On Faith, Love, and Acceptance

So today, as per a fieldwork assignment for the Race and Ethnic Relations online course I am currently taking at Framingham State University, I attended my very first church service. The fieldwork project reads as follows:

The goal of this assignment is two-fold.  First, it is designed to encourage you to reflect on the experiences of members of a wide range of ethnic groups in the United States.  Second, it will encourage the application of course concepts to the everyday social world. 

For this assignment, you must spend one hour in a public place with members of an ethnic group with which you are not physically and culturally similar. I want you to put yourself in a social situation with an ethnic group that takes you beyond your comfort zone.  


As someone who identifies as an Indian-American Hindu, a Christian church service was certainly out of my comfort zone. I have, however, always wanted to attend a local church service anyway, simply because those attended or visited while traveling abroad in Italy (Rome especially), France, and London were so breathtaking and serene. Calming. 

At first, the situation was a bit uncomfortable. Though the project was on behalf of a sociology course, I could not very well state that as I entered the building. Going to a church right across the street, I also feared running into neighbors I knew and who knew me - who would perhaps ruin the nature of the assignment. But, no such mishap occurred, and I was able to sit peacefully between people I had never met.

However, given the small size of the church, everyone knew each other. Subsequently, they also knew who was new. Greeted initially by the pastor himself and welcomed openly, I felt slightly guilty for only coming to complete an assignment. Upon beginning the service at 10:30 am, we also had a chance to meet and greet with one another. These strangers who I had never met before in my life were all so generous with their attitude, their smiles, their hugs, even. And while the hymns and Proverbs specifically may all preach Jesus and His teachings, I found that the core values, beliefs, and morals were all ones I could relate to. Attending a service was perhaps an even better experience than that I would have at a temple. I love that the pastor chooses certain passages from the Bible and intermixes them with his own words - all teaching a certain theme for the day. Today, the discussion revolved around family and raising children, with lessons applicable to me as well. Of respecting ones parents, and loving each other in spite of our flaws. Pastor Ted specifically cited the idea of unconditional love,

"I may not respect or love or accept what you have done, but I respect and love and accept you"

These ideas were further reiterated as I came home to the newest episode of Satyamev Jayate, where he discussed the plight of the disabled in India. It is incredible, how many suffer because parents of perfectly abled children do not want disabled learning in the same schools, or how some pretentious idiots will spit on the faces of the equally as intelligent, beautiful, and loving disabled children. Unconditional love indeed.

Acceptance, then, is the theme of the day, both for the assignment, at the church service, and Satyamev Jayate. It's funny also that I decided (or rather, was forced by my high school work-ridden sister) to reread The Life of Pi. Pi's own religious fervor and zeal lead to belief in Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, though his family and life have previously all been Hindus. Yann Martel insightfully describes what I had a chance to discover first hand today - that underneath all of these meticulous practices of faith, the core beliefs we share are all the same.

"When [my friend] first heard of Hare Krishnas, she didn't hear right. She heard "Hairless Christians", and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims"

Note that this is not me preaching religion nor is it me preaching a sort of anti-religious spirituality. It is merely a collection of my own religious, spiritual, racial, and ethnic observations over the last few days, and how funny it is that they have all connected in one way or another. Above all else, I do, however, believe that everything happens for a reason. And here I am able to explain the connections between all that has happened in this one post. Faith, love, and acceptance at it's finest :)