Together with StoryCorps, WYSO invited community members to take part in One Small Step, bringing people from across the region together for conversations with someone they’d never met. PR Frank of Dayton and Mary McKnight of Trotwood met at the Huber Heights Branch of the Dayton Metro Library and talked about their own faith journeys, including what it’s like to feel like an outsider in a community that’s supposed to feel like home.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Frank: I've always gone to church, I've always believed in God, grew up Catholic. Then my wife and I decided about four or five years into our marriage that we weren't growing in our faith. But my wife and I met in the church and we were a youth group together. And so why would we leave that whole family and decide we aren't growing into our faith? We explored lots of different churches and ultimately it led us on this journey of church-hopping because...
McKnight: Right.
Frank: What you see is challenges among the people that come to a church for what beliefs they're going to take on or what beliefs are harder for them to take on and then you have the person leading from the pulpit and then there's judgment calls about us as a family that have made us just have to leave some churches. And after about the fifth time doing that and getting burned, and sometimes, because I get so involved when it comes down to "do we need to leave this church?" and then we do, it's heartbreaking. It's leaving another family.
McKnight: Yeah.
Frank: After about the fifth time I was like, I ain't going back. Forget it, forget about religion. But then it becomes really important to me and I really miss it. I miss cultivating my faith and listening to people's perspective on the Bible, discussing it, arguing it, or whatever, trying to find some piece of that to take, to grow in my faith. And I have gone to church with Trumpsters, right? But you know, it's a challenge to me because we have this other shared belief in God. We have this shared belief in the magic and the mystery of Jesus and faith. But at the same time, we're divided on this man who's in leadership that doesn't represent any of that to me, but somehow they stand behind it.
McKnight: That makes me sad you can't find comfort, because I think that our faith can be very comforting. My mom, it was important to her that we have a foundation. And so we went to a Presbyterian church. And then when we moved, we went the Methodist church and I got very involved in that in high school and taught Sunday school, and then I became a Mormon.
Frank: That's what you are now? Do you consider yourself Mormon now?
McKnight: I don't. I've lived a very secular life, and deliberately so. Which doesn't mean that I don't have some sort of faith. And I don't have church or religion as a guiding factor, but I think morally and ethically, it's certainly based on Judeo-Christian foundations and I think that Jesus is pretty righteous. But somehow we, as humans, we love to judge. And so people are using that, they're using their religion to support their judgment or to justify their judgment of others that they have considered to be other and to be wrong. But especially now, I feel the need for something. It's kind of like I want to reclaim the word Christianity for me, because that's basically what my beliefs are. I'm not a joiner, but I also think, you know, maybe you need to find a church. But I'm also not going to go church hopping.
Frank: It's tough, it's tough.
McKnight: And my husband is an atheist.
Frank: So he wouldn't go with you if you did?
McKnight: Oh, gosh, no, no.
Frank: So the not fitting-in part, if we want to circle back.
McKnight: Yeah. Yes.
Frank: Is that like "I always feel like an outsider" and "the more I don't go I am an outsider," right?
McKnight: And that's the one thing that should be bringing us together, I really feel this, is our love for God.
One Small Step with WYSO is produced by the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO. This series is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and presented by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.
