Community

[She] had the half thought that she would go and find the church phone book, but she realized that she wasn’t in the phone book anymore and neither was he and anyway there was no phone book for those who had left.

—Hanna Pylväinen, We Sinners

Sanctuary

Familiar faces, long unseen but not forgotten or forgetting, smile and nod toward me with friendly recognition. The extended hands are shaken with Hey, – ! fitting tidily in place with a remembered name where God’s Peace used to be. I respond to the polite questions about what I am up to these days with a deftness that improves as the evening progresses. All writings and publications go unmentioned.

They’re probably as nervous as I am, I remind myself at first. Soon I am not so nervous anymore and I think that perhaps they never were, either.

Standing beneath ceiling tiles I helped to glue up, on carpet I used to clean when my committee’s turn came, our brief conversations hop brightly across silent waters of unspoken things via lilypads of neutral topics. My eyes and those of a one-time brother or sister in faith lock and linger and take in the measure of the years as we talk of children growing up in our homes and moving on. Then another face slides into view and smiles, and I nod and wave my way to the next exchange of updates and memories.

These are the people of my first forty years, my friends and travel companions when I was on the way and the journey alongside them through a dark and sinful world. Now I am part of that world, an outsider, here as a visitor in a place that used to be mine, too.

It actually hurts that they are so friendly, that they remember, that they seem to mean it when they say it’s good to see me. It was good to see them, too, but it brought renewed awareness of a hole inside that will likely never quite be filled.

There’s not a God- or Jesus-shaped hole in my heart, but a people-shaped one. It’s them I miss, not some demanding, unpleasant, shape-shifting superhero characters ¹ who faded from my consciousness far quicker than the flesh-and-blood people who gathered there with me, week after week, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

I sing along with them, enjoying the music and our making of it but baffled that I’d ever believed the words I remember and see in the book held in my hands. Somewhere in those thin pages are the words Sing O people of the Lord, praises to the Lamb of God, and I am no longer one of those people. I will not be here next Sunday, or the one after that.

I’ve already done my time in these pews, listening to sermons with critical commentaries about them running through my head until one of my little kids would mercifully start to fuss and I’d have an excuse to get up for some air. Mine wasn’t much different from the experience of Father Michael Paul Gallagher, who listened to a Gospel reading at Mass while doubting (for good scholarly reasons!) that the red-letter words of the text ever had been actually spoken by Jesus. He found it “an alarming and lonely experience to be there with my community, and yet to feel cut off from the core of why we were gathered there.” ²

Does it even matter to these people, I wonder, seeing them all warmly surrounded by parents and spouses and children and lifetime friends, whether it is true? Some of them do realize that it’s not, at least not all of it. But there they are, just the same.

A cozy cocoon [Flickr page]

Therapist Calvin Mercer observes that fundamentalists “tend to avoid new experiences by remaining isolated in their fundamentalist networks, thereby avoiding the various novel influences that flow into an emerging identity.” ³ The ideal for the group is that “the fundamentalist Christian can live his or her life inside a protected cocoon constructed in a form consistent with fundamentalist ideology.” ⁴

The sheltered community–God’s Kingdom, in Laestadian parlance–is paramount. Everything and everybody else is of “the world,” sinful, dangerous, and generally to be avoided.

The fundamentalist does not stand alone. The fundamentalist exists in and is supported by a social network that usually includes a religious community and, often, a biological family as well. The church or campus group that serves as the primary social group for the fundamentalist provides not only social interaction and support, but also ideological training.⁵

Perhaps nowhere else in American religion is this more harshly true than the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, an offshoot of Mormonism featuring polygamy and hard-line control of members under a strict morality code. Everything around you is of, and dictated by, the FLDS. It is your entire community, both physically and spiritually. When you leave the FLDS, you literally get out of town. And you certainly don’t go back for friendly visits like the one I had.

Brenda Nicholson told me that leaving the FLDS was the hardest thing she’s ever done. “I knew that once I walked away, it was over. My family, friends, community–everyone and everything that had been a part of my life would be gone. I knew the drill.” She had been well schooled in the protocol from the old-time Mormon prophet Brigham Young: “Leave apostates alone, severely!”

