Interfaith parishioners

Amy Frykholm's  article "Double belonging" took me back to my first encounter with double belonging. A young man in my congregation returned from working with the Peace Corps in Vietnam. He made an appointment to see me. After describing his Peace Corps experience, including his encounters with Buddhist monks and Buddhist practice, he said, "I think I'm a Buddhist." My knowledge of Buddhism at the time, I'm ashamed to admit, was based on a 20-page chapter in a book on comparative religion.

I gently raised the question of his Christianity. "Oh," he said, "I'm still a Christian." I suggested that one could be a Buddhist or a Christian but not both. "Who says?" he asked. "Where does it say you can't be both? I haven't found anything on Buddhism that conflicts with my Christian faith or requires that I disavow my faith in Jesus Christ. In fact, there's a lot about Buddhism that feels like what real Christianity ought to be."

He continued to attend Sunday morning worship in the Presbyterian church with his family. When he fell in love he made another appointment—to discuss a wedding. His fiancée had also been brought up in a Christian church, and she too considered herself a Buddhist-Christian. She was less patient than he, wondering why I was making a big deal out of an issue that seemed simple to them. They believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and called people to lives of faithful following, and they also believed the best way to do that was through the practice of Buddhism.