Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound: A Nonbeliever's Journey With the Faithful

• In Event: 26.034 - Intersections of Faith in Education: The Often Silenced Connections of Faith, Education, and Global Religions

Abstract

Although for some people, faith or membership in a faith community is a life-long, unwavering endeavor, for others, such as this author, initial belief systems can crack and crumble into dust, leaving behind complicated memories that are overlaid with what feel like clearer and more real, contemporary understandings, although at times threaded with sorrow at loss of affiliation (Dressman, 2013). This shift from believer to non-believer is nuanced and fraught, and in many settings, may leave the new non-believer in a dangerous or vulnerable position (Berger, 2013) as an apostate. Informed by this intentionally chosen outsider, non-believer status, this autoethnographic paper details and explores three sets of intimate encounters with members of three different faith communities (Islam, Catholicism, and Evangelical Christianity) while moving across and through East Africa during the summer of 2013. Drawing from critical frameworks (Solórzano & Yosso) intended to both problematize the author’s positionality (Duffy, Weltsek, & Marin, 2013) and speak to the idea of performed identity (Derrida, 2002), this paper serves as an account of a secular pilgrimage (Morgan, 2010) highlighting insights about the lasting effects of colonialism and newly emerging capitalism as related to faith.
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Duffy, P. B., Weltsek, G. J., & MarÍn, C. (2013). Postcolonial, Postmodern, Postracial, Postqueer Positionality in a… Aw Hell, I'm Just Trying to Do Good Work: A Dialogue of Identity, Intention, and Position: Part 1. Youth Theatre Journal, 27(1), 1-6.
Morgan, A. D. (2010). Journeys into transformation travel to an“other” place as a vehicle for transformative learning. Journal of Transformative Education, 8(4), 246-268.
Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2009). Critical race methodology: Counter story-telling as an analytical framework for educational research. In E. Taylor, D. Gillborn, & G. Ladson-Billings (Eds.), Foundations of critical race theory in education (pp. 131-147). New York, NY: Routledge.

Author

• Anita Bright, Portland State University