{"id":10278,"date":"2012-10-14T14:24:03","date_gmt":"2012-10-14T21:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=10278"},"modified":"2012-10-14T14:24:03","modified_gmt":"2012-10-14T21:24:03","slug":"belief-is-seriously-overrated-you-dont-have-to-be-a-believer-to-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/belief-is-seriously-overrated-you-dont-have-to-be-a-believer-to-believe\/","title":{"rendered":"Belief Is Seriously Overrated — You Don’t Have to Be a Believer to Believe"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/form>\n
\n
\"Peter
Peter Newhall read Isaiah at his grandmother’s memorial mass. Photo by BF Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

As I made plans for my mother\u2019s memorial mass at the tiny St. Vincent Catholic Church in Pentwater, Michigan, last summer, I asked my brothers and my mother’s grandchildren — with some trepidation — if they\u2019d like to participate in the service.<\/p>\n

\"St.
St. Vincent’s Church, Pentwater<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were the Prayers of the Faithful to be read, as well as two passages from scripture, and the bread and the wine to be carried to the altar.<\/p>\n

My trepidation was not unfounded.<\/p>\n

My nephew, an evangelical, jumped at the chance to read from Romans. My son and daughter, who grew up in St. John\u2019s Episcopal Church in Oakland and are now an agnostic (an apatheist to be more precise) and a beginner Buddhist respectively, agreed to take on Isaiah and the Prayers of the Faithful.<\/p>\n

But my brothers and some of the grandchildren were uneasy at the thought of standing up in front of a bunch of people to read from a document they didn\u2019t believe in. One gra<\/em>nddaughter thought she might be able to read a passage, but only if it didn\u2019t mention God.<\/p>\n

Exasperated, I blasted out an email. \u201cIt\u2019s not necessary to \u2018believe\u2019<\/em> the scriptures!\u201d I declared. \u201c\u2018Belief\u2019 is seriously overrated!\u201d<\/p>\n

Between my nephew and my own children, I had enough readers to fill all the reading slots, so I offered the two \u201cnon-believer\u201d granddaughters the wordless roles of carrying the bread and wine to the altar. They accepted happily.<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t tell my nieces was that to my mind, while the offering of the bread and wine doesn\u2019t involve words of assent to \u2013 belief in \u2013 any kind of doctrine, the act does reflect another kind of belief, the faith and trust kind. It is the bringing of a hopeful heart to that which is. (Or as Christians would put it, to God.)<\/p>\n

\"Tinka
My mother at Pentwater in 1982. Photo by BF Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I want to argue that my \u201cunbelieving\u201d nieces are not unbelieving at all. They are full of trust and love and light. They showed up for their grandmother. They generously carried the bread and the wine to the altar of a tradition they neither understood nor subscribed to.<\/p>\n

As I see it, they did all this with a great deal of hope — and belief.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post, consider getting my regular updates with an email subscription. Just fill in the box at the top of the right-hand column. <\/em><\/p>\n

You can also get updates via Facebook , Twitter or RSS by clicking on the appropriate icon at the top of the right-hand column.<\/em><\/p>\n

For more on this topic, read about Harvey Cox, who asserts that you don’t have to believe<\/a> to be a Christian.\u00a0 Are you a Somethingist? Find out at “They Don’t Believe in God, but They Do Believe in Something”<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Peter<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of my family members were uneasy at the thought of standing up at my mother’s memorial mass to read from the Bible, a document they didn\u2019t believe in. I told them I thought belief was seriously overrated.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[34,54,784,55,785,750,786],"class_list":["post-10278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-dont-miss","tag-grown-up-kids","tag-memorial-mass","tag-family-stories","tag-non-belief","tag-spiritual-journeys","tag-st-vincent-pentwater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}