Now, she would “be looked upon as apostate. A traitor to God. And worse, I took my children with me and now I had ‘their innocent blood on my skirts.’” Even so, she said, “I knew I had to do it. My conscience wouldn’t permit me to stay. If nothing else, I had to leave to protect my children.”

I asked her how it felt leaving the community behind.

In many ways these last few years, since we left, have been very lonely. It’s like starting over alone in a strange world. I can’t say what the future may bring for sure, but it’s very doubtful I’ll ever be part of an organized religion again. I had enough of it. I know how to love, and I do so freely now. I have met some amazing people and gained friends within the educational community. It has changed my life for the better. It’s not the same as family, not quite, but hopefully someday I’ll have both.

She misses family and the feeling of belonging, but added, “I don’t miss the oppression and sadness.”

A woman I know who left my old Laestadian Lutheran church doesn’t miss that part, either. Nor does she seem to have even the nostalgia I sometimes get for the community. She’s only felt relief about leaving so far, she said.

The communities that I have found outside of the church fulfill something deep that has been missing in my life for a long time. It is me as an individual they embrace! Not my line of genealogy, not how many kids I have, not who I’m married to but me and who I am!

Her new friends, she said, “share my passions in life! My true passions!” She has chosen them, rather than merely having them handed to her as “friends by default.”

That night of my visit, I found myself lingering around the foyer of the church, soaking up the warmth and evident goodwill from people I hadn’t seen for years yet quickly felt at home talking with again. But this former sister in faith said she “scooted out as fast as I could” from one recent LLC event. “It’s been hard for me to get past the angst of how they view me, and the exclusivity of it all still really annoys the heck out of me! I still feel comfortable around my old friends, but I do feel that I can’t truly be myself without a few cross-eyed stares.”

Someone else I know, a brilliant amateur scholar of things biblical who studied his way out of faith but hasn’t made a clean break of it yet, considers himself “still fairly good friends with people from my former church community. Some of them know that I am no longer a believer, and several even know why.” A few of them he suspects “are even harboring serious doubts themselves.” He hasn’t resisted going to church, because his “wife is comfortable in a church community.” They are currently doing a bit of church shopping, not having found one where they both feel at home.

His wife knows that he is “not a believer,” he said. (We’re not talking about Laestadian “believers” here; my friend is from a majority black church hundreds of miles from the nearest LLC congregation.) Fortunately, though, she

is fine with it. She’s known for a little while (spouses are usually clued in). She has been very inquisitive and interested in why I no longer believe, and she understands intellectually–but she can’t get past the Pascal’s Wager mentality with regard to her own faith. I don’t push it. She hints that she respects my willingness to be “objective.” It has been such a relief! My mother-in-law knows too. And she doesn’t seem to care.

Hopefully they can find a church with songs my friend will find a little bit less creepy. “It’s all about ‘I am nothing . . . I am a wretch without Jesus,’” he complained to me. “‘My life is meaningless without your love, God.’ And all the songs that glorify the blood spillage on the cross. That stuff is psychologically crummy.” I’d thought about that a bit, too, as I belted out verse after verse along with my former brethren. And we never even got to the song with that part about being drunken with the bridegroom’s love.

———

Further reading: The Visit from January 2013, about another return visit I made a few years ago, equally pleasant; Round-Trip Trauma about the social pull that sometimes brings ex-members back, at least for a while; Section 4.2.3 of my book An Examination of the Pearl under the subheading “Separation from the World”; and a public Facebook posting by Brenda with a horrifying description of conditions in the crazy cult she left behind. I hasten to add that, despite its fundamentalism, restrictiveness, and authoritarian tendencies, the LLC is not a cult and certainly not in the same league as the FLDS.

