Coming to Faith

Today – the Fifth Sunday in Lent, or Passion Sunday – happens to be the anniversary of my baptism and confirmation as an Anglican Christian while at University. I had been attracted to Christianity as a teenager by things like the fact that it came with a holy book to read – you could get quite a long way with reading and quiet thought. I also like the fact that liturgical church services follow a pattern, and I’d been picking it up while singing in various choral services at University. Broadly, unexpected things are not supposed to happen in Anglican choral worship and I enjoyed the calm of the predictability, unexpected organ stop changes excepted. The rhythm of the church year is also good – there are lots of nerdy patterns and sequences to get your head around. It doesn’t take too much of a stretch to see “it’s the 14th Sunday after Trinity so the altar will be green today, the set psalm has stuff about floods in it so it’d be a good moment to sing some hymns about water” as a type of liturgical trainspotting.

Having decided to sign up for the Christianity club, I then set about working out how to insert my autistic self into it. I was going for Anglicanism because it was what I knew from music making, and because it came with plenty of history, architecture, books and so forth – all things I liked – and because the beliefs seems pretty much right, in so far as I could judge. The first hurdle was Baptism. My parents hadn’t had me baptised as a child for a range of good reasons (that meant I didn’t have any godparents and consequently missed out on a lot of birthday and Christmas presents, blast it), so I was automatically an outsider. A phrase that comes up each week in Church is: “in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body” and there was I thinking: “I wasn’t!” Having spent my entire life at this point and beyond as an undiagnosed autistic I was used to feeling left out and not fitting in, but this was a bit of a downer every week.

Talking to anyone about faith or baptism was a huge deal for me because it was a tricky social interaction I didn’t know the script for, and it took a long time to work up the courage. In fact I think I needed the hook that I was going to be an organ scholar in my college, which made me responsible for leading the music in worship, so I could say I thought I ought to be baptised if I was doing that. Luckily the chaplain of my college was a sensible welcoming chap who responded in a calm measured way, accepted my entirely hopeless non-profession of faith (I couldn’t have managed something neurotypical) and didn’t drop me into church “groups” and “fellowships” that would have had me running for the exit. It’s a sad truth for we autistics that Christianity puts so much weight on fellowship, hospitality, warmth of interaction and togetherness because the way those tend to play out in society are exactly what some of us can’t cope with. No, I would not like to join a church group, host a bring-and-share meal, or get involved in a club. No really; I find people exhausting and I can’t taken on extra requirements to socialise, no matter how lovely they would be.

The next challenge – following some slightly unorthodox “confirmation classes” with the chaplain (my abiding memory is being advised to watch The Life of Brian because his contention was if your faith was secure you wouldn’t get in a lather over it being a satire on Christianity) – I approached public baptism and confirmation. I was doing both in one hit as I was an adult and there was no need for a gap in which to grow up between infant baptism and adult committing-to-faith. I was very intimidated by the “public” aspect; confirmation (which is when you’re signed up properly as an adult Christian, if I can put it that way) has to be done by a Bishop and bishops tend to visit parishes once a year or so to confirm a batch of people in front of their friends and family. It’s one of those enormous “do”s with tea, cake, frocks and endless people, that the Church does so well.

I didn’t bring any friends or family. I just couldn’t. I didn’t tell anyone either. I couldn’t cope with the huge deal of signing up to a faith that would shape my life AND have a series of awkward social interactions about why I was doing it AND a whole load of extra socialising and social expectations. I and the chaplain and a couple of other people from college (who may have brought their friends – I don’t even remember) went over to a church where there was a confirmation service happening, and did the baptism and confirmation thing. In some churches those being baptised are invited to give a “testimony” of why and how they’re coming to faith or otherwise be the centre of attention in a packed church – thank heavens (both literally and metaphorically) I wasn’t.

Over the ensuing weeks, as I gradually got used to my new status as “card-carrying Anglican” whatever that is, I managed to tell people I’d signed up to the Christianity thing. There was some surprise, disbelief (pun not intended) and general supportive noises. It was fine. But it was stressful and difficult too. And it was particularly stressful and difficult as I was keenly aware that Christians were supposed to be good at fellowship, hospitality, spontaneity and togetherness and I still wasn’t. Making music in church was an immense benefit to me though – it gave me a group of people I could socialise and interact with without having to make conversation, and it gave me a role. Even though undiagnosed autistic me didn’t seem to be the “right kind of Christian,” I had a place of sorts on the grounds that I could do something useful.

The danger I encountered with religion as an autistic person was that my absolutist way of thinking was attracted to simple absolutist answers – and that way lies fundamentalism. An autistic passion for justice can be particularly dangerous coupled with absolutist religious thinking. If you believe in your absolutist way that someone or something is wrong, and your doctrinaire, inflexible sense of “justice” demands that you oppose it by all means in your power, you’re not very far from witch-burnings or their modern equivalents. By contrast, the kind of religion that I honestly think is the best expression of God’s love on earth is the hospitality, community and flexibility-based church that just screams “being autistic is not what God wants” at me.

Today, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, marks the beginning of Passiontide: the fortnight running up to Easter when Christians recall the events leading up to Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection. “Passion” here doesn’t mean “romantic love/devotion/enthusiasm”, but derives from the Latin word passio meaning “suffer” – the same word that “patient,” referring to someone suffering illness or injury, comes from. Passiontide is therefore the season where Christians think about how Jesus suffered by being rejected, tortured and killed. It’s fundamental to most Christian belief that God sacrificed Jesus, His son, to atone for the sins of humanity in some way, and that’s why He had to suffer. Clearly that’s a really crude summary and to do justice to the subject you’d need about a million volumes of theology. It’s pretty widely recognised that Jesus was a historical figure who was crucified around 30 AD (he’s mentioned by non-Christian historians of the period, such as Tacitus) but the significance of it all and what happened next is definitely up for continuing discussion. A LOT of discussion. I will not attempt to summarise it here, and nor will I inflict my own take on it on you any more!

Coming to diagnosis and wrestling with why I’m like this, I’ve got more used to the idea that almost nobody is entirely the “right kind of Christian” really. The people who look like they’ve got it sorted on the outside haven’t necessarily on the inside, while the people who look like outsiders may be flourishing spiritually. “So the last shall be first, and the first last“, as it says in the Gospels. I suspect there are very few simple right answers, but my autistic brain would still love to find some.

This post has been brought to you by the Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent and is respectfully dedicated to the memory of the Rev Bill Fosdike who was a truly excellent college chaplain.

We beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.