That's the challenge I and my family find ourselves in. We're living and working in Kayseri, Turkey for the year. In larger Turkish cities like Istanbul and Ankara, there are English-speaking religious institutions, but not here, because 98 percent of the Turkish population is either Muslim or secular, and very few people speak English. So we are left to our own devices.
I've been reading Mother Teresa's "The Joy of Loving", Huston Smith's World Religions: A Guide to Our Wisdom Traditions, Joseph Campbell's Myths to Live By, and have recommended that my son Alex read Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, a science fiction classic about a boy raised by Martians, with religious themes, which may in some ways parallel his experience here in Turkey and eventual return to the U.S.
The full text of the Bible, Torah, and Quran are all posted online, along with a plethora of other resources, including sermon texts, audio and video files and live streaming, as well as virtual communities, so I don't lack for resources at my fingertips. There is fascinating Christian history less than an hour away from us in Cappadocia, including cave chapels and churches built by early Christians hiding from persecution, as early as the second century, and great Christian history all over Turkey. Turkish-Jewish history spans two and a half millenia (see this article in Today's Zaman), and Islam in Turkey goes back to the seventh century.
But for the first time in my life, I do not have access to a face-to-face, English-speaking religious community. To quote singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone...?"
I do know that I am not alone in taking a different religious path from my parents and grandparents, who in turn took different religious paths from their parents and grandparents. Religious observance, practice and beliefs evolve from generation to generation, due to changing environments and circumstances. Newsweek illuminated this point in "We Are All Hindus Now," how Americans' views of God, death, afterlife, and eternity are shifting.
Yet for me, there is still great appeal in committing and re-committing to the "faith of our fathers (and mothers)," to old verities that do not change throughout the centuries. In my experience, it is more difficult to sustain that commitment if you are not part of a community that nurtures faith and tries to embody the beliefs one professes.
I can see that a personal challenge is at hand, without a local faith community to draw upon. Religious history, especially in the Jewish and Christian tradition, is filled with stories and metaphors of exodus and exile that lead to redemption. As this article points out, quoting Isaiah 11-9, each individual must try to make his environment a dwelling place for God, for collectively we are preparing the world for a time when "the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the ocean bed."
My family, left on our own to design religious curriculum, structure worship services and prayer time for ourselves, may not, upon reflection, experience a diminution of our faith. But it won't be easy.
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