in another life, i would've been an amazing pastor's daughter
(my dad wasn't a pastor btw I just liked how this title sounds)
If you held a gun to my head and asked me if I believed in God, I would say that ‘I do.’ If we passed on the street and asked me the same question, I’d say ‘I do, but I’m a bit quiet about it’.
Joshua 24:15
Every week, for as long as I can remember, my dad and his siblings would assemble into our living room and conduct a bible study. I physically couldn’t resonate with the latter because my dad and his siblings conducted said meetings in Lingala, which is their mother tongue, and not mine. This sensation is comparable to what I imagine Medieval English peasants experienced, since priests spoke or sang Mass in Latin. I didn’t learn much, except how to finish a Jacqueline Wilson book in about 2 hours. Today, there’s less of us, and the weekly meetings are in English. I chime in with reading a bible verse from Louis Segond instead of the King James’ edition.
I lived and breathed Christianity from the moment I was born. Catholicism was in school, it was in church, it was in our communities, it was in song. I was quite malleable when I was young, so you could tell me anything about God, and I likely believed it. My mousey-quiet demeanour paired with my conviction to articulate how devout me and my family were would have honestly made me a great pastor’s daughter.
Culturally Catholic ?
I would like to say that I’m more culturally Catholic than I am religious. I still believe in God, but I like the aesthetics of Christianity more. I love going into my college chapel, I love the Sacre-Coeur in Montmartre, and I love going back to my childhood church during Christmas and Easter. I chase Divine Intervention like it’s scared of me.
Every Thursday morning, we used to have hymn practise in primary school. I still play those ‘Jesus tunes’ on my Spotify every now again for comfort. Before secondary school, the only times I would go out on the weekend (and I mean beyond the estate park), was mass. I loved wearing the ‘Jesus bracelets’ in school, and I did feel proud (perhaps not the good kind) to wear my cross necklace on my first day of work at my French lycée. I wanted to see if I would get clocked for it (spoiler alert: the headteacher did, *<20 mins* into the job, and proceeded to tell me to take it off). Laïcité in action !!!
Being ‘culturally’ Catholic is quite fun. I’m not devout at all, but I still believe. Religious studies was my favourite subject in school because it felt like common sense. I knew my ‘Our Fathers’, (in English and French), ‘Hail Maries’, and even the Nicene Creed off by heart, and all I needed to do was apply everything I was exposed to, into essay form. I’m still pissed off about the AQA RS GCSE exam in 2019. My peers and I used to joke about ‘love thy neighbour’ being a get-out-of-jail-free-card in our essays, but this took a dark turn when our real GCSE exam had the quote in the question, so we couldn’t use it in our answers. Still smashed it, thank God !
Skepticism will free us all
I believe that every religious person should be skeptical towards their belief. It prevents you from complacency, and it assures that you don’t need to ‘refer to the Bible’ for your answers. Why wouldn’t you want to know and learn more about your religion, your faith-based philosophy? What I won’t tell you is that my skepticism comes from an existential crisis. I simply didn’t like how people I loved used the same religion I knew and loved to justify their Bigotry.
My skepticism comes from questioning whether I should be Catholic at all. Most Central African nations are because of colonialism, which makes religion an insidiously successful form of soft power. While most nations are free, we (especially second generation immigrants) are completely cut off from tribal traditions. In my case, that would be Bantu philosophy, whatever that is1. While I felt ‘comfortable enough’ in my Catholic bubble, I really wanted to have friends that weren’t Christians. I had enough of an understanding that their worldview was different to mine, but what we shared in common is that a) faith is a cheat code to life, and b) we were taught to be decent people. Sometimes my religion feels like it has come as a default, in the same way that a child may only like cheese and onion crisps because they’ve exclusively had cheese and onion crisps.
Furthermore, we hypothesise, but never actively question, ‘why does God allow suffering’, or ‘why do people use the bible to tell people that gay people are going to hell’. With regards to the former, I’m not a fan of the ‘Eve argument2’, especially because I always thought that story, as well as the story of creation, was more metaphorical/symbolic than literal. Oh, and the latter is flat out wrong. Having a loved one make you read out the story of Sodom and tell you that you’re going to hell [for being bisexual] engenders an unforgivable rage when you are freshly eighteen and angsty. If sex[uality] was a sin, then the vast majority of us would be automatically condemned into The Inferno. I’m also not a fan of the idea that we should justify our suffering on earth for ‘peace in another life’. Why can’t we have peace in both ?
Skepticism will free us all because skeptics arouse us with stimulating questions. Religion is completely intangible, and we all become agents of voluntary servitude because we surrender our collective power in exchange for a community led by leaders. Displacement of agency isn’t necessarily a bad thing if we adopt faithful mannerisms through positive behaviours and embrace positive tradition, but it is equally important to reflect on why we believe, and therefore, our willingness to displace our individual power for the greater good.
Religion and climate
I was in year five when I learned about the notion of ‘stewardship’ and how we are all ‘stewards of creation’ so we need to look after the planet. I really took this on, and aggressively tried to recycle when I could. Half a decade later, the climate strikes rose above and I very quickly learnt that stewardship requires company. “Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening” is a constant reminder that the work I do is based on faith, but also privilege. People have been killed for expressing their concern about social injustice, and I can do it on the streets (for now…), or through a few taps on my phone, or my laptop in the digital age.
Quite a few of my friends and mutuals in climate spaces vary in, or have no faith. While we may never explicitly talked about religion (I never asked), my peers’ courage and drive was sufficient enough for me to believe in something new: people power.
Abrahamic allies
Some of my closest friends are Muslim. I absolutely love hearing about the faith and how it mirrors Catholicism, Above all, I admire just how beautiful their forms of worship are. I genuinely think Muslims adopt a type of discipline that is impossible to master for the rest of population. Ramadan is a PRIME example of that, and it is incredible that their love for Allah drives them to fast during daylight hours. (I've READ the 2016 Ramadan timetable… dear God (!!!))
Equally, I absolutely LOVE adopting Arabic phrases (such as inshAllah) because they hold so much more weight in my opinion. With inshAllah, the respective English and French equivalents, ‘Godwilling’ and ‘si Dieu le veut’ just don’t do it for me. InshAllah feels so much more intentional. I love learning about the cultural elements to it, how Eid is like the Muslim Met Gala (and not Christmas), and I am counting down the days for Christmas/Eid 2033. Jingle Halal indeed :)))
Yesterday, Christians joined our Muslim brothers and sisters in fasting. I wasn’t sure what to give up for Lent this year, because I feel like I’d ‘done everything’, but I decided TikTok will do. I did catch myself trying to scroll to the app on my phone multiple times yesterday, so it’s borderline instinctive. I hope the next thirty-nine days will be purifying, wholesome, and thoughtful.
I’m quite quiet about how I practise my faith because I think it’s between myself and God, and that’s enough for me. I could write articles about my reservations towards ‘university Christian societies’, but that would make me just as judgemental, and it’s not my place, nor space, to speak on.
Read up on Leah Lauder, though.
I pray before bed. I pray the same prayer that I learned in primary school (old habits die hard). It’s both unintentionally humbling but a reminder that I deserve to express myself with comforting words. I wouldn’t change any part of my upbringing, because faith is truly the one thing that has kept me going, and I am annoyingly indebted to that feeling.
Not being flippant, I just genuinely couldn’t tell you about it beyond the fact that it has origins in Congo, and likely West Africa !
(blaming women when a man ate the apple too ???)
This was a lovely and insightful read
this is really beautiful - i wish more people talked about the nuances that come with having faith, rather than making it binary!! fab read 🧡