My spouse and I have a baby on the way, our first. I thought we weren’t going to raise our child to be either Jewish (my background) or Christian (my spouse’s) since neither of us believes in the faiths of our ancestors. But lately we’ve been dreaming aloud together about what it will be like raising our child, and my spouse surprised me the other day by fantasizing about a traditional Christmas: Christmas tree, wreath, carols, presents on Christmas morning. I said I thought we weren’t going to raise our child to be Christian,and my spouse said of course we weren’t, but their childhood memories were full of happy Christmases and they wanted the same for our child. This feels really weird to me. Sure, Christmas trees and presents are nice. But there are lots of ways to have a happy childhood without them—and why would we celebrate Christmas if we’re not Christian? I thought we were on the same page about religion, but now I’m shaken.

—Feeling Like Scrooge

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Dear Scrooge,

To answer your last question, it’s been my observation that people celebrate Christmas for lots of reasons. For some people, it’s a deeply meaningful religious holiday, and for others, it’s about giving gifts and hearing familiar songs. It sounds like for your spouse, it’s tied up with happy memories rather than with particular beliefs. For them, “I want my child to have a Christmas tree” doesn’t mean “I want my child to be a Christian.”

I understand that hearing that Christmas meant a lot to them is a somewhat scary realization for you. Parenthood will probably reveal a lot of subtle differences between you, and also the ways in which you are fundamentally aligned.

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Can you take this as an opportunity to have a conversation about your childhoods? What you each do and don’t want to carry forward from your parents and grandparents, and why? What you want for your child, broadly speaking?

It’s worth exploring whether what your spouse really wants your child to have is a Christmas tree, or what underlies it: coziness, say, or tradition, or good smells and good food, or a fire in the fireplace on a snowy morning. But it’s not just about your spouse. I’m sure you, too, have dreams for your child, and the two of you can learn a lot about yourselves and each other by talking about those dreams and gently sorting out what’s the essential element of those dreams.

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It’s possible that once you know what is really important to your spouse, the question of “to Christmas or not to Christmas?” will become much less important to one or both of you. No promises. But see what happens when you each set down your assumptions about what “being Jewish” or “being Christian” means (much less “celebrating Christmas”), and just learn about each other.

And congratulations on the little one!

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next time (August 18, 2026): My roommate and I are having an argument. I say good people are rewarded with heaven and bad people are punished with hell. He says if we’re only good to get a reward, or to avoid punishment, we’re not really being good. What do you think?

I’m an atheist, and sometimes I just go along with prayer or a religious ceremony for the sake of other people, people who do believe. Is this hypocritical? Do other atheists do this?

--Hope I’m Not a Hypocrite

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Dear Hope,

I can answer your second question: yes, sure atheists sometimes go along with prayers and other religious actions in public. Your first question, though, is something I can’t answer. There are too many nuances to say “Yes, this is hypocritical,” or “No, it’s fine.” So much depends on the ritual you’re participating in and the social context.

Can we look at what hypocrisy is for a minute? It’s pretending to be other than you are or to believe something you don’t. The strong implication is that someone who is hypocritical is trying to gain something by deceit. If you’re not trying to gain something for yourself, but are focused on making a situation better for others, maybe that puts your actions in the category of polite lies (such as telling your host “It was a lovely party,” when in reality, you were bored out of your skull).

So here’s an example that might happen to you (though I hope not). You and others are in the hospital room of someone who is gravely ill, and one of the others says, “Let’s take a moment to pray” and holds out their hands. Everyone else is holding hands in a circle around the bed, and the praying means nothing to you, but you do want to express your care for the sick person and you don’t want to start a theological argument when everyone is so distressed. Is this the kind of situation you mean?

Does it help to remember this?: While we’re apt to look at a gathering of people joined in prayer and assume they are all thinking and feeling the same things, that is almost never true. One of the people in that circle is communing with their creator. Another is overwhelmed with sorrow and finding comfort in the squeeze of others’ hands. Another is so distracted by a back spasm that they’re barely able to think about the loved one in the bed. Another is privately saying, “God, just don’t let me get this illness.” If yet another is thinking, “Prayer is hogwash, but I sure do love my sick friend and hope they’ll recover against all the odds,” is that person being somehow more hypocritical than the others? Maybe none of them is being hypocritical. They are just human beings bringing all their complex experiences to one of life’s crises, and they mean as many different things by holding hands and holding a few moments of silence as there are people in the circle.

Some people firmly believe that we should be honest at all times, or at least never utter an untruth. These good folks won’t say the party was lovely. They’ll say “Thank you so much for inviting me”--since their gratitude for being included is sincere—and not a word more. If you admire this stance, by all means find a polite way to excuse yourself from the ritual that’s underway. If you can express your common ground with the people there, so much the better—maybe you touch the sick person’s hand, whisper “I love you,” and tell the others, “I need to sit quietly by myself.”

Some situations are less intense, of course. Maybe it’s the prayer before a city council meeting to which you don’t want to say “Amen.” I can’t tell you what integrity looks like to you. I would just advise you to consider what is truly important to you in that moment (to be honest? to be kind? to express solidarity?) and honor that.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next time (August 4, 2026): I thought we weren’t going to raise our child to be either Jewish (my background) or Christian (my spouse’s) since neither of us believes in the faiths of our ancestors. But now my spouse is saying a traditional Christmas is essential to a happy childhood.

I had to take a long absence for restoration, rejuvenation, and some retooling of how this column will work and what platform will host it. I’ve decided that a pace I can maintain is biweekly publication. And I find it a lot harder to research platforms and set up a new site than to write the columns, but when I have completed that process, I’ll make it easy for you to follow me to the new place.

Thanks, and see you in two weeks. Don’t forget to subscribe so that you get a reminder in your inbox.

And now, on to today’s column.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Dear Isabel,

I grew up Protestant, but I am still so confused about what all the denominations are about. Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, etc. -- are they all Protestant? Why do they have all these different names? Why are there so many of them to begin with?

Bewildered by Sects

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Dear Sects,

The TL;DR is yes, they are all Protestant. As for why there are so many and where their names come from, there’s no short version of that. Except, I suppose, what my late father-in-law used to say about political movements. He said a person could write their history and title it, And Then There Was a Schism. Same with religion.

Let’s look at Protestant Christianity, since that’s the example you gave. Until the 16^th century, there were pretty much two forms of Christianity: Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. In 1517, a Catholic monk in Wittenberg, Germany, named Martin Luther wrote up his suggestions for points of Catholic practice that ought to be debated—ninety-five of them—and nailed the list to the doors of churches in the city. This sounds pretty in-your-face to us, but actually, in the German Catholic Church, it was not only acceptable to nail things to church doors, but it was the required procedure for theses (points of debate).

