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• Saturday, February 11, 2006 01:38 PM

  Anne Lamott not a whiny Christian

  Cosmicmojo, I think you and I have a lot in common in terms of how we view the world, but I have to disagree with you about Anne Lamott. I don't think she's implying that other people don't have what she has and are therefore inferior (you and I, after all, probably call upon different inner resources), and when she talks about being a Christian, I think, in a way, she may be speaking to other Christians.

  I tend to get really frustrated when, in response to a column by a professed atheist, all the so-called progressive Christians come out and start whining about how he/she is painting everyone with the same broad brush. Or they whine about how Kerry (who is HIMSELF a pro-choice, practicing Catholic, go figure) didn't "reach out" enough to Christians, and how liberal Christians just can't get no respect from the Left, and blah blah blah (although as a Unitarian I go to church with plenty of liberal Christians and we get along just fine).

  And then I ask myself: where WERE you people during the election? Where WERE you people during the "culture wars," when the Right claimed God and left us godless secular humanists to try to defend all your civil liberties? Why are you using all your energy to attack your fellow liberals instead of attacking the real enemy, which is as we speak trying to destroy your denominations from the inside out?

  Here we are--and let me tell you, the reason there are no atheists in foxholes is that we're all out fighting on the front lines--and instead of joining in and fighting the good fight against torture and secret surveillance and government abuse, and finding ways to make the world a better place for the "born," they're still whining about how we're "alienating" them by saying that we think human embryos kinda look like more like brine shrimp than babies, or that we don't need a mystical explanation of the origins of the universe in order to make peace with it.

  All my life, I put my ego aside and coped with other people's assumption that I believe in God. I think they least they can do is put theirs aside and deal with the fact that some of us believe that there is no God, and that said God didn't "know us" in our mothers' wombs. I sympathize with a woman who felt bad about having to have an abortion. I've never had one, so I don't know how I would react. But these people have to deal with the fact that others don't have those experiences, and that there's nothing wrong with that.

  I've never heard that kind of whining about victimization and alienation from Anne Lamott. When she talks about her faith, she talks about being a member of a truly welcoming church (MCCC, I think?) and trying to apply Christian teachings to the rest of her life, as she did, maybe unsuccessfully, in that column to which you refer, and she has been unapologetically and unshrinkingly leftwing all along. I think there's an enormous difference between talking about how Christianity has informed one's life and wrapping it around oneself as a shroud of victimhood. Maybe some of her personal decisions rub people the wrong way, but she's definitely with us, and she's a positive example of a progressive Christian.

  —Marianna Trench Read Marianna Trench's other letters
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