It's Sunday, and I'm not sitting at home doing the New York Times crossword puzzle -- I'm playing bass at church. Although it has a band, this is not some über-contemporary cutting edge church. The feel is folksy and we mix up old hymns and new stuff and a lot of it is quite pleasant and some of it is banal and vacuous and sometimes those are the same songs. On this particular Sunday I play bass and sing tenor and most of the time I can keep that straight. I usually play drums, so this is a nice change of pace. I feel a little like Sting, actually, only neither so cool nor so incredibly good-looking. So maybe more like the lead singer from Mr. Mister.
I used to be very anxious in church, not least when I was on staff. I had a lot to lose: I felt that if people knew my theological proclivities, I'd be ostracized. Out of a job. Or just out, I guess. I felt fake, and in some ways I was fake, though I was trying really hard. I lived in constant fear of being outed and yet also with a constant desire to come out, to be known, to tell my story. The tension wasn't unbearable, but it was uncomfortable, to say the leas -- especially since the kind of Christianity I thought maybe I could believe in was still not something that would sit well with this crowd. Either way I was on the outside.
I get to rehearsal and don't immediately recognize the drummer -- he's not a regular -- until our worship leader points out that we played together once this past summer at a youth event. We shake hands and make small talk. I wonder why there's no sound coming out of my bass and we check a few things until I realize it's not plugged into the amp. This sparks a round of "absent-minded professor" jokes at my expense, most of them instigated by me. My self-designated role at practice is comic relief, anyway: I play an interminable series of 8th notes on the E string of my bass. "What am I playing?" I ask, grinning mischievously. Nobody has a guess, but they know I'm up to something. "Every U2 song," I say. This gets a laugh. I then stumble upon something that sounds a lot like the bass line to "Crossroads" by Stevie Ray Vaughn so I spend the rest of the warm-up trying to get it right until the worship leader signals it's time to start.
It seems strange that after ten years of tension (and the process began long before that) that now that I've given up on any overt theological project, I'm more relaxed. The pastor knows where I'm at with things. I'm a baptized unbeliever, some kind of sympathetic apostate; do with that what you will. I don't try to talk people out of their faith. I'm no proselyte for atheism. I nod and smile at the right times. Should my preacher friend decide that this is untenable, I'll stop playing. Maybe I'll decide I'm not interested anymore and stop playing on my own. I don't know. I've had my fifteen minutes of worship leaderish fame and I'm good. There's always the crossword puzzle.
We finish practice and I grab a cup of coffee and mingle a bit. I'm not much of a mingler, really, but I know these people. They're my people, even though I confess that kind of embarrasses me. The whole thing has a kind of Lake Woebegone-esque quality to it; we're here in church because this is what we do and where we're from and the fact that I don't really believe in God is immaterial next to the history I have of singing with these people and eating with them and watching their kids grow up (as they've watched mine grow up). As evangelicals, we don't have the rich history of the liturgy behind us, or the communion of the saints, or little bits of Jesus, but there is nevertheless a sense of community, a sense of being a people.
The spunky old widow in the prayer room doesn't want my theological history as much as she just wants a hug and a laugh and a wink, as if getting a hug from me is some kind of guilty pleasure. The worship leader doesn't want to rehearse my epistemological misgivings about evangelical theology as much as he needs me to play bass and kvetch about Chris Tomlin (he doesn't really how much he needs me to do the latter, but he does). The high school kid playing keyboard just needs a crash course on how to voice an added second, which is something I can answer. It's not that they wouldn't care I'm an atheist -- they might well be scandalized -- so much as it seems like bringing it up would just make things more complicated than they need to be.
We take to the stage and play our set and people sing along, not exactly lustily, but at least earnestly. There are two services. I sit through the first one, and during the second I hang out with the other musicians in a back room, sort of like a green room. We talk in hushed tones and stop nervously whenever there's a lull in the sermon, wondering if the preacher is headed into the final prayer -- our cue to go back up. (If you get the urge to get up and move whenever someone prays publicly, you might be a church musician.)
It seems odd to me that, in the wake of finally owning up to being an atheist, or something very much like one, I would find myself digging in to church a little more rather than less. This is not quite what I had expected, though I must confess I've stopped expecting much at all because it doesn't seem to do me much good. But I think I know what's going on; I've externalized that tension I've borne for so long. In a way, it's somebody else's problem. The fact that I'm an atheist and a church musician is no longer a conundrum to be resolved or a question to be answered. It just is, and I'm coming to terms with it.
The preacher starts into the prayer and we take our spots. As he's praying I look out at the congregation to see who else is looking up, or looking around. I like doing this for some reason; I'll catch someone's eye, and maybe smile a bit. Some people just pray with their eyes open, but others look strangely guilty, like they think they should have their eyes closed, but for some reason they don't, and there's a story in that reason. I don't know the story, and it's unlikely that it's the same as mine, but still -- I like to think that my smile lets them know that they're not alone.
