Faith In The Closet

    Usually I dislike sermons.  The form is lost on me. This has occasioned some awkwardness in my life, as I've had good friends among clergy. They in turn have compounded my problem by being exceptions who vividly proved the rule. It is a mildly uncomfortable conundrum.
   In any case,  I usually dislike sermons. But I perked up at one a few Sundays ago. The preacher began with a story of visiting a backyard barbecue at a neighbor's house. One of the other guests, on learning that he was a clergyman, treated him to a lecture. It began with words on the order of, "Do you really believe all that stuff?"  It ended with words on the order of "You can't prove any of it."
    The story resonated with me.  From time to time I have a layman's version of the same experience. People who are not religious seem to be bothered by the fact that I am.
    I take care not to wear religion on my sleeve.  But I don't dissemble. If the subject comes up in social conversation, and the question lands in my lap, I acknowledge being observant in a Christian denomination.  Several kinds of reaction may occur. Some people shoot embarrassed glances toward far corners of the room, as if I had claimed to be a chicken pot pie. Others go blank and silent, as if to forbear through rudeness.  Still others go rigid with something that looks very like annoyance.
     Granted, religion can nowadays be a cringe-worthy subject. Choose your culprit, starting with the scalawags who will cure your bunions or save your soul -- your choice -- if only you'll pony up.  At the other extreme are the sweet folks whose faith is utterly sincere and comprehensively vocal. Nobody likes to be harangued. I'd rather not be blessed by the cashier at the grocery store.
    In between, we have hate-mongers, politicians who claim God as an ally, and mega-preachers whose definition of reverent humility permits them million-dollar homes. Praise the Lord, pass the loot, vote for me and scorn the neighbor of your choice.
    To all the above I plead not guilty. Even so, I may wind up being -- figuratively speaking -- the guy who stops conversation by telling the wrong joke or grinning with spinach between his teeth.
    Perhaps it is not irrelevant that atheism has become stylish. It has its own mega-preachers and proselytizers.  And like my friends on the religious side, its adherents can be artfully selective about which tenets they embrace and which they ignore.  I particularly enjoy the Christmas season's manger scene mania, in which religious tradition must not put so much as a toe on secular turf. I wait for the manger police to reject the tradition of taking the Christian Sabbath as a day off from work. So far, no go.
    With the rest of the human race, I am capable of petty resentment. I do become annoyed in those moments when I realize I'm being regarded as a walking, talking faux pas.  In years past I might venture to talk my way through them. The result was always social disaster. I babbled earnest endorsements of the theory of evolution, and abject admissions of scriptural contradiction, until I sounded as if I were selling door-to-door magazine subscriptions. I embarrassed whole rooms full of people, including myself.
    Social mores are bearable if not always sensible. But the ones here at hand reflect a larger context that I think terribly sad. The hucksters and pols and zealots have so thoroughly poisoned the vocabulary of religion that it is genuinely risky to mention the subject in polite company.
    As for my social life, perhaps I will try to hint -- without actually fibbing -- that I am a Druid.
    And come to think of it, I wonder if Druids have sermons.