Skeptical Christian Humanism

A work in progress.

There are innumerable ways to be religious. Each and every person who has ever lived has to find their own way, whether or not they adhere to a particular creed. I don’t pretend that the path I present here is better than any of the others. It’s simply the path that has presented itself to me. I hope that illuminating this path might help you on your journey.

I’ll start by saying I usually don’t feel like I fit in, whatever religious community I’m part of. When congregants think of their church as “liberal,” I seem like a silly fundamentalist. When they think of themselves as a “conservative” congregation, I seem like a raging liberal. (We’ll set aside for today the problem of importing this conservative-liberal political axis onto religion.) In debates between Christians & atheists or agnostics, I sometimes find myself agreeing as much with the skeptic as with the believer.

Why does it feel like such a struggle to fit in? The best I can come up with is that I am a skeptical Christian humanist. Each of these three terms is carefully chosen, and how they relate to each other matters. Let me try to explain.

I. Skeptical

II. Christian

III. Humanism