A None's Story: Searching for Meaning Inside Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam
Corinna Nicolaou
Language: English
Pages: 312
ISBN: 0231173946
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The rising population known as "nones" for its members' lack of religious affiliation is changing American society, politics, and culture. Many nones believe in God and even visit places of worship, but they do not identify with a specific faith or belong to a spiritual community. Corinna Nicolaou is a none, and in this layered narrative, she describes what it is like for her and thousands of others to live without religion or to be spiritual without committing to a specific faith.
Nicolaou tours America's major traditional religions to see what, if anything, one might lack without God. She moves through Christianity's denominations, learning their tenets and worshiping alongside their followers. She travels to Los Angeles to immerse herself in Judaism, Berkeley to educate herself about Buddhism, and Dallas and Washington, D.C., to familiarize herself with Islam. She explores what light they can shed on the fears and failings of her past, and these encounters prove the significant role religion still plays in modern life. They also exemplify the vibrant relationship between religion and American culture and the enduring value it provides to immigrants and outsiders. Though she remains a devout none, Nicolaou's experiences reveal points of contact between the religious and the unaffiliated, suggesting that nones may be radically revising the practice of faith in contemporary times.
going to stay in a monastery for a week, and she cried, “They’ll rape you!” Her hearing is not so good, though it turns out she heard me just fine. I eased her into the idea over several conversations, but she remained skeptical. My parents were the ones I was most worried about. When I was growing up, we had a family friend who became a “born-again” Christian and it was with a mixture of pity and sorrow that we spoke of her. She may have been reborn someplace else, but she had died on our side.
offers a “classical education in light of scripture” and is located just a few blocks from the state university, in a building on Main Street—though I had no idea it was there until someone pointed it out. It occurs to me that kids born in this congregation whose parents are inclined to send them to its series of private schools could grow up having almost no meaningful contact with the outside community. In addition to the education system, several local businesses are affiliated with the
all the time I had spent eyeing those kids, I never once spoke to them, nor they to me. Whatever made their world operate was alien from the particulars of mine; it was like we occupied dimensions so distant that any sound I might utter would dissipate before it reached their ears. I had the idea that they might be an optical illusion, a projected image on a screen; if I snuck up and looked behind it, I’d see only dust bunnies and boxes. Dad and I came to the corner without finding my name and
normal kid. I had always attributed my feelings to my situation, as if my lack of goodness were exactly proportional to the difference between a conventional family and mine. But now I wonder if my shame didn’t stem from a more universal source, if I would have smuggled the sense of being not quite good enough into a perfect nuclear family if those had been my circumstances. The more I talk to people from various backgrounds, the more I realize how others struggled with similar feelings that
condition. He finds a pleasant spot under a tree, close enough to the trunk that he can lean against it if he needs to, and makes a nice place to sit, with a bed of straw. He commits to staying until he finds a way to end his suffering. For a time he falls into old habits: he gets caught up in the past; he worries about the future. Finally he manages to subdue those thoughts, to plant his feet firmly in the “now.” At last, at the age of thirty-five, he arrives at “nirvana” or “the extinction of