Building Community and Overcomming Convictions

An assumption that some people may have of religions are that they can, in any of the many forms, promote close-minded and intolerant attitudes while breeding an environment of repressed individuals insensitive to cultural and social diversity.

Well at least I assumed that to be so, never having been a member of a church nor really ever setting foot in one except when an elderly aunt or uncle passed away.

Being religious, through my cultural lens, meant that you hate when women chose to abort an unborn child for any reason whatsoever, or that you hate when couples of the same sex display affection or God-forbid decide to seal their bond together forever in marriage ...and that of course you hate all other religions and your God is the most omnipresent.

This week we visited a local church to publicize a collection that they organize to award at Christmas. The First United Methodist Church of Germantown or FUMCOG, is seeking proposals to fund ideas that help the community in need around Philadelphia.

Maybe its Philadelphia's tendency towards the political left or that FUMCOG is in Germantown, one of the more socially-stratified areas of the city. Both ends of the economic spectrum are present, and the people of FUMCOG were genuinely positioning the church to do what they could to help those in need.

After our scheduled interview with the two coordinators of the Community Needs Committee at FUMCOG we decided that we needed to stick around to do some more reporting, which meant sitting through mass.

A young woman who's family was saved from political turmoil in Guatemala gave an account of how the church is always ready to welcome members back who haven't been to church in a while. A Southern white man offered some words of wisdom to those in attendance on how he came to fall for a black woman and is now in an interracial family.

One of the most striking occurrences was the large grizzly-bearded black gentlemen in the pew behind me, with his bellowing tenor voice, so enthusiastically and flawlessly hitting every single note of Paul Simon's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" adapted for the church choir. I couldn't help but be moved. Later the man, Rod Thomas (picture right,) said that he has degree in theater from Temple University.

I wouldn't want those who are devoutly religious to assume that I'm an apathetic, soulless hater because I come from a culture in which religion wasn't an important part of forming who I am. I guess I learned that I'm a victim of projecting my own presumptions upon those of us who are religious. Whereas I formerly looked at religious zeal as a sign of weakness within the individual; it is apparent through this experience that church is a place for people to find community strength and therefore strengthen their communities.