My
parents had me baptized Roman Catholic at St. Lawrence Church (nowadays the
church is called Our Lady of Guadeloupe) in Lindenwold, NJ.
The first time I went to a church service was Easter of 1962; I had turned six
the previous month, and I was still in Kindergarten. I remember bring dressed
up and my parents sat on either side of me in the pew. During the mass, either
my father or my mother whispered to me what was going on during the service.
This was very important for them because this was before the days of Vatican II
when the priests performed mass in Latin. The only part of the service where
the priest spoke English was the sermon and the announcements. Back then,
people dressed up for church: men in suits and women in dresses, and women had
to wear hats while men had to take off their hats before entering a church.
Nevertheless, I didn’t go to church on a regular bases until that September
when I started first grade in Catholic school. That Christmas, the last
Christmas I believed in Santa Claus, I went to the mid-morning mass.
In the spring of 1963, a friend that I played with, Caroline, invited me to her
bible school at Good Shepherd Lutheran
Church in Lindenwold.
When I mentioned this to my mother, she told me that my father was baptized
Lutheran as a child, and later in life, he became Catholic. Therefore, on a
certain weekday after school, I went to bible class. That Easter, the first
year that I didn’t believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, tooth fairy,
sandman, etc., I went to a morning service at Good Shepherd with Caroline and
her family. Similar to the Catholic Church, people dressed up in this church
too. The big difference, however, was that the minister conducted this service
in English. Then, later in the afternoon, I went to mass at St. Lawrence. For
the following Christmas, I went to midnight mass at St. Lawrence. The next
morning, I joined Caroline and her family to Good Shepherd, and this tradition
continued through 1968.
By 1969, I became disillusioned with the Catholic Church and its teachings,
especially concerning women. That Easter and Christmas, I only went to services
at Good Shepherd. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be Lutheran, but I definitely
didn’t want to be Catholic. Then, I remember going to rummage sales, Girl Scout
meetings, and dinners at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Clementon, NJ,
with my mother. She knew many of the churchwomen there, and I knew friends and
classmates from the local public school who went to St. Mary’s Church. (I only
went to Catholic school for four years; then, starting in fifth grade, my
parents transferred me to public school.) Therefore, starting in Easter of
1970, I attended a service there. When my father found out, he handed me a Book
of Common Prayer. He received it when he received confirmation in the Episcopal
Church. Until then, I never knew that he attended the Episcopal Church. He told
me that my grandmother stayed Episcopalian even though she married in the Lutheran Church, and my grandfather had my father
and his siblings baptized Lutheran. (Not that she went to church much.) When
his family moved to another area of South Philadelphia, and there was an
Episcopal Church located nearby that was much closer than the Lutheran Church,
my grandmother enrolled my father and uncle in the Sunday school at this
Episcopal Church. My father told me that he and my uncle had to bring home
papers the following year for my grandparents to sign. My grandparents'
signatures gave permission for my father and uncle to be confirmed by the local
bishop in the Episcopal Church. Anyway, I read this book and that’s when I
learned that the Episcopal Church is part of the Anglican Communion or the same
denomination as the Church of England. This became even more interesting to me
that fall in high school when I had to take a course in English history. I
received an A in this course, and I became an Anglophile for many years to
come. That Christmas, I went to the midnight mass at St. Mary’s Church. For the
next six years, I would go to the Episcopal Church for Easter, Christmas, and a few
services during the year.
From about 1977 through 1980, I entered a “dry period” in religion. I had many
reasons for this that I don’t want to go into now. Overall, I didn’t go to
church during those years.
The dry spell ended in 1981, and I started attending a local Episcopal Church:
Good Shepherd in Berlin, NJ. Later, I told the vicar my desire to
become Episcopalian, and shortly thereafter, the visiting bishop received me
into the Anglican Communion. Through the years, I went to other Episcopal
Churches, and I visited other denominations and religions during those years.
In addition, I transferred to another Episcopal Church: Grace Church, Haddonfield, NJ.
By the mid-1990s, I entered another dry spell in church going that started to
end in 1998 when I started researching about the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention
in Seneca Falls, NY. I was originally thinking of writing an
article about the convention, but I noticed that out of a committee of five
women, four of them were members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
(The fifth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was a Presbyterian.) This made me wonder
what it was about Quakers and their treatment of women. Before doing my
research, the only thing I knew about Quakers, was that my great grandmother
(my paternal grandmother’s mother) was a Quaker. My father had told me that she
became Episcopalian when she married my great grandfather, and after he died,
she returned to the Quakers. Anyhow, I never did write that article, but I did
more research into the Quaker faith, and I was impressed with what I read,
especially concerning women. In 1999, I was visiting London,
and I decided to attend a meeting of worship at a local Friends Meeting
House—the main Friends Meeting House on Euston St. Starting in 2000, I attended
my local Friends Meeting House in Haddonfield,
NJ, and I’ve been attending ever
since.
In 2006, I also joined the Universal Life Church
in Modesto, CA, an Internet ministry. I have yet to
perform services, blessings, weddings, and so forth, but I like reading their
newsletters and other publications.
To sum it up: I
listed my religious views on Facebook as between the Religious Society of
Friends and the Universal
Life Church.