Click on individual images to enlarge, or check out the photo page for the second one in my Flickr photostream. They are Copyright © 2014-15 Edwin A. Suominen. You may freely use the second one for non-commercial purposes, with attribution, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Notes

---

1. Remember, it’s a Trinity. The Fantastic Three? ↩

2. Quoted in Ruth A. Tucker, Walking Away from Faith: Unraveling the Mystery of Belief and Unbelief (InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 131. ↩

3. Calvin Mercer, Slaves to Faith: A Therapist Looks Inside the Fundamentalist Mind (Praeger, 2009), p. 30. ↩

4. Mercer at p. 152. ↩

5. Mercer at p. 150. ↩

 

Open Dialogue over the Faith Boundary

He drew a circle that shut me out–
 Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
 We drew a circle that took him in!

—Edwin Markham, “Outwitted”

The traditional approach

Note: The presentation reviewed here was made more powerful by an example of its author practicing what he preaches; the bottom half of this post contains a gracious reply I received to my open letter.

During its annual Summer Services last month, my old church’s pastoral director Keith Waaraniemi gave a talk entitled “How to approach another person.” It was based on a work presented a year earlier at a large gathering of the church’s sister organization, the SRK.¹

The presentation was excellent. There is much in it to praise, even for someone as vocal as I have been about issues confronting the church and its doctrines.

Laestadianism does not emphasize individual preachers, and I try to avoid doing so as well when critiquing their sermons and writings. My points are about the organization and what it teaches, not the people doing the teaching. This time is different, though: I want to offer credit where credit is due, and have decided to do so by name.²

Keith Waaraniemi

Indeed, the whole point of this remarkably thoughtful presentation–encouraging human contact and understanding, even between people of differing views–makes me a bit hopeful that a personal approach would not be unwelcome for this blog post. So, I will take it a step further and address Mr. Waaraniemi directly, with an open letter.

Keith (as I will presume to refer to him from this point on) and I are an unlikely pair for undertaking any correspondence, even without a thousand or so people looking on. I left my childhood faith after forty years, and in a very public way that caused a great deal of upset among people in the church. Keith has dedicated his professional life to the Laestadian Lutheran Church (LLC), serving for many years as a preacher and in leadership roles of its central organization. But hopefully my letter will be taken as it is intended–friendly, complimentary, with a few points gently made along the way to advance mutual understanding.

———

Dear Keith,

I really liked the presentation you gave at Summer Services recently. It was warm, compassionate, balanced, and showed a great deal of understanding about human needs. I know this sort of praise is unusual to hear, even from believers, but hope you won’t be unsettled by it.³ The sense of service and humility on the part of preachers in the LLC is quite refreshing, actually. It’s something I think you guys really do get right, in the midst of a country full of ego-driven, money-grubbing televangelists and megachurch pastors.

Slide #20

For me, one of the highlights of the talk was where you and Aimo Helén provided a simple and reasonable summary about the way to maintain human relations: “We care for them by coming close, and talking” (28:20). I appreciated how you encouraged contact not just with believers, but non-Laestadian neighbors as well (28:50), and elsewhere, how everyone is actually your neighbor.

Including me! An open letter from this outspoken LLC apostate is probably one you read with some reluctance, and that is entirely understandable. Thanks for doing so, though. It’ll be fine.

There is, I know, another motive for believers to engage in such unequally yoked contacts, the desire to “convey living faith to another person” (19:40). That’s understandable, too. You have a message that you feel is of great urgency to people’s eternal salvation, so of course you will want to share it! “We have been given the task of being ambassadors of Christ. God speaks through us,” you say, adding that you and your listeners have been entrusted with the message of forgiveness. “God makes his appeal through us, through his own. We implore the world on behalf of Christ, that they would be reconciled to God” (20:20).

Slide #38

The desire almost always comes from genuine concern–especially for the people closest to you. During the talk, you indicated that many of those listening could think of some loved one they would’ve liked to have alongside them. No doubt that’s true. It’s a natural human drive to share what we value; I do it, too, though of course with very different viewpoints from yours.

One thing we should all keep in mind, though, is that our loved ones do not want to become our conversion or de-conversion projects. When I visit with friends or relatives who are happily living their lives as believers, it hardly ever seems appropriate for me to bring up issues involving the church. They all know that I’ve left it for my own reasons, and if they want to know why, all they have to do is read my book or blog posts. Similarly, those who have left the LLC know the positions held (or at least professed) by those who remain, including about them.

