Faith as Living Life: Karen Seay and Emilia Allen

May 28, 2015

Karen Seay—originally a Southern Baptist—now lives an active spiritual life outside the church, much like her daughter Emilia Allen, who believes there are many different paths to ultimate truth. In this conversation, the mother and daughter discuss how they understand their faith lives vis-à-vis organized Christianity.

This story was produced by David Dault at Sandburg Media, LLC.

This story is a part of the American Pilgrimage Project, a conversation series that invites Americans of diverse backgrounds to sit together and talk to each other one-to-one about the role their religious beliefs play at crucial moments in their lives. The interview was recorded by StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.

Emilia Allen: If I'm Christian, I'm Christian by default, because that is the story that I was raised with, those are the traditions that I was raised with, and that's why my identity is Christian, I think. It's cultural. But I very much recognize it as by default. I believe more and more all the time that there are a few truths, and that every religion points to them, that many philosophies point to them, that schools of thought point to them, and it's just a matter of different paths.

Karen Seay: I grew up in the 1950s in South Carolina, and I was raised in a family that was not necessarily very tied to church, although for some reason my own mother became very tied to church, and the church that she was tied to was the Southern Baptist Church. And so therefore from the time I was about four or five years old, I was taken to church and taught about Jesus, and taught about God, and taught very clearly that God was male and that God watched me all the time, and that I was to behave in certain ways because that's what would please God. And now I count myself among those who are calling themselves nones.

Emilia Allen: N-O-N-E-S.

Karen Seay: N-O-N-E-S, yes. And I'm troubled, I think, because many people assume that nones, those of us who have come out of the church, really have abandoned our faith, or we have given up on our faith, or that there's some negative aspect to what we have done. I don't feel that at all. My progression from where I started out as a child to where I am now to me is an absolutely natural progression. It's a positive progression.

Emilia Allen: I think that I don't need to define myself against Christianity in the way that you do, and I know that that's not the bulk of your faith, but that's the language that you sometimes use. It's really interesting to be that you use the term post-Christian. We had a conversation sometime within the last year, I think. Maybe the last couple of years where you used that term, and it occurred to me part of the reason that I have never had the struggle that you've had, I was not obviously raised Southern Baptist. I didn't have as much to fight against because I think...You say I was raised in a very progressive church. I say I was raised in a very moderate church, and that I think, frankly, avoided strong statements about anything, which chafed a little bit. I wanted something to engage with, to rub up against, and I didn't find it. I haven't had that to push off from.

Karen Seay: I find myself only regretting that I'm probably not going to be around to see where this all goes. In some way, I'll be aware of it. There's that faith again. But I have every confidence that you're going to figure out not only your faith, but your life. And I don't think there's any way to separate the two. I think the conversation we've just had proves that.

Emilia Allen: I think faith is how you live your life.

Karen Seay: Yeah. It is.

Emilia Allen: That's I think what the practice of faith is.

Karen Seay: Yeah. And I think that you are on the road, you are committed to the road, you are passionate about the road that will lead you exactly where you need to be and will be the gift to the world that you were born to bring. And that's absolutely my faith.