03\/18\/uncomfortable-questions-church\/"},"modified":"2008-03-18T11:49:02","modified_gmt":"2008-03-18T11:49:02","slug":"uncomfortable-questions-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/03\/18\/uncomfortable-questions-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncomfortable Questions: Church Wedding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adrienne asks<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Why, when you apparently are an agnostic or atheist, did you get married in a church? And are you going to baptize your baby? Raise him\/her in a religious framework?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now, here’s a nice volatile question…<\/p>\n

Why did we get married in a church? Because religion is more than just superstition and mythology. I’ve written about this before<\/a>, and will no doubt write about it again.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My family is Catholic, and I was raised Catholic. I got out of school for an hour or so on Wednesday afternoon for religious education classes in middle school, and in junior high, I went to confirmation classes on Sundays after Mass. I haven’t set foot in a church in a couple of years, but I can still recite (well, reconstruct) the Nicene Creed from memory, and large chunks of the rest of the Mass as well.<\/p>\n

That instruction didn’t particularly take– as I said, I don’t go to church any more– but it was an important part of my upbringing, and it’s an important part of my family. And my family is a big part of my identity.<\/p>\n

I pushed for a church wedding because of that, and Kate went along with it because she’s way too good to me (and because neither of us knew in advance that we’d end up kneeling through the whole ceremony…). It was important to me to have a church wedding as a tribute to my family and my heritage. In a sense, it was similar to the Polish wedding dance at the reception– a way of honoring family traditions on a special occasion.<\/p>\n

(And, let’s be honest, it’s just hard to beat Catholicism for pomp and circumstance on liminal occasions, at least among Western religious traditions. If you get married or buried in the Church, you get your money’s worth of ceremony…)<\/p>\n

This is the element that I think is missing from most of the current discussions of religion, and it’s why I find the “New Atheists” so incredibly frustrating. They hammer on the mythological aspects of religion ad nauseam, but barely acknowledge the social and cultural aspects. But those are a huge piece of the picture– I bristle at the oh-so-witty references to pedophile clergy that pop up whenever Catholicism pops onto the radar not because I agree with Church doctrine (capital punishment is about the only point of overlap), but because the Church is part of my cultural heritage. My reflexive “Oh, fuck you” reaction to Catholic slurs has nothing to do with belief in God, and everything to do with my parents and grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.<\/p>\n

Family and community are a powerful part of the attraction of religion, and they don’t get addressed in most of the current discussions. Probably because it’s a Hard Problem, and not the sort of thing that provides a great platform for incredibly witty ways of calling churchgoers stupid. Which, in turn, leads me to write most of the “New Atheist” movement off as irretreivably childish.<\/p>\n

Returning to the original question, having gotten married in a church, will we have FutureBaby baptized? Almost certainly not.<\/p>\n

The way I see it, a church wedding was an appropriate time and place for paying respect to family heritage. A wedding, after all, is not just about the couple getting married, but about their friends and families coming together as a community to witness the marriage. It’s not just about the bride and groom, but also about the people who helped bring them to this point, and will help carry them forward. It’s a time to honor the past, as well as celebrate the future.<\/p>\n

The birth of a child, on the other hand, is a new beginning, and an appropriate time to break or alter traditions. FutureBaby is our<\/strong> child, and he or she will be brought up in a manner of our choosing. He or she will still be part of the family line, but he or she is also the start of a new line.<\/p>\n

Will he or she be raised in a religious framework? Not really. (Though, ironically, we looked at potential day care options last week, and we’re strongly leaning toward the day care program at the local Jewish Community Center…) He or she will no doubt pick up some bits and pieces here and there– as I said, my family is Catholic– but Kate and I don’t go to church, and we’re exceedingly unlikely to start going with FutureBaby. Some basic knowledge of Christian theology is essential information for navigating the world we live in, so I’ll probably explain it a bit, but I can’t see enrolling him or her in any formal religious instruction.<\/p>\n

So, quite frankly, it would be waste of time for almost everybody involved to have FutureBaby baptized in the church. We don’t go to church, and we’re not going to start now. I’d feel awfully hypocritical standing in the front of a church and pledging FutureBaby to a whole bunch of stuff that neither of us really believe. A sufficiently mellow parish would probably take our money and do the ceremony, but really, what would be the point?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adrienne asks: Why, when you apparently are an agnostic or atheist, did you get married in a church? And are you going to baptize your baby? Raise him\/her in a religious framework? Now, here’s a nice volatile question… Why did we get married in a church? Because religion is more than just superstition and mythology.… Continue reading Uncomfortable Questions: Church Wedding<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}