My journey began in an Irish Catholic home in New York City, where my parents took their faith seriously and gave me an early desire for a meaningful spiritual life. We went to Mass every week, and during Advent and Lent my father and I sometimes went every day. The trappings of faith were all around me.
Our neighborhood was predominantly Irish and Italian, and therefore Catholic. Our parish had more than 10,000 families and celebrated many Masses each weekend. Parochial school filled my formative years, and I memorized the Baltimore Catechism.
I did the whole Catholic childhood. I made my first communion in second grade and served as an altar boy from sixth through eighth. Vatican II was changing the church during those years, so I learned the Mass in Latin and then had to learn it again in English.
“In a sense, my world grew, but my God shrank.”
I read everything I could find on Catholicism and then began exploring beyond Christianity. The first books that caught my attention were by Edgar Cayce and Jeane Dixon, a psychic and an astrologer, respectively. They got me asking new questions and seeing the world differently.
I suddenly realized there was more out there than Catholicism. In a sense, my world grew, but my God shrank. I began raising questions that wouldn’t go away. I had grown up thinking of God in very Catholic terms, often tied to fear, and now he was rapidly becoming an irrelevant old man.
I did what came naturally and tried to read my way out of it. When that failed, I went to see my parish priest. I was still in high school, and I spent a long session raising questions and baring my soul. Some questions were practical: Why do priests and nuns still dress as if it were the Middle Ages? Why hasn’t the church adapted to the modern world? Others were philosophical: How can I believe in God when there seems to be no evidence of him? Why accept the authority of a book that seems irrelevant to the world I live in? What about other religions? Given what we’re learning in science, how can I believe the Bible?
The priest listened patiently and then smiled. “You’ll get over it,” he said. “It’s not unusual for kids your age to raise questions about faith. But you’ll get over it.”
I didn’t get over it.
I felt dismissed, so I read more, which took me even further from the church. After reading Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian, I started asking questions I had never dreamed I’d ask. Eventually I left the church spiritually and intellectually, though not physically, because I didn’t want to tell my parents.
At first I considered myself an agnostic. I figured there might be a God, but if there was, he wasn’t letting us in on it. Eventually I realized that was intellectually dishonest. The truth was, I didn’t believe. My cautious atheism became strongly committed. I wasn’t an atheist just to avoid God or moral demands. I was an atheist by conviction.
“Although I believed there was no God, strangely, I was angry at God for not existing.”
At home, I still seemed like a good Catholic, going to Mass and joining in when we said grace.
That changed when I went to college in the early 1970s. Campuses were in revolt over civil rights, the Vietnam War, free speech, sexual freedom, drugs, and alcohol. The Jesus movement was active too, which I became familiar with by criticizing it.
I was vocal about my atheism, and professors invited me to speak about my convictions. That led to public debates with Christians from the campus fellowship, and I became a prime target for Christians who wanted to witness to me. Weekly, someone would share The Four Spiritual Laws booklet with me. Many of them had enthusiasm and passion but little knowledge, while my extensive reading made it easy for me to counter their arguments. They thought they had all the answers, but I had questions they were unable to answer.
Yet I was a very dissatisfied atheist. I found that when you remove God from the equation, you also remove purpose and meaning from life. Although I believed there was no God, strangely, I was angry at God for not existing. Atheism became a dark place, and I became lonely and frustrated.
So I kept searching. One professor, an unusual combination of Presbyterian minister and lay Buddhist, became a mentor. For a while, I explored Buddhism and traveled the Zen highway seeking enlightenment, but that path left me frustrated too. I tried other philosophies and even some cultic movements that were popular at the time. Still, I could not find peace.
Then one day, while I was in my dormitory arguing with another student about the reality of Jesus’s resurrection, an acquaintance overheard us. He asked, “Tom, have you ever read the Bible?” Cocky as I was, I told him I’d been a Catholic most of my life and knew all I needed to know about Christianity. He quietly left and came back with a Bible and C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. He knew me well enough not to open the Bible and start quoting verses. He simply handed me the books and said, “How about you read these and we can discuss them?”
“I discovered that the Christian faith was both rational and relational.”
We started meeting, and those conversations continued for months. At first I was the Grand Inquisitor from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I challenged and debated and pushed aggressively. Gradually, however, I became a seeking inquirer. Piece by piece, my arguments were cut out from under me. My questions were answered, or he pointed me to other books. Here was a Christian who wasn’t confused or defensive when challenged. If he didn’t know an answer, he would research it and get back to me.
By then I’d run out of arguments. There was no voice from heaven. It just became clear that I had nowhere else to go, and somewhere along the way I was a Christian again, years after I’d left the faith.
I didn’t return to the same place I had left. I was determined not to return to the church, and I also had to deal with my feelings about Scripture. Yet the more I studied it, the more I realized that avoiding church was impossible. I discovered that the Christian faith was both rational and relational. It was a relationship with the risen Christ, Lord of life, Creator of the universe, and now my personal Savior.
As I read the Gospels, I saw how Jesus continually referred to the Scriptures, quoted them, and corrected religious leaders. I also saw that the Bible matched reality and that God’s word was given to help us live well.
Moving from fighting Scripture to embracing its truth and authority led me to recognize my need to be discipled, which meant getting involved in a church. The members of the Christian fellowship on campus were attending a local church, and when I followed them, I realized it was the first Protestant church I had ever entered.
Around that same time, I began sensing that God was calling me into ministry. The thought stayed with me, and others began confirming it—often people with whom I had once argued vehemently. I wrestled with the idea for months until I finally said yes, and an overwhelming sense of peace followed.
By God’s providence, I was led to Springfield Evangelical Covenant Church in West Springfield, Massachusetts, where I began a relationship with the Covenant that has now lasted more than fifty years.
How important the Bible was in bringing me to faith! As I devoured the Scriptures, God was speaking to me. The early Swedes who were part of the movement that became the Covenant Church were called the läsare—the “readers.” They were followers of Jesus who read, studied, learned, and lived the word. Now I, too, am a reader.