Luther wasn’t the first to raise these questions, and he almost certainly didn’t intend to start a whole new movement. But, in retrospect anyway, it was a turning point. Luther and others who made similar criticisms were excommunicated (kicked out of the Catholic Church), but when that happens to people, they don’t typically go away. They think they’re being good Christians (and often they are), so they carry on. If many people with the same interpretation of Christianity start gathering, then presto: a new church. Maybe just one congregation, or maybe a whole movement.

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They started popping up all over the place in 16^th-century Europe, fueled by such things as rampant corruption in the Roman Catholic Church and by the fact that thanks to the invention of the first Western printing press, the Bible was now being printed and distributed more widely than ever. Also, these Bibles were no longer just in Latin, but in the languages people spoke, like German, Spanish, French, and English. You didn’t need to be a scholar or monk to read them, though you did need to know how to read. Literacy rates were still only around twenty percent at the beginning of the 16^th century, but they rose like rockets.

So, you mention Lutheran churches. They trace their roots back to—ta da—Luther and the German Protestants of the mid-1500s. Another critic of the Catholic Church around that time was Jean (John) Calvin, who set up a whole theocratic government in Geneva. A lot of the churches of our time that stem from Calvin’s form of Protestantism are Presbyterian.

That name points to one of the ways different sects of Christianity get their names: because of how they’re organized. Episcopal churches give authority to special clergy-above-clergy called bishops; “episcopal” comes from the Latin for “bishop.” Congregational churches give the most decision-making power to each individual congregation. A presbytery is a regional council of clergy and lay elders, and that’s who holds the authority in Presbyterian churches.

Another way sects get their names is if they name themselves after some element of their belief or practice. Or, occasionally, others pick the name for them, possibly as an intended insult. Baptism is the ritual by which most Christians are formally admitted to the community of Christianity. Baptists think that instead of baptizing infants, as Catholics and many others do, we should hold off on baptism until the person is old enough to decide for themselves that they want to follow the church’s teaching. Methodists got that name for the methodical way they went about deepening their spirituality. Quakers was a mean nickname for members of the Society of Friends, because they would sometimes tremble with religious ecstasy during their religious meetings. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with trembling with religious ecstasy, though, so they accepted the name cheerfully enough. The Shakers, who are a different sect from Quakers, were given that name for the same reason.

But religion isn’t only a history of schisms. Sometimes different sects unite. The Unitarians and Universalists merged in 1961 and became Unitarian Universalists. The United Church of Christ (UCC) was formed in the 1957 merger of numerous denominations. Even the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, which split apart during the reign of King Henry VIII of England, have had some conciliating talks about how they might possibly one day consider maybe reuniting.

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I could give parallel examples in other world religions, but you asked about Protestantism and it’s enough to say that there are many sects of Islam yet they are all Islamic, there are many varieties of Judaism that are all Jewish, etc. In other words, people have lots of firmly held opinions, and in no realm of life do they hold onto them more firmly than in religion. So it is no wonder that people choose to gather with those who share their take on the nature of Jesus, who should hold authority and make the decisions for the church, the way to learn about their faith, etc. And each gathering has a name.

But although many of these schisms have been accompanied by enough tears, blood, and persecution to fill a horror movie festival, once passions cool and a couple hundred years go by, a lot of the differences stop mattering much. So someone might well grow up Presbyterian, move to a new place where there isn’t a Presbyterian congregation and decide to join the Methodists, then discover that in their next home, the UCC church has the best preaching, or the liveliest young adult group, or the best post-service coffee. And they will feel right at home.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next time (July 21, 2026): I’m an atheist, and sometimes I just go along with prayer or a religious ceremony for the sake of other people, people who do believe. Is this hypocritical? Do other atheists do this?

My wife comes from a very traditionally (I’d say rigidly) Catholic family. I don’t believe in any of that, and I told her that early in our relationship. In fact, she agrees. We are pretty simpatico about our religious views, and that agreement is important to us both.

Now we are talking about how we want to raise our children, because we’re expecting our first. At first “Ella” said that even though she doesn’t believe in anything baptism stands for, she wants to baptize our child because it will make her parents happy, especially her mother. I’m actually okay with that, too. I wouldn’t say this to my mother-in-law, but in my opinion sprinkling some water on the baby and saying some words won’t do any harm, so if it makes her happy . . .

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But after a conversation with her mother about what happens after that, Ella has started saying our kid needs real godparents and a Catholic education. This is a big change, and she says she’s only doing it to make her mother happy.

I know it’s a long way off and I should just be happy about our baby and not think ahead to First Communion and all that nonsense (sorry, that’s how I feel), but it’s really affecting me and my relationship with Ella. How long are we going to play along just to make her mother think we’re raising our child to be Catholic, when we really don’t want to? We have to tell her our own views sooner or later, and I’d rather do it sooner. Am I creating trouble?

No Crucifixes, Please

Dear No Crucifixes,

I think your instinct is right. This is, at bottom, not a religious problem. This is a problem between Ella and her mother, and so it’s a problem between Ella and you. And, like all interfering-grandparents problems, it isn’t going to stop with godparents or First Communion. You will have to draw the line with your mother-in-law (and anyone else who tries to overrule your parenting decisions), so I strongly advise you to draw it where you and Ella really want to, and not kick this problem down the road. If the line is at godparents, say so. If it’s at catechism classes, say that.

The burden ultimately falls to Ella, because it’s her mother who is pressuring her to abandon her own principles. You can help by offering to support and strengthen her. Would Ella appreciate it if she could practice with you playing her mother? Ella can say, “I know you’re disappointed, Mom, but this is our decision and it’s how we’re doing it.” Repeat calmly through any response. If the response turns to threats or other escalations, another good thing for her to say is “This conversation isn’t productive, so we’re done talking about this topic.” Future attempts by Mom to raise the topic of religion?: “Remember, Mom, we’re not discussing that.” End conversation entirely if Mom refuses to change the subject.

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You can also support her when it comes time for those real conversations. Ask her if she wants you to be there and squeeze her hand, or maybe she’d like you to say, “Ella said this topic is out of bounds. Now, let’s talk about where we’re going to take you and Dad to dinner.”

Ella may benefit from a good therapist, especially one trained in family dynamics, because she didn’t get to this point without a lot of training in how to surrender her will to her mother’s, and it takes work to unlearn that. Your patient support for who she wants to be and how she wants to raise this child with you can help.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

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Next time: I grew up Protestant, but I am still so confused about what all the denominations are about. Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, etc. -- aren’t they all Protestant? Help!

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After our second visit this past Sunday, though, I asked my four-year-old what she learned in Sunday school, and she said they talked a lot about death in her group. They read a book about a boy whose grandfather had died, and they talked about what they think happens when we die. I think my four-year-old—any four-year-old—is too young for this topic! No one in our family has died since she was born, our pets are healthy, and we have not introduced her to this grim topic. Now she is asking about it. She asked whether our pets are going to die soon and even whether my dad and my husband’s dad are going to die. Everyone has to learn about death eventually, of course, but these are not conversations either of us thinks we should have with a pre-schooler! I worry that she’s become so worried about death so suddenly, and it makes me sad because I thought this church might be a good place for us.

