Wrestling with Religion

Religion in the old South Growing up in an Alabama Protestant town and a Baptist family in the 20th century, I had a clear idea what religion was, but a limited one. Most local religion was austere or invisible in the frontier tradition, all about words and the "truths" they signified, scarcely existing outside of songs, prayers, sermons, books, and pamphlets. A "mixed" religious family was one where a husband and wife disagreed about which church to go to Sunday morning. There was a Catholic church--small but thriving in 1950 as university influence made Auburn vaguely cosmopolitan--but I've heard that the church was founded by mistake. Around 1910, when no establishment of religion meant promoting all Christian denominations equally, students were required to sign a log at the church of their choice every Sunday morning. Since there was no Catholic church in Auburn, if they registered as Catholic, they could sleep in, and the story is that thes...

"Do not be afraid, for I am with you" (Isaiah 41:10) is a sentiment repeated all through scripture, Abrahamic and otherwise. Religion generally counteracts fear--our instinctive physical reaction to impending danger, loss, or insult. Fear is a surge of adrenaline that causes sweating, dilation of the eyes, a fast heartbeat, a surge of blood to muscles, imprinted memories, and an impulse to freeze, flee, or fight.           For the millions of years our progenitors wandered in small bands exposed to carnivores, starvation, and strangers, terror helped them survive, but today, when wild beasts are rare, food warehoused, and most strangers harmless, fear can be useless and corrosive. Chronic anxiety afflicts us in social situations where we can't freeze, run, or fight--not productively anyway. Fear erupts as road rage, PTSD, agoraphobia, blanking on exams, and other dysfunctions, and chronic stress degrades sleep, health, and pleasure. Fear ...

My great-great-grandfather Green was a devout lay Methodist who founded Sunday Schools wherever he went. He founded Green's chapel in north Alabama, which was my grandfather's and father's home church. My paternal grandfather, Papa Green, was a gentleman and a scholar, retired businessman, and farmer who kept a Bible and newspaper on the table by his rocker. My mother's grandfather donated land for a Baptist church down the hill from his house in central Alabama, where her father and mother, were pillars of the church and sustained a one-room school, also on family land. Grandaddy worked road maintenance in addition to farming to send my mother to Montevallo, the nearby women’s teacher’s college. Mother and Daddy were the first college graduates in their families. Both became teachers and settled in Auburn, Alabama. I grew up in a house just a few blocks from the university and within sight of one of the best public schools in the state. Daddy had converted t...