indicators when isolated in the intelect of reason. As in taking

responsability . In part one should try to take responsability in

self knowledge. In knowing my self I know that anxiety can mean

this place , these people, or this situation is not right for me

and my own personal growth. I am a feeling person , my body tells

me about the world around me . If some one is trust worthy , if the

situation is as it is presented. And in honor of that wisdom

innate in all of us that guides us if we listen. Anxiety is a link

in the wisdom .Now some time when I am around people I can become

very anxiouse. I thought it was about my inability to cope. I have

learned in reflection that some times we as human are opperating

to fill are own needs , be it due to insecuritys, fear and the

need for control of our fears by controling you in any way they

can. I have learned to value my own truth. To practice love , honor

and respect for my self as well as those around me. The anxiety

taught me to honor self.

ER

Michael is right that “churches did not decide for you to be anxious about them.” But that’s not what’s being said. The church building, or even church community, need not decide to make one anxious in order for the whole institution, the smell of the place, and the way it reminds you of your childhood to all converge and together arouse a sense of anxiety.

In terms of the responsibility question—I think, in some respects, that Manifesto language is our starting point at KtB. It might be said that all we do amounts to the process of taking responsibility for sensations like the anxiety about churches we’ve all been talking about. The initial formulation, perhaps, is passive voice and vague, attributing the anxiety to something external. But, if you take time to wander through our archives, you won’t find a lot of purely resentful heaping blame on churches. What you’ll find, thankfully, are lots of people exploring what in themselves gives rise to such anxiety and how they can transform their own response. What I’m suggesting is that we need that naive starting point—passive voice, vagueness, and all—from which to begin the process of taking responsibility. Just as naive would be to say that taking responsibility can happen automatically, immediately, from the outset. The sensation arises first; naming it and claiming it may happen only after.

Perhaps the philosophical discourse best known for its analysis of anxiety is existentialism, from Kierkegaard to Sartre and (in theology) Tillich. There, anxiety is a starting point, a raw sensation that occurs in response to the condition of being-toward-death. The whole philosophical project amounts to the work of taking responsibility for that anxiety.

In that case, however, one soon realizes that the anxiety is not simply “raw.” It isn’t some purely biological event bubbling up in consciousness because of death in all people, in all times and places. As is so well-expressed in Nietzsche’s account of the “death of God,” that sensation of anxiety probably has a lot to do with the context of Christian thought for the last nearly 2,000 years. After so much fixation on l’heure de notre mort and ars moriendi, those for whom Christianity had lost its spell inherited a deep concern about death from the religion, but they lacked its coping mechanisms. Thus anxiety. To say that they alone are responsible for their own anxiety under-appreciates the history and context in which it arose.

In Heidegger’s analysis, “thrownness” is the operative term: the existential condition in which, at a fundamental phenomenological level, one finds oneself “in” an experience not of one’s choosing. Living “authentically” then, amounts to the hard work of taking responsibility for it.

And, for me and for some of us, there’s something about churches that’s related to that void.

We can differ on what has made me anxious, and if I’m to blame for it, and if I’m being evasive or childish by not saying I did it to myself, and if anxiety is something I should be able to control, but let’s not say my anxiety is not anxiety.

Precisely what you say is “the point” is what I’m saying may not be the only possible point. Why, exactly, are you so insistent on taking responsibility in this way, I wonder? Can you explain more fully?

Paraphrasing Mrs. Roosevelt was just an attempt to give credit where it might or might not be due. Don’t hyperfocus on her and what she might or might not have said.

The point is that I am responsible for my anxiety, and you are responsible for yours. If churches are “making” you anxious, you’re giving them permission and space in your life to do that. I’m just suggesting you take responsibility for your own responsibility, and I’ll take responsibility for mine.