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faith

Theology

when Good Friday lasts forever

The first Holy Week I was blogging, back in 2013, I wrote a brief post for Good Friday, describing the resonance I felt with those who watched Christ suffer, bleed, and eventually die from being crucified as a rebel:

A few years ago, I stood in a dark place. The ground trembled and shook under me, and I stared up at heaven and watched my god die. Everything that I thought I had known– known with an absolute, unreachable certainty, was gone. Shattered. In a moment, in the space of a few words, it felt like everything in my universe was a lie. I had been deceived, tricked.

Horror-struck, I watched the truth pierce the side of the person I’d thought was god made flesh, and the pain was so intense I could feel a hollowness inside– an emptiness torn apart by swords and spears. Truth and reason and experience and emotion were the pallbearers that carried my faith away. And suddenly, the world was cold and dark and empty, because all the light had gone out. The veil was torn, and I couldn’t see anything worth hoping in behind the curtain. It was just a room. It was just a piece of lumber, a few pieces of iron. It was just an empty space carved into rock.

Tears washed my face in the night; my heart echoed along with the cries of “why can’t you save yourself? Why can’t you save me?” Why did I carry a back-breaking cross in your name?

They carried him away and buried him under a mountain of shame and terror. I sealed the door shut with guilt and fear and betrayal and anger and rage.

Eventually, the sun shone, piercing clouds and making the world seem strangely normal again. I went back to work. I continued learning. I talked with friends who never knew what I had just witnessed. I hid in upper rooms I created inside of my head, places where my god had never been– and never would be. All the promises I’d ever known were broken, and the lie of them was bitter. I couldn’t speak them to another person, and every time I offered an assurance to another, it felt like feeding them false hope and platitudes. I wanted to rage inside of my own temple and hear the crash of silver on marble tile.

He was dead. The god of my childhood was nothing more than a corpse.

I wrote all of that, and then immediately wrote the post that followed it, words filled with hope and ultimately confidence. It’s been a long three years since then, though, and my faith has continued to take heavy battering. It’s shifted, struggled, grown, transformed. In many ways, the sort of Christian I was three years ago and the Christian I’m becoming bear little resemblance to each other. Back then I still thought it was important to cling to a certain set of facts to be a Christian, and now I feel that facts have very little to do with faith at all.

I’ve had my faith challenged, shaken, even broken at times. In a way, I’ve faced down the same choice Judas did: abandon Jesus because what he offers makes no earth-bound sense, or go to Good Friday with him like Mary Magdalene? Some days, like Judas, I almost feel like giving up. If I can’t know that Jesus is resurrected, if I can’t be sure that he’ll come back to break all chains and cease all oppressions, then what is the point? If Christianity doesn’t make any logical, realistic sense, then I might as well side with those who are more pragmatic– dreams and belief and pixie dust don’t do anything real.

For me, it feels like Good Friday isn’t just a day during Holy Week– it’s every day of my life.

Nearly every day I stare at a bloodied cross and a body laid to rest in a tomb, and I wonder and doubt. I wonder sometimes if I’m being completely ridiculous. If there is a god, then why does the world look like this? Nearly every day I lay my God to rest again. I bury him. I mourn him.

But, I still have a choice in those moments. Maybe my God is dead. Maybe he’s not miraculously coming back from beyond the veil to give me the proof he gave Thomas. But does it matter? If I want to follow him, does whether or not he resurrected and ascended truly make the difference between whether or not I try to do what he said? If the resurrection never comes, if I’m never given concrete-hard proof that Christianity is the religion, what happens?

Do I stop believing that it is my responsibility to make the world a better place? Do I stop trying to bring an end to misogyny, racism, ableism, transphobia– bigotry in all its forms? Do I stop seeing every person as worthy of love, respect, kindness, equality, and justice? Do I lose hope in redemption for each of us individually and for the world?

If my life is a perpetual series of Good Fridays, do I spend all my days hiding, afraid of leaving an upper room of privilege and security? Do I spend these hours more afraid for myself then for those Jesus charged me to clothe and feed and heal? Do I huddle together with other Christians, separate and unmoving, cut off from our communities, unwilling to reach out and love the widow, the orphan, the prisoner?

We’re all moving through Good Friday, really. Maybe you have the assurance that in three day’s time Jesus will roll back the stone and walk among us in the flesh. Maybe, like most, you’re utterly convinced that the resurrection is a well-established fact, testified by multiple eye-witness accounts and all the other evidence Habermas and Strobel and Licona and Wright have spent books and books explaining.

Except, in the end, even with all of the arguments, all the proof in the world, we’re all still facing the same choice: hide in our upper room, or go out and do what Jesus showed us. We could be so afraid of the world around us with all its dangers and threats and, like Judas, turn to political powers for our protection. Or, we could leave the false security of the upper room and take up the same cross that Jesus bore.

