My family has recently surfaced from what seems like a plague of sorts. It started with a major home improvement – a floor transplant—and ended with pink eye. Between, there have been lots of other interesting events. Be thankful you’re not my BFF because then I’d have to bore you with all the gory details. Since the house is half put together, the humans are on the mend and the IRS is no longer sending us little notices, I can find time and my desk in order to post. This is something I wanted to post at the beginning of the month, but oh well. If you’ve been keeping up with Ex/Urb you know that our current feature interview is with Brad Johnson, the former pastor of a suburban megachurch who is now employed as a Starbucks barista. Brad was what I’d call locally famous here in the NW ‘burbs of Los Angeles. He had an affair, his family was devastated and he stepped down from his church post. Many people (including my dear husband) would say, “Yeah, whatever.” But if you read Brad’s interview you know that it isn’t about the details of his affair or some confessional account of what happened. It’s an interview about spirituality and even redemption. Okay, and it also satisfies some curiosity as to why he’s working at Starbucks. But let’s get back to the higher ground. It seems to me that lately many of us are questioning our faith. In tough times maybe this is par for the course. I know in the past few months whether I pick up the New Yorker and come across an article on Ian McEwan and how he now agrees with Christopher Hitchens that God is not great or whether I check my email and find a friend has sent me a link to a  Nightline Face Off on whether the devil exists, spiritual questioning is all around. In fact, I remember reading a few months ago about a survey concluding there are fewer “believers” in the U.S. now than at any other time. The poll, The American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College in Hartford, CT, found that 75 percent of Americans now call themselves Christian. In 1990, the figure was 86 percent. When I mentioned this to a friend recently, he called it a Bush backlash. Maybe.

At my house, we’re always interested in ideas about faith. My husband rented Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous some nights ago. After I watched it I spoke with my friend Steph, who was once one of Pastor Brad’s church members and is now sort of wondering about all things spiritual.  I told her how I felt after watching Religulous, which was that while many of Maher’s ideas I found interesting– and some I found extremely enlightening — something bothered me. Maher came off as picking on the least articulate believers. It’s a low blow, in my opinion, for a slick, smart television dude to ask a bunch of truckers who attend church in a trailer beside a roadside diner to defend their religion. Why didn’t he do more interviews of people like those at, say, The Harvard Divinity School? He seemed to give very little footage to really smart and studied believers. Nonetheless, as I said, Maher made some good points. Steph put it in perspective, though. She said, “I don’t want to watch Religulous. Right now I’m looking for reasons to believe — not reasons not to believe.” I think with the state of the world right now, that’s true for many of us (unless you’ve already sided with Hitchens et al).

I have a recommendation for those of you like Steph and myself who are always on the lookout for reasons to have faith in all varieties of ways. I recently came across  10 Things Your Minister Wants To Tell You (but can’t because he needs the job) by Reverend Oliver “Buzz” Thomas. Actually, I first checked out the audio version at my library. I don’t really have a minister but I wanted to hear what this Buzz guy thought my minister would tell me if I did have one and if he didn’t need to keep his job. Thomas is from Tennessee so sometimes his voice reminded me of Bill Clinton’s. Arkansas and Tennessee are close enough to share twangs and drawls, I guess. Later, I went back to the library and checked out the book, which is a very slim volume. I learned from the jacket cover that the good Reverend Thomas is a Baptist minister and constitutional lawyer. From his photo, I see he’s also kind of hot (married for nearly 30 years, father of two). I now know that some theologians have criticized the book as too glib but I’m not a theologian. In the book, Thomas addresses many of the most serious issues that keep us from believing. For example, is God really against homosexuality? Does God say women should be subservient to men? How do you please God? I liked it all but the chapter on homosexuality I found most interesting. Many of us hear so-called religious people say they’re not for gay marriage or that they don’t “condone” homosexuality because it’s a sin. Thomas explains that the book of Leviticus does mention homosexuality in an unfavorable way but also “Leviticus is filled with laws imposing the death penalty on everything from eating catfish to sassing your parents.” Thomas rightly says that if we decide homosexuality is wrong based on Leviticus, we must also decide eating catfish and a bunch of other crazy stuff is also wrong.

He also writes about how science shouldn’t be pitted against religion, how so  often the Bible isn’t translated well and how to live a right life.  My fave quote Thomas offered, though, is at the end of chapter 5 and comes from the theologian Martin Luther: Make peace with God and sin on bravely.

I take that as meaning make peace with religion. And I think maybe that isn’t a bad manifesto. Stop wondering, sin on bravely. What else can mere humans do?