I’m planning to meet with the minister about this, and wonder how you’d advise me to go about it.

–Depressed Kid, Bummed Mom

Dear Bummed,

Talking about death with our children is one of the hardest things we do as parents. I recently learned that in Mexico, there’s a saying that we each die three times experience. The second time is the death of our bodies; the third is when no one who is still alive remembers us anymore (remember this in the movie Coco?). The first? When we are children and learn that everyone dies. So, yes, it’s hard stuff. However, you are right—they do have to learn about death eventually, and like any other difficult aspect of life, it’s ideal for children to learn about it in the context of loving, supportive people who will be there to answer any further questions. Well done you for wanting that for your kids.

This will surprise you, but four is the age that many, if not most, children start to have questions about death. (In U.S. culture, anyway. It may vary around the world.) Whether or not anyone they know has died, they start to understand that death happens to every living thing, and naturally, they tend to have questions. Sometimes they are sad or scared. Sometimes they aren’t—they just want to know more. So, now that you know that your four-year-old was likely to be curious about death very soon even if she hadn’t had that Sunday school lesson, what will help you answer her questions honestly and support her in however it makes her feel?

It sounds to me as if, by luck or intuition, you made your way to the right place: a faith community that understands children’s emotional and spiritual development and has given the children a safe, loving place to bring their questions and feelings.

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If you were taken by surprise, that’s understandable. You didn’t know that these questions were likely to come your way. But your child does seem to be ready, since she is asking thoughtful questions, and she’s asking you, because she trusts you. And if you don’t feel as ready as she is, you seem to have found a place that can help you. Are there classes for parents at the church? If not, that’s a great thing to bring to the minister: ask for help in the spiritual aspects of parenting—which might not only be about talking to your children, but also about dealing with death, yourselves. You’ll not only be better prepared for whatever your kids are dealing with, but you'll also be better prepared for the spiritual challenges of your own lives.

There’s one more reason to be open to conversations with your kids when they’re developmentally ready, and not put them off until later. When children pick up on your reluctance to talk about something difficult (and they do pick up on it), the message they get isn’t “You aren’t ready for this, child” (they know they are), but rather, “You can’t talk to us about this.” And they will remember that and avoid the subject with you to protect your feelings. So if you’re not ready, Bummed Mom, please do all you can to be less bummed, or at least, able to hang in there no matter how you’re feeling. Your meeting with the minister is a great place to begin.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next month: We thought we agreed on how to raise our kids, but my mother-in-law’s religion is already having an unwanted impact–before the first one is even born.

A close friend is expecting a baby boy and she recently said to me, casually, “Of course, we’ll be having a bris (a circumcision) at the house.” I live nearby and I know she’ll expect me to be there.

Isabel, I know it’s supposed to be a celebration, and I would go to any other celebration she held, but—can I say something really judgmental? I’m just really appalled by circumcision. It’s not even as if she and her husband are very religious. They don’t keep kosher or celebrate most Jewish holidays. But this commandment is that important to them? It seems hypocritical. Also, the idea of being in the house when a circumcision is happening just makes me feel sick. (I know I wouldn’t be expected to watch.)

Should I go even though I have ethical objections? If I don’t go, should I tell her why? I’m afraid our friendship couldn’t survive that, and I really do value our friendship and respect almost everything about her (everything until this, actually). I don’t want to ruin the friendship, but I don’t want to give my blessing to something I think is just needless cruelty to a child. I also don’t like lying to my friend.

If it matters, I’m Jewish too. We’ve never talked about what that means to either of us, though.

—Conflicted

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Dear Conflicted,

I see several issues here, and it might save your friendship if you can keep them separate.

1. You are uncomfortable giving your implicit blessing to something with which you strongly disagree.

2. You treasure the friendship.

3. You want to be honest with your friend.

4. You just don’t want to be present for this ritual.

5. You don’t know what words to use to decline.

6. You think your friend is being hypocritical.

To take the first one first: Analogies are risky, but it reminds me of the situation of someone who’s opposed to same-sex marriage and is invited to the wedding of a friend and their same-sex partner. In that case as well as yours, the conflict is between simply showing one’s love for a friend, or demonstrating one’s own ethical stance. (I don’t think I’m being unfair with that choice of verb. Your disapproval doesn’t have the slightest chance of stopping the ceremony, right? So the question is whether you demonstrate your disapproval or keep it to yourself.) You can honor a friend without endorsing all of their decision. You can decide that what your presence says is not “I approve” but “I love you even when I don’t approve of everything you do.” That addresses point number 2: you treasure this friendship, and your friend.

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Which brings us to the second question: is it dishonest to bite your tongue? If your friend had specifically asked your opinion of circumcision, then yes, it would be. But she didn’t. You’re worried not about giving your explicit approval, which she didn’t ask for, but about whether she or anyone else might interpret your presence as implicit approval. And it’s certainly possible that your friend or others might interpret it that way. But they would be wrong, and it’s not your responsibility to correct an unspoken assumption.

Still, your point number 4 is valid. No, you don’t have to watch, but if it upsets you even to be in the room where it’s happening, or the house where it’s happening, you don’t have an obligation to go.

Which leaves the question of what to say when you decline. There is a potential for a deep conversation about beliefs and practices here, and since you and your friend are close and share a Jewish heritage, asking her in a non-judgmental way what circumcision means to her could help you understand her better (and maybe she’d also ask you, and come to understand you too). But what are the chances of having that conversation now, in these circumstances: shortly before the birth and bris of her child? Very slim.

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So I would counsel you not to tell her that your absence is a matter of conscientious objection. Just say, “I’m so sorry—I can’t be there.” Give a baby gift—the occasion for that is the birth, not the circumcision. And be grateful that there’s no save-the-date possible for most circumcisions, so it’s plausible that you’d have an unavoidable conflict on that day.;

What is avoidable is the conflict that would come of accusing your friend of hypocrisy without knowing her reasoning or, from the sound of things, much about what her religion (including this ritual) means to her. With that, you’re leaping to conclusions, and that’s not a good way to treat a friend.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

We humans have made such progress in understanding the world since the major religions were founded. It’s understandable why people living millennia ago would have given supernatural explanations for things that we now explain with science, like saying a rainbow appears in the sky because God puts it there, or that people get leprosy because they sinned. I’m not knocking them. But now that we can explain a rainbow as the refraction of light through water, leprosy as the result of organisms too small to be seen without a microscope, etc., what is the use of religion?

It causes so many problems, and its whole reason for existing is out of date. Why even follow books written hundreds and thousands of years ago?

