CREEDE HINSHAW: Finding religious identity

When a reporter identified a particular author as a “secular Jew” I wondered if this was how the author described himself. I’m not wading into the complex issue of who is Jewish, but am interested in exploring what it means to identify as a religious person.

Catholics, for instance, describe themselves as lapsed Catholic or cradle Catholic. One gets the impression that Catholicism itself is an identifying mark for a person. In this sense Catholicism and identity seems to be more closely related than for Protestants. I’ve never heard a person self-identify as a “lapsed Methodist” or a “cradle Baptist” (although there are plenty of both.)

But Protestants claim their identity in important ways, too. In my first pastorate in Waverly Hall, Georgia, one of the finest couples of that community settled their “cross-religious marriage” in a unique compromise. The Baptist husband attended his church weekly while his Methodist wife attended her church (right across the street) weekly. They were too closely tied to their own received faith to give in to the other side. I guess they compared notes each week over Sunday dinner or else waved the white flag and never discussed religion.

In another church I served a lovely couple married later in life. They were both Methodist, each having lost their first spouses to death. Because their self identity was so strong they alternated weeks sitting together in each other’s church. I tried unsuccessfully to convince the husband (member of the other church) to travel out of town only on the weekends they were scheduled to be at his church.

Religious identity is more important than we acknowledge. When I was growing up in the 1960s in Indiana my next door neighbors, loyal Catholics, boycotted the wedding of their only daughter because she married a Protestant. That’s sad, we say: shouldn’t love for a child prevail over her choice of a husband? But their identity and her apparent walking away from that identity created a crisis.

I know Protestant parents today who agonize because their child has “abandoned” the church where he/she grew up to attend a church that is either (a) too soft on sin (b) too dogmatic on biblical obedience (c) too open on ordaining women or (d)too eager to reject hymn books in favor of songs flashed on a wall. These parents are struggling with identity issues.

Being Amish or Mennonite is all about identity. But much larger religious groups stress identity, too. Baptists are either Southern Baptist or Cooperative Baptist. Presbyterians are either PCA (conservative) or PCUSA (liberal). Same with Lutherans in LCMS or ELCA. Same with those in the Episcopal/Anglican communion.

Polls show that those who identify themselves as Christian (of any denomination) is waning, implying a weakening of religious identity. I suspect, however, that many readers of this column still recognize that their faith, “cradle,” “chosen” or “lapsed,” constitutes a significant part of their identity.

Creede Hinshaw, of Macon, is a retired Methodist minister.