I remember telling my Christian auntie before the beginning of my Freshman year that I would be majoring in Philosophy to which she responded, “Be careful. Most people who go and major in that thing come out not believing that God exists.” So maybe this is that post, maybe not. I cannot say with a sound conscious that I do not believe a God exists (if pressed for details I will explain that I am agnostic in the sense that I do believe there is a God, but I am not sure that we can truly know all things about the nature of God). But I must say this, I do view religion as an institution and I do not believe that this institution is necessary in order for one to get in touch with their spirituality.

The thing is I sort of grew up in an inter-faith household. I grew up with parents who divorced when I was too young to remember how it happened exactly, a Muslim woman and a Christian father. I would argue that both of them had an attachment to their respective faiths that was more cultural than it was spiritual. That was my first lesson on the utility of religion, to reinforce cultural norms and allegiance.

Growing up, I just thought of myself as both. It wasn’t until later my tweens that I realized from other people, mostly very religious people, that you can’t be both. And I was confused. I felt like I had to choose one over the other, and for a time it was easier for me to choose Christianity over Islam especially in a post 9/11 America. It was also very difficult for me to inhabit Muslim spaces where I’d be asked about my and my family’s conversion as if Black Muslims haven’t existed for quite some time now.

It seemed most natural for me to identify as Christian because I was black and American and most people assumed this of me, and this was one of the ways in which most other black people around me could connect with each other. Even further still, I also grew up in the Black American Christian Tradition. Even though Islam mostly took a backseat in my childhood in terms of religious practices, I would argue that my religious values though informed by both religions, are mostly influenced by Islam. However, most things tied to religious practices feel like mundane routine that I was required to do even when I found some things questionable and unnecessary, I tried to force it to work.

When I attended a Catholic High School where we were required to take religious courses, and I learned about the idea of Abrahamic Faiths and how supposedly all three faiths (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) believe in the same God. However, there still exist so much tension amongst the religions. This has affected me personally when I have been amongst my muslim family members and they would make disparaging comments or remarks about Christianity, and the very same must be said about my Christian family members who would also make disparaging comments and remarks about Islam. My main with religious people has always been how sometimes devotion for one’s faith can turn into contempt or even disdain for another religion. I never want this to be me.

Growing up, my mother, now a devout muslim, would simply encourage my sister and I to “just pray how you know how to pray,” in addition to reinforcing that we should respect people’s religious differences. But to be fair, all of this has really been a distraction from my own personal reality that religion isn’t something that brings me peace in the ways that I have seen it do for others. I tried, and it didn’t work for me. I have witnessed people wear religion like an ornamental badge. I’ve never felt comfortable with this.

In the past three years, I’ve been having a funky relationship with religion altogether. For various reasons, mostly travel and circumstantial, I have not been inside of a mosque or church for almost a year.  It has been a time of deep reflection, and in this time I’ve learned to listen to myself and embrace the things that bring me peace, and speaking my personal truth is one of the things that has been helping me feel that sense of peace.

Personally,  I have had to accept that for my mental health, for my peace of mind, I cannot be a devout anything. While I choose to respect people in the practice of their faith, I don’t think I could believe one religion to be superior or “truer” than another. I believe in the need for interfaith dialogues to promote understanding and appreciation amongst people. I believe that treating other people equally well despite their race, class, or creed is what makes me a good person, even more so than being dogmatically religious. In short, I find that I am most comfortable identifying as SBNR (Spiritual But Not Religious) and/or spiritually agnostic, and in so doing I feel as if a heavy weight has been lifted off me; I feel free.

Sidenote: If I could choose my own religion, I’d probably just say gospel music, for me it is the one thing that reaffirms that joy is real. For no matter my circumstance, I can play gospel and feel a sense of happiness.