Religious Traditions: Kevin Kim on 'Switching'

Kevin's Stroll through the Country

(Image from Kevin's Walk)

Kevin Kim, a friend of mine who until recently taught English for several years here in Korea and had the advantage of being half-Korean and conversant in the Korean language, is a really big guy. Big as in football-player-size big. Big as in about six-foot-three-inches big. Big as in weighing nearly 300 pounds big.

Hence his blog, Big Hominid's Hairy Chasms.

Don't go there unless you're prepared for a 'hairy' experience, for Kevin has an unusual sense of humor. Anway, Kevin has put that blog on ice for the time being as he goes about the process of becoming a somewhat Medium-Sized Hominid through losing a bit of weight by walking a little more than usual.

He's taking a little stroll across the United States, starting from Washington State, where he touched the Pacific Ocean, and heading east, eventually to end up touching the Atlantic Ocean. He's calling this little constitutional Kevin's Walk: An Extended Inquiry into my Home Country's Religious Diversity.

Kevin is obviously more than your average English teacher. In fact, he has a master's degree in religious studies, and along his chosen path, he's visiting various religious sites -- churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and so on -- where he engages the devout and not-so-devout in discussions on spirituality and related topics and also asks for a bite to eat and a place to sleep in exchange for doing some chores. He then presses onward, ever eastward.

On Friday, June 6th, 2008 (for future reference), Kevin had an "Interview with Jay Rozendaal," the reverend of the Christ Episcopal Church of Blaine, Washington. In that interview, he learned that Jay had grown up Presbyterian and gone through a Buddhist phase before returning to Christianity. Kevin asked if Jay was also still a Buddhist, to which Jay replied no, but that led to discussion of Ann Redding, a professor at Seattle University who's an Episcopal priest as well as a Muslim. At this news, Kevin reflected on the words of one of his graduate-school professors:

I'll inject a remark here: back when I was in grad school, one of my profs, Father William Cenkner, said that it's not really possible to hold on to two religions at once in a purely integrated manner. In his view, the best one can manage is a sort of bifurcated stasis, where the two religious tendencies are held together in tension, not harmony, and the dual-adherent is obliged to "switch" from one religious mode to the other depending on the situation. I wasn't too comfortable with Fr. Cenkner's formulation, but I haven't had the chance to speak with people who openly proclaim themselves to be members of two distinct traditions. Given the subjective nature of religious belief, Cenkner's contention would be hard to test.

Let me interject my own thoughts here.

I think that many people do this sort of switching in the modern (and perhaps now postmodern) world between their religious selves and their secular selves, for these two selves are differently grounded. The Christian tradition's distinction between God and Ceasar, the church and the state, the religious and the secular, the sacred and the profane, the eternal and the temporal, and various other ways of expressing this duality makes room for such switching, which is perhaps necessary for believers (theocrats included) since they live in a secular world that is differently grounded than the religious world.

For Muslims, since Islam acknowledges no distinction between the religious and the secular, the problem posed by switching is particularly acute, which partly accounts for the rising influence of Salafi Islam in our contemporary world, for Salafis draw upon the srict Muslim doctrine of Tawhid, very rigorous monotheistic unity, to reject the secular, democratic state as inconsistent with true Islam because Muslim law, shariah, comes from Allah, whereas the laws of the democratic state come from human beings, which implies for strict Salafis that a Muslim who accepts a democratic state is associating something human with Allah and is thus committing shirk, the worst of all sins, and is effectively an apostate (cf. takfir).

The stakes can therefore be rather high for the believers in some religious traditions.

At any rate -- or, rather, at Kevin's rate -- the walk across America continues, and Kevin continues walking the talk, thereby increasing "in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" (cf. Luke 2:52).

Though, to be upfront about it, Kevin is actually losing in stature as he gains in wisdom, for he is down to about 275 pounds.