On Church Attendance and Participation

At this point, I shall digress a bit and summarize my current thinking along the line of religion. Perhaps because of my childhood background the importance of religion has been over-emphasized in my life and a considerable passage of time has been required to arrive at a more or less satisfactory evaluation. I suspect that a person with a less indoctrinated childhood would have spent considerably less time in reaching an evaluation, and would regard the subject in a more cursory way.

A further decline in my involvement occurred after my transfer to the San Francisco Bay Area — for a time I had my church membership transferred back to the congregation in Gowrie but eventually I transferred it to the Lutheran church in Berkeley. I think it still functions on University Avenue below what was then Grove Street. Here I attended and continued contributing but my attendance was irregular. During this time I didn’t think too much about church teaching and Christian theology though subconsciously there was a growing disenchantment.

A more serious deepening of the rift between me and religion was probably delayed by my contact with the Knock and Udden families. Rev. Knock and his wife were delightful people personally and though I didn’t share their unquestioning faith, it was easy to compromise my outward appearance of acquiescence in keeping up the social contact with them. The Uddens were similarly congenial people (Mrs. Udden was a sister of Rev. Knock) and I had the same relationship with them.

A rift was also delayed by the visit my parents made to California in the winter and spring of 1952–53 when my attendance at least improved during their visit. It was during this time that my relationship with my future wife Jean Ribley developed and because of the difference in religious training and background we went through a period of serious disagreement and estrangement. This disagreement resulted eventually in a further decline in my attachment to Christian doctrine but superficially the decline was softened and delayed by the compromise we made to attend the Methodist church in north Berkeley. I transferred my membership to that church, but Jean dropped her membership in the Christian Science church (both locally and nationally).

A further factor was the rearing of our three daughters. By experience both Jean and I were accustomed to attendance at Sunday school in our childhood and was wanted this for out offspring. The attendance of out daughters in the Sunday school served to involve us in various of the activities of the church and in attendance. Further I have always found some congenial contacts in church members and this has always and indeed currently prevented a more obvious break with any organized church function.

In recent years my attitude toward Christian theology has further declined. I think this has been partly the result of the deaths of both of my parents. Since I no longer feel the need to present at least a semblance of adherence to their position on theological matters, my feeling about church values has declined. Generally I have not discussed my attitude with my brothers or with my sisters when they were still living. Clarice died in the middle 1970s before her 60th birthday. Vivian died in 2003, having passed her 80th birthday.

I have retained my membership in the Methodist church, transferring it first from Epworth in Berkeley to Memorial Drive Methodist in Houston when we moved there and then to the church here in Ashland when we moved here from Houston. Jean continued to attend along with me though she has never joined the Methodist church as a member. I am sure that at present if I were faced with the decision to join a church I would undoubtedly decide against such a move. Habit kept me involved to the extent of fairly regular attendance, financial contribution and I acted as an usher one Sunday a month until I had a relatively mild stroke. Now all I do is send a contribution once a month.

Beyond ushering I have declined to participate as a church functionary. During our early years in Ashland I did attend the monthly meetings of the Methodist Men’s Group; the potluck dinners were tasty and I enjoyed the table conversation. However the programs were usually uninteresting and after being inveigled into being a “caller” to line up reservations for the dinner meetings, I concluded that the easiest way to avoid being asked to perform any duties was simply to stop attending the meetings, which I did. For a while various members continued to ask me to attend but gradually these overtures have ceased, as I didn’t respond.