That’s the choice of Good Friday. It’s a choice between fear and love.

Photo by Der Robert

March 25, 2016 by SamanthaField

Theology

thoughts prompted by the GCN conference

I wish there was a way to communicate how busy it has been for the past few months, and how wonderful and exhausting, all together at once. Between visiting family for Thanksgiving and Christmas, business travel, buying a house, packing, moving, unpacking, painting, and all the other little odds and ends that fall along with that … it’s been a whirlwind.

Handsome and I did buy a townhome, and I am sitting in my brand-spanking new office, with my brand-spanking new bookshelves (the past few months have seen a steady buildup of book piles around my old office), and I’m thrilled to pieces. There is sunlight in my home in winter. I have windows. I’m hoping this will help with the seasonal affective disorder, but February will be the true test of that. February is really the cruelest month.

We’re mostly unpacked—technically everything is out of boxes, there’s just a pile of things on my dining table left to be hung or sold or donated. So far it’s all the tiny little things that add up that make moving exhausting. Not the rent-the-truck-have-all-your-friends-carry-boxes day, but the week and a half after of trying to find 22x20x1 HEPA filters that don’t seem to exist for your brand-spanking-new furnace.

Update on something slightly more relevant to you readers: thanks to my Patrons and the many of you who helped on top of that, I was able to attend the Gay Christian Network Conference a few weeks ago, and present on Bi the Way: What’s Next for Bisexuality in the Church with Eliel Cruz-Lopez and Sarah Moon.

The panel was spectacular, and I even got to meet and hang out with a few of you, which was the highlight of the conference for me. It was mind-blowingly weird and fun to be live-tweeted, y’all. People were quoting the things I, Eliel, and Sarah were saying, and a few folks came up at the end and said we’d started them thinking or even changed their minds on a few things. That was amazing. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting from the panel, but at the end when people were coming up and hugging me and we all laughed and cried together … I felt like I was standing on holy ground.

What happened for me at the conference happens so rarely that it both feeds my soul and enrages me all at the same time. Thursday night we sang a song about God’s love for us, and listening to all those people in the room I knew that they meant—really meant—that God loved all of us, that God loved me. It’s infuriating that feeling the love of God from my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ is so rare, but it was nice to experience regardless.

Every time I feel like maybe I should just say “screw it,” and give up on being a Christian, something like going to the GCN conference happens. I’m still on the fence about a lot of things, and my faith is just as mixed-up and confused as ever, but the few moments in my life like GCN’s conference tells me that remaining a Christian is still a worthy endeavor. Maybe it won’t be that way forever, but it’s true for at least today.

Other things of note at the conference: Broderick Greer preached Thursday night. We need more theology from survivors, from the margins, as Broderick put it, because “objective” theology from the Ivory Towers of White Supremacy and Misogyny is … well, to put it bluntly, faith without works is dead, and there’s nothing more dead to me than a bunch of old straight cisgender white men talking about God as if they have the sole right to Themself. They stay locked up there and refuse to come down to where people are dying because of their so-called “objective” theologies. It’s “faith” without boots on.

One of the workshops I attended was given by a former fundamentalist, and the description in the pamphlet said it would link fundamentalism and idolatry– y’know me, I exclaimed ooo! and went. I believe he was quoting someone when he gave this line: “fundamentalists don’t believe. They know,” which he followed up with “ever heard ‘I know that I know that I know that I’m saved!’?” and I think I gasped aloud, because he was right, and it helped clarify something for me that I’ve been struggling with a ton over the past few months.

The reality that I don’t know, that, in truth, it is impossible to know whether or not god/the supernatural/a supreme being/deity exists, and in fact, believing in him/they/her anyway is probably the essence of faith … well, it’s driving me nuts. I want to know. I want to look at my world and feel reasonably confident in “yes, a supernatural being has a redemptive plan for their creation and I am a participant in that plan” or “no, there is no divine spirit guiding anything, ever, we’re all a mathematical miracle and then we die the end.” However, what’s been hitting me in the gut every time I try to think about it is that there is no way to know, and that’s sort of the whole point behind faith.

I used to think that atheists claiming that Christians accepting the existence of God on “faith” meant we were believing in something without any evidence was a load of bunk … but now I think they’re right. I don’t have any “evidence” or “proof.”

I’m not ok with that yet, but I’m getting there. I’m becoming ok that choosing to believe in the Christian Trinity is no more or less ridiculous than believing in the Greek pantheon or the ancient Mesopotamian goddesses. It’s faith. I don’t know, I believe that a Triune God exists, and that they love me.

