One of the things that is kind of depressing about growing up is that you have to give up some of the fun that comes with immaturity. Oh, sure, we can put ourselves in the mindset to enjoy the simple things, but some aren't fun because they're not right, and we see that now.

I sometimes miss the religious arguments. We've all had the experience where someone comes up to us at work, on the street, or even at our doors and tries to convert us to Christianity. When I was younger, I seemed to be flooded with such experiences, and I prety much felt that these people were fair game. I could verbally spar with these people for hours, or I could make them get upset and leave in frustration within minutes.

Before I moved here to Richmond, I had been advised by management that one of the people in our new department was a fundamentalist Christian, and that any issues I had because of this should be reported immediately. As it turned out, there were no issues. In fact, when the subject of religion finally came up, this fellow actually turned out to be intelligent and rational about his religion, and the discussions turned out to be more of a compare-and-contrast. "This is what I believe, and this is why I believe it" versus "You must believe as I believe, and here's why." I was pleasantly surprised by his open-mindedness, and I think he, in turn, was surprised to see exactly how much we saw eye-to-eye. He was utterly devout, but wasn't blind to the concept that some ideas are more political in nature than religious.

When I was a teenager, or even in my early twenties, I would have handled it a lot differently. I would have assumed that his piety and his willingness to share his beliefs made him a closed-minded zealot, and I would have attacked him with ruthless efficiency. I would have pointed out things in the Bible that cannot be reconciled to me, and even used a few passages that I understand, but that he would have been unlikely to be able to explain (Correction-- my friend probably wouldn't have tripped over most of them. I would have assumed otherwise, incorrectly, out of a perspective that most Christians are mindless followers who have let the Bible be spoonfed to them rather than actually taking the time to learn and understand the religion they espouse). My perspective has been slowly changed over more than a decade, but I can tell you when it began to shift.

I was living in the South Side of Birmingham, and I was finding myself constantly presented with opportunities to hone my arguing talents. My friends and I used to hang out at the fountain at Five Points South, and just about every weekend one of the nearby churches would send a delegation to Witness to the crowd.

One Samhain, they actually set up a concert on the grounds of the church behind the fountain and turned the Five Points area into a rally. I had a full pack of cigarettes and a two-liter of Mountain Dew; all I had to do was sit and let them come to me. And they did, let me tell you. Most of them were fairly inexperienced, and I didn't even have to work at it... I just started asking questions, and then analyzing the responses with more questions.

And then this man sat down next to me. I already knew who he was-- we called him "Biker Bob", and he tended to come out when the people came to witness, dressed in black leather, riding his motorcycle, and with a beard down to the middle of his chest. He was probably in his fifties and had a reputation for being calm and rational, and really knowing his stuff. I realized I'd never locked horns (if you'll pardon the phrase) with him. In hindsight, I was probably afraid I wouldn't get the reaction I wanted.

He turned to me and said, "Wow. The idiots are out in droves tonight."

What's more, he meant it. These people were getting on his nerves more than mine; I at least was getting a sadistic pleasure out of frustrating them, but they were misrepresenting something he took very seriously. We started talking, and I found myself actually thinking about what he was saying, rather than just thinking about ways to flummox him. I found myself enjoying it, since he wasn't trying to change my mind. Then the real fun started.

He made a statement of his faith, I asked an intelligent question... and one of the witnesses, who had been listening to the argument, jumped in. She said that I should bow down to Jesus, pray for Him to reveal Himself to me, and then I'd understand.

My standard response to that is that blindly praying for a God to convert me was irresponsible; after all, would she be comfortable if people were willing to bow down to say, Baal, just to see what happened? It's what I used to end an argument that wasn't any fun any more; I'd explain how it works, but it doesn't matter-- he beat me to the punch.

He asked her if her Lord was something to be tried on for size. I don't remember her response, but it wasn't very intelligent and he went through it like it was made out of paper, along with everything she said as followup. She found herself arguing with someone who knew her position better than she did, and had much more skill in the art of coming across as having an IQ higher than that of those chimpanzees in the zoo that keep doing embarassing things in front of the children. She was as confused as hell, because she'd heard him defending Christianity, but now here he was arguing from the point of view of a Druid.

Actually, "Druid" was just the word he used. He was really throwing concepts from a combination of several non-Judeo-Christian religions, and I'm fairly sure he knew it, but she didn't. She just couldn't stand up to his logic. In the end, he told her to go study her faith more before trying to push it on other people. Then he turned back to me and we picked up where we left off.

A little while later, it happened again with somebody else, and while Bob was doing his "Druid" riff, one of the other bystanders came to his "defense" with some fairly weak rhetoric. It was like watching a toy poodle help defend a doberman from a dachsund. I decided to return Bob's actions with one of my own-- I attacked the "poodle" from the point of view of the Christian. Mind you, this kid knew me, so he took the hint ("Quit yipping and watch this stupid dachsund make a fool of itself")... and then Bob turned on me.

Suddenly, I-- a militant Pagan-- was defending Christianity from the verbal assault of a fundamentalist Christian. He was probably going easy on me, because I actually managed to defend myself pretty well. This went on for about ten minutes-- we were having intelligent debate and pretty much picking off the bystanders who felt the need to jump in. When people left us alone, we'd go back to our appointed corners and debate, switching sides any time anyone chimed in with rhetoric. Every once in a while someone would make an intelligent point, and we'd include them on the conversations, each making a point to back the other's supporters during our exchanges of position.

We talked for a couple of hours that night, and we met on several other occassions and had similar discussions. I suppose the argument could be made that he "played" me; since the topic was generally Christianity, he did a lot more for the image of Christianity than I did for Paganism. It doesn't matter to me-- I had a good time, I learned a few things, and I don't have a problem with the version of Christianity he was pushing. I imagine more Christians learned to follow his example than non-Christians.

My personal favorite is the time we met at an abortion protest. He walked up to me, said "Good Morning, Ralph" and made a motion in the air and a noise like a time clock: "Cha-chunk!" I responded by saying, "Good Morning, George", and "clocking in." (If you missed it, it's a classic Looney Tunes reference. It was wildly amusing to us.) Then he started screaming at me at the top of his lungs, hyping it up as a caricature of the protester, and loving it. I had no idea what he was doing, but I went along and started screaming back at him as a stereotypical protestor from my side of the debate. We were getting creative, though never resorting to obscenity and each letting the other finish his one-sentence tirade, and we were loud enough that we attracted the attention of the cop working security.

Mind you, this cop knew us; he also worked the Fountain sometimes (This might have gone poorly otherwise). He came up and reminded us of the rules-- loudly enough that everyone heard him-- and asked us to separate. We apologized for the disturbance, "clocked out", and walked off into a corner to discuss abortion for an hour and half.

I moved out of Birmingham a little while later. There's not much else to tell, except this sad footnote: If I'm not mistaken, this was at the Northside Family Planning Clinic, which was bombed on January 16, 1997 by Eric Rudolph, and that officer was killed.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't automatically shy away from religious discussion, and we shouldn't treat such contact as a battle that must be won. Learning about how other people see their religions-- and trust me, Christians have a lot of variety, even within an allegedly homogenous denomination-- helps us relate to them and find common ground. We may even help them learn a little more about us.

History has taught us that social barriers and stereotypes will fall, given an atmosphere where it's allowed. If we shut ourselves off from this kind of contact, or immediately become hostile, we're missing a great opportunity to improve understanding on both sides of the religious wall. Sure, it's easy to shy away from the subject altogether, and sure, it's fun to exasperate people, but it's time to grow up.

© 2002 by Cather "Catalyst" Steincamp