Sometimes I find myself trying to explain to someone why I am a practicing Episcopalian but not a believing one. Actually, I think I often try to explain it to myself.  Having lost the child-like faith of my childhood, I feel what Jean-Paul Sartre, an atheist existentialist philosopher, ireferred to as a  “God-shaped hole”. The phrase is used to describe the emptiness left behind when the divine disappears from human consciousness.

Recently, I came across an article in the NY Times that explains my behavior better than I have ever been able to.   Here is it:

CAN I GO TO CHURCH WHEN I DON’T BELIEVE?

I grew up in the Catholic tradition, but after obtaining several university degrees — including one in religion — it became clear to me that Jesus wasn’t divine and that the cobbling together of the Bible in the fourth century was a consummate work of spin-doctoring. I have about 20 arguments in defense of this, not the least of which is Christ’s inefficacy. After 2,000 years, his followers have split into thousands of sects, many of whom have shot and killed members of rival sects. Think of Northern Ireland, World War II. It doesn’t seem to me the way an omnipotent deity should operate.

But boy, oh, boy, do I love the artistic output of Christianity. Bach’s B-minor Mass, the Fauré Requiem, St. Paul’s Cathedral — all these lift my spirit. I love a beautiful Christian service.(Where else do you hear an organ like that?) Actors talk about ‘‘working from the outside in,’’ in which a physical position unlocks inner emotions. For me, kneeling does this. I don’t pray, but the act creates humility and gratitude. It does me good. Then there’s the lovely sense of community in a congregation.

I’ll never be converted. So I guess I’m lying when I turn up at a service and recite the Creed and sing the hymns as lustily as anyone else. Am I hurting anyone by doing this? Is it, for want of a better word, a sin? — Name Withheld