When I first heard about the NPR show on spirituality, Enlighten Me, hosted by the dynamic diviner Rachel Martin, I got grumpy. As a cradle Christian, a happily ordained Protestant minister for 50 years, a person who as a child was saved by the church from her beleaguered parents, I feared another swipe at institutional religion. I’d have to get out my worn joke that people shouldn’t be afraid of organized religion because we are super disorganized. Then I changed my mind.
Why am I stuck defending something that is either dead or already in hospice? Why not develop Rachel Martin’s wider view of spirituality plus religion? Why be defensive when there is so little left to defend? I decided to join rather than beat “them.” Plus, my own faith is best described as post-cradle, post-Christian, post organized religion. I can’t help but love my childhood Sunday morning warmth, snuggled against my grandmother’s mink coat in church, the pockets of which contained “Life-savers.” I’ll surely never forget that Pastor Witte came when I called him at age 7.
Daddy was beating up Mommy again. He came. He didn’t stop the beating forever but he convinced me that there are adults in the room. I now know how many other kids didn’t have anybody on the other end of the line. I now know what organized religion can do for kids. I was saved by youth workers, pastors, teachers, coaches, camp counselors. They joined Pastor Witte’s “showing up.” Rachel Martin is exploring the new infrastructure of faith and spirit. I have to listen in.
She has just completed round one of the 30 radio shows and is now going to do podcasting about piety. She all but made fun of her decision in her exit interview from one to the other (Sunday, Weekend Edition, January 7,2024) but then decided to embrace her choice. She was on a rare edge of cynicism in the podcast embrace but her spiritual gain from the work already done saved her. Her cynicism about podcasts might be a part of my derision for spirit without religion. Who knows? And who needs more cynicism about anything.
I listened to most of her shows and decided that she didn’t need seminary or organized religion or ordination or any of the other props for enlightenment. She should teach in seminaries and teach those of us “inside” what is on the minds and hearts of those “outside.”
Whether she is interviewing Jia Tolentino on her passionate search for an ego death or talking to Perry Bacon about his search for a church that isn’t a church, I pay attention. Why? My favorite congregation of seven over these 50 years as a pastor described itself as “the best church nobody ever heard about.” Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village sings a Broadway “hymn” every week and puts up red chili pepper lights at Christmas in the shape of Mother Mary’s cleavage on its roof. Nobody knows that we and others exist.
We get the usual avoidance from the “spiritual but not religious”, “none of the above” who never met us. Whoops. Do you hear my grumpy dismay? Jesus is the one who refuses to have an enemy. I do follow him but he is also out of my pay grade. Maybe that’s why I try and fail to demonize the nones and their allies.
Martin intrigues me because she is trying to get to know the people who are trying to get to know me and what I represent and mis-represent. We meet well on a podcast.
Atheist Chaplain Vanessa Zoltan speaks to Martin movingly about how to use Jane Eyre as a sacred text. She also explains what happens to faith after a holocaust. It dies. These honest searches warm the hearts of the institutionalized parts of me. Yes, I know Kierkegaard and Augustine and critical theory and the bible and more. I also don’t know enough about how evil connects with faith to dissolve it.
Rainn Wilson of The Office wants a spiritual revolution. So does Rachel Martin. So do I. Nothing less will dull the knife of capitalism’s idolatries. Nothing less will have the power sufficient to stop the domestic abuse of the environment and its animals and its plants. I applaud Wilson and Martin for sleuthing spiritual power.
Patti Krawec talks to Martin about “Indigenous spirituality” which many people, including Rebecca Solnit in her book Not Too Late (with Thelma Young Lutunatabua), find essential to their days. 94% of the people on the planet did very little to destroy it; 6% took care of it all by themselves. It is not accidental that indigenous people care for the earth and spiritually stranded people don’t. The former don’t know how not to love their home; the latter are spiritually homeless and need a soup kitchen.
When Martin interviews Columbia university professors and scientists like Roland Griffiths on “the value of spirituality to mental health,” my grump renews. DUH! Of course, psychedelics deliver spiritual experiences chemically and they help. Of course, feeling held by a power larger than our own cradles protects and nurtures us. Of course, having a paid, hired and vetted pastor means he will show up. Of course, a holy grail at the center of the earth comprehends the utter chaos of it all and almost holds the globe together.
How do secular or post-secular people get out of bed in the morning in the first place? I have never understood how. Horoscopes? I have always needed props to leave my pillow.
Dan Harris surprises himself by finding himself at the center of a mindfulness/meditation movement. Martin is not surprised. Her assurance as an interviewer, a provocateur, a curious asker of curious questions shines with him. It may seem quaint to some that people like quiet time and a quiet mind and find peace there. It is not quaint to either Harris or Martin and for that lack of condescension, I am grateful.
When Jon Ward tries on church and walks away from his evangelical roots, Martin understands. How could he stay in a church that treated gay folk as though they were sinners? How could anyone? Did something like God create something sexually inferior to something else? Of course not. All seven of my congregations were/are “Open and affirming.” We didn’t just approve of homosexuality from aloft. We affirmed it. We had as slogans, “We are the perfect churches for people who aren’t.”; and “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.” And no, we did not mean that queer people were sinners and we weren’t. We went to seminary. We knew how to protect the “bad immigrants” as well as the “good immigrants”, the non-heroic disabled people and the heroic disabled people. Why that way of thinking? We read the bible. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3: 23-24 King James Version)
I probably appreciated most the interview with Sarah Hurwitz who became a seeker and went home to her childhood faith. I was hoping there was some hope for people like me, somewhere. Repeating myself, I know organized religion is dead. It is not an accident that weeds grow up on our sidewalks or that our signs have missing letters. We come. Nobody comes in. Nobody wants my husband’s stamp or coin collection either. Or our scrap books or photo albums.
“Could you give it to me digitally?” We know Protestant progressives missed the embrace of technology that evangelicals did not. We know our own contribution to our own children not wanting what we have. The average church today has 48 worshipping. We are old and we are in hospice and we dug our own grave. Organizations, including religious ones, have life cycles. Our is spent.
Lots of people, including me, worship at Krista Tippett’s place and now Rachel Martin’s place. There we hear less about the leaks in the roof or typos in the bulletins and more about what Katherine May calls a sense of wonder or how Simran Jeet Singh understands the end of hate or Singer Tyler Williams deals with losing his voice or Buddhist monks mange burnout or HBO calls Somebody Somewhere.
Thank you, Rachel Martin for introducing me to these folk, who will never “darken my door.” Thank you for enlightening me. I do know a few good seminaries. Most of them don’t have enough students. Maybe if you would darken their door, they would? Could you apply to teach at a seminary? Or ask a seminary to subscribe to your podcast?
The Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper is a rewired UCC and ABC pastor and author of www.removethepews.com