From Mennonite to Manhattanite

When you're secular and therapized, the advice of science-loving minister can be suprisingly practical-- and profound. This was the case several years ago, when I asked Galen Guengerich what I should say to a dear friend whose young daughter had recently died. "It's not about what you say, it's about how you listen," he told me. "Hear her. Let her talk, and let her grieve and remember in all the ways she has to. In this way, you will be the presence of God for your friend."

In his provocative new book God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age, Galen Guengerich asks how we would view ourselves and our world if we didn’t assume that ultimate answers came from scripture. And if we put relationships at the top of our list of ethical, spiritual and personal priorities.

Your first chapter, “From Mennonite to Manhattan,” describes how you left your upbringing as a Conservative Mennonite. What prompted you to leave?

I had to make a choice between living in a world dictated by the Bible and living in a world defined by human experience and described by modern science. Ultimately, I saw too much human suffering: women being oppressed in the name of religion, children being slaughtered by tyrants or swept away by tsunamis, and innocent people being abused and mistreated for financial and political gain. How could these things happen in a world controlled by an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God?

Why didn’t you just become an atheist and stop going to church?

I did stay away from church for a number of years. But I kept wondering whether the experience of the God I didn’t believe in was the only way to experience God. I decided to take a hard look at what we know about ourselves and our world today and ask whether faith in God and the practice of religion have any role to play in the modern world. My book is the story of that quest.

How did your understanding of yourself change over the course of your journey?

When traditional religion describes the essence of a human being, it typically describes the most real and enduring part of us as spirit: the mind or soul. Modern science typically focuses on the physical aspect of our being: the body. In my view, we need a way of thinking about ourselves that incorporates both mind and body. If you ask me who I am really or essentially, and I respond by talking about 190 pounds of organic matter differentiated into various organ systems, you would rightly find my answer unsatisfying. On the other hand, the fact that I’m a straight white male is a nontrivial aspect of who I am.

So what’s the answer to the body/spirit paradox?

Our identity as human beings is based not on matter alone or spirit alone, but on experiences that involve both our minds and our bodies, but also other people and the world around us. The essence of personhood is not physical or spiritual, but relational.

In my case, I was born on a dairy farm in Delaware, grew up in south Arkansas, and went to a Mennonite High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. My father was a Mennonite minister, my niece Krista died of a brain tumor at age eleven, my daughter Zoe’s mother and I are divorced, and my wife Holly is Zoe’s stepmom. These experiences, and countless others besides, make me who I am—not in the way a potter shapes a bowl, but in the way flour, butter, sugar and other ingredients go together to make a cake. If you take away all the experiences I have had—the experience of having a mind and living in a body, of existing in a world and relating to other people—what remains apart from these relationships might be something, but it would not be me.

If our relationships aren’t incidental to who we are, but rather constitute who we are, how does this change the way we approach our relationships?

It means we have to take them more seriously. Sometimes our relationships—whether to our bodies or minds or our physical surroundings or other people—are positive, constructive, and nurturing. But sometimes our relationships are indifferent to our well-being, or perhaps even difficult or destructive. We need to pay attention to our physical health, as well as to our emotional well-being and spiritual wholeness. Architecture matters too—the physical environments in which we spend our days—as does the character of our friends and the quality of our friendships. Over time, these ingredients make us who we are, just as the relationships among the notes and the players and the composer make the music what it is.

In a world constituted by relationships, what role does God play?

We have a word for the totality of the physical world; the word is universe. We also need a word for all the experiences in the universe; that word is God. When I say I believe in God, I’m saying that I believe in an experience that intimately and extensively connects me to all that is—all that is present, as well as all that is past and all that is possible. This revised understanding of God isn't an optional aspect of life in the modern world. I believe it's necessary—both to explain the universe we inhabit and to live a meaningful life within it.