A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

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.