Now, that doesn’t mean the church can never be mentioned. Doing so in a neutral way can actually defuse tension in the room. I’ve had enjoyable conversations about shared memories, humorous stories, and ongoing church activities. Someone who will always remain close told me with a laugh about hearing that people “who think like me” are “Ed-heads,” and I laughed, too. On another occasion, two of us–one a believer, one not–fondly recalled the old songs that we both grew up singing. I miss them sometimes. There was no preaching about how I really must feel a longing to repent (I don’t), just understanding about my continuing to value, in a way, something that was so much a part of my life for so long.⁴

Slide #16

Your slide No. 16 is headed, “Approaching without prejudice.” You point out how believers might have stereotypes or fears about approaching someone different, and I smiled at your lighthearted mention of the “irritating bunch of skateboarders” hanging out by the library. And so, you acknowledge, the approach often is made “with prejudice, pre-conceived notions.” But, you added, “we find when we do approach, that we find people, and that our fears are often unjustified” (26:40, my emphasis).

Indeed. May I make one point about doctrine here? If we as mere frail humans can both realize that we are all just people, shouldn’t an almighty God be able to as well? We have some mutual friends, Keith, and I have heard about your good humor and big heart. My faith in people, yourself included, remains strong–much stronger than any faith in an angry, judgmental God who cannot behave as well toward us as we do (in our better moments) toward each other.

Aimo Helén’s original paper (p. 3) includes something that is very encouraging for us “unbelievers” to read. I was very glad to hear you pretty closely repeat it in your talk (35:00) and see it on your slide #20.

Authentically respecting one’s neighbor means giving him or her human value irrespective of his or her characteristics. The love that God gave as a gift teaches us to accept ourselves and our neighbors as unique persons created by God. We can value humanity by respecting different cultural and religious customs and by treating our neighbor as an equal regardless of his or her differences and possible inadequacy. However, valuing diversity does not mean approving of sin and an indecent life.

“Treat all people as equals created by God,” is how you put it. “We respect different cultures and religious customs, but not at the expense of faith and good conscience” (35:45). What more could anyone ask, without becoming dogmatic themselves in an opposite way?

Later in your talk (53:30), after an interesting and useful discussion about helping someone with difficulties (including mental health issues), you return to the issue of understanding us unbelievers:

The kind of upbringing that we’ve had, the kind of parents that we’ve had, the kind of place that we’ve lived, values that we’ve developed, may be different than others. But we want to try to understand one another. We of course can’t accept everything, but we want to respect our neighbor for who they are. All neighbors, even unbelieving neighbors.

As your Finnish colleague puts it (p. 5), this is done out of “true neighborly love,” which “gives us readiness to meet even a diversity of cultures with an open mind. We cannot approve of everything, but we can value our neighbor as an equal irrespective of his or her background and different way of thinking.”

Bravo! And consider how important this sort of treatment is to you, too. Imagine, for example, how you would feel in this hypothetical situation: A young woman who left the LLC after having just two children comes to a wedding at church and afterwards belittles the pregnant mother of the bride for continuing to have children. Now, I’ve never heard of a former believer behaving so thoughtlessly. But, I must gently add, I’ve heard plenty about people in the LLC belittling and mocking the changed beliefs and lives of people who have left the church. Your presentation will hopefully go a long way toward helping to improve that situation. I really do appreciate what you and Aimo Helén have done.

The issue of acceptance is somewhat different when it comes to people who are still in the organization. You note, I think accurately, that “some of [your] friends–that is believing friends–think differently about matters of faith and life than is taught in God’s Kingdom. They still claim to be believers, even though their tie to the congregation may have been severed. They may want to believe on their own terms” (1:00:00). That is, of course, the right of every person in a free society, but so is the right of the LLC and SRK to maintain norms of behavior and belief for those who wish to be members. You may be surprised to hear that I respect that.⁵

Personally, it was important to me to make a decision about what I actually believed and then act accordingly. I didn’t want to cloud things by trying to live one way and profess belief in another. The “temptations of the world” were never that big a deal for me; the issues were. Of course, now that I’m no longer concerned about conforming to the LLC’s standards, I enjoy movies, TV shows, and a wide variety of music. Why not?

