When I was young, I always admired this stance. Later I saw its harder edge: during World War II—a war against genocide—Mennonites were excused from military duty as “conscientious objectors” while other citizens had to fight and die for the greater good. My admiration for Mennonite pacifism survives, but not without reservations.
There was cultural unity among the Mennonites, migrating together for hundreds of years, maintaining their language of origin and other shared traditions. Such cultural unity is admirable, but there are downsides, such as reduced genetic diversity leading to an increased rate of heritable diseases. In groups with a relatively small and insular founding population, the practical effect is that marriages occur between people more closely related than they appear. Many such marriages are genetically comparable to marriages between third cousins, or even closer relatives than that if the two families are tightly interwoven.
Many Mennonites migrated east from the Netherlands to maintain cultural and religious freedom, settling as farmers in Ukraine for over 100 years. Eventually, most relocated again—under the trauma and duress of war and persecution—to various regions in North America, such as southern Manitoba. Some Mennonite subgroups adopted practices comparable to the Amish, while most others became quite mainstream Protestant denominations, often leaning toward conservatism or fundamentalism, though some became more liberal or progressive. The branch my family was most recently part of was comparable to other common modern Christian Protestant denominations. As with many families, the culture of my family over many centuries has been shaped by its religious involvement. Faith traditions carried within a family become woven into its history, culture, and values. Much of this history is something to feel proud of.
During my childhood, we attended church frequently. For the most part, these were positive experiences. One virtue of weekly church attendance is the opportunity for moral reflection. Sermons contained messages about dealing with difficult issues or about being a better person. Some sermons appealed more to the intellectual side of the audience, with references to academic theologians or philosophers; others would appeal to the more emotional or sentimental side. Many contained moments of gentle humor or playfulness, and many deliberately reached out to children. Sermons were based on Bible passages, many of which were good foundations for moral reflection and also had a poetic quality. Members of the congregation would participate in the services, often volunteering to read the Bible passage aloud. I was frequently moved by stories about Jesus—a gentle, loving, humble, heroic figure who accomplished amazing, transformative things not through superhuman strength or military prowess, but through wisdom, love, and self-sacrificial devotion to others.
The congregation was always reminded to care for members who had experienced recent loss or illness, or to celebrate those who had experienced a recent joy, such as a marriage or birth. In some church services, perhaps during prayer or music, some people would become deeply absorbed, in a joyful, flow-like state. This kind of regular experience can be profoundly healthy: it offers structured moral reflection with an attitude of gratitude, service, and reverence, couched in a loving and supportive community. It encourages people to be aware of—and involved in—the joys and travails of other people's lives.
However, this format favored people who could tolerate long stretches of stillness and conformity. For children with ADHD traits, learning differences, restlessness, or physical discomfort, many services would have felt stifling. I remember children who were often scolded simply for being unable to sit still. I suspect this is one reason why some modern fundamentalist churches—which put on a more exciting and emotionally dynamic show, with charismatic preachers, rock bands, and other performers—have proven so appealing, especially to the younger generation. The form, as much as the content, is what draws people in.
I also attended a religious high school, with significant exposure to daily religious practice and education. Once again, this was quite positive, since the teachers were for the most part kind, thoughtful people. The motivation of most of this education was to help students grow in kindness, morality, and ethical leadership while being humbly conscious of important local and global issues. However, I also noted that the frequency of bullying, conduct problems, and social ostracism among students was not much different from what one would find in a public secular high school. Alongside educational content in religion, there were meaningful, enjoyable, and comforting practices almost every day, such as choral singing, "chapel time," and opportunities for community volunteering. I only noticed major gaps in parts of the science and social studies curriculum years later.
