God, faith and atheism

As a lapsed Catholic and someone who, for a long time, rolled his eyes at the very mention of religious faith or spirituality, I confess to a growing interest in the topic.

No, I'm not doing a 180-degree turn. Just sayin' that as I purposely try to branch out and read different material, I'm coming to grips with how ignorant I've been on matters of faith. In fact, the past couple of years might qualify as The Religious Education of George Rede. OK, that's a stretch. But, still...

The noted atheist, Christopher Hitchens, is speaking tonight in Portland and, to its great credit, Portland Monthly magazine offers a fascinating Q&A with recently retired Unitarian Universalist minister Marilyn Sewell in its January 2010 issue. Read it here, along with sidebars on local practitioners of "emerging Christianity," the term for a new movement in modern religion characterized by progressive theology and reading of the Bible as a historical-metaphorical document rather than a literal, infallible document.

(I learned of the Q&A from Tom Krattenmaker, a friend of mine who writes a religion column for USA Today and recently published his first book, "Onward Christian Athletes." It was at Tom's book release party last month that I met the Rev. Sewell, who proved every bit as intelligent and gracious as I'd imagined her to be, based on reading about her through the years.)

Anyway, I've never really considered myself a spiritual person or even had much of a vocabulary to discuss my beliefs or non-beliefs. If asked, I'd often say, well, I think most people practice their faith because it's what they were born into. I grew up Catholic because my parents were Catholic. If I'd had Jewish or Buddhist parents, no doubt I would have grown up with those traditions. In other words, organized religion seems to me more about the accident of birth than a conscious experimentation and selection of a certain denomination.

God, faith and atheism are topics way too broad to deal with in a single, short post so I'm sure I'll return to them from time to time. For now, let me just say these two passages from the Hitchens-Sewell exchange really resonated with me:

Hitchens: [S]how me what there is, ethically, in any religion that can't be duplicated by humanism. In other words, can you name me a single moral action performed or moral statement uttered by a person of faith that couldn't be just as well pronounced or undertaken by a civilian?

Sewell: God is a mystery to me. I choose to believe because -- and this is a very practical thing for me -- I seem to live with more integrity when I find myself accountable to something larger than myself. That thing larger than myself I call "God," but it's a metaphor.

I love the intelligence and logic in Hitchens' statement. Yet I understand what Sewell is saying and, dare I say, have even felt that same way from time to time. I, too, want to lead my life with integrity. Do we need God -- or any religious presence -- to do so?