But, moving on. Perspectives embraced by organizations like GCN (who represents both Side A and Side B positions), that it’s important for all of us to live in the tension of disagreement over important ideas, are always challenging for me. Part of that is my ISTJ-ness—I want to be right, dammit—but another part of it is that I look at platforms like Side B and think “oh hell no.” If you’re LGBT and have chosen Side B for yourself, more power to you. You do you. But the fact that the most commonly held position among straight evangelical Christians is Side B makes me light on fire a little bit.

And Allyson Robinson’s address is still making me think. Some of what she said, things like “the culture war is over,” I flat-out disagree with especially as a bisexual person who isn’t even widely accepted in the LGBT community and we’ve got a freaking letter. But other things, like encouraging us not to use mockery and derision and snippiness and trolling when interacting with bigots … steps on my toes a mite. But, it reminds me of a truth I’ve been hearing echoed in several places, from Audre Lorde to bell hooks to Brian Zahnd in Beauty Will Save the World: you cannot use the tools of Empire to remove that Empire from power.

In many ways, that was the trouble with second-wave feminism: they decided to use patriarchy’s tools to try to tear down the patriarchy. They decided to adopt the same metrics that patriarchy’s Empire used to measure success: jobs, wealth, political power, capital.

The Christian LGBT community is, in many ways, a triumph of love over hate. But it’s hard, it’s hard not to hate, especially recently. A deep, miry, black, thick and oozing place inside of me roils when I heard Trump say things like “I could shoot someone in the middle of the street and I wouldn’t lose any votes.” When I hear Falwell, Jr. say “we need to end those Muslims,” it’s hard not to choke on my hatred. I want to scream and cry and break things.

Anger is appropriate, even rage. But hatred is not. When Jesus said that hatred is like murdering someone in your heart … he was right, and it’s not ok. I’m not entirely sure how to stop, but I know that I have to be able to. I cannot use the tools and weapons of Empire.

I’m not entirely sure what that all looks like, or what all I think about everything I’ve just spilled out here, but I’m working through it one day at a time. If you’d like to be as encouraged and challenged and confused as I was for three days, maybe you can go the GCN conference next year. It’s in Pittsburg.

I don’t quite have internet at the new house yet (it’ll be here on Thursday), but I am back to a regular blogging schedule again. Thanks for all of your patience and support through the past two months.

January 25, 2016 by SamanthaField

Theology

15 things not to say to a recovering fundamentalist

There have been plenty of things I’ve heard since I left Christian fundamentalism after spending 14 years (more than half my life) in it, and most of them make me want to tear my hair out. So, I put out a general call for some of the gems you have heard, and here’s a few that I got back.

1. “You just need to work through your bitterness.”– Teryn

Bitterness. It’s a good idea to pretty much never use that word in particular. Bitterness, in fundie-speak, is a tool to silence anyone who is being critical. If you’re accused of “bitterness,” it means that you are incapable of viewing any situation or person “correctly,” that you lack the capacity for love and grace, and what you actually need to work on is yourself. You’re imagining things, nothing bad is happening, and you have a screw loose. This is actually a form of gaslighting– convincing the person who’s being attacked that they’re just crazy– and we’ve been beaten over the head with it for years. Just because we’re saying things about the Church that aren’t pleasant doesn’t make us bitter. Just because we sound angry doesn’t mean we’re bitter.

2. “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” — Lydia

There are a lot of variations on this one, but it all boils down to this idea that Christianity is fine, it’s really just our personal experiences that we have to get over. And, I get why this one comes up a lot. For Christians who haven’t experienced either a) fundamentalism or b) spiritual abuse, their religion is one of the best, most wonderful, spectacular things in their life and they couldn’t imagine living without it. For us, though? It’s not even remotely the same feeling. When Christianity has been the weapon used to beat you, sometimes, throwing the whole thing out is the only healthy thing left to do.

3. “You were never really a Christian.” — Libby Anne

It’s the teachings of “eternal security” and “by their fruits you shall know them” taken one step too far. And, frankly, it’s codswallop. By any measure, people who grew up in Christian fundamentalism, prayed the sinner’s prayer, loved God, loved Jesus . . . they were Christians any way you look at it. Just because they’re not Christians now has absolutely zero bearing on if they were Christians then. The same thing goes if they don’t fit your particular criteria for what you think a “Christian” is.

4. “If you’re not currently attending a church, you have walked away from God.” — KR Taylor

People usually come to me armed with Hebrews 10:25 — “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together,” which is really just code for “real Christians go to church.” Which, seriously, asking some of us to go back to church is like asking a soldier with severe PTSD to go back to the battlefield, or asking a battered wife to go back to her abusive husband. You’re telling us that the only way we can be a “True Christian” is if we go to a building where all the other “True Christians” are once a week, and aside from sounding ridiculous, it’s inconsiderate and displays an astounding lack of compassion. If you’re telling someone who you know has been spiritually abused to get their ass back in church, all it means is that you haven’t been actually listening to us. If you were listening, you’d know exactly how hurtful and dismissive you sound.