Modern Man

Dear Modern Man,

It is absolutely true that science has given us much better explanations for things that were once attributed to supernatural forces. There are still mysteries to be solved, but that doesn’t mean the only solutions to them are supernatural. It could just as easily be the case that science will eventually progress to finding these solutions (and most people would probably say that this is far more likely than a supernatural solution). Discoveries such as refraction and germ theory, to use your examples, didn’t happen at the same time. In fact, such discoveries are often made, forgotten, and re-proven—and in different parts of the world—before finally becoming widely accepted by scientists and finally the rest of humanity. So yes, we remain ignorant on some points, but science continues to shine a light.

But that doesn’t mean religion has no purpose. In fact, it’s a deep misunderstanding of religion to think that its only, main, or original purpose was to explain physical phenomena. Religion has its share of “Just-So Stories,” stories that explain the world, but it has many other purposes as well—for good and ill. Through rituals that occur regularly, it brings people together (good). It assembles us into different peoples who sometimes go to war against each other (bad). It offers a bigger perspective for our troubles. It collects the writings of long-ago people. It seeks to answer the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Whether it does all of these things to your satisfaction is something I can’t answer for you. But it is not the case that religion is simply a primitive form of science.

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I certainly wouldn’t disagree that religion has a role in some of our biggest problems. That isn’t about science, though. Neither is the question of why we should pay attention to things people wrote a long time ago. Genesis is a poor scientific text, but it’s an excellent compilation of legends. And like anything written long before our time, it is a guide to . . . what people were like long before our time.

Modern people can gain great insight into how to live, now, by observing how people lived long ago. So there isn’t a contradiction between being modern and reading religious texts—as long as one doesn’t try to use them as guides to physics, biology, astronomy, and other sciences.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next time: Why do we need hell and heaven?

Is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster a real religion, or is it a joke?

Hungry for Answers

Dear Hungry,

The answer to your question is yes.

The first mention of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was made by a man named Bobby Henderson in a letter responding to the Kansas Board of Education’s 2006 movement toward allowing the theory of intelligent design to be taught in science classes as an alternative to evolution. A little background: intelligent design suggests that the best explanation for the existence and forms of life on earth is that they were created by an intelligent being. As a statement of faith, there is nothing wrong with it. However, science classes deal with evidence and facts that can be proven or disproven, not faith. If intelligent design is a scientific theory, it needs to have supporting evidence.

That’s a dry explanation, I’m afraid. Henderson was much cleverer, and funnier. He wrote to the Kansas Board of Education that if the state’s schools were going to teach intelligent design, they needed to teach not just one theory but a variety of theories of intelligent design. He said that he believed that the world was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and he summoned “evidence” that sounds familiar to those who know U.S. fundamentalist Christianity: there are millions of believers (they are secretive, he said, but they exist); they have texts describing how the FSM created us and everything else; and any scientific tests that seem to disprove the existence and power of the FSM are unreliable, because the FSM himself interferes with the tests and renders them invalid.

The “theory” that some wanted Kansas schools to teach was of course the theory that the God described in the Bible created the world and its life forms, and Henderson was spoofing that theory in a very serious joke. He wasn’t criticizing religion or Christianity as such, but pointing out that they are not science and that their “theories,” being untestable and neither provable nor disprovable, aren’t what we teach in science classrooms. He was making a reductio ad absurdum, taking an argument to its logical conclusion in order to show its absurdity: “I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (Pastafarianism), and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.”

At that point, I wouldn’t have said the Church of the FSM / Pastafarianism was a religion. It was a pointed joke about the ridiculousness (and danger) of trying to replace science with religion.

Since then, however, it has taken on some of the characteristics of a religion. It has its own lingo (Pastafarianism; ending prayers with “Ra-men”). People wear clothing and jewelry bearing its emblems. Fans (followers?) of the FSM gather online and come to know each other well, with the affection, squabbles, and mutual support one expects in a religious community. So maybe the irony is that it has become a religion of sorts after all: a religion whose adherents deeply respect the scientific method, but although that may be unusual in the world of religion, it isn’t unique or disqualifying.

There’s lots of other interesting stuff about Pastafarianism, such as its challenges to restrictions on freedom of religion and its theories about pirates, but this response is long enough, so I’ll leave it for another time.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

My country has one of the highest murder rates in the world. The leaders of its religions have declared many National Days of Prayer and Fasting, appealing to any higher power to help and guide us. But the murder rate has only increased.

I’m sure that not everyone who prayed and fasted was a true believer, but with so much intention directed toward a good cause, how can God (whichever God may exist) ignore us? Is this proof that God doesn’t exist? Are these National Days of Prayer a waste of everyone’s time?

Thanks,

Brokenhearted

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Dear Brokenhearted,

I am so sorry the people of your country are suffering. My heart breaks also, for all of the people murdered and their families and friends.

I think uniting in an intention to reduce the frequency of a terrible crime is a wonderful thing. So no, a day of prayer isn’t a waste of time. It is an expression of care for your country, and the unity of desire might help people work together to find solutions.

That seems to me to be the key. Whether or not there is a God, whether or not prayer has any effect, sooner or later people must take action.

Here’s a story I love. It’s phrased like a joke, but as your letter illustrates, what it’s about is very serious:

A man was caught in a terrible flood. All around his house, the waters were rising. He managed to get onto the roof of his house, but he could see that if the water didn’t recede soon, he would be swept away. He began to pray ardently to God to save him.

As he was praying, neighbors came past in a rowboat and called out to him: “We have room for one more. Jump down and get into our boat!” He said, “No, God will not forsake me.” They shook their heads and rowed on, and he kept praying.

The water had reached his second-floor windows when he heard the sound of a motorboat. It idled near his house and the driver called out, “Come on, jump into my boat and we’ll get out of here!” Once again, he said, “I’m praying to my God, and I know he will rescue me.” So the motorboat revved up again and went on. The man continued to pray.

The water had reached the roof and was lapping at his feet when he heard a helicopter. “We’ll lower a ladder to you,” the co-pilot bellowed through a megaphone. The man yelled back, “I have faith in God! Don’t worry about me!” So the helicopter flew away.

The man kept praying, the water kept rising, and in another twenty minutes, he drowned.

He arrived at the pearly gates, sad and in despair. Before St. Peter could say a word, the man demanded, “I had such strong faith. I prayed and prayed that God would rescue me, and He left me to die!” St. Peter looked at his clipboard and said, “According to my records, God sent a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter, and you turned them all down. What the heaven was He supposed to do?”

Obviously, the moral of the story is that divine help may come in human form. I realize that no one is coming along to put your whole troubled country on a boat and take it to safety, but what does hold true is that there are human solutions to your problems. They aren’t easy or foolproof, but if there is a God who reaches out to us through human hands and human minds, then God has offered some solutions to all places suffering high murder rates.

