William Lobdell -- Losing My Religion

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Marie
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William Lobdell -- Losing My Religion

Unread post by Marie »

Hey Joe,

Have you finished that book yet?.... :shock:

Thanks.
"That's me in the corner -- losing my religion" -- REM
joe sz
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amazon review

Unread post by joe sz »

yes

see my review on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Religion-R ... geNumber=2

Cats and the ineffable name, October 18, 2009
By Joe P. Szimhart (Douglassville, PA USA)

Losing My Religion by William Lobdell is a clearly written and provocative memoir by a former Los Angeles Times religion reporter--an award winning one, I might add.
Lobdell's story intrigues religious minded readers because he entered a serious Christian walk as an adult through a Protestant "born-again" path and later in 2001 with his wife committed to Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (who elect to be Catholics). It intrigues atheists because in the end Lobdell finds peace in his personal philosophy as a kind of atheist without losing his moral base. On the verge of his initiation as a Catholic, Lobdell's skepticism got the better of him--I use "better" without irony. The author comes across as someone who honestly approached his conversions yet to be honest with his conscience had to finally admit that he no longer believed in God or God's religions. How he got there and found peace is the drama of the book subtitled "How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America--and Found Unexpected Peace."

As a child Lobdell attended Episcopal Church services with his family. Like so many young adults in America he lapsed from his rather "boring" family religion as soon as he could, in his case at age 17. After a failed marriage and some loose living the author impregnated a new girl friend who was a nominal Catholic. She kept the child. A month after the birth of their daughter Bill and Greer married in a secular service in Las Vegas. Greer figures prominently in the story as the couple remained together throughout the author's rough religious passages. Lobdell's adult inroad to Christianity occurred around 1990 when he joined the evangelical Mariners Church. Two years later a friend took him to a Presbyterian men's retreat for an intense weekend of self-examination, confession, renewal and conversion. There the author experienced a closed environment where lack of enough sleep, emotional Bible readings, pious songs, charismatic prayer and group pressure brought on what he felt was an authentic born-again experience. He had a vision that seemed to confirm his deeper connection to Jesus. During this period he found a job as the religion writer for an Orange County, California news service. He attributed his new prosperity to prayers answered by God.

His entry into Catholicism paralleled assignments he had to report on sexual abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church. While maintaining his faith Lobdell nevertheless felt disgust with the Church leaders after listening to many victims tell their stories of abuse. Though most of the horrible molestation events and crimes occurred years and decades before, time had not healed the wounds of the victims. Adding to their pain was a Church hierarchy that systematically suppressed, minimized and covered up the abuses. The Church, for the longest time, was more inclined to forgive and restore the deviant clergy than to believe and assist the victims. Lobdell was also upset with the media that often used "far too neutral" terms like "molestation" and sexual abuse." He accuses the Church of being "Orwellian" in its vague use of "boundary violation" and "inappropriate conduct" to describe "child rape" and "sodomy." News editors might change or neutralize his more graphic descriptions that accurately portrayed the allegations.

Lobdell cites studies showing that people in pews among Catholics, Protestants and Mormons are no better or worse than average Buddhists or atheists. He found this dismaying as he was expecting to find, on average, better behavior among fellow churchgoers. Eventually he "felt angry with God for making faith such a guessing game." Lobdell was referring to the myriad versions of the Christian faith that continue to splinter and argue with one another. He mentions that this lack of unity is "often described as the faith's largest scandal." As he paid more attention to scientific studies and statistics he grew more skeptical about leaning on faith to excuse the more bizarre claims in religions. For example, Lobdell wrote of DNA research about migrating peoples that proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Book of Mormon story of Semites coming to America before Columbus was false. By invitation he attended a conference with Mormons where a church leader attacked him for merely reporting the facts. Mormon scholars like all faith apologists continue to scramble to reconcile odd and fantastic scriptures with disconfirming evidence.

Lobdell writes that his biggest challenge was death (247). Would he end up in hell because he rejected God? Should he take Paschal's Wager just in case God was real? A resolution came when he and his wife attended Letting Go of God, a one-woman, autobiographical play by comedienne Julia Sweeney who portrays her walk into disbelief. Sweeney, a cradle Catholic like Lobdell's wife Greer, captured and resolved Lobdell's dilemma with "humor, insight, sensitivity and reason" and so much so that the play gave our author "goose bumps." He found good news in the play for his transformation. Howard Stern, the embarrassingly honest shock-jock became Lobdell's role model for expressing his story as directly as possible. He came to the conclusion that Occam's razor trumps Pascal's wager or the idea that it is better to bet on God just in case God exists. Lobdell had to be true to his conscience. God became an unnecessary factor to explain his existence, his morals and his life in general so he let "Him" go. He felt relieved to finally accept his thin slice of life in this universe and to do the best with it in the time he has. When he came out publicly in a 3,800 word news feature about how his doubts led to his conversion to atheism, he was surprised by the response. A Catholic priest, for example, wrote, "Welcome to the edge. There are lots of us here." Lobdell titled Chapter Eighteen "Welcome to the Edge."