I used to be very anxious in church, not least when I was on staff. I had a lot to lose: I felt that if people knew my theological proclivities, I'd be ostracized. Out of a job. Or just out, I guess. I felt fake, and in some ways I was fake, though I was trying really hard. I lived in constant fear of being outed and yet also with a constant desire to come out, to be known, to tell my story. The tension wasn't unbearable, but it was uncomfortable, to say the leas -- especially since the kind of Christianity I thought maybe I could believe in was still not something that would sit well with this crowd. Either way I was on the outside.
I get to rehearsal and don't immediately recognize the drummer -- he's not a regular -- until our worship leader points out that we played together once this past summer at a youth event. We shake hands and make small talk. I wonder why there's no sound coming out of my bass and we check a few things until I realize it's not plugged into the amp. This sparks a round of "absent-minded professor" jokes at my expense, most of them instigated by me. My self-designated role at practice is comic relief, anyway: I play an interminable series of 8th notes on the E string of my bass. "What am I playing?" I ask, grinning mischievously. Nobody has a guess, but they know I'm up to something. "Every U2 song," I say. This gets a laugh. I then stumble upon something that sounds a lot like the bass line to "Crossroads" by Stevie Ray Vaughn so I spend the rest of the warm-up trying to get it right until the worship leader signals it's time to start.
It seems strange that after ten years of tension (and the process began long before that) that now that I've given up on any overt theological project, I'm more relaxed. The pastor knows where I'm at with things. I'm a baptized unbeliever, some kind of sympathetic apostate; do with that what you will. I don't try to talk people out of their faith. I'm no proselyte for atheism. I nod and smile at the right times. Should my preacher friend decide that this is untenable, I'll stop playing. Maybe I'll decide I'm not interested anymore and stop playing on my own. I don't know. I've had my fifteen minutes of worship leaderish fame and I'm good. There's always the crossword puzzle.
We finish practice and I grab a cup of coffee and mingle a bit. I'm not much of a mingler, really, but I know these people. They're my people, even though I confess that kind of embarrasses me. The whole thing has a kind of Lake Woebegone-esque quality to it; we're here in church because this is what we do and where we're from and the fact that I don't really believe in God is immaterial next to the history I have of singing with these people and eating with them and watching their kids grow up (as they've watched mine grow up). As evangelicals, we don't have the rich history of the liturgy behind us, or the communion of the saints, or little bits of Jesus, but there is nevertheless a sense of community, a sense of being a people.
The spunky old widow in the prayer room doesn't want my theological history as much as she just wants a hug and a laugh and a wink, as if getting a hug from me is some kind of guilty pleasure. The worship leader doesn't want to rehearse my epistemological misgivings about evangelical theology as much as he needs me to play bass and kvetch about Chris Tomlin (he doesn't really how much he needs me to do the latter, but he does). The high school kid playing keyboard just needs a crash course on how to voice an added second, which is something I can answer. It's not that they wouldn't care I'm an atheist -- they might well be scandalized -- so much as it seems like bringing it up would just make things more complicated than they need to be.
We take to the stage and play our set and people sing along, not exactly lustily, but at least earnestly. There are two services. I sit through the first one, and during the second I hang out with the other musicians in a back room, sort of like a green room. We talk in hushed tones and stop nervously whenever there's a lull in the sermon, wondering if the preacher is headed into the final prayer -- our cue to go back up. (If you get the urge to get up and move whenever someone prays publicly, you might be a church musician.)
It seems odd to me that, in the wake of finally owning up to being an atheist, or something very much like one, I would find myself digging in to church a little more rather than less. This is not quite what I had expected, though I must confess I've stopped expecting much at all because it doesn't seem to do me much good. But I think I know what's going on; I've externalized that tension I've borne for so long. In a way, it's somebody else's problem. The fact that I'm an atheist and a church musician is no longer a conundrum to be resolved or a question to be answered. It just is, and I'm coming to terms with it.
The preacher starts into the prayer and we take our spots. As he's praying I look out at the congregation to see who else is looking up, or looking around. I like doing this for some reason; I'll catch someone's eye, and maybe smile a bit. Some people just pray with their eyes open, but others look strangely guilty, like they think they should have their eyes closed, but for some reason they don't, and there's a story in that reason. I don't know the story, and it's unlikely that it's the same as mine, but still -- I like to think that my smile lets them know that they're not alone.
1 comments:
When I opened Google and saw that there was a new post from you in my reader, I was so excited.
Another great article. I could relate to the "(If you get the urge to get up and move whenever someone prays publicly, you might be a church musician.)" I chuckled.
You make me wonder if part of the reason I loved "doing music" at church was because I had something solid and tangible to focus on while everyone else was being existential and metaphysical about something I couldn't ever really grasp.
Thank you for sharing yourself like this and for making me think.
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