While sitting in an airport, I had an interesting experience listening to a group of pastors returning from a retreat and discussing who is and who isn’t a Christian. They were quite open and vocal in their exchange, with little concern for who was listening. The typical suspects were dragged up in the conversation with the usual disapproval and even disgust, “How can a Catholic or a Mormon be saved? And, what about those churches who ordain women and gays, what is the faith coming to? What can be done?” As the pastors entered the plane the conversation continued along those lines and I found myself slinking further and further behind the group of pastors trying to distance myself from the conversation because of the sadness coming up in me about my own faith. I thought I had finally succeeded in avoiding my pain, until I sat down and discovered that the three pastors were on both sides of me in the same isle, still talking. While I listened to the conversation gain momentum I began to wonder:

What is really being said here? It seems that Instead of trusting the process Jesus has people in and allowing for that process to transform individuals into a new spiritual identity organically emerging from community, the organized Church requires identification with a historical and theological Jesus, relating a Cartesian perspective of Christ as “The Faith.” As one of the pastors talked of Orthodox Christianity and its requirements, I was taken by his tone; I wondered, is Christianity an ideology for scaling Christ into form to be marketed?

The irony of this situation struck me because I had brought a book entitled Infidel I was intending to finish on the flight. Infidel is the life memoir of a Muslim woman by the name of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and it chronicles her life journey of coming out of the oppressive radical Islamic community and becoming a champion of free speech and her mission to fight injustice done in the name of religion.