Converting to Evangelical Christianity
There was a lot I enjoyed about being raised a reformed Jew. I appreciated the identity given to me before I was old and experienced enough to form an identity on my own. I took what my parents gave me, what the temple we belonged to gave me, what the lessons and songs, and art projects in Sunday School gave me.
I was into it. Judaism. I liked that it was an O.G. kind of religion. That if the body of Jesus was ever found that everyone would be automatically be Jewish, Muslim, or lost without a god to call their own. And I found that silly, yet beneficial for the community—we’d all be the same. The whole point of religion, I thought as a boy, was to give mortals a conduit to the larger thing: life, god, spirituality, meaning. An understanding, or at least, a simplistic, mortal grasp on the universe.
But as I grew up and into myself, I found flaws in the program. I recognized the failure of identity politics long before I knew what identity politics was and almost as long as it became a thing theorists and assholes considered.
By the time I was twenty-one, I had renounced my religion. The journey to that moment is expansive, but I’ll save you from that and instead tell you of the moment I realized it:
I was sitting in the newly renovated sanctuary of the temple I grew up in. It felt more like a Baptist social hall than a Jewish sanctuary. It was bright and generic and felt like, well, it felt like… it felt like religions would have dressed themselves in 2000. The only thing missing was chain wallets and puka shells draping the Torah. I was going through my first grownup break up as well as battling the Hillel chapter of my university on several human rights issues—another expansive story for another time. Judaism‚ religion, God, didn’t feel right. I was there for my baby brother’s confirmation. Considering the tradition of it all and the familial connection, I felt, well, off. All those things I had found comfort in seemed strange.
I embraced my feelings and came out comfortably determined to define myself as nothing—that is to say, a non-denominational, recovering Jew. “Recovering” because, like alcoholics, once you’re a Jew, you’re always a Jew. It’s a sneaky law the elders snuck to maintain their numbers. Early Jewish leaders were no better than Donald Trump; for them it was all about the ratings. So, since my mother was a Jew, I was and always would be a Jew. So, “recovering” is the operative word.
And I’ve lived that way for two decades. And I’m fine with it. Because I realize now that the decision to not identify as a Jew was the start of a journey that would lead me to God.
✶
The first three months of 2020 have been remarkable, incredible, awesome, and wonderful. I started a new job at a great agency, I’ve seen my son learn to string sentences together like, “Daddy no, Mommy poop, Elmo!” And I’ve begun living through a part of history that will be referenced for centuries. 9/11, the rise of Nicole Richie, COVID-19. It’s the latter that had led me to my latest and most divine moment of life.
These last few weeks, I’ve listened to the words of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and the hosts of NPR and PBS news programs. Shit is bad. Things are fucking fucked up. And we’re doing the best we can based off of the shitty truth this coronavirus COVID-19 forces our leaders and exhausted experts bring us. And I’m no dummy. I can read writing on the wall. These are end times. And that’s why I’ve made the very hard, very serious decision to convert to Christianity.
But not just any Christianity. No, I want the real deal, the active, the engaged, the righteous and the thoughtful Christianity. The kind of religion that accepts all people as long as they’re willing to accept a few rules. Evangelical Christianity is for me.
With all the goodness I’ve been blessed with lately stacking up against the troubling global issues facing us so far this year, I was forced to consider the benefit of embracing a higher power and asking that higher power to watch out for me and my family. I looked back at my Judaism, but the temple and congregation I knew was just shy of disbanding and had sold its property off to a Baptist organization, making my assumptions on the sanctuary’s millennium design right on the nose. I considered Catholicism because I’d worked at a Catholic high school for four years and knew a whole helluva lot more about Dominican Catholicism than I ever knew about reformed Judaism. Ultimately, it was Evangelical Christianity that I landed upon.
I caught a news story about Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr. reopening Liberty University in the face of this great pandemic. Rev. Jerry has never had much faith in the science backing the truth that COVID-19 is a threat and could kill us all if we’re not careful. And he opened up his Liberty U despite the informed guidance of experts. Because for Rev. Jerry, education trumps safety. And what are a few dead students compared to the rest of the co-eds who will live through this and tell the story of survival through the 2020 plague—that is the defeat of the liberal elite. Because it’s all connected. Just listen to what the great Rev. Falwell says.
And it’s the evangelicals who are not only best prepared for the Apocalypse, they’re looking forward to it. Don’t freak out, dear reader, I’m still very pro-choice and pro-gay marriage and pro-LGBTQ, and all that liberal jazz, but I’ve decided that my life, my soul belongs to Jesus. And God. His dad. I guess. Right? God is to Jesus as I am to Harry. Right? Yes, same thing.
Like I said, like the experts are warning us of, like our president is trying to downplay, these are end times. My wife and kid were already sick. They likely had COVID-19 and I’m likely infected but one of those magical asymptomatic people. And if that’s so, it’s a blessing. It is God’s will. Can you explain it any other way? And if this virus comes back and kills us all—my wife, my toddler son, me—I will remain calm throughout the death spasms. Because I know that my heart and mind and soul and faith and future is in the hands of the Lord.
Science be damned. If you sneeze, God bless you.
I am an Evangelical Christian. Raised a Jew but baptized in terror and fear and kept safe, no matter the outcome, in His name.