Now, there are people who don’t want to leave the church, even though they find no good reason not to partake of such activities, or to back away from the heavy demands of nearly annual childbearing. This is where I will be most critical of a work I find encouraging and excellent otherwise: Your advice to fellow believers to “search for answers within God’s Kingdom,” the so-called “pillar and ground of truth,” which you feel is guided by an “unerring advisor” (1:06:00). Do you realize, as an insider, that those answers all tend to be of the form, “It has been revealed in God’s Kingdom...”, or “God’s children have seen it good that...”? The invitation to be “free to ask questions” when it doesn’t work out that “the spirit that is in each child of God answers the spirit that speaks in the congregation” (1:07:00) rings a bit hollow when the spirit always seems to just wind up referring back to its own authority.

Slide #41

So why don’t these people just leave, to stop sowing weeds in your midst, as you and Helén put it? I can’t speak for them: They are individuals, with their own private thoughts and emotions. But I think you provide one answer yourself: the longing for contact, for love, for fellowship (1:02:00). Thoughtfully, you recognize that it’s not just difficult for believers when their loved one leaves the church, but “it’s difficult also for the person who has left” (1:09:00).

You like to call it “the Father’s house,” and Laestadianism also makes a lot of references to “the mother.” And of course, there are “brothers and sisters in faith.” These analogies illustrate the very deep emotional bond that is established when people grow up with each other in a distinctive subculture, do almost all their socializing with each other, and reinforce their ties by seeing each other as a group on a weekly basis. It doesn’t hurt that many of you really are extended family, either. The connections run deep.

I am glad, though, that you recognize, “Each person must make their own choices in life, even giving up faith” (1:08:00), that you must “accept their decision, though so very hard” it is to do (1:11:00). And it was wonderful to hear those “very important words” your wife’s believing friend told her about your own son who had left: “Love him, love him, love him” (1:09:00). That is what you desire to do, you said, and so do we.

Thank you for this presentation, Keith, and Aimo Helén as well.

Fond regards,
Your former brother,
Ed Suominen

———

I was happy to receive a thoughtful response from Keith, which he gave me discretion to quote from or post in its entirety. He expressed his thoughts well, and with considerable trust that I’d treat them fairly. So here they are, verbatim–everything after his initial salutation and a friendly line about this being a busy summer for him. I really appreciated the reply, all of it, and encourage you to read it as well.

First of all, thanks for your complimentary comments about the presentation. For the most part, I borrowed what Aimo Helén presented a year earlier in Finland. For that reason, I want to credit the original source and above all thank God for the words that He has given. In answer to your question about using my photo and quoting from or posting this message, I will leave that to your discretion. In any case, I prefer not to personally comment or participate in online public forums where questions of Laestadian Christianity are discussed.

Yes, it was a surprise to get a message from you! I’m happy that you felt free to write to me. I want to carry you in prayer and love. Regarding the critique you have given, I do not see a need to answer point by point. The presentation is what it is. All glory and honor goes to God. Any weaknesses are mine.

I hope that Laestadian believers, former believers, and all people for that matter would remember that carrying bitterness towards another person hurts the carrier more than anyone else. As you pointed out, we have the freedom to believe as we wish. No one is forced to believe. It would be good to remember that our focus needs to be on the issues at hand and not attack the person. Luther’s explanation to the Eighth Commandment reminds us not to speak evilly of our neighbor, “but apologize for him, think and speak well of him and put the best construction on all he does.” Who of us can say that we have been exemplary in this? I certainly cannot. Our human corruption is close.

You gave a hypothetical example, “A young woman who left the LLC after having just two children comes to a wedding at church…afterwards belittles the pregnant mother of the bride for continuing to have children.” You stated that you have never heard of a former believer behaving so thoughtlessly. Well, I must say that I have seen anger, thoughtless words, evil speech, etc., both from believers as well as former believers. In our Christianity we endeavor to speak about the evil deeds of that little member, the tongue. It’s hard to keep it in subjection. Regarding former believers’ speech, I’d ask you to consider their blogs. Do they speak well and put the best construction on the words and deeds of their former friends in faith?

