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tj_roweI think it's finally got to the point where I have to make a decision.
It's a decision that I've been putting off since first discovering Wicca at 12 - can I still pay lip service to a faith system which, quite frankly, sickens me? Do I want to? Hell no. Do I have to? Well, that depends on what I can reasonably exclude myself from.
There's no denying that this is a Christian country. I don't like it, but I have to live with it until I get fluent enough in the language of a country that isn't conditioned like that (are there any?) and can move there. I also attend a Christian school, and have done so since I was 10. My best friends have been active in their churched lifestyles (Vicar's daughter and Jehovah's Witness in my C.P. school; a pair of fundamentalist evangelicals, a group of wannabe gospel singers and a few Black Catholics in my current school) for as long as I remember.
... Let's start with a history, shall we?
*
When I was much younger (about seven or eight or nine, I think), I remember my mother stopping me from going past the window because of 'a group of people handing out booklets'. I argued, as only an eight year old can, that I liked reading. She hauled me away and told me that No, they weren't Christians. They were bad people called Jehovah's Witnesses and I shouldn't talk to them.
You'll remember that one of my best friends at this point was a Jehovah's Witness? Her existence may just have saved me from becoming a sheep, as it made me realise young that my mother was wrong.
After my mother had impressed this point on me, I remember hiding until she'd gone away and then going to the keyhole to look out and she if they were still there. To my disappointment, they weren't - though it shows by the fact that I still remember it, 10 years later, that it was still a significant event in my young life - the first I knew about censorship.
I don't know if I really realised that then, but it seems obvious now. After coming away from the keyhole, I asked my mother if we were Christians - something I hadn't actually realised until that point. (The only services I can remember or I can take as having happened are: my own christening, my sister's christening, and my aunt's wedding). She told me that we were a Methodist family, probably, since she and my father had married in a Methodist Church.
I reflected upon this memory a lot when I was trying to fashion a religious identity for myself. It was soon after it happened that I was moved from my C.P. school to the prep* school of my current school - my first faith school. As having a familial connection with something tends to make me go obsessive and want to be part of it too, I re-read my Children's Illustrated Bible and memories OT stories and tried to get into the whole thing. But I was also a bit of an all-or-nothing child, so eventually got tired of not being able to go to the Harvest Festival or church or whatever, and more or less forgot about the idea.
I still considered myself Christian when we started secondary school Religious Studies (we had had 'Religion' at prep school, too, but there it was all OT stuff) - we did holidays and Genesis mostly - until the pedo-padre was fired and the PE department took over. Anyway, I immersed myself in the myth (and had the whole 'but surely Judas was supposed to' view that so many in my position seem to - it is logical...), but the more I wanted to learn, the more my questions were just pushed aside.
My favourite 'characters' were David's wives (mostly Jonathan, Jonathan's sister and Abigail) and Delilah (Samson and Delilah). I had a fair bit of admiration for Ruth, too. ... This may be where my veiw on marriage comes from, because all of them were political about it. ^^;
It was during my second year that I really acknowledged that there were other religious systems that other people actually used and didn't think were stupid. I'd had a brief episode of being a Hellenistic Pagan at the C.P. school (because of Athena's myth being teh awesomeous), but I got told to stop being stupid. Woe. But it all really started when I came across Wicca on a web search. I don't know how I got to it (the old PEN site, IIRC), but I did, and, because it was so shiny to me, I printed off the main information page to show my friends.
The reaction shocked me to the core. I'd pretty much filed my mother's reaction to the Jehovah's Witnesses as being a weird thing with my mum, but a similar thing was exhibited by my friends. One was all 'Um. Not touching it.' and the other... well. She informed me that all Witchcraft was evil devil-worshipping, no ifs or buts, so please-please-please don't go getting into all that stuff! Any time that I tried to bring it up again, she shut up.
Over the first few months of third year I was befriended by a questioning girl who had a lesbian sister and whose mum was into crystals and white magic (the girl is now the homophobic fundamentalist Christian that I often rant about), another girl with a pentagram necklace (she now wears a cross), a French Catholic and a boy who was a questioning atheist. The first girl, me, the Christian one of my original friends and the atheist often met at lunchtimes to discuss religion, but we quickly gave up when the Catholic got involved because she was loud and never gave anyone else a chance to speak.
