Spotlight on... Jeff Davis

I grew up in a vaguely Christian household.  A lot of emphasis was placed on believing in Jesus as one's savior but we never really attended church for some reason.  We didn't even attend services on Easter and Christmas for the most part.  I grew up in a broken home, living with my mother, whose beliefs were pretty fundamentalist.  I heard second-hand my father was a Catholic, but his beliefs obvious weren't too involved as he never even mentioned religion in my presence from birth until his death in 2002. 

Like a lot of people, a fundamentalist upbringing instilled in me a deep and abounding fear of going to Hell forever.  As a child I would frequently lay awake at night, sometimes crying silently at the mere thought that I, or someone from my family, might not make it into heaven.  What few experiences I had in church reinforced this way of thinking.

Around the age of 16 I started to listening to a lot of heavy metal (which I still enjoy) and started discovering that a lot of people had been negatively affected by the beliefs they grew up with.  I became quite reactionary and opposed to Christianity in general, because I had little exposure to the positive side of it.

As I grew older and teen angst subsided, I eventually started viewing religion as irrelevant superstition and stopped thinking about it altogether.  It was something for "other people" that I had little interest in.

Around 2002 in the aftermath of a serious medical diagnosis, I started thinking about engaging with religion again.  My reasoning was that since things seemed to be going poorly in my mortal life, maybe I should start looking elsewhere for hope.  Probably not the best reasoning, but not an uncommon motivation either.

Since I really had no idea what was involved in choosing a church, or even the difference between denominations, I latched onto the first Church I saw, one which may be familiar to many of you from their TV commercials.  I dragged my wife to services there one Sunday evening.  The opulence of the church was astounding, and frankly, a little off-putting.  Services took place in a very large amphitheater with a state of the art sound system and giant TV screens for those that were sitting in the back.  What we experienced there was frankly pretty frightening to the both of, never having been exposed to the charismatic movement before.  There was a lot of movement, screaming and shouting about Satan, and a very big deal was made about the offering.  It was basically a more extreme version of the televangelism you see on religious channels.  We never returned.

(I later learned that the reason megachurches run so many TV commercials is that the turnover in the congregation is higher than usual.  A recent poll of megachurch attendees found that over 60% of them would describe themselves as spiritually unfulfilled.  Not only are megachurches run like businesses, their turnover is just as high.)

My next church was chosen in a method nearly as random...flipping through the phonebook looking for nearby churches that had hours listed on a Sunday afternoon.  I found a local Baptist church that had services that evening, so once again I dragged my wife along for moral support and got in the car.  This ended up being a very big mistake.  Nowadays you hear about "sick buildings" that make people who work in them ill.  I strongly feel this church was an example of a "sick church" that makes everyone in it spiritually ill.  Their fundamentalist beliefs were pushed very strongly on everyone that attended.  They adhered to the usual list of groups that are demonized on a regular basis by fundamentalists: liberals, feminists, people that belong to other religions, gays, and so forth.  Neither of us really agreed with this but we kept our mouths shut about it except at home.  In a discussion with the pastor, I happened to mention my now-wife and I were living together but had not yet married, a fact that I was encouraged to keep as quiet as possible.  Later on I was strongly discouraged from baptism and communion for this reason.  Other people seemed to have their own problems with the church...attendance was always a constant struggle.  The only time you could get most members in a room together was when free dinner was provided by the church women.  Some people were actually upset the church wasn't fundamentalist enough and there was a brief, angry exchange during a sermon one night that ended with someone storming out.  My wife quit attending long before I did.  Eventually I hit my breaking point too, since I realized I was basically being treated like a black sheep while at the same time having heavy church obligations laid on me.  I wasn't a young earth creationist, my wife was the head of the household, I was a liberal, I didn't look down on GLBT folks or many of the other groups they disliked.  I resolved to quit attending and stopped responding to their missives for me to return.  Eventually they quit trying.

A few months later I decided to try again, this time trying to find a church that matched me, instead of finding a church that wanted me to become like them.  I discovered Universalist-Unitarianism and started attending a local congregation occasionally.  The people were friendlier and their beliefs in general were a pretty good match for mine.  Over time I decided that perhaps UUism was a bit too diverse for me.  I don't find anything wrong with the idea of communal worship between people of different beliefs, but I felt there were too many concessions to be made in the sermons.  When you're trying to cook for 50 people that all have different allergies, you end up serving oatmeal.

I looked for something similar to UUism and discovered the Quakers.  I was encouraged by the fact that they seemed to be on the side of peace and justice on any social issue you could name.  I attended a local meeting for a great long while but over the course of time I realized that like UUism, I wasn't getting anything out of the worship style.  I've never been able to meditate so sitting silently for an hour alone with my thoughts was a great struggle for me.  I found myself peeking at the clock, or wishing someone would feel led to speak out of the silence in the Quaker tradition.

The last church I attended before finding Nexus was a local new-age type congregation.  Everyone was friendly, but I found some of their beliefs a bit incredulous.  I was once asked what I thought about crystals, and had an awkward moment where I had to think of something nice to say without treading on anyone's beliefs.  I basically demurred that I thought they were nice-looking rocks but not much else.  Eventually I came to suspect that the entire church may have been a vehicle to provide the leadership with interested clientele for their side-businesses.  The leadership was very much involved with selling related services...mediumship services, psychic readings, spirit portraits, reiki, therapeutic massage.  These people wore many hats, and were charging a pretty fair amount for these services.

At this point I just kind of quit looking...I had already visited pretty much every nearby progressive congregation.  All of the others were either too far to drive to on a weekly basis, or just variations on what I had already experienced.  I frequently wished someone would start a progressive Christian church in Butler County.  A church where "misfits" and those cast out of other churches could feel welcome.  A church with a commitment to peace and social justice.  A church that at least tolerated some degree of skepticism.  A church that embraced technology in its outreach.

Eventually I read an article about a church in Seattle that met a few of these criteria (while missing others entirely...this church was Calvinist).  On a lark I decided to Google for 'Hamilton Ohio Churches."  On the second page of results, I discovered there was a small church on the outskirts of Hamilton that met in a gym, that fulfilled every one of these criteria.  That church, was of course, Nexus UCC, and I'm delighted to have found it.

Jeff is a Hamilton native.  His wife, Roxanne, is from Southeast Ohio, near Athens.