You take issue with the kingdom of God being the pillar and ground of truth and our belief that we have an unerring advisor, the Holy Spirit. I would point out that it is a kingdom that holds the Bible as the highest authority for doctrine and life. The Spirit is the key to understanding the Bible. The spirit of Christ resides in the body of Christ, the congregation. For that reason it is unerring. How could God’s Spirit speak against itself, or disagree with itself? I believe that as God is God, He doesn’t make mistakes. That is why the congregation is unerring.

It is so, as you state, that each person is free to believe or not to believe. Those who believe have not been able to do so of themselves, but have been called by God. Luther teaches in the explanation to the Third Article of the Creed: “I believe that I cannot of my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me by His gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith, even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and preserves it in union with Jesus’ Christ in the true faith; in which Christian Church he daily and richly forgives me and all believers all our sins.”

We can believe only through the grace of God. I am thankful to be a partaker of this grace, which I have not deserved. I am happy to be a child of God. My sins are forgiven and I have the hope of reaching heaven one day. I join with the Apostle Peter when some could no longer follow Jesus due to his teachings. Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” I cannot find the peace of God anywhere else than in His kingdom, among His own upon earth. That which I have received, I desire to make known to others.

You are in my thoughts and prayers, Ed. 

Sincerely,
Keith 

———

Waaraniemi’s thumbnail portrait is from his entry on the “Contact Us” page of the LLC’s web site. Thumbnails of the “Approaching Others” presentation were exported from his PowerPoint file. The “traditional approach” composition, using a photo of my own plus a thumbnail of the By Faith book from the LLC’s online store, is Copyright © 2014 Edwin A. Suominen; you may freely use it for non-commercial purposes, with attribution, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Notes

---

1. Waaraniemi’s first slide says it is based “on Aimo Helén’s presentation at 2013 SRK Speakers and Elders Meeting: Toisen ihmisen kohtaaminen” The MP3 audio, is quite legible at 2x speed if you want to save time. Also, check out the Powerpoint slides. ↩

2. Waaraniemi’s name is on the work, after all, and on the webpage where it is publicly available. ↩

3. I use the term “believers” here to refer to Conservative Laestadians–as they refer to themselves–along with “unbelievers” to mean everyone else. A lot of non-Laestadians don’t like being distinguished in that way, as most of them have sincere religious beliefs of their own. Personally, I don’t mind, especially when engaging in a dialogue with Laestadians. ↩

4. Believers might also consider the converse side of such an open dialogue, one that is a bit challenging for them: politely acknowledging some of their friend’s “worldly” activities. I’m not talking about burning incense on an altar to Satan in the middle of the night, but things that are an everyday part of life for most everybody outside the LLC. If the friend lets it slip that junior hurt his knee at soccer practice last week, an expression of sympathy, perhaps a little joke about Laestadians saving on medical bills in that regard, at least, can go a long ways toward keeping a long-valued relationship intact and mutually respectful. Sure, there is a possibility that the ex-LLCer might wonder, “Hmmmm, maybe he doesn’t think school sports are such a big deal.” But consider the other thought that occurs to the one lucky enough to have such an understanding friend: “I’m so thankful he is secure in his beliefs and doesn’t need to be a fanatical sourpuss about everything.” ↩

5. I would suggest, however, that you guys dispense with the charade about there being no rules. Of course there are–many of them! If there weren’t, then people could do as they pleased. And it wouldn’t bother them much at all, without the pressure to conform, given how ordinary and harmless most of the supposed sins really are. ↩

 

Finale

Apparently, if people cannot find satisfactory social contacts in a small group, they attempt to compensate by forming pseudo-contacts with celebrities, who have been converted into super-optimal stimuli by the visual magic of television.

—Paul R. Ehrlich, Human Natures: Genes, Cultures and the Human Prospect

Except for some teenage rebellion and a few lapses duly confessed and absolved, I didn’t start watching TV or movies until recently. My old church isn’t just opposed to R rated movies; everything dramatized is off-limits. If there is acting going on, and it’s not just some historical reenactment in a documentary or something, then it’s probably not suitable material for a child of God.