By the end of that year, though, we'd all polarised. The first girl was more or less converted to Christianity, the atheist and I had pretty much decided that my former best friend's church was not somewhere we wanted to be and the Catholic was P.O.ed. So me and the second girl were pretty much the only openly non-Christian/atheist-dichotomy-affiliated people in the year. (There was a Bahomite-wearing girl in the year below, though) We were also in the middle of the necklace wars - "If crosses are allowed, so should everything else!" - which we won.
At 12, I was hardly going to be able to disengage myself from the religious lifestyles around me, though I know I started to try as I learnt about alternatives. That was actually when I discovered that fundamentalism and brainwashing even could occur - one of my current friends suddenly starting the most nonsense I'd ever heard in my life. (Notice the past tense - she's said worse since). About as political as I got was with the necklace wars ("If crosses are allowed, so should everything else!") and refusal to sing hymns that I objected to the message (or wording, in the case of 'Set our hearts on fire' and 'lift up your hearts and give them to the lord' *shudder*) of.
*prep school in the British sense - junior/primary/elementary schools independent of government funds an the national curriculum, not the American sense.
*
Anyway, the issue now is with Choir. I like singing in the same way as good exercise - you feel you've accomplished something if your lungs and diaphragm hurt after. And to tell the truth, the free speech therapy doesn't hurt. But it's a school choir, and so the songs are up to the music teacher.
A few years ago we sang 'Ave Verum' (in Latin) at the summer concert because the headmaster was leaving and it was his favourite hymn. Now we seem to be singing something religious every term, and I don't like it. This term it's gospel, and I am really not liking it.
I cannot fucking wait until I'm at the other end of the country.
*sigh* It's a 'lesser of two evils' problem, I think, but I don't know which is the lesser. Give up singing, or sing evangelically? Both are bad choices. I want to stick to principles, but is it just the weakling's way to give up something that I enjoy because of personal discomfort? I don't know. Advice?
It's a decision that I've been putting off since first discovering Wicca at 12 - can I still pay lip service to a faith system which, quite frankly, sickens me? Do I want to? Hell no. Do I have to? Well, that depends on what I can reasonably exclude myself from.
There's no denying that this is a Christian country. I don't like it, but I have to live with it until I get fluent enough in the language of a country that isn't conditioned like that (are there any?) and can move there. I also attend a Christian school, and have done so since I was 10. My best friends have been active in their churched lifestyles (Vicar's daughter and Jehovah's Witness in my C.P. school; a pair of fundamentalist evangelicals, a group of wannabe gospel singers and a few Black Catholics in my current school) for as long as I remember.
... Let's start with a history, shall we?
*
When I was much younger (about seven or eight or nine, I think), I remember my mother stopping me from going past the window because of 'a group of people handing out booklets'. I argued, as only an eight year old can, that I liked reading. She hauled me away and told me that No, they weren't Christians. They were bad people called Jehovah's Witnesses and I shouldn't talk to them.
You'll remember that one of my best friends at this point was a Jehovah's Witness? Her existence may just have saved me from becoming a sheep, as it made me realise young that my mother was wrong.
After my mother had impressed this point on me, I remember hiding until she'd gone away and then going to the keyhole to look out and she if they were still there. To my disappointment, they weren't - though it shows by the fact that I still remember it, 10 years later, that it was still a significant event in my young life - the first I knew about censorship.
I don't know if I really realised that then, but it seems obvious now. After coming away from the keyhole, I asked my mother if we were Christians - something I hadn't actually realised until that point. (The only services I can remember or I can take as having happened are: my own christening, my sister's christening, and my aunt's wedding). She told me that we were a Methodist family, probably, since she and my father had married in a Methodist Church.
I reflected upon this memory a lot when I was trying to fashion a religious identity for myself. It was soon after it happened that I was moved from my C.P. school to the prep* school of my current school - my first faith school. As having a familial connection with something tends to make me go obsessive and want to be part of it too, I re-read my Children's Illustrated Bible and memories OT stories and tried to get into the whole thing. But I was also a bit of an all-or-nothing child, so eventually got tired of not being able to go to the Harvest Festival or church or whatever, and more or less forgot about the idea.