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Namely, human beings know a lot about why people commit murder, and so we can do something about it. Poverty, discrimination, hopelessness, and easy access to lethal weapons cause murder rates to soar. Add criminal gangs—running drugs or arms, typically—and the results are deadly. These aren’t easy problems to solve, but many countries have reduced them and seen the benefits.

If a loving God is guiding the leaders, they will begin to tackle these problems, and if a loving God is guiding the people, they will reward leaders who take responsibility for lowering the murder rate and keep them in office. Prayer can help strengthen people to deal with very difficult challenges—that is not a trivial part of the solution, but it is only part. I hope you, and especially your leaders, can find the things that people can do to be the hands of a loving God.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Note to readers: I realize that this isn’t the first Tuesday! It got away from me somehow. I will be back on the first Tuesday of February, February 4. Your questions are welcome, as always!

Is it true that Christmas is really a pagan holiday? I have a super-religious evangelical uncle who says we shouldn’t celebrate Christmas because it’s pagan, and an atheist I know told me it is too. I love Christmas, but I want to be a good Christian.

Thanks,

Merry Christmas?

Dear Merry,

The name Christmas is thoroughly Christian; it means “Christ’s mass.” And religions borrow from each other and adapt and rewrite each other all the time. So there is overlap between Christianity and pagan rituals, and some of the elements of Christmas have their roots in what pagans were doing before Christianity took hold. That doesn’t make Christmas “really” pagan (or Pagan. I won’t get into the whole question of whether and when to capitalize it).

A couple of the things people are referring to when they talk about how Christmas has pagan roots are:

1. At the time that Christmas began to be celebrated, which was around the year 330 in the Roman Empire, there were two important Roman festivals in December. One was Saturnalia, a mid-December Carnival-type celebration in which people did things like eat and drink a lot, gamble, and give each other gifts (sound familiar?). Another, which had only been around for a couple of generations at that point, was the celebration of the god Sol Invictus, “the unconquerable sun,” which occurred on December 25 (sound familiar?)

The Gospels don’t say what time of year Jesus was born, and various scholars have pointed to clues that it was in spring or around September. But if you’re a new-ish religion trying to get people to celebrate the birth of your savior, it’s a good strategy for you to put your holiday in the season that the people are already celebrating. And if they give each other gifts to celebrate Saturn, you might start giving each other gifts to celebrate Jesus.

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2. Many centuries later, in northern Europe, Norse and Germanic people celebrated Odin with a festival called Yule, at the winter solstice (usually December 21). December nights are looooong in northern Europe, and people were looking forward to the return of shorter nights and longer days. They burned a huge log and gathered by the fire, a symbol of the returning warmth of the sun, and they brought boughs of evergreens into their houses, since evergreens represent life even in the depths of winter. It’s possible that they also decorated trees with lights (candles, of course, since this was before 1000 CE) and hung fruits from the branches. As the people of those places began to convert to Christianity, they adapted some of these elements of their winter holidays to the celebration of Christ’s birth. That’s probably the origin of wreaths and garlands of evergreens, and festooning trees with lights and hanging ornaments.

Thematically, the two are a good fit: the return of the light out of the winter’s dark cold and the birth of a savior who will bring eternal life. If you’re a Christian trying to convince your neighbors to become Christians too, instead of trying to convince the worshippers of Odin to give up their enjoyable rituals—a losing proposition—why not repurpose them?: “Look, we bring evergreens into the house too, because Christ, who was born on this day, brings life everlasting.”

So, Merry, if you don’t think it’s right to celebrate a Christian holiday that has any roots in, or resemblance to, a pagan one, then Christmas is not for you. But I have bad news for you: neither are any other Christian celebrations, because they all adapted elements of earlier religions. That’s what religions do. Easter was patterned on pagan celebrations of resurrection and new life, and explicitly connected to the Jewish holiday of Passover. The weekly Christian mass bore a resemblance to the Jewish Sabbath service—and that service had grown out of the rituals of other ancient religions.

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Since being Christian is important to you, why not focus instead on what Christianity has made of these celebrations? How is the evergreen tree related to Jesus? Why do you give gifts on Jesus’s birthday? If you have a clear sense of those connections and keep them in mind as you celebrate, then you will make it a thoroughly Christian holiday.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Share Ask Isabel: Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed or Vexed

I get a lot of political-religious posts from family members, often about how to identify the Antichrist if he appears. It seems to me that Trump might actually be the Antichrist, and that if we elect him, we are supporting Satan, not God. Is there evidence for that belief?

Evangelical-Adjacent and Wondering

Dear Evangelical-Adjacent,

There are two important caveats before I answer. One is that the Book of Revelation, from which most speculation about the Antichrist derives (along with Daniel and 1 and 2 John), is—how can I put this—one weird-ass book. If someone living on the island of Patmos in the first century A.D. had a psychotic break and wrote down his visions, this is what they would sound like. The other is that with the right selection of verses and gift of interpretation, you can make the Bible say almost anything you want. This is the fundamental problem with literalism.

However, if one embraces literalism and analyzes the Bible and other texts devoted to identifying the Antichrist (or an Antichrist, since 2 John makes it clear that there may be many), then yes. There is considerable evidence that if one of the political figures in our world today is the/an Antichrist, it is likely to be Donald Trump.

1. The Antichrist is male. Every single reference to the Antichrist refers to him as a man or uses masculine pronouns: for example, “a man of lawlessness” (2 Thes. 2:3). So we can dismiss female politicians from the short list straightaway.

2. Speaking of which, the Antichrist is lawless, a “man of sin” (2 Thes 2:3). Whether you’re a critic or supporter of Trump, there’s no denying: he has violated countless laws. Many counts of criminal business fraud. A fraudulent university. Theft of his employees’ and contractors’ wages. I’ll keep this short, but you can look up dozens more. As for sins, it has been established beyond a doubt that he committed adultery during his marriage to Ivana, and also during his marriage to Melania–again, just for a start.

3. But followers of Jesus are deceived by him. Jesus predicted, "False messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect" (Matt. 24:24). The fact that so many evangelicals view Trump as a messianic figure doesn’t mean he isn’t an antichrist. Just the opposite: it is a warning sign.

4. The Antichrist is supremely arrogant. Paul writes, “He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” (2 Thessalonians 2:4) Trump has explicitly said that he was chosen by God as the caretaker of His Paradise. But does he actually set himself up in God’s place? Some Christian leaders think so, because to want to be like God is to supplant God. Referring to the viral video “God Made Trump,” Pastor Joseph Brown of the Marion Avenue Baptist Church in Washington, Iowa, pointed out, “The original sin of Satan or Lucifer is not that he wanted to take over God’s position but that he wanted to be like God. There is only one god, and it’s not Trump or any other man.”

