Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Fowler's Stages of Faith interview

No one else will be interested in this on any forum, so why not post it here? These are my answers to the research interview shared in the back of Fowler's book. I guess I could do them in separate entries, section by section. First, the bio section.

I was born in December of 1980 in northwestern North Carolina. I have an older half-sister that I never really knew who graduated from high school before I was born. I have two older half-brothers, one of whom moved back to live with his father when I was two. I'm the youngest/only.

Umm - I know that I have Irish and Sioux ancestors and I think that's cool, but I wouldn't say that I really have an ethnic identification - maybe American because my worldview is shaped by having been born and raised here although it's not like I'm all nationalistic and proud of it and go all "USA number one! Kick their ass and take their gas!" Actually, stuff like that makes me want to vomit.

I think that first and foremost, before anything else, I am North Carolinian. And even then I don't really particularly identify with the people - people here are the same as people are everywhere. But the land - oh, the grass and the sky and the trees and the hills and the mountains are part of my soul.

I have no religious identification. And although the rest of the world sees me as white and treats me as white and I do probably have some unconscious privileged white person views somewhere I don't really identify with people who look like me. Class-wise, I guess I'm upper working class. I have a home and plenty of computers and a fast net connection and many many books and some disposable income. If we produced little humans, though - we'd be lucky to not end up homeless due to the expense.

I was in pretty much the same class growing up - my parents were factory workers and my father died when I had just turned seven. I had a home and books and got a computer and a net connection when I was 16. I had everything I needed and got most of what I wanted, but I wasn't terribly spoiled or over-privileged.