I'm curious about any anecdotes / insights other DUers may offer -

[pinto]

Friendships, relationships, professional associations with folks of other faiths, agnostics, atheists, a-religious, none of the above, etc.

Not looking for any personal disclosures, I just have a feeling we all have relationships of one sort or another with folks we know in each of those "labels".

Most of my friends are either agnostic, atheist or a-religious. If religion comes up in conversation it's often in relation to something else - usually national politics. Duh. Or the role religions are playing on the world stage. Or the cultural and historical contexts.

I particularly value the historical / cultural aspects. The settings help provide a bigger picture.

Two specific relationships stick in my mind.

A childhood friend was Jewish. We touched on our different family backgrounds between trying to catch lizards and coaxing money for a coke from our parents. I even visited the kids' Hebrew school until that got nixed. I found it fascinating.

The other was a conservative Christian coworker. We worked in a very diverse public health program, serving a very diverse population. We hit it off as work friends. I admired her sense of humor and her sincere ability to set aside her religious stuff to do the job we were trained to do. (The sense of humor helped a lot, I think.) The program closed, she got married and I hear she's grown more strident with her religious point of view. But in that work setting she was a pleasure to work with.

My point here is there's more than the label. And that we have more in common than our differences or our labels.

[cbayer]

1. Most of the people I spend my social time with either have no religious affiliation

or don't really talk about it. I do have some friends who are vocal atheists, but many are apatheists.

Now, in my immediate family, I have a great variety. My father is a minister. My sister is an active church member. I spent some time with my mother's family when I was young, and they were born again christians. My step-daughter's family are evangelical, she is atheist and has married a Muslim. My son is engaged to a Catholic with a strong Catholic family. My other son worships the holy medicine of weed, lol.

This diversity has driven my interest in religion and in the role religion plays in relationships and families.

Like you, I think we all have more in common than we do differences.

[Jim__]

2. Most of my friendships with religious people were through work.

One guy I sat next to for about 5 years. He had an undergraduate degree in biology and a graduate degree in computer science. He was a conservative Christian. He didn't believe in evolution and we used to talk about that a lot. I once called him a fundamentalist, not meaning it as an insult, but thinking it because he didn't accept evolution. He was insulted by that label. He was not a biblical literalist. He had a philosophical approach to life , so we talked about lots of things: the meaning of life, the origin of the universe, science, philosophy, etc. He voted for Obama in 2008; I think mostly because of the Iraq War, and the incoherence of Sarah Palin. He died in his mid 40's in 2011. I went to his funeral in a huge church. The service mostly talked about love and the faith Mike showed while he was in the hospital and knew he was dying.

For a number of years I worked as a consultant. The group I was in traveled all the time. My boss was an ex-Marine Corps officer; and his dream was to be a youth pastor in a Christian Church. He knew I was an atheist and we used to talk about life, faith, and the meaning of it all. Since we were usually "on the road" a number of these talks took place into the wee hours in various bars. The one conclusion I came to from these talks was that when we really got down to what each of us believed, neither one of us had a firm grasp on ultimate meaning. I used the word universe, he used the word God; but neither of us could define what we actually meant.

Most of the places that I worked, it seemed to be divided roughly 50 - 50 between atheists and fundamentalists. I spoke with different people on either side of the question. We never argued or attacked anyone's beliefs; really just tried to understand. Of course, I only had these types of discussions with a few people. But, I never had any problems, or witnessed any problems between people because of their different beliefs.

[Cleita]

3. I went to parochial school but my best friend was a neighborhood girl who

was Jewish. I really don't know any atheists although I'm most likely agnostic. I can't really call myself an atheist. My friends have crossed a wide spectrum of religious belief including Mormon, Wiccan and Buddhist although I myself practice no faith.

[cbayer]

4. I think your scenario is a great example of why the simplistic labels of theist or atheist

or even agnostic don't make a lot of sense to so many people.

While there are those who clearly identify themselves as one of those things, many people fall somewhere in between or move between categories or feel spiritual in some way, etc. etc.

Those that insist that you must pick a label or a group are on the extremes, imo.