At times my family went to a fundamentalist Christian camp in Minnesota for a summer holiday. I have fond memories of camping, being out in nature, camp songs, and friendly people. One family there had a wonderful little dog that I loved. I was excited about the use of tambourines by the musicians. People were engrossed by charismatic preachers and energetic sermons every day; many were in an almost trancelike state of excitement or passion fueled by group energy, music, and prayer. Some people would get baptized in the lake; for many, this was emotionally moving and transformative ("Born Again"), accompanied by tears of joy.
In my young adult life, I also appreciated the philosophical contributions of many religious thinkers. C.S. Lewis was a favorite (following a pleasant introduction during my early childhood, reading his children's books aloud with my mother), as were Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer. In my final undergraduate year, I took a course covering historical theology and its manifestations through art and literature, looking at Western religious themes through the ages. This course became one of my intellectual foundations, resonating with my personality and interests, and combining the study of philosophy, art, literature, and history to deepen my understanding of the world.
Prayer and other symbolic actions can have a peaceful, meditative quality which is psychologically beneficial. It can be comforting to know that someone is praying for your well-being, and it can feel meaningful to pray for someone else's well-being. Prayer's comfort, though, seems to lie in the act and the attention rather than in any external answer. The largest and most rigorous trial of intercessory prayer—Benson's 2006 STEP study of more than eighteen hundred cardiac bypass patients, funded, fittingly, by a foundation devoted to reconciling science and religion—found no benefit; patients who were told with certainty that strangers were praying for them actually fared slightly worse.
Many church buildings are enjoyable spaces due to their architecture and acoustics, and their association with calm, comfort, safety, refuge, and transcendence. Church buildings in much of the world have historically been architectural gems in the middle of communities, sometimes the most visible or distinctive physical feature of the neighborhood.
I did not arrive at my current views through any bitterness or wound. My childhood faith was, on the whole, a gift. There must be great respect and sensitivity for the many intimate, positive experiences of cultural enrichment and meaning that religion—or what others might call "spirituality"—bring to people in their own life history and in their family history.
References
Benson, H., Dusek, J. A., Sherwood, J. B., Lam, P., Bethea, C. F., Carpenter, W., Levitsky, S., Hill, P. C., Clem, D. W., Jr., Jain, M. K., Drumel, D., Kopecky, S. L., Mueller, P. S., Marek, D., Rollins, S., & Hibberd, P. L. (2006). Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. American Heart Journal, 151(4), 934–942. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ahj.2005.05.028
The largest and most methodologically rigorous randomized trial of intercessory prayer conducted to date. A total of 1,802 coronary artery bypass patients at six US hospitals were assigned to three groups: prayed for (but uncertain), not prayed for (and uncertain), and prayed for (and told so with certainty). Among the uncertain groups, complication rates were essentially identical (52% versus 51%), indicating no benefit of prayer. Patients who were certain they were being prayed for had a higher complication rate (59%). The study was funded by the John Templeton Foundation, an organization devoted to research bridging science and religion. It is frequently cited as decisive evidence against the medical efficacy of distant intercessory prayer.
Sosis, R., & Alcorta, C. (2003). Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12(6), 264–274. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.10120
A review of the evolutionary "costly signaling" theory of religion, relevant here to the practices of baptism, public conversion, and demanding camp rituals described in this chapter. Costly or hard-to-fake displays of commitment—emotional public baptism, sustained collective worship—function to build trust and cohesion within a religious community, which helps explain why such moments feel so powerful to participants.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.
The foundational work on "flow," the deeply absorbed, self-forgetful state of optimal engagement. It provides the psychological vocabulary for the "joyful, flow-like state" observed during collective prayer and music in worship; such absorbed states are genuinely beneficial regardless of their theological framing.
Newberg, A., & d'Aquili, E. (2001). Why God won't go away: Brain science and the biology of belief. Ballantine Books.
An accessible account of the neuroscience of religious and meditative experience, including neuroimaging of prayer and meditation. Relevant to the chapter's observation that prayer and ritual can produce meditative, peaceful states with measurable psychological and physiological correlates—independent of any supernatural cause.
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