autism and religion: my story.
This is a republication of my essay dated on Jan. 3, 2020. It has been slightly edited for this version.
This is my personal story. As it has been often said, if you’ve met one autistic, you’ve just met one.
It seems that for the neurotypicals, religion and/or spirituality is mostly an emotional experience, to provide a sense of calm and comfort amidst the challenges of the world. I’ve heard many “testimonies of salvation” that are littered with words like love, feeling, hope, and sadness.
In my younger days, I desperately longed for those experiences. Like some “model Christians” would often tell the church, I wanted to “feel” God in forms of supernatural revelations or miraculous convulsion or ecstatic sense of joy. I’ve traveled to many Pentecostal revival meetings and televangelist “miracle crusades” hoping to get a taste of it. None of that happened in my life.
In fact, to me, coming to Christianity (I was not raised in any religion, as my parents were atheists) was mostly a cerebral experience. I was convinced of the veracity of the Bible through the Moody Science Films and books written by creation scientists, as well as by the highly scholarly Bible studies offered by churches. (And one day I had come across a Jehovah’s Witness book called Life: How did it begin – evolution or creation? – which led me to almost become a JW at one point, until when I noticed a doctrinal contradiction around their beliefs of death and resurrection; I left them when their elders could not sufficiently answer my question! Eventually I ended up becoming a Fundamental Baptist at age 15.)
A couple years later, I switched to a Pentecostal church, looking for “healing and deliverance.” Their charismatic worship services were new and exciting for me, and so were the fervent prayers and speaking in tongues. This was in the mid-1990s and the suburban megachurches of the baby boomers seemed to be the coolest, cutting-edge church experiences.
Yet, the vague, fuzzy “spirituality” never worked for me.
I was drawn to the traditions and structures of liturgies. I’ve heard of a so-called “Messianic Jewish” congregation being advertised on a local Seattle Christian radio station one day, and I decided to check it out. The Hebrew liturgy from a siddur (albeit a modified one) and ritual elements were something I appreciated deeply. Yet, it did not take very long before I realized how shallow their misappropriation of Jewish tradition was, and their understanding of the Bible was no better than those of the charismatic megachurches.
I decided to study Judaism for real. I’ve been to Chabad and Kollel classes to learn more about Orthodox Judaism. I’ve read through the Mishnah. I’ve studied several different versions of siddurim. I’ve spent two full cycles through the Jewish year of observances. I’ve observed kashrut and shabbat. I would have actually converted to Judaism (again, I came very close to doing so) if not for three things: (1) as a POC and immigrant, I experienced a lot of racist microaggressions from the Jewish community in Portland circa late 1990s; (2) I had gone through a personal and financial crisis and I could no longer afford being in the Jewish community, in which I was expected to pay large sums of money on synagogue dues, donations, and J membership; and (3) it was still difficult to be an out queer person, even in the progressive/Reform/Reconstructionist Jewish communities at the time.
I’m not going to bore you with rest of the story, which includes one full year as a member of a UU church, a few years of active membership in a liberal Protestant church, several years of being an Anglican and a Benedictine oblate, experimentation with Neo-Paganism, spending several months in a Wiccan commune, and a few years of being not religious at all.
Only five years ago, after having a serious burnout from seven years of political activism and community organizing and after over three years of not being part of any faith community, I found myself in a Unity church, whose New Thought approach to faith appealed to me because of its emphasis on disciplining one’s thoughts and beliefs instead of some vague appeal to emotional experiences.
To make the story short, as an autistic person, I have always tended to approach religion from reason and structures – doctrines and rituals/observances. I could always learn and grasp the concepts around theology and liturgies.
But it has not been an emotional, ecstatic, or even mystical experience for me. Whenever I sought such an experience, I always came away disappointed.
Nevertheless, this is a valid religious experience – no less valid than all the emotionalism of NTs in churches, synagogues, temples, or covens.
Of course, your mileage may vary and your experiences might not be like mine, but a handful of autistic individuals of religious faiths that I have known so far seem to share similar experiences. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this!
