This church that I'm attending may be practicing more Humanistic values than the Atheist/Secular Humanist "community" that I have attended over the years..
It's called Imago Dei in SE downtown Portland.. Last Sunday was my first time attending there with a Christian friend of mine. Interesting enough, she is a psychologist, an intellectual in her own right, and in many areas just as skeptical as I am. Yes, a sincere Christian and skeptic, who asks questions. Is that possible? Well, yes.
Anyways, I had been looking for a church to attend for several months now.
-First, I went several times to the New Thought church in Lake Oswego, which was very warm and accepting(with a questionable degree of critical thinking) but not much in the way of socializing and not much of a 30's adult crowd there.
-Next, I attended, a couple of times, The Unitarian Universalist church in downtown Portland, which was relatively warm and accepting(with a more progressive degree of critical thinking) and better in the way of socializing, with a significantly greater 30's crowd.
-Finally, I attended, last Sunday, Imago Dei in SE downtown Portland, which had a family feel to it and about 60% of the atmoshere was 20's to late 30's. I'll need to attend a couple more Sundays to determine how warm and accepting the people here are and how much socializing takes place, but it was my strong impression that Imago Dei had the highest level of critical thinking skills, of the churches I've attended, on the many topics and questions that I sat in on Sunday.
Critical thinking skills, following the evidence wherever it leads, and facing the conclusions that this process takes you to(even if those conclusions challenge your cherished beliefs and assumptions), have been very important values for me, that, for many years now, I've consider humanistic, even secular humanistic..
Yet Imago Dei, despite society's popular belief in Christians as having an unquestioning faith in what scripture says about many issues and philosophical issues.. the majority of the people I sat with in class at Imago Dei used their critical thinking skills, asked lots of questions, and were very reflective...
However, I've had experience with Christians from different walks of Christianity attending Christian AND Atheist events, not asking quite as many questions, being less reflective, and more quickly coming to conclusions instead of suspending their judgement on deep issues, at least until an Atheist/Christian event was over. :)
So maybe when you put Christians in a church atmosphere with ONLY like-minded people they can identify with, a place where they feel safe from scrutiny and criticism, do they let their guards down and more deeply reflect on things.
I could ask if that is the same exact phenomenon that happens in Atheist circles, but for now, I want to focus on Christian circles in churches...
In addition, and more importantly to this post, I found Imago Dei to be very Humanistic: compassionate, with a strong sense of justice and sensitivity towards injustice(the pastor IN HIS SERMON, for about 5 minutes, talked about the sex trafficking problem of young children and teens in Portland and the steps Imago Dei was taking to actively intervene in this situation). So, a firm awareness of complicated issues that are out in the world and a pro-activeness about these problems with, already in place, church-sponsored programs that face head on the many issues that are in society..
And I'm willing to acknowledge that churches such as Imago Dei are significantly more aware of AND active with programs for social issues in our city, than any Secular Humanist organization at the local level OR national level, that I know of!...
Please!! if anyone knows of a secular organization that is a worthy contender to what I have mentioned so far, please let me know.. Re-experiencing this social dynamic is ONE of the reasons I find myself now attending church.
And, NO, churches don't do these things mainly because of blind faith/or tax free money and so they obey, throw money at causes, and therefore appear Christian. It is more complicated than that and something I'll post on in the near future. Moving on..
So why am I going to church almost every Sunday? Why am I no longer "immersing" myself in an Atheist community, outside of a few exceptions? And why this unconditionally accepting, upbeat, liberal church over a conservative church?
Well...
