Today, my husband and I reached an important milestone together; we officially became full-fledged Episcopalians! This is exciting because we’ve both found what we’ve been looking for in the Episcopal Church and wanted to convert together. We started attending our church when I stumbled upon it as a potential wedding venue. It was love at first sight. Not only were we instantly welcomed into our parish’s friendly, fairly liberal community, we also decided on the spot that the historical chapel on the church’s grounds would be our wedding venue. Lookimg back, I think we made the right decision. So what does my satisfaction with our church have to do with the gloomy title? Well, dear reader, allow me to explain my religious journey.
For starters, my husband and I have starkly contrasting religious backgrounds. His family is Southern Baptist and my mom’s side of the family is fiercely Roman Catholic. My dad’s family’s religious affiliation is all over the place. Some are evangelicals, some have no affiliation but still do Catholic weddings, baptisms, etc. and my dad is very, very New Age. Even though Mom wanted me to be Catholic and instilled some Catholicism in me, I never had a formal Catholic education. Because of price, location, her aversion to nuns, and potentially other factors, she enrolled me in two private, uber-Protestant private schools from kindergarten through eighth grade. I attended the first school only for kindergarten and completed 1st-8th grade at that school’s redneck cousin. I have always believed in a higher power, but I never fully bought into the brand of religion they tried to indoctrinate us with. I could never accept how misogynistic, hypocritical, anti-science, and generally problematic it was even as a child. The routine bashing of Catholicism I heard in Bible class only made me want to defend it more.
However, that began changing once I concurrently started attending a public high school and Sunday Confirmation classes at the Catholic church I had been baptized and received my First Communion at. Since Mom and I never attended services on a regular basis, I had no idea how to keep up with the rigid structure of Mass and the litany of responses that goes with it. I hoped I would finally learn how to “be” Catholic during my classes but I wound up incredibly disappointed. Instead, we went over a lot of the same Bible stories that had already been drilled into my skull. I realized that there’s an expectation within the Catholic Church that you’re supposed to learn this sort of thing from a very young age for otherwise you’ll remain an outsider like me. The irony is that my single favorite thing about Catholic Mass *is* how structured and ritualistic it is. To me, the rituals of Mass combined with the grand, ornate architecture of many Catholic churches makes for a rich, deeply spiritual experience. Having said that, I began turning away from Catholicism pretty much the second after I was comfirmed.
I went ahead with the process because Mom really wanted me to do it and I was ok with it. I didn’t have any major qualms with the Chirch at the time. However,I knew from the get-go I wasn’t devout and never would be. Even to this day, I don’t consider myself to be devoit, which lead me to really stress out about my Episcopal confirmation. Anyway, as I grew older, I became more and more uncomfortable with the Church’s positions on sexuality and abortion, especially in light of its handling of child abuse by clergy. Once i determined that there is no place for me as a pro-choice bisexual in the Catholic Church, I became very interested in converting to the Episcopal Church. I hesitated for a very long time because I was very afraid of that level of commitment (but not marriage, go figure...)and knew that certain relatives wouldn’t be pleased. Fast forward to 2016...
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