the complexities of faith
reviewing & reflecting on omar mouallem's praying to the west and linda kay klein's pure
I always appreciate stories that illuminate the complexities and nuances of faith and religion. Recently I’ve been on a non-fiction kick which has included Omar Mouallem’s Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americans, and Linda Kay Klein’s Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free.
Reading Pure, I reflected on the ways I was influenced by my fundamentalist evangelical upbringing in the height of the purity culture movement. It felt good to know I wasn’t alone in having trouble connecting with my body, confused and shamed by sexuality, and frustrated by the ways in which patriarchy and church seem impossibly and eternally intertwined.
Yes, the church has hurt me, and many people I know, but I have never wanted to give up my faith entirely. I am frustrated with it often, grapple with it, but still hold onto it, even as its shape has changed over the years. I am thankful for the ways my immediate family was a respite from the dogmatic, black-and-white thinking of the church I grew up in, where we could have open theological discussion with no easy answers at the end.
In addition to my frustration with the church, I have often been frustrated by secular liberals uncritical dismissiveness of faith and religion. There was one quote in Pure that stuck with me, that often people who come out of churches where they were taught black and white thinking - the outside world is bad, the church is good - go to the opposite way of thinking once they leave the church: the outside world is good, the church is bad. I like to think maybe there’s some room for grayness, nuance and uncertainty in between.
Omar Mouallem’s Praying to the West spoke to that grayness, nuance and uncertainty of faith, profiling many different Mosques and Muslim groups across North America. Each one had their own structures, flaws, benefits, and unique people with unique flaws. It’s a brilliant, compelling picture of the diversity of Islam within North America, where stereotypes and Islamophobia abound. Like Pure, Praying to the West talks about not the religion, or the people as the problem, but extremism itself, on all sides.
Humans crave certainty. We crave answers, cures, strict right and wrong, clear divisions between who is in and who is out. The world doesn’t exist in black and white, however. One of the reasons I love stories is that they can speak to that in-between space. Stories bring the gray area to life and make a safe space to experience and live into the mess and eventually, feel comfortable there. Religion is bad and good, has hurt and brought hope, and also many, many things in between. My faith lifts me up, confuses me, frustrates me, gives me hope, connects me, separates me, helps shut people out and helps me to live.
One day I’ll write a book about it, probably, but for now you can listen to this poem I wrote, called dear house of God:
