Hometown News: Newsprint Jesus

My parents broke away from the Catholic Church just before I was born. My mother found out she was pregnant with me and freaked. Scared and confused, she went to church.

The priest told her abortion was a sin. If she had one, he said, not only would she burn in Hell, but so would the baby. Distraught, feeling trapped, she went home and took a fistful of aspirin -- probably hoping to induce a miscarriage. When my father found out what she had done -- and why -- he went and raged at the priest. They never again went to church, and eventually, I was born.

I grew up thinking I was raised basically areligious. Nobody told me I had to go to church, but nobody told me I couldn’t. It was neither a good nor a bad thing. Just something that was simply and apparently unnecessary for respiratory function in my world. The sun still rose, I still got to watch “Dragnet,” and life as I knew it went on. I grew up with the attitude that I didn’t need religion.

Probably now, in adult retrospect however, I see I grew up believing that at the moment when my mom was so desperate for comfort, a man of God had nothing but rebukes and threats for her. And for me, pronouncements of damnation for an act I had no control over.

I had enough judgment, anger and vengefulness from the people around me in the steel town of Pueblo, Colorado, where I was growing up. I didn’t need more from my God.

My wife, Lesli Bangert, grew up in the United Church of Christ. For a time while we were in college she was a practicing Buddhist. Any religious training or knowledge I have comes from Lesli.