Writings: Doubt, I think…..with Julia Baird

When I was a young monk at a university in Tennessee in the States, I was required to take a class called Religion 101, perhaps because the school trained Anglican/Episcopal priests, perhaps because they saw I’d been to Roman Catholic schools & wanted to straighten me out, or perhaps for the best of reasons: it would be fun.

In class early on, we read things by a Protestant theologian named Paul Tillich, who knocked my cocksure sense of things around by insisting that  a key component in the growth of faith was doubt.

Although the stories always include doubt – Peter denying he even knew Jesus, Francis coming back pretty confused from the Crusades, Gandhi’s uncertainties in South Africa, Luther & Calvin &  others – it’s always seemed to me that there are many faces of doubt, and many aspects.

I was glad that my friend Father Jon sent me this article from the New York Times by Julia Baird, who is my new favourite writer.

 

Here’s the article: Doubt as a Sign of Faith

She’s clear, and she says things you & I were thinking already (remember that the Ten Things includes the notion: Truth is self-evident.) I look forward to hearing what you think & feel!

Julia Baird is an author, a journalist and a television presenter with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She is working on a biography of Queen Victoria. Here’s more about Julia.