We all see our lives as having a moral and spiritual shape. Somewhere, in some activity, lies a fulfillment, in which life is wholer, richer, and deeper. These experiences of fullness can also have a negative side, in which we feel a distance from and incapacity to ever reach this place. Many of us, escaping this sense of exile yet not reaching fulfillment, live in a middle condition. We come to terms with this condition often through some stable, routine order in life, in which we do things that have some meaning for us and contribute to our happiness. Essential to this condition is that this ritual keeps at bay the feeling of exile and has continuing contact with and slow movement towards fullness. In this state, we have a feeling of what fullness would be. Sometimes there will be moments of joy, where we actually feel whole.
While still waiting for my parents to come home, I remember that my mother, Hannan Hallukah, had one of those moments 25 years ago in a small, dirty Pentecostal church in the outskirts of a village in Egypt. She was the youngest of her three brothers and four sisters, all of whom were Coptic. She went to mass every Sunday, sang long prayers, and participated in the sacraments. The church was very run down; even minor repairs needed presidential approval. That absurd requirement was just one of the many examples of the systematic persecution she and her family faced. As a Copt, she had to be at the top of her class to even compete with the mediocre girls. Her Coptic faith, however, gave her a community that she grew closer and found safety in.
Despite the persecution she endured, she still found emptiness inside all the rituals and sacraments she participated in. Reports of Coptic Church bombings and close Coptic friends being murdered by members of the Muslim Brotherhood made my mother question her faith. The rituals lost meaning to her and couldn’t provide comfort in her depression. The legalistic nature of the Church burdened her even more as she felt that her sins against God resulted in the death of her closest friends. She felt inferior and ashamed.
One day, when she was in college, a friend of hers invited her to a Pentecostal Church. Hannan initially refused, worrying that her family would feel betrayed if they found out that she went to one of the newer Evangelical Churches. Her friend persisted and finally convinced my mom to go to this small, beaten down church. The church was very peculiar: instead of mindlessly participating in meaningless rituals, people were praying fervently and incessantly. She had never seen Christians with such enthusiasm and joy. At one point, my mom walked up to the altar and knelt on the ground. She hardly dared to look up as she trembled under a terrifyingly other presence. It was that moment she felt a new sense of freedom from the guilt and shame she had. She knew that God was with her despite her suffering and sin.
My mom repudiated the Coptic rituals for a view of God that expanded beyond her church. In her own experience, in prayer, in moments of fullness, this Pentecostalism is the picture that emerges.
Patiently waiting for my parents to come home, I get a text from my mother: she’s coming home in a few hours. I decide that I should greet her with a gift. I quickly put on my black hoodie and matching leggings and head out to the Queen Boulevard mall. In the deafening silence of the streets, I hear my every step. I pass by an old Catholic Church, a Coptic Church, and a Pentecostal Church within the span of fifteen blocks. I even pass by an Islamic center. Despite all this, large portions of Glendale’s members are agnostic or have no religious preference. There’s no “default option” in Glendale. I’m free to break with the religious tradition of my parents and carve my own path, and I have by identifying with Confessional Presbyterianism.
This plurality isn’t just confined to Glendale. In America, there are alternative ways of living and attaining fullness. There is no default option of belief like in Egypt, in which breaking away from your faith is inconceivable. As I walk, I cannot help but be aware that there are a number of different options. I can’t help but look over my shoulder from time to time, living my faith in doubt and uncertainty. Often times, I truly wish I were born in Geneva during the 1500s, where atheism was virtually impossible. Today, in the secular streets of New York, unbelief is easy.
I quicken my pace to get to the bus stop on time. It’s almost noon and the bus comes exactly four minutes past that. As the brisk wind stings my face, I get onto the bus and push my way to obtain a seat. On the rare occasion that this happens, I usually like to rest my eyes or reflect on my theology. This time, however, I feel a sense of urgency. Not that I need to get to the mall on time, but that I have to answer this burning question: How did society get to this present state, where beliefs are fragile and marginalized? I tilt my head down to block the Sun’s rays and focus on the dull, dirty floor of the bus. Yet the rays, still hit my head, opening my mind. It feels almost divine, revelatory.
“Could it be that my mother’s story be a guide that answers my question?” I thought. I pursued the idea like a young boy searching for his mom’s purse. Like the Coptic Church, Roman Catholicism heavily emphasized ritual and sacrament. Medieval people concieved that the natural world pointed beyond itself. Society was enchanted and grounded in a higher reality. Sacraments like the Eucharist and the doctrine of transubstantiation captivated the medieval world. Even social bonds were sacred and a premium was placed on the collective good. Turning heretic wasn’t a personal matter; it had communal repercussions. Breaking from the community left you alone to the charged forces. Human life found its ultimate meaning in a transcendent eternity but the demands of securing such an ultimate life required an ascetic relation to ordinary life. This creates a tension between the radical transformation faith calls to and the realities of an ordinary ongoing human life.
The Medieval world resolved this tension by making a division of labor. The church created a class who ascetically devote themselves to transcendence for the wider population who has to deal with the nitty-gritty of creaturely life. The population also had rituals such as Lent that served as opportunities to live in this tension. The rituals signify a sense of “higher” time, in which events far apart are closely linked.
In this highly pressurized world, there was discontent with the hierarchical ordering. To solve this two-tiered religious system between the saints and the peasants, reform movements arose, seeking to make everything religious. Everything was to be done before the face of God, leveling the distinction between the peasant and the monk. This belief that God sanctified everything everywhere also led Reformers like John Calvin to reject the marginalization of grace to rituals and sacraments and extend it to all of nature. This led to a kind of disenchantment: as the world is de-charged, it also left us free to reorder the world as we see best. Social and political arrangements were no longer enchanted givens, just like the Coptic arrangement of worship was no longer a mandate for my mom.
Theological shifts, regardless of the intentions of Reformers, led to an anthropocentric view of God. The dualism between the heavenly and the earthly of the medieval world was replaced by a more immanentized view of humanity. God’s providential concern for order was reduced to an ordering of creation for humanity’s benefit, and since order is discernible by reason, humans could rise to the challenge to realize. God still plays a role, not as Calvin’s sovereign preserver of the universe, but as Spinoza’s simple watchmaker.