5. The servant of the Antichrist will set up his image to receive devotion (Revelation 13). Colin Smith, in Who is the Antichrist? 10 Things to Know from the Bible, warns, “The false prophet, who works alongside the Antichrist, will create an image of the Beast and compel people to worship it. ‘Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.’” Trump promotes NFTs and coins with his image on them, emphasizing that buyers will possess “really incredible artwork pertaining to [his] life”: glorified images of Trump as the Statue of Liberty, a superhero posed before Trump Tower whose eyes shoot lasers, and other such messianic figures.

6. The Antichrist will be a boastful king (Daniel 7). In Daniel 7:8, the Antichrist is portrayed as a boasting "little horn.” Trump says he knows more than anyone about dozens of subjects.

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7. The Antichrist will be a descendant of the tribe of Dan. According to Brother Adso of Montier-en-Der, a10^th-century monk whose writing on the Antichrist became authoritative, he will belong to Dan, one of the twelve ancient tribes of Israel. The Tribes by Yair Davidy traces the fate of the tribes to various western countries, and concludes that the people of Dan ended up in northern Europe, including Denmark, England, Wales, and Scotland. Trump’s mother, who emigrated to the United States as a young woman, was born in Scotland, fulfilling this part of the prophecy.

Some identify the Beast with the Antichrist. This gets complicated: first, because the Beast is called the Beast, not the Antichrist; and second, because there are two Beasts. One is “the beast that ascends from the bottomless pit” or “the abyss” (Rev. 11:7), and the other is the “beast [that] rise[s] from the sea” (Rev. 13:1). However, numerous commentators down the centuries have viewed the Beast as another appearance of the Antichrist. If you do accept the common interpretation that the Beast, or both Beasts and the Dragon also mentioned in Revelation, are embodiments of the Antichrist, then there are some further similarities to Donald Trump.

7. The Beast’s incarnations are all male. The dragon: “his heads” (Rev. 12:3); the beast from the sea: “his horns” (Rev. 13:1), the beast from the abyss: “he is the eighth” (Rev. 18:11).

8. His number is 666 (Rev. 13:18). Infamously, the Trump family owns 666 Fifth Avenue, a skyscraper in New York City. The owner is not Trump himself, but his son-in-law, Jared Kushner—but after Jared bought the building, Trump made him one of his senior advisers, putting him in charge of Middle East negotiations. This seems like a strange thing to have done, given that Kushner had no government or policy experience and failed his security clearance. Trump, as president, had the power to grant security clearances over the head of the State Department, and did so for Kushner.

9. The Beast appears to be fatally wounded in the head, but the wound is healed. (Rev. 13:1-4) This miraculous recovery causes the people to worship the beast, and the dragon that gave him power.

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10. The Beast “causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.” (Revelation 13:16)

(Photo source and credit here.)

11. Those who do not have this mark or name are excluded from the marketplace. (Revelation 13:17). Trump threatened to cancel Deloitte federal contracts because one of its employees showed disloyalty to him (“Trump allies threaten Deloitte contracts after employee shares Vance chats”). He has also threatened to revoke the licenses of ABC and CBS, making it impossible for them to carry out their business.

12. The Beast is so overwhelmingly powerful that none can make war against him (Rev. 13:4). This is a claim Trump frequently makes for himself. “The October 7 attack would never have happened if I was president.” (Sky News Australia, October 7, 2024, :00) “We have a war that would have never happened if I was president, that war [between Russia and Ukraine] would have never happened.” (Piers Morgan Uncensored, Sky News Australia, April 26, 2022, 1:07) Is this assertion of quasi-magical power the Antichrist signaling to his Satan-worshipping followers, “I am here”?

I could go on, but a dozen reasons are enough to establish that if one takes Biblical revelation seriously, and applies it to the events of our day, Trump is an excellent candidate for Antichrist.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

I consider myself agnostic. I don't discard the existence of a God, but I'm also not sure and don't follow a single religion.

I'm going through a real bad time, and have a bunch of anxiety about upcoming health tests.

I want to pray that I will be okay, that my tests will be negative, but I'm not sure if this would make things worse because I’m not religious. I've even considered asking others to pray for me but again, I don't know if that's a bad thing.

Need Help

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Dear Help,

I appreciate your wish to be respectful of other people’s beliefs. Nothing in your letter strikes me as disrespectful—just the opposite. You are in need and you are wondering about something that other people do in such situations.

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So I don’t think you are at risk of making things worse, whether by praying yourself or asking someone to pray for you. If it helps, many people who do have faith in a God have doubts about prayer—or just doubts, period. In a famous passage in the Bible, someone tells Jesus, “I believe—help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) I think it’s quoted so often because most people experience a myth of believing and doubting.

I’m sorry you are going through such a bad time. I hope—and with your permission, I’ll pray—that your health problems will resolve soon.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

I learned something this summer: trying to do a column every two weeks is not going to work for me. Without the rhythm of “this is what I do on Tuesday,” I kept forgetting. And then the habit was lost.

During my sabbatical, when I developed this , I reasoned that if I could write a column in an hour, I could sustain a weekly column even when I was back to work. Maybe that was true, but I haven’t been able to keep it to an hour, and my life is too busy for a weekly column. Instead, I’ll write on the first Tuesday of every month. That makes it memorable for my brain, and as much as I would love to be able to sustain a weekly column, I hope that monthly will be frequent enough to hold your interest.

I also really do not like the interface on Ghost, so I am back to Substack. It works well for me, so I will have to use the tiny scrap of influence that being a Substack writer to ask them to please enforce their own standards vis-a-vis writers who shouldn’t be given this platform.

Thanks for sticking with me. And now, on to my first monthly column.

All the best,

Isabel

Isabel

In the Bible, the Quran, and other holy books, God speaks directly to people like Abraham and Moses. Miracles happen all the time. Why are things so ordinary now? Did God stop speaking and stop performing miracles, or what happened?

Wondering

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Dear Wondering,

You aren’t the only one who wonders. Even in the time that the Psalms were written down (which was probably over 2500 years ago), people seem to have thought their time was very ordinary compared to earlier times: “I will remember your miracles of long ago,” it says in Psalm 77. I don’t have a firm answer to your question, but rather a few possibilities.

One possibility is that the stories of conversations between God and people might be in the realm of myth and legend rather than history. We don’t know whether Abraham and Moses were actual historical figures. (I realize you were just giving a couple of examples. Some people in the Bible do seem to have truly existed, while in other cases, such as these two, there’s no good evidence for it.)

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Another is that people do witness miracles in the present day. A few minutes with a search engine will turn up many reports of miracles, from infants returning to life after being declared dead to a rescue from natural disaster against formidable odds. Are they really miracles or just highly unusual events? (After all, it would be unusual in the extreme if nothing unusual ever happened.) Either way, maybe they are the same kinds of things that occurred in ancient times and were handed down in scriptures.