I still considered myself Christian when we started secondary school Religious Studies (we had had 'Religion' at prep school, too, but there it was all OT stuff) - we did holidays and Genesis mostly - until the pedo-padre was fired and the PE department took over. Anyway, I immersed myself in the myth (and had the whole 'but surely Judas was supposed to' view that so many in my position seem to - it is logical...), but the more I wanted to learn, the more my questions were just pushed aside.
My favourite 'characters' were David's wives (mostly Jonathan, Jonathan's sister and Abigail) and Delilah (Samson and Delilah). I had a fair bit of admiration for Ruth, too. ... This may be where my veiw on marriage comes from, because all of them were political about it. ^^;
It was during my second year that I really acknowledged that there were other religious systems that other people actually used and didn't think were stupid. I'd had a brief episode of being a Hellenistic Pagan at the C.P. school (because of Athena's myth being teh awesomeous), but I got told to stop being stupid. Woe. But it all really started when I came across Wicca on a web search. I don't know how I got to it (the old PEN site, IIRC), but I did, and, because it was so shiny to me, I printed off the main information page to show my friends.
The reaction shocked me to the core. I'd pretty much filed my mother's reaction to the Jehovah's Witnesses as being a weird thing with my mum, but a similar thing was exhibited by my friends. One was all 'Um. Not touching it.' and the other... well. She informed me that all Witchcraft was evil devil-worshipping, no ifs or buts, so please-please-please don't go getting into all that stuff! Any time that I tried to bring it up again, she shut up.
Over the first few months of third year I was befriended by a questioning girl who had a lesbian sister and whose mum was into crystals and white magic (the girl is now the homophobic fundamentalist Christian that I often rant about), another girl with a pentagram necklace (she now wears a cross), a French Catholic and a boy who was a questioning atheist. The first girl, me, the Christian one of my original friends and the atheist often met at lunchtimes to discuss religion, but we quickly gave up when the Catholic got involved because she was loud and never gave anyone else a chance to speak.
By the end of that year, though, we'd all polarised. The first girl was more or less converted to Christianity, the atheist and I had pretty much decided that my former best friend's church was not somewhere we wanted to be and the Catholic was P.O.ed. So me and the second girl were pretty much the only openly non-Christian/atheist-dichotomy-affiliated people in the year. (There was a Bahomite-wearing girl in the year below, though) We were also in the middle of the necklace wars - "If crosses are allowed, so should everything else!" - which we won.
At 12, I was hardly going to be able to disengage myself from the religious lifestyles around me, though I know I started to try as I learnt about alternatives. That was actually when I discovered that fundamentalism and brainwashing even could occur - one of my current friends suddenly starting the most nonsense I'd ever heard in my life. (Notice the past tense - she's said worse since). About as political as I got was with the necklace wars ("If crosses are allowed, so should everything else!") and refusal to sing hymns that I objected to the message (or wording, in the case of 'Set our hearts on fire' and 'lift up your hearts and give them to the lord' *shudder*) of.
*prep school in the British sense - junior/primary/elementary schools independent of government funds an the national curriculum, not the American sense.
*
Anyway, the issue now is with Choir. I like singing in the same way as good exercise - you feel you've accomplished something if your lungs and diaphragm hurt after. And to tell the truth, the free speech therapy doesn't hurt. But it's a school choir, and so the songs are up to the music teacher.
A few years ago we sang 'Ave Verum' (in Latin) at the summer concert because the headmaster was leaving and it was his favourite hymn. Now we seem to be singing something religious every term, and I don't like it. This term it's gospel, and I am really not liking it.
I cannot fucking wait until I'm at the other end of the country.
*sigh* It's a 'lesser of two evils' problem, I think, but I don't know which is the lesser. Give up singing, or sing evangelically? Both are bad choices. I want to stick to principles, but is it just the weakling's way to give up something that I enjoy because of personal discomfort? I don't know. Advice?