Even now, over a year after leaving the religion in a very public way, I still don’t have any live connection—no antenna, no cable. Just Netflix and iTunes. Wasting brain cells watching commercials, slanted “news” coverage, or pointless gladiator matches between overpaid sweaty men is not something I’m ever likely to do.

James Gandolfini, aka Tony Soprano, in 2011.

But drama fascinated me, and still does. With a lot of catching up to do on my pop culture, I consulted Google for lists of the best dramatic TV shows. One of the tops in the search results was some mafia show called The Sopranos, and I bought an episode on iTunes.

There were ducks in a swimming pool, a creepy overweight mafia don who looked uncomfortably similar to a certain relative of mine, and a shrink’s round office. Weird stuff, I thought, but let’s give it a chance.

Another episode. Now I started getting into it, appreciating the subplots, the characters, the wry humor. Fine, I said to iTunes, go ahead and “complete my season”—the first one, over ten years after it first aired.

Then another season, and another. I savored each episode of every one of those six seasons (except for the disjointed and maddening finale. The mob violence wasn’t pretty, but as the star of the show remarked about his subject matter in an interview, “These aren’t nice people.”

Brief light before darkness [Flickr page]

That star, James Gandolfini, is now dead at age 51. It feels odd to be feeling sad and reflective about the loss of a person I’ve never met, who never knew of my existence, who made a fortune from his appearances on my iPad screen and millions of TV screens around the country. I’m certainly not alone in feeling this way; Gandolfini’s death is headline news, and you don’t have to look far on the Internet to find eulogies by devoted Sopranos fans. The fact is that many of us have spent more time in the virtual presence of this man, as mob boss Tony Soprano, than with our next-door neighbors or the parents of our kids’ friends.

Avoiding this artificial, one-way social situation is one thing that my old church gets right. Its rejection of dramatized video keeps members from taking the easy way out. Instead of just filling their hours with images and sounds of story people, they interact with real ones across the coffee table or living room. Their spouses and kids are usually friends with each other’s spouses and kids, too.

It is a closed little society, self-assured and self-contained, but for many there, it works. And when it is working for you—with the right network of siblings and cousins, shared interests, willingness to toe the party line about religion and politics—it can seem like there is no better place on earth to be.

———

Photo of Gandolfini by Gordon Correll. Regarding the Sopranos finale, see the Wikipedia article on the series. Regarding the LLC’s rejection of dramatized video (now widely ignored by everyday members), see An Examination of the Pearl, §4.6.1 – Entertainment.

Credit Where Credit is Due

There’s been some fuss on the Internet about a pastor stiffing the waiter for a tip, saying she had “already given 10% to God” or some such self-righteous nonsense. I much prefer the example that one of the preachers from my old church set when he was downtown with a daughter of his, which I heard from someone to whom the daughter had told the story.

Apparently, as they were walking around downtown, this preacher gave some homeless guy the coat off his back, literally. And in doing so, I suspect he taught his daughter more than any amount of lecturing could have done. Not that he hasn’t also lectured, and in a positive way, too.

In one sermon he challenged the congregation to consider whether they would welcome someone into that sanctuary who looked very different (piercings, tattoos, etc.). After an awkward pause, the story goes, he said of course they would. That isn’t to say he wouldn’t also do the usual suggesting of a change in appearance to the outsider after the eventual hoped-for conversion. The point, I think (and I wasn’t there), is that Christians ought to there be no less willing to sit with publicans and sinners than Christ was.

I can assure you that this man would never have told the coat-off-his-back story himself. Tooting your own horn like that is just not something one does from a Laestadian pulpit. That certainly has its positive aspects, and is very much line with Paul’s beautiful confession of 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (as is Laestadian ministering generally), but it does make it harder for the preachers to be an example to the flock. So, I’m certainly happy to give credit where credit is due, heathen though I may be. Well done.

—First posted (without links) on Facebook, 2/4/13