Is Jane Fonda a Born Again Christian
Read Beliefnet's complete interview and listen the audio excerpts beneath.
Beliefnet: Although you didn't identify with a particular religious path until recently, your book seems to tell the story of someone whose spiritual consciousness has been developing her whole life. You were raised as an agnostic, or an atheist?
Fonda: I always causeless it was every bit an atheist. Looking back now, I gauge it was more an agnostic upbringing. My father's parents were Christian Science practitioners.
Things began to change for me-every bit I think they do for many people-when I was in crisis. I think that the reason that that happens is because pain tin can break you open up. And you can become several ways with information technology. You can pretend that information technology's not happening and y'all can cover the broken places with busyness or booze or whatever-you lot can numb it.
What happened to me was, and I call back exactly where I was on the day: I mean, I was really in pain, and I said out loud-I was by myself-"If God wants me to suffer similar this, in that location must be a reason." And it took me by surprise; I did a double take. I idea, "Where is that coming from?" And from that time forrad, I became enlightened of, I call them coincidences. I just became very aware that the absolute right person would come up into my life at the moment that I needed to know something. The exact right book would come into my hands. Frequently by people I didn't know. They were like sign posts! And I thought, "Has this been going on all forth and I just didn't notice?"
And along almost that time, I heard Beak Moyers say, "Coincidences are God'south way of manifesting," and that lodged in me. That just really struck me and near that same time, I met Ted Turner and moved to Georgia-[laughs] Atlanta, Georgia!
At present, I had never lived in an surround where people went to church regularly and had a living religion. And I was, utterly fascinated because they were smart people, President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn and Ambassador Andrew Young and many others who were friends with Ted and people of deep faith. And I was married to Ted, a professed atheist, for ten years and for viii of those years, I spent a lot of time listening and talking and asking questions of these people.
Past that time, information technology had come to feel similar I was beingness led. It was a somatic feeling that I was being beckoned, and I often felt that at that place was a light drawing me. And I'yard not a woo-woo kind of person! I'm not a New Age person. I grew up in the fifties. But it was a very powerful feeling.
What I realized writing my volume was that I had been empty since boyhood. Whenever I endeavor to effigy out how to draw information technology, information technology always manifests for me in terms of emptiness. I feel like when I was an adolescent, and felt so unworthy of dearest and so empty, I moved outside of myself. Myself emptied out of myself. And what was left was a more perfect me that maybe people could love, and I wasn't going to bear witness them the other function. And when yous do that, yous fill in the emptiness-well, it fills up with anxiety real fast, and to numb the anxiety you practice many things. I suffered from eating disorders, and drinking, and y'all know, in that location are many means of numbing it.
So if y'all jump almost 50 years later and I'g living in Georgia and I'm having this feeling of beingness led and I find myself so curious well-nigh this faith that these people all around me are practicing. I felt my emptiness being filled up with reverence.
This is the hunger that you talk about in the book-
Yeah, yes.
--and finally that hunger is being satisfied.
With what I was really searching for all forth. It was spiritual hunger. I was learning to exist satisfied by spirit, [whereas before] I had been trying to satisfy the hunger with other things. And so, you know, like many people, I could have sort of settled with being spiritual.
You hateful, settled with being spiritual, as opposed to becoming religious?
Correct. It would accept just been meditation, but information technology became prayer.
I think information technology's partly that I live in Georgia; it's partly that it's my culture. Yous know, I wasn't attracted to Buddhism although I actually respect it. I wasn't attracted to Islam although I really respect it. Or Judaism. I'k attracted to Jesus.
Somebody in south Georgia, a very hostile person who doesn't like me at all, said, 'Have you been saved?' And I wasn't even sure what it meant, and I kind of tap danced around it 'cause he was hostile, and I didn't want to appoint. But I and then came dorsum and I asked a friend of mine what did information technology hateful, to her? And she said, "Well, to me, it meant going the next stride." Well, boy, I mean, I'm a going-the-next-stepper! If there's a next stride that tin be taken, I'll take it. And so she had me read the Book of John and I was-I was experiencing grace at that fourth dimension.
Did y'all feel a divine presence?
Aye, yep. I was feeling. I was humming with reverence. I felt the presence of the Omnipotent very much in my torso-and I wasn't having a nervous breakdown [laughs] and I wasn't spacing out, or anything like that. It was very heavy and-you know, information technology's hard to get the words out these days because it's so loaded politically, and it scares me to say it-but I was saved.
Then I began to go to Bible report class, and information technology didn't take long for me to call back, "Uh oh, I've made a terrible mistake, this is non for me." I started going to churches and I fled. I but fled.
Because the teachings led you to believe it was a patriarchal system?
Yes, yeah. What I was feeling on my own was not a "Lord in a higher place." It was not-well, information technology certainly had nothing to do with woman being the downfall of human. You know-
Yous couldn't relate to the "old human in the heaven" idea-
Information technology wasn't a human in the sky! It was, it was: Come on! When nosotros talk about-depending on how y'all talk almost it-God, the Almighty, Sophia, a greater power, any-tin't you empathize that this is beyond gender? This is beyond anything that we can imagine. I hateful, we can't even describe information technology. I sympathise why people latch onto gender things, merely this is not a man. But because people have taken it then literally, information technology becomes gender and hence, hierarchal. And it just made my teeth grate. The more I studied, in the very kind of linear, fundamentalist way, the more I felt reverence leaking abroad from me.