Likewise, people do report conversations with God. I occasionally receive a quite detailed account of one, because when someone has an experience like that they want to record it and share it, and they sometimes send their accounts to clergypeople. Today, we’re likely to consider mental illness an explanation: they’re hallucinating, we say, or they had a psychotic break. But they sound like the kinds of conversations recounted in ancient scriptures. Are they actually speaking with God and having God answer them? Or conversely, were the ancient conversation partners with God actually mentally ill? Either is possible. It’s also possible that some of the ancient people suffered from psychoses (humans are humans), and that any deity who spoke to people then is still speaking to some people.

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That brings me to another possible explanation: there is nothing in scripture to suggest that miraculous occurrences and divine conversations were ever common. If they happened to some people, even just a very rare few, then they’d have been retold, written down, and passed along, because they were the notable events. If they really did occur, but rarely, maybe they still occur, but rarely, and so the vast majority of us never experience them.

And finally, of course it is possible that there is a god who is capable of working miracles, and that this god just doesn’t see the need to anymore. To understand why, we’d have to understand the mind of a god, so I won’t venture a guess.

Which possibility do you think is the most likely explanation? Or is there another one that I haven’t considered and that you prefer?

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next week: Should this reader join a religion?

In my church, we learn that someone who dies unbaptized goes to hell. My son has fallen away from our religion, and he and his wife recently had a baby. I am a very happy grandfather, but I’m very upset because they flat-out refuse to baptize their son. I am worried for his soul, and I’m thinking that as soon as I can, I’ll take him to our pastor to be baptized. I know my son won’t allow it if he knows about the plan, so I’m going to do it secretly.  

I made the mistake of telling my wife about this, and she says I absolutely should not have our grandson baptized without our son and daughter-in-law’s permission. I normally wouldn’t do anything behind their back, but this is so important that I’m willing to risk their finding out and being angry with me. Do you agree?

Loving Granddad

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Dear Granddad,

I’m glad you asked, because your relationship with your son and daughter-in-law, your hopes for a relationship with your grandson as he grows up, and even your relationship with your wife are at stake. No, no, no, you should not baptize this child against his parents’ will.

You are entitled to live by your particular interpretation of Christianity, but I hope you know that many, many others hold that God does not withhold the blessings of heaven from unbaptized infants. It is the belief of most Christians, after all, that God can do anything and has boundless mercy for the innocent. I hope that that will ease your anxiety somewhat.

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You know how you love that sweet child? Do you believe that God loves him less? Even if you believe that God wants a particular ritual to be carried out—which, I repeat, you’re entitled to do--do you really think that God would punish him with eternal torment because no adult in his life made sure it was?

I hope that the fact that you wrote to me—instead of just ignoring your wife, son, and daughter-in-law and thousands of Christian preachers and teachers—means that some part of you believes God is bigger than that.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next week: In the Bible, the Quran, and other holy books, God speaks directly to people and performs miracles. Why doesn’t that happen anymore?

What is the point of living when human beings are destroying life on Earth? (I am ten years old.)

Pointless

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Dear Pointless,

Your letter breaks my heart. I think you are saying: how do we feel hope for the future? And that is a heartbreaking question from anyone, but I wish you could live the carefree life of a child a little longer before being burdened by such a big worry. I have a few answers, so what I’m writing is pretty long. I hope it helps you.

I’m 45 years older than you, and you know what? When I was about your age and shared my worries about the earth’s future, people 45 years older than me said the same thing to me—“that breaks my heart.” I suppose that for a long time, most kind, decent people have wished they were making a better world for the next generation than they have managed to do.

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And what I just said is one of my answers. I take hope from the fact that kind, decent people do keep trying to make the world better. You and I are not carrying this burden alone. Humans have worried about the state of the world for hundreds, probably thousands of years, and on the whole, they haven’t given up on making it better.

A second thing that gives me hope for the future is that we often have made it better. Here are three huge, seemingly un-fixable problems that human beings have fixed:

1. As you know, right here in our country, it used to be perfectly legal for one person to own another, and to do anything they wanted to that person. Through all that time, many people fervently believed that this was a terrible wrong, but it took them 400 years from the beginning of the slave trade to abolish slavery everywhere in the United States. And still, they finally did it.

2. Only 30 years ago, 38% of people around the world lived in what is called extreme poverty (living on less than $1/day). It caused so many early deaths from hunger and disease and other preventable problems. Since then, we have cut extreme poverty so that it affects only 9% of the world’s population—still far too many, but a huge, huge improvement, saving millions of lives.

3. In 1900, people died young of many diseases that we can now prevent entirely, cure easily, or treat pretty effectively. That might seem like a long time ago, but it is only a few generations. Your grandparents’ grandparents lived in a world where there were no antibiotics, so people often died of simple infections; almost no vaccines, so people often died of such things as measles, polio, tetanus, and rabies; and almost no treatments for cancer, so almost everyone who got cancer died.

Here's the thing: we look back at those things now and see them as solved (or partially solved) problems, but at the time, people didn’t know they would be solved. They often felt that they were hopeless. So in our imagination, we can travel to 50 or 100 years from now and see people looking back at us and saying, “Those people in 2024 had to deal with environmental destruction! Wow, good thing we fixed that problem.”

And here’s the third thing that helps me feel as if life has a point, even when I am really worried about big problems (and like you, I’m most worried about the environment). It’s the day to day things: Snuggling with my cat. Walking in the forest. Laughing with my family. Having a really good conversation with a friend. Making art. Reading a book. Doing something that makes life better for someone else. In other words: love, beauty, friendship, joy, purpose.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

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Next week: My son refuses to baptize his baby, and I’m worried for my grandson’s soul. I say I should get him baptized, even if I have to do it secretly. My wife says I shouldn’t. Who’s right?

*Great news! This site will migrate to Ghost.org next week. Many thanks to the fabulous Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, author of the fabulous Life Is a Sacred Text, who made time in her very busy life to answer my questions about Ghost. I am satisfied that it is a much better alternative to Substack. I’ll explain more about this decision when we get there, and don’t worry, I’ll take you with me!

I used to be religious, but I stopped believing, and so I stopped going to services. I felt like a hypocrite singing all those songs that no longer meant anything to me. I think it was the right thing to do. But I haven’t found anything since then that makes me feel as connected to other people or, really, that makes me feel so alive. I miss having that sense of spiritual conviction. I know that faking it won’t make me feel better. But I just feel like I am missing something, and I don’t know how to get it again. Do you think I should start going to church again?

Hooked on a Feeling

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Dear Hooked,

It’s possible that you could go to church and sing the songs and enjoy being with the people while knowing that you don’t believe all the things the group is saying. It’s a good bet you won’t be the only person there who’s in that situation.

But since you’ve identified what you’re missing as a sense of spiritual conviction, it might work better for you to keep looking for what does fill you with conviction nowadays. You stopped believing in what your church believed in. Was there something you did believe in that drew you towards that new thing?

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Or are you still in the in-between: you know what you don’t believe in, but you haven’t found what you do believe in? In that case, some exploration might be in order. Keep in mind that belief might not be the best category. You might be looking, instead, for what matters most to you; what you value; what gives you a sense of meaning and purpose; what fills you with awe and wonder; what makes you feel most intensely alive or most connected to the universe.

Is anything coming to mind as you read those words?

If not, I suggest going about your life, following interests, and noticing when something sparks. It could be very ordinary: listening to a street musician, or appreciating a flower, or reading about a particular social problem and feeling an urge to do something about it, or being with a certain group of people. Follow the spark and see where it leads you.

You have described a wish to live with the kind of intensity that you did when you believed what you sang in church. I hope you’ll honor that wish, and I hope you find that intensity again.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next week: With human beings bent on destroying so much that’s beautiful about our planet, she’s feeling as if life has little point.

My teenage son has a fairly new friend who calls himself a Satanist. What does that even mean? Should I be worried, or is this just a case of a teen rebelling and trying to get a rise out of adults? My son has always been kind and had pretty low-key ways of setting himself apart from me and his dad: wears all black, has a few piercings, stuff like that that we consider “battles not worth fighting.” (Besides, it seems to be his generation’s equivalent of my own goth phase.) Now I wonder if there is something really sinister going on, and I’m not sure how to find out.

Dabbling in Demons?

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Dear Dabbling,

To find out, you’re going to have to ask them: your son and/or his friend. I can give you a bit of a road map and I hope ease your anxieties a little. I’m no expert on Satanism (though read on), but I know there are several religions that call themselves Satanic and mean very different things by it.

Some Satanists accept the Christian idea of Satan as the embodiment of evil, the being who tempts us to do bad things. (The Muslim Iblis has a somewhat similar biography and role.) In worshipping Satan, they are worshipping evil: vices like cruelty and greed are the qualities they admire. I don’t know how common this really is, but it’s one definition.

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Then there is The Satanic Temple, whose adherents also accept a certain Christian conception of Satan, but argue that that Satan is admirable. This is the Satan of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, whose pride and resistance to God’s authority got him cast out of heaven, but who is a sympathetic and in certain respects even an admirable character. The Satanic Temple aspires to anti-authoritarianism, rational thought, religious liberty, and individual integrity. In short, they think that at least in one traditional concept of Satan (Milton’s), Satan was made to embody admirable qualities like these. They don’t worship Satan, because they don’t believe in supernatural beings or magic.

Another major strain of Satanism in the United States, the Church of Satan founded by Anton Lavey, also sees Satan as more of a metaphorical figure than a real being. However, in their view, Satan embodies extreme individualism, a la Ayn Rand. They might not worship a supernatural being, but the things they identify as worthy are self-centeredness and pride.

Ironically, shortly after I committed to answering your question, the congregation where I serve was publicly accused of being “a church of Satan” for its support of transgender people. It is 100% true that we support transgender people. But of course, our motivation for doing so is not to be evil, but to be good. And that goes to the heart of the matter: Satan has so long been God’s opposite number that he has come to symbolize whatever is the opposite of a particular person’s concept of God. If someone’s God is about compassion and surrendering our strength in order to care for the oppressed and marginalized, then Satan stands for greed, cruelty, and oppression. On the other hand, if someone believes that a being they call God despises and condemns transgender people, then it is those who oppose that god and his followers who are being moral. In that situation, being called Satanic is an unintended compliment.

So I encourage you to set down your worries and assumptions, sit down with those teens, and ask them what they mean by Satanism: that is, what they hold dear, what they hold sacred, what they rebel against, what they affirm. “Satan” is just a label, if a deliberately provocative one; when you know what the label stands for, you’ll know whether the self-described Satanic friend is someone to fear or someone to admire.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next week: When you’ve left the church but miss the emotion and spiritual conviction of your churchgoing days

I’ve recently become engaged to a wonderful man (“Adam”). He grew up in a pretty religious family. My parents are in-name-only Christians, we never went to church except for someone’s funeral or wedding, and I don’t believe in God and I don’t think they do either. Adam and I have talked about religion quite a lot, because we plan to have children, and we want to be in agreement on how we’ll bring them up. He isn’t as firmly atheist as me (which is okay with me) but his parents probably think he’s still like he was in high school, very devoted to their religion, and that’s not true anymore.

They are very kind people, kind to me, and enthusiastically embraced me when we told them we are going to get married. And . . . his mother took me aside and said, “I’m so glad Adam has found someone who will help him create a Christian household.” I don’t know where she got this idea about me—wishful thinking maybe, because Adam says she didn’t get it from him! Maybe she just thinks “nice girl” equals “Christian woman.” I didn’t know what to say.

I feel like they are headed for disappointment and that I have to be honest, but I don’t even know how to have the conversation. And I’m really nervous that they’ll change their minds about me when they know I’m not going to be a Christian wife raising their grandchildren to be Christian. What should I say?

Don’t Mean to Mislead

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Dear Don’t Mean to Mislead,

Those moments are hard. You weren’t ready for a conversation about religion, and there it was.  

Congratulations on your engagement. And congratulations on knowing that you can’t pretend to be someone you’re not. Your in-laws-to-be aren’t like the person sitting next to you on an airplane for a few hours, to whom you can say “mm-hmm, mm-hmm” as they make assumptions about your beliefs. They will be part of your life for many years, the most important people in your husband’s life besides you, important people to your future children. So sooner or later.

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First of all, you and Adam should talk between you about how to talk to them about your religious stance. You are lucky to be united, so present yourselves as united. Ideally, it comes from Adam, not you. Something like, “Mom, Dad, we know religion is really important to you. I learned so much about being a good man from you. I know you’d also like it if I were still a devoted Christian, but that just isn’t important to me anymore. We want to raise our children to be good people” (this is assuming you’re okay telling them you plan to have kids) “and I hope you know we will always respect your faith.”

Second, be aware that they’ll have some feelings to process. It sounds like he has never told them about his own changes, and while that might have been okay in the past, it’s not going to work for much longer. They might also be sad and disappointed that he isn’t the devotee he was as a teenager.

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And finally, I don’t think you have to tell them about your beliefs unless they ask. If they do say, “What about you, daughter-in-law—is this okay with you?,” keep it simple. “Adam and I are on the same page about this.”

That may be the end of it, or there may be tears and future attempts to change your mind. Or you may have deep conversations about your atheism and their Christianity over the years. Whatever direction things go, you will have begun by setting good boundaries and communicating respectfully. That’s an excellent way to start a lifelong relationship with your future in-laws.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next week: My child’s friend claims to be a Satanist. What does that even mean? Should I be worried or is this teens being teens?