The Entrance

continued

Actually, when it came to religion, John and I prized our outsiders' status. Interviewing all persuasions of Christians from Roman Catholics to Free-Will Baptists, we could identify with each in turn. "Objectivity" we called it. "Fence sitting," said our Christian friends.

Our very ignorance, we insisted, made our writing clearer. Statements that might go unquestioned by a fellow Christian -- "God told me to make that phone call" -- drew a barrage of hows from John or me. How did God tell you? How did you know it was God?

If we were content with our agnosticism, however, others were not. In the course of some interviews we'd be preached at and prayed over, coaxed and condemned, until in self-defense we learned to adopt the religious passwords of the group we were with.

Some passwords, that is. Others grated so I couldn't bring myself to utter them. One formula in particular irked me, till I was willing to lose a story altogether rather than reply when someone accosted me with,

Have you been saved?

This black-and-white division of the human race into "ins" and "outs" contradicted everything I'd observed since coming to Guideposts. No two histories I'd heard were alike, no two encounters with God the same. "How can they talk as if 'saved' were a switch—on or off!" I'd splutter to John.

Another question religious people posed, though, I could not dismiss: What about your children? Weren't we going to give Scott and Donn and Liz any exposure to religion? To biblical literature? Why not at least send them to Sunday school so that, later, they could make an informed decision?

That argument struck a chord in my Unitarian conscience. And so in the spring of 1956, John and I began to look for a local church.