I never ever would have gone public with this, ever. A person who had been driving me at that time (because Ted and I shared a car) went on a website and said he had brought me to Christ. And it just spread like wildfire and became front page news. I was outed, and it was only a tremendous betrayal. I never would have [gone public with this] because information technology was too new. And so I discovered that information technology wasn't what I was-I thought, this is wrong for me.
Did y'all stop going to Bible study?
Yes. Yep, I did. And I went for a couple of years feeing bereft. And I was actually very sad. Then at present I'g on my own [in 2000 and 2001, afterwards separating from Ted Turner] and for near a twelvemonth, I'm confused. I think I've made a mistake.
And I read Elaine Pagels. I had read "The Gnostic Gospels" years before and it had really impressed me. In fact, I read information technology when I was starting time feeling God. And then I read "Beyond Belief," which is a volume she came out with recently, and information technology had a lot of references to early Christians and Gnostic Gospels, so I read the originals. In fact, I got the whole Nag Hammadi library and through that reading, I began to realize that I am on the correct path. That Christianity is my spiritual home. This is where I'm meant to be. And that I have to observe for myself what that means.
And this is very new then y'all know, it's hard for me to go into it in great detail because I'thou only a few years into this journeying. But I am riveted, I am fascinated with religious history, with Biblical history, with the early Gospels, with Robert Graves, King Jesus, I'm just, I tin't get enough. This is a very real journeying for me.
Have you been able to find a spiritual community in Atlanta that you can identify with?
I want very much to practice that. I would have to say that I have been for the last five years, writing my volume which means that I don't leave dwelling house very much.
I started venturing out when I finished the volume final fall and discovered that there's a whole community nationwide of feminist Christians. I finished the book and then I heard most this book "Faith and Feminism" past Helen LaKelly Hunt, and now I've gotten to know her and through her, discovered that in that location's a lot of us out there. And it'due south similar, "O.1000., this was waiting. I needed to end [the book] and this was waiting for me." And it'due south very exciting.
And of course there was Anne Lamott. When I offset became a Christian, I read "Traveling Mercies" and I realized, "Oh, I'chiliad not alone, thanks." Information technology was this book that literally came to me by accident that was my view of what it ways to be a Christian. And I gave it to my children considering I said, "This is what I'thousand talking about" because they're just sort of horrified [laughs] with my whole process.
Did that assist them understand you? Did they read information technology?
I don't know. I remember my daughter read information technology because she loves Anne Lamott-so I think she did-but they just, they merely don't want to deal with this trip that I'yard on.
Was in that location one "Ah ha" moment for you?
No. It'southward been a journey; little baby steps. And so long about 1998, it became very vibrant and vivid for me and that's when I began to pray-and prayer, it was very powerful for me.
And y'all hadn't ever prayed before and then?
No. I had meditated and withal do. And it's different.
What kinds of things do yous pray about?
Well, a lot of times it'southward thanks. You know, I feel uncomfortable e'er asking for something [laughs]. And then in that location'southward a lot of things. And I have a lot to give cheers for. But when I need an answer, or I need someone to be helped, information technology's ever the aforementioned: my hands in prayer position and my thumbs pressed against my third eye, my forehead. I find that I demand to do that. And I need to be sitting or kneeling. It'due south like sending up. It'southward like my prayer and my thoughts go from my head through my fingers upward. And I'grand sending this up and every bit I describe within the book, I feel "hooked upwardly."
And then when you have questions and y'all're going through a difficult time, are your answers revealed to you through coincidences, or how things happen in your life?
Aye, yes.
What role did religion play in your intermission-upward with Ted Turner? Is this why you split up?
Oh, it was 1 amongst other reasons.
When did he say that Christianity was a "religion for losers" (for which he later apologized)?
Earlier I met him. And y'all know information technology's funny because he ends all his speeches with "God Bless". He studied; you know, he was an altar boy. He was because becoming a missionary. He's read the Bible encompass-to-cover twice. He's been saved seven times, including twice past Billy Graham.
How does he feel now? Exercise you ever talk about your spirituality with him? Do you think he might modify his views?
I pray for that sometimes, but I don't know what will happen. We don't talk nigh information technology much.
You lot seem to consider him a soul mate, and still you don't have a spiritual connexion-unless it's something that's there but he doesn't recognize every bit such.
I feel information technology in him, and I experience it blocked, and it makes me deplorable.
"Monster-in-Law" is your outset moving-picture show in 15 years, then this is the get-go fourth dimension you lot're going dorsum to Hollywood every bit a Christian. Do you lot think it's difficult to exist a spiritually grounded person in that concern?
I certain think information technology helps. I'm not sure that I would have become a Christian if I had continued to live in Hollywood because the notion wouldn't have occurred to me. I think I would have continued to identify the coincidences and the sense of being led, but in a secular way.
You mentioned that yous read Helen LaKelly Hunt's book, "Faith and Feminism." Do y'all hold with her argument that the feminist move needs to incorporate a spiritual element?
I think it has a spiritual element. I retrieve feminism is about the spirit. I retrieve feminism is another mode of teaching what Jesus taught, that we are all full human beings with the correct to accept our humanity seen and respected. That is what feminism is, and that's what Jesus taught. I merely think that for besides long-not in the beginning, not at all in the starting time; it was very faith-based in the first, the women'south movement. It's become secular and I call up that that's beginning to shift and I retrieve it needs to shift.
Source: https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/2005/04/christianity-is-my-spiritual-home.aspx
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