Mary Stange

Were it not for the political wrangling over whether he is a hero or a traitor, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who arrived in San Antonio early Friday, might well be held up as a classic example of the religious seeker: the deeply spiritual quester after truth, light and justice.

Yet the news media have been curiously silent on the question of his religious background. Aside from vague references to his belonging to a Calvinist church, no one has taken a serious look at how that church might have played a role in his decision to join the Army, and subsequently to leave his unit behind.

Philip Proctor, the Bergdahls' pastor at Sovereign Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Boise, told The Huffington Post that Bowe had "grown up in a conservative Christian home, and he was trying to figure out if this was his faith or his parents' faith."

Maybe. But in young Bergdahl's case — unlike that of the more typical Catholic or Jewish or mainline Protestant adolescent — the devil had to have been in the details. His family's faith, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, makes extraordinary demands on a sensitive young person's conscience and conduct.

A hyperconservative offshoot of the mainstream Presbyterian Church USA, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church sees the world in stark either/or terms. This is Calvinism on steroids. You are saved and bound for heaven. Or you are a sinner, treading a one-way path to the fiery pit of hell.

The church, founded in the 1930s, has obviously been a genuine source of support for families such as the Bergdahls, who might have little in the way of material or spiritual comforts in this life but can feel confident of reward in the life to come. It is all about the counterpoise of heaven and hell, and it appears that for Bergdahl, this cosmic tension laid the groundwork for his subsequent actions and attitudes.

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church compels followers to feel the inner spark of absolute certainty of one's own God-given righteousness. It is a more than plausible explanation that, failing such certainty, Bergdahl embarked on a series of life transformations — Buddhism, Tarot, French Foreign Legion and all the rest, culminating in the transformation from gung-ho warrior to pacifistic deserter — that looks like chaotic mood swings without the religious explanation.

Religious motives might or might not justify whatever Bergdahl might or might not have done. But those same motives can go a long way toward helping to comprehend his actions. We as a society have too frequently failed to take religion seriously as a source of evil as well as good. And, as Bergdahl might himself observe, all too frequently there has, as a result, been hell to pay.

Mary Zeiss Stange is a professor of religion and director of the religion program at Skidmore College. She is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

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