Christian mother, Muslim daughter experience faith divide

Patricia Raybon grew up on a pew.

In a 1950s era when her African-American family wasn't welcome everywhere, they were always welcome at church.

Sunday school and service. Wednesday prayer. Friday church youth group. Summer vacation Bible school.

"I was shaped, molded and launched from a pew," the 65-year-old says.

So, when the devout Christian had children of her own, she expected the same for them. She raised them that way.

Then one day, her daughter, Alana, called home from college and shattered everything Patricia Raybon knew about the belief system of a family.

"Every day, I realize how big a faith divide can be for people who love God in their way and struggle with a family member who does not," Patricia says.

Every day, Patricia works to respect her daughter's choice to become a Muslim.

Connecting with the Quran

Alana Raybon sits at a picnic table outside Nashville International Academy watching two of her children tease each other on the playground as she talks.

The teal-colored headscarf she wears frames her freckled face and makes her amber eyes pop. Even when she reflects on the pain in her family's past, those eyes remain bright and her smile is quick to return.

It's been more than a decade since this 35-year-old schoolteacher and mother of three converted to Islam, and she describes the transformation as "one of the happiest times of my life."

It's not that Alana was unhappy. Raised in an African Methodist Episcopal church in Colorado, she came up in a loving and warm place where people were welcoming and kind. The older church members were like her grandparents, always quick with a hug and always knowing her name.

She believed in God and felt connected to God, she says, but she never really connected with the idea of the Trinity — a unity of three persons of one substance, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. She didn't question the divide when she was young. "I felt eventually I would get it," she says. "I thought it was a grown-up thing."

But as she grew up, she still wasn't experiencing her faith in the same way as those around her, including her mother. So she started expanding her circle, reading the Bible more, but also other things. Books about Christianity. About Islam.

Islam initially did for Alana what church had done for her mother years ago. Motivations touted by men such as Malcolm X to "uplift black people" provided a sense of racial and religious pride for the college student, who spent a few months in the Nation of Islam.

She connected with the Quran and the monotheistic teachings — the idea of God being one, without any associate. Talking to God directly made sense to her. Moved, she converted from the faith of her upbringing and become an Orthodox Muslim.

"It's how I always felt, but now I had a package to go around it," she says.

She anticipated the day she would share such a moment of personal growth with her mother. She didn't foresee the years of devastation and division it would cause.

'The earth had shifted'

A daughter can call from college with all sorts of news. I'm on the dean's list. I need money. I flunked out.

But what Alana said that winter day was a revelation Patricia was not prepared to process.

Instead, she thanked her daughter for calling. Asked her a few pedestrian questions about how classes were going and if her car was still running. And then hung up.

"I knew the earth had shifted," Patricia says, "but emotionally I didn't have a way to engage with the news."

When she did finally engage, the emotions were severe.

She felt burdened by guilt, feeling that even though she took all the right actions, the greatest gift she could have given her children — the "saving knowledge of who Jesus was" — did not transfer to Alana.

She felt, too, enraged that Alana would choose this time — a period when Patricia had hit a low point in her marriage, when her other daughter was closing a business, when her husband had a cardiovascular emergency and when Alana's widowed grandmother had moved in — to attempt deep conversations about religious choice.

Their deepest divide was Alana's view that Jesus isn't God and Alana's decision to divorce herself from the Trinity — two ideas deeply precious to Patricia. Faith begot friction, and the two women became locked in bitter conflict.

"I thought I had to fight for Jesus by fighting with my daughter," Patricia Raybon says.

Alana echoes the sentiment. When she came home on visits from college, she felt passionate about convincing her mother that her views were valid. When Alana married a Muslim man and the couple had children of their own, it only escalated.

Religious debates dominated dinner-table conversations any time the family came together. Christian holidays spent apart became a painful reminder for Patricia of theological differences. When Islamic holidays were overlooked or completely unknown, Alana felt disrespected. Traditional American holidays, such as Thanksgiving, now seem to be the only ones that can bring family together.

That and the dark-haired, amber-eyed children whom Alana's parents travel from Colorado to see several times a year. And even then, as Alana and her family live out their faith exactly as they would, praying five times a day and attending mosque, those visits can become strained.

There is still much for mother and daughter to resolve. Part of that process has begun as the women co-authored a book called "Undivided." The sequence of alternating narratives have served as a valuable communication method, Alana says. Passed between each other during the writing process, the essays forced each woman to read and digest the other's perspective without the ability to respond defensively in the moment.

Patricia won't go so far as to say she accepts her daughter's decision, but she respects the idea of choice. And as she works to see her daughter in a new light, she has learned to take her hurt to God and ask forgiveness.

Alana, too, embraces the idea that God wants positive familial relationships. Faith traditions, she says, should help to resolve family conflicts, not be a barrier to peace. Patience and empathy are key, as is the ability to validate her mother's feelings and reassure her that faith will not stand in the way of love.

Together, Patricia and Alana have discovered something about peace. It's not a line in the sand that you draw and then arrive at. It's not a place of arrival at all. It's a continued journey, where you stumble and get lost.

Peace is a choice.

"And," Patricia says, "you make it every day."

Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and on Twitter @jlbliss.

Undivided

For more than 10 years, Patricia and Alana Raybon have tiptoed with pain around the deepest chasm in their lives — Alana's choice to leave the church in which her mother raised her, convert to Islam and become a practicing Muslim.

Together, mother and daughter have written a book, "Undivided," which is a real-time story of healing and understanding with alternating narratives from each.

The two women will speak July 23 at Scarritt Bennett Center. For more information visit www.undividedbook.com.

Religious composition in Tennessee

• Christian: 81 percent

Evangelical Protestant: 52 percent

Mainline Protestant: 13 percent

Historically Black Protestant: 8 percent

Catholic: 6 percent

Mormon: 1 percent

Orthodox Christian: less than 1 percent

Jehovah's Witness: 1 percent

Other Christian: less than 1 percent

• Non-Christian: 3 percent

Jewish: 1 percent

Muslim: 1 percent

Buddhist: 1 percent

Hindu: less than 1 percent

Other world religions: less than 1 percent

• Other faiths: 1 percent

• Unaffiliated: 14 percent

Atheist: 1 percent

Agnostic: 3 percent

Nothing specific: 10 percent

• Undecided: 1 percent

Source: Pew Research Center