5. “You need to work this out with trembling and fear.” — Dani

Also known as, “Are you sure you want to be asking these questions?” Questions, in many arenas of Christianity, make a lot of us uncomfortable. The unfortunate thing that I’ve encountered the most is that I grew up understanding more about the God of the Old Testament than a lot of “typical” Christians I’ve encountered since getting outside of fundamentalism. Questions like “is God really a genocidal megalomaniac?” or “How is it fair or loving to hold millions of people accountable for something they’ve never heard of?” are legitimate, but they’re also not easy. As fundamentalists, we tend to be intimately familiar with an angry, jealous, righteous God, and trying to figure out how that’s the same Person that is also supposed to be Love is hard. Beyond hard, at times. It’s downright impossible for many of us.

6. “I wish people just knew that if they remembered how good Jesus’ love for us is, these things wouldn’t seem so hard!” — Hännah

This one feels . . . empty. I’m super happy for all those people who have had amazing experiences with Jesus in their religion, but how good God or Jesus is doesn’t really change the fact that a lot of people’s lives are hell holes or that a lot of people who claim Jesus’ name have done some heinously evil things. And telling us just to ignore our “hardships” because “Jesus loves you!” is basically meaningless. It’s like splashing orange juice on a bullet wound. Sure, orange juice is awesome, and Vitamin C is good for you, but it’s not going to do anything to help.

7. “Why do you have to criticize the Church? Do you hate Christians?” — Boze

Probably more than a lot of these, this one makes me want to tear my hair out and beat my head against the wall. I think this is another example of the Christian persecution complex gone crazy. There’s this perception that Christianity is under constant, brutal attack on all fronts, and it’s a battle we’re all gloriously and nobly fighting, but it’s going to overwhelm us at some point and then everything will be terrible. This results in any form of criticism whatsoever being perceived as an “attack.” If what we have to say about the Church isn’t all happy-happy-joy-joy, then we should just stay quiet because we’re just making Christianity look bad. To ex-fundamentalists, this is a line we’re more than familiar with. Defending the reputation of the organization at the cost of actual people is a line we know by heart.

8. Quoting Jeremiah 29:11. Or Romans 8:28. Or pretty much any hand-picked verse about God working everything out. — Abi

Proof-texting. If there’s one thing that a lot of Christians, but fundamentalists in particular, are exceedingly good at, it’s this. Most of the pastors and preachers I’ve heard are the Kings of Taking Verses out of Context and Making it Sound Good. First of all, using verses like Jeremiah 29:11 (“I know the plans I have for you”) is bad hermeneutics. Also, throwing single verses at us isn’t very helpful, and is really just frustrating. When Bible verses enter the conversation like this, it usually means that whoever we’re talking to is done listening, and they’ve decided the most helpful thing they can do is use a trite cliché we’ve heard exactly 164,455,795 times before.

9. “You’re hurting the church. We need unity, not division.”

If I had a nickle.

It’s related to the “do you hate Christians?” comment, but this one is specifically an order to shut up and color. Criticisms of Christianity are not sowing division, just to be clear. There are all kinds of things that sow division– like telling the people in Moore, OK that they should be grateful that God deigned to destroy their homes, or covering up child molestation by pastors in your churches for over 30 years– but standing up for the broken isn’t one of them.

10. “I’m a/my church is fundamentalist, and I’m/we’re not anything like what you’re describing.”

I run into this sentiment a lot. In fact, when I put out my request for this on twitter, one of the people who responded said “I’m a fundamentalist. Please don’t throw stones.” Which, was just . . . ironically funny, but also made me sigh. I use the words fundamentalist and fundamentalism to talk about a specific Christian movement, and I use the accepted term to describe it. I know a lot of people who claim the label “fundamentalist”– in fact, one of my best and dearest friends does– who don’t actually fit. There is a difference between traditionalism, religious conservatism, and adhering to “fundamentals,” which is really just Protestant orthodoxy, and fundamentalism. I’m using the term as it is modernly defined.

However, there are a lot of people who are fundamentalist and fit exactly what I’m describing, and still say this. Which, just . . . boggles.

11. “If you are truly seeking God in this time, he will lead you to the Truth.” — Trischa

And if I’m led to believing in universalism? Or atheism? Or neo-paganism? Somehow, I don’t think they’ll believe me, because “Truth” usually means “whatever I think the Bible says.” The catch in this statement is “If you are truly seeking.” And they get to determine what “truly seeking” entails. If I don’t eventually end up agreeing with them, welp, I must not have been truly seeking!

12. “Fundamentalism isn’t really Christianity.”

Oh, boy. I get this one so much, and I’m never entirely sure how to respond to it, because damn. What do they think Christianity is then? It’s a pretty big religion, and it’s got an awful lot of denominations. If believing that Jesus is God, literally came to earth, was crucified