That "edge" can be an anxious place where people feel as if they are among the lunatic fringe or the cutting edge for believing or not believing. It is a two edged sword. For many of us, like the priest quoted above, faith in God relies on a slim intuition at the borders of our testable reality. I know it does for me because I am one of those Catholics who live on this edge. Buddhists might say that walking the "right" way is a razor's edge to sustain the Eight Fold Path. The security of a simplistic pseudo-certainty is not what the author wanted in faith or finds outside of faith. He never states that he is certain, rather he feels more at peace. Lobdell understands completely that the Gospel he sought to follow teaches that sustained faith requires grace but the same Gospel also teaches that not all are called by the Father to follow Jesus. His conscience finally won out as there was no clear evidence that God called him. All his religious experiences could be explained as social influences and psychological misperceptions. He would no longer fake his faith or hang on to the promise of some future grace. Nor would he endorse the best selling evangelists of the neo-atheist movement: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. "I know only what is true for me," he says. Where this author will be philosophically as he ages (he was 48 at the time of publication) I wonder. He is not an absolutist. In other words, his newfound atheism is personal, not dogmatic.

So, to a Catholic, what does it matter if an intelligent churchgoer finds good evidence to leave the Church? There is nothing new here that has not shaken the faith of believers since ancient times. Prophets and seers have often appeared as nutcases to unbelievers that met them or read their revelations. Religious ideas rarely meet scientific criteria for falsifiable evidence. Our ideas of God do not. Historically religions exhibit every human foible common to any established political force. Why would anyone remain Catholic faced with the same evidence as the author? In my case with a long career as a cult deprogrammer or exit counselor I have had to grapple with hundreds of fantastic mindsets and religious claims that not only borrow from the old religions but often reveal new and unique variations of religious ideology with every one totally believed by rather intelligent people. In my work I have become well aware of Roman Catholic history and the criticisms.

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) called his forays into the history of religious ideas an "Ordeal by Labyrinth" in a 1982 autobiographical book by that title (Ordeal by Labyrinth: Conversations with Claude-Henri Rocquet). Eliade, for all his eloquence in establishing a scientific approach to world religions, avoided revealing his private faith in his writings. The labyrinth represented the potentially confusing array of ideas that might drive some men crazy or tempt others to "go native" by a conversion experience while studying a religion or cult. Eliade, who has been called a radical modernist, quietly participated in Orthodox Catholicism. Eliade's personal "center" was his insistence that something he called the sacred was just as necessary to the human experience as physical reality. I am not sure that William Lobdell abandoned this same sacred center. After letting his book settle in my head for a week, I am inclined to place Lobdell (and his quoted priest on the "edge") in the context of one of T. S. Eliot's cats. In his Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats Eliot (1939) writes that cats have three names: A common name like Victor or Bill Bailey, a unique name like Munkustrap or Jellylorum, and a private name that a cat will never confess. By analogy, we name our particular group (e.g., Society of Friends or Quaker) while sustaining a personal identity within that group (Asian-American Quaker human rights activist). Ultimately we might sit quietly (as Quakers are wont to do) never uttering our deepest, inscrutable thoughts about our relationship with the sacred or being. The Eliot cat's deepest name indicates that we are speechless to express (and should be content not to express) the ultimate mystery that is us yet we somehow know is us above and beyond whatever faith we name outwardly as our own or reject not as our own.

"When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason I tell you is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of he thought of his name
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name."

Though Eliot most likely remained an Anglo-Catholic from 1927 until he died in 1965, we can only wonder what he really believed. And I wonder what Bill Lobdell will confess (to his self) twenty or thirty years from now.
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G2G
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Unread post by G2G »

Quoted from above: ""the ultimate mystery that is us yet we somehow know is us above and beyond whatever faith we name outwardly""

Joe, this is wonderful and is where I have found myself after so much contemplation of various religions and of course, RSE. I think it's simple - I am. 8)
"I never really understood religion - it just seemed a good excuse to give" - Ten Years After circa 1972
joe sz
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Unread post by joe sz »

yes. I learned that from seeing "Cats" 4x with my wife.
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littlewiseone
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Unread post by littlewiseone »

Joe, I'm nearly finished reading the book. I picked it up after you mentioned it here. I have devoured it. Well, in the sporadic free moments I manage to find to actually read a book... it turns out, it will probably be the first book I have made it all the way through before it had to go back to the library. :lol:
...and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make...

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