Christians in Coffee Shops
Written by Robin Marie in Opinion at November 9, 2010
Tell me if this sounds familiar: you’ve finally made it to your favorite study spot, you’re cuddling with a warm, delicious cup of your choice of caffeine delivery, and you’re just about to start reading that very important book you’ve been meaning to get to all week when, like a huge fly buzzing in your ear, you suddenly hear something like this:
“I’m just, really appreciative of how the Lord has developed my personality in the past year.”
My first response is something like, “What?!” It takes me a moment, in other words, to adjust to my disbelief at what I’m overhearing and to process that I am yet again sitting within earshot of a very loud conversation amongst believers which will, despite my best efforts to tune it out, make it impossible to concentrate on the work I have come to do.
So my first response, fair to say, is your run of the mill annoyance. It is fair to ask though, why I do not at this point exercise my freedom to relocate or put headphones on and listen to some music. The answer is a little complex, and speaks to my still rather ambiguous feelings about the believers amongst us.
The first thing that prevents me from removing myself from the radius of these conversations is curiosity coupled with a sense of obligation. A significant portion of atheists’ conversation is spent trying to figure religious people out – what do they really believe, why do they believe it, what does it do for them really? And how does believing these sorts of things impact your whole human condition – how does a believer move through the world, thinking the things that they do? So whenever I happen upon one of these conversations, I feel that tuning it out would be to pass up a research opportunity, to miss out on gaining just a little bit of understanding of what makes the faithful tick.
It might be objected here that if I really want to know these things, all I have to do is ask religious people directly – but I disagree. As soon as a religious person is talking to an atheist, this knowledge is going to color how open, honest, and unguarded they are about their experience of their own faith. They will be aware of what your criticisms of religion may be, and will not offer up the sort of ambiguities and confusions which make the phenomena of religious belief so genuinely interesting. They will not talk, as I heard one young woman do, about how they are troubled that they have not been feeling “that emotional” during worship lately – that although they see the Lord’s work all around them, they are not feeling moved by it in the same way they used to. They will definitely not then tell you that this makes them feel isolated and alone, because they are not sure who they can safely talk to about their current lack of religious ecstasy. And yet these sorts of questions – what religious faith is or is not, what, in the minds of believers, it is supposed to look like – are the questions I am most interested in, much more so than the ones you can ask directly to a relative stranger, such as “so really now, how can you think this is true?”
The second thing which compels me to remain seated and disconnected to my iPod is, I completely admit, a feeling of resentment – why should I be compelled to leave my favorite study spot or blast my ears with loud music when arguably, it is the Christians who are abusing the most commonly understood use of this space? Now of course, they have every right as I do to be there and to use the space for what they will, from both a legal and a philosophical standpoint – but just as mothers with screaming children take their progeny outside until they have calmed down or people who are having long, loud cell phone conversations do the same, I feel there is an unwritten civil code which suggests that conversations about deities talking to you should really be conducted somewhere away from people who, with all due respect, are trying to get some work done.
But this is ridiculous and, honestly, unfair. If we tried to edit our public spaces to exclude controversial or distracting conversations they would not be welcoming spaces at all. And when I am overhearing the intellectually stimulating conversation of Christians, at least there is something reminiscent of the traditional seventeenth and eighteenth century version of a coffee shop, where ideas were openly discussed and debated. Back then, coffee shops were genuine public spaces, where people came to challenge themselves intellectually and be true citizens, not merely to bury their heads in a book for four hours so they could get an A in Marketing (so they could start a hedge fund, so they could be rich and have a big screen TV in every room in their house).
A coffee house at the end of the seventeenth century: now this is my idea of quality coffee shop conversation.
Once I acknowledge that I am unconvinced by any argument my initial resentment produces, I realize that my real complaint is deeper. My real complaint is that this is not an eighteenth century coffee house, and that to engage these believers – to turn around in my chair and suggest that perhaps, all the young woman’s faith really was about in the first place was an emotional hunger that “Jesus” was satisfying at a particular and passing point in her life – would be considered incredibly rude, and completely beyond the pale of acceptable behavior. It is not, the Christians and their moderate defenders might retort, as if they were discussing anything particularly offensive or shocking – it is not like they are communists discussing the coming proletarian revolution or Muslims discussing, well, anything. If I am really so bothered by overhearing them discuss their Christian faith, they would imply, then the problem is clearly mine – I am clearly a bitter and resentful person, which makes perfect sense because really, aren’t all atheists?
Going through this imaginary conversation in my mind, I am struck by how unreasonable the majority of Americans must think I am. Not unreasonable in the sense that my opinions make no sense, although the Christians would certainly agree with that as well – but unreasonable in the sense that my emotions are out of check, that there is no good reason to really get all bothered by simple, good Americans believing in simple, good morals and doing so through belief in Christ. That I actually have plenty of reason to have an emotional response to overhearing Christian conversation – that connected to what makes these conversations possible are a thousand unambiguously bad things, and a million more good things unfortunately contaminated by said bad things – is not acknowledged by the vast majority of my countrymen. And upon reflecting on this, I feel that most classic emotion of emotions experienced by the modern, critical mind – alienation.
By the time I have cycled through these responses, I have sighed deeply, given up on accomplishing anything until the Christians have gone, and decided to make the best of my situation by listening carefully and trying to remember the details of what they say so I can chew on it later. I do admit however, that I take some comfort from knowing that I, too, have conversations in public about religion – and that sometimes, someone must be listening who is a devout believer, and I must make that person, for that amount of time, profoundly uncomfortable. Does this make me a bitter person? Perhaps, in some measure to which I think most people, if they are honest with themselves, are at least a little bit guilty of. But even more than that, it gives me the positive emotion of hope. The fact that I still live in a society where no one can call in the cops to shut up obnoxious atheists increases my ability to patiently endure the overhearing of the obnoxiously devout. For while I cannot fairly ask – and will not ask – for the religious to keep their religion private, neither can they ever ask me – the atheist, the minority – to keep my disbelief quiet. At the end of the day, I might feel alienated, but I am still here. I am still here, and my ears are wide open.
Interesting article.thanks.