[hrmjustin]

5. I spend time with people with a variety of different opinions on faith.

We love to discuss our opinions politely and usually with a few drinks. In all my time on this Earth I think I have invited a friend to church once. They say Episcopalians invites someone to church every 13 years and it is very true. I find that we all want the same thing out of life which is peace and a good drink. I choose people who are open and respectful of my views and I must give the same to them. I ware many labels so I have a lot in common with people.

[cbayer]

6. Peace and a good drink! Here's to that

[hrmjustin]

7. And here is to you my friend!

[kwassa]

8. Where two or three Episcopalians gather together, there is usually a fifth.

(old joke!)

Also known as Whiskeypalians.

[hrmjustin]

9. We tell that joke in my parish as well.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

10. I'm reminded of another old joke

Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the head of the Church.
Baptists do not recognize each other in the liquor store.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

11. Almost everyone in my father's family is Anglican, everyone in my mother's family is Jewish

Last edited Wed Apr 10, 2013, 12:19 PM - Edit history (1)

My father converted to Catholicism when I was a small child -- and so I was brought up as a Catholic -- and my mother is a non-practicing Jew. (Which means that, under at least some definitions, I am a Jew.) I cannot reject anyone else's faith, because then I would be rejecting my own family.

You want an anecdote? OK. My Jewish grandfather's mother was the composer Gustav Mahler's niece. Now, the Mahlers were a fairly large Central European family, split into two groups with some enmity between them: The Catholic Mahlers and the Jewish Mahlers. As my great-aunt Pauline Gold (nee Mahler) put it, the Jewish Mahlers despise the Catholic Mahlers because the Catholic Mahlers converted for all the wrong reasons; while the Catholic Mahlers dislike the Jewish Mahlers because they know the Jewish Mahlers are right. (I'm sure that one of the Catholic Mahlers would put it differently.)

Now, despite my being a practicing Catholic, I am one of the Jewish Mahlers. The Nazis had hit the family hard during the Holocaust, and they did not want to lose anyone else. When I was in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, I worked for a time for a man named Bergstrom, whose mother was one of the Catholic Mahlers. I never told my boss that we were cousins, both because I did not want to look like I was sucking up to him, and also because I knew that his mother took the family feud seriously.

[grantcart]

12. Some years back

I attended a lecture in international business management held by a Professor at my alma mater. This is a Prof who I tangled with, and truthfully embarassed many times, when I was there. We remained friends.


The lecturer gave a long talk about how third world economies were stalling and especially in SE Asia.


I had just spent 20 years there was fluent in Thai, spoke some Malay and could read and write in Thai as well.


I had been an international civil servant in 4 countries and opened up a company that had 400 employees in Thailand.


The lecturer had stayed in a Holiday Inn the night before.


I sat quietly and then the Professor introduced me and asked me what I thought of the question, he would regret it as he had so many many times a few decades before.


I said that the professor was 100% correct and completely wrong at the same time.


I then explained that my problem was that in accepting the metric of a country was. If you are going to use that as the only building block then yes, fine her numbers are correct.


If however you understand economic interaction as crossing borders the same way climate does then, no it doesn't.


My point was that while the large concentrated urban areas were stagnating the interriors were opening up and millions of miles of borders that were closed for hundreds of centuries were opening up.


I explained that the interior part of China would soon have, for the first time ever, a road access to the sea.


It wasn't going East through China, but South through Burma and Thailand. Roughly 100 million people would be entereing the international market for production and consumption.


These geographical borders were the key to understanding new areas.


My point is that religious terms like "Christian" "Muslim" "Jew" and so on tell very little about somebody, like countries are not good boundaries for looking at economics.


Is this person man or woman, literate or not?, are they afraid or reassured, rural or urban, loved or alone? These are much more meaningful questions to know about someone than their religion, which in most cases involve some degree of social pressure for them to acceede to the label. (BTW 'Muslims' more than any other group of people I have ever met have been the most frequent to come out and say "please don't judge me by the term Muslim".


I tell people who ask that I am a Buddhist but that is simply a kindness to allow them to put me into box so we can continue.


Buddhists don't have an initiation ritual, attendance or tithing. Being a Buddhist simply means that you are on the road to Dharma (truth).


I would put myself on that road but I would say that a lot of folks are way ahead of me and some of them call themselves Christians, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Humanist, even a few Marxists (but alas I never have found a Troskyite ahead of me, but its possible).