Way back in 2010, Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts Special Election to fill the Senate seat left open by the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy. This blog’s genesis is in the frustration I felt with the outcome at that election.
At the time, I had a somewhat odd relationship with the Episcopal Church. I had been raised Roman Catholic but struggled both with the Roman Church’s historical abuses of power and its present day conservative politics. By the time I was 12, I had declared myself an atheist and wanted nothing to do with religion.
However, over the course of my high school years as a boarding student at Groton (where Chapel services were required 5 times a week), I developed quite a fondness for the Church — its rituals and liturgies, its music, and most importantly, the community that it fostered. Then, in college, I took several philosophy courses and came to the conclusion that there’s really no way either to prove or disprove the existence of God. So, when I moved to Boston after college, I started attending mass weekly at the Church of the Advent and described myself as “intellectually agnostic but liturgically Episcopalian”.
I realize now that there’s actually nothing inherently contradictory about that description, but at the time, I felt a bit torn by it. So, when I decided to launch a blog to express my discontent with Scott Brown’s election, the title “Voice of a Heretic” seemed reasonable. In the end, I decided against posting what I wrote in the aftermath of that race. I have, however, held on to the domain name.
A lot has changed since 2010. Religiously, I’ve actually started believing in God (more about what I mean by that in my next post), have been confirmed as an Episcopalian, and now often find myself arguing for a position that I believe to be rather orthodox (even though I know I would still be considered a heretic in some circles). Politically, Martha Coakley has (unfortunately) once again lost a high profile race here in the Commonwealth and Republicans have just taken over control of both houses of Congress, but I don’t feel the same resentment that I did back in 2010. This time around, my decision to start actually writing something here is based primarily on some reflection I’ve been doing since being asked a question by a friend at a recent party.
Thus it is that I find myself poised to launch into a defense of religion from a web page that would seem to denounce the very words I’m about to write. The irony is not lost on me, and I could, of course, just go buy another domain name. I choose not to so that this blog’s title may serve as a reminder both to me and the reader whence my perspectives come. Besides, as Pascal reminds us, “Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”
