Test of faith

Veronda Pitchford, 37
Edgewater, no declared religion

Do you believe in God?
Hells yeah. I’m like the Ramones and looking for something to believe in—do you know that song?

How often do you go to religious services?
Rarely, but I do yoga religiously on Sundays and for me it’s a time of spiritual reflection. Honestly, being on my mat is my temple.

Who is the most important figure in your religion?
Personally? Human beings! Acts of compassion and grace that occur between individuals on a daily basis. I know it sounds crazy groovy, but a girl can dream, right?

What do you think happens after you die?
I dunno but I hope it involves an open bar.

Do you pray?
Yes. Who doesn’t love asking some supreme being to help them get what they want?

How often do you pray?
I pray several times a day. Please let the train come soon; please let this war end; please let that purse be on sale. I pray for things from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Would you ever marry someone who did not share your views?
God, yes. Wait, was that ironic?

Christopher Chesser, 25
McKinley Park, agnostic

What religious questions trouble you most?
Do you believe in God? is a pretty big one. The way things seem to fall in order in a natural way and how the universe has a way of working itself out would seem to indicate that there might be.

What do you believe happens after death?
Darkness.

Do you believe in the devil?
No, but I believe in Keyser Söze.

What do you like least about your faith?
There aren’t enough virgins for me when I die. It’s severely lacking in postdeath virgins.

Photo: Nolan Wells

Philip Blackwell, 63
Loop, Methodist

You’re the senior pastor at the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple. Is that a lot of pressure, since you set the standard for a lot of people?
I have to be aware that I have a public persona that needs to be consistent with my private persona. I have to take seriously what I do and say because I’m not just speaking and acting for myself, I’m speaking and acting for an entire community. 

Do you ever feel like people expect too much of you, expect you to be beyond human or without flaw?
I think there are some instances where the expectations are unreasonable. But it’s not like a generation or two ago when the people idealized the pastor in town. I read the papers like everyone else, and there are some bad actors out there.

Lynn Sasamoto, 46
Hyde Park, Buddhist

What’s your religion?
I am Buddhist, but Buddhist by birth. I can’t say that I’m practicing. I don’t feel like I have a whole lot of religion in my life.

What do you think happens after you die?
I do think there is something else for us after we’re not living. My father’s parents and my mom’s dad are deceased. I do think that they’re looking out for their families, but it’s not really related to being Buddhist.

Does your grandma [95-year-old Fumiko Yamaguchi] believe in God?
I don’t know. I’ll have to ask her. [They talk for a couple of minutes.] Grandma says no.

Did she have to think about that?
Yeah, she did. She struggled with it. And I have to say grandma is very, very Japanese in that respect, so I think talking about this is probably hard, period.

So she was raised Buddhist?
[They talk for a few more minutes.] Wow. I just learned something totally new. Grandma said she is Buddhist because when she met my grandfather [in Japan], he was Buddhist. She grew up being Shinto. Wow. I did not know that at all.

Billy Riley, 48
Rogers Park, shamanist

Do you believe in God?
I believe in anything that embraces love: the divine, the Creator, the Goddess, the God…. I do not believe in the male, patriarchal God; I think the Creator is male and female.

How did you get involved in shamanism?
As a small boy, I practiced shamanism without knowing what it was. I was  always bringing home animals and rocks, buying animal pelts and making altars. When I began studying massage therapy, I met all these new friends who said, “You act like a shaman,” and gave me books about shamanism. The books kept giving me confirmation of things I was already practicing.

How often do you go to religious services?
I don’t. I don’t need to spend time with other shamans. I flow in the energy of the bobcat. The bobcat comes down from the mountains, mingles, then goes back up…. But I do daily rituals such as Kundalini yoga, and before meeting with a client, I build an altar for him or her to call in the energies of the universe.

A. Malik Mujahid, 55
South suburbs, Muslim

Have you had to defend Islam since 9/11?
People who know Muslims have very good opinions about Islam and Muslims. People who don’t know their neighbors and just watch TV seem to have negative opinions. Two months after 9/11, only 26 percent of people had negative opinions of Islam and Muslims, and now it has doubled.

Why has it gone up?
Well, no buildings have gone down, but it’s because of two factors. One is that some opinion makers are saying irresponsible things. [Tom Tancredo], who wants to become the President, says we should consider bombing Makkah…. Senator Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, is saying Islam is a wicked religion. It seems like [anti-Islamic] racism is an okay type of racism. We have a name for it; it’s called Islamophobia.Second, there’s an irresponsibility on the media’s behalf. The media does not necessarily convey the positive news…. People keep asking why Muslims don’t condemn terrorism. The fact is that we do all the time, but it never gets written anywhere.

How do we counter Islamophobia?
We need to isolate terrorists from the rest of the 1.3 billion Muslims. Because if you’re going to call all of them terrorists, one of these days, all of them will behave like terrorists. They are Al Qaeda. They have nothing to do with Islam and Muslims. They are just wackos. 

Tom Welsh, 29
Logan Square, spiritual

What does spiritual mean?
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that’s my religion. That’s how I live my life, to not do anything on the way that I’ll have to question at the Pearly Gates.

So you do believe in heaven?
I do, absolutely. I believe in Jesus Christ, but I don’t take away from anyone else’s religions. How could you say that one religion is right and another wrong?

Has having a baby changed your views on religion?
No, it hasn’t. It just means that I have to keep being good to my fellow man and twice as good to my little girl.

Do you believe in the devil?
I believe that you’ll pay for your sins, that there’s karma in this life.

Compiled by Julia Borcherts, Danielle Braff, Christina Couch, Steve Heisler, Fred Koschmann, Ruth Lopez, Jake Malooley, Jonathan Messinger, Novid Parsi, Allison Riggio, Martina Sheehan, Chuck Sudo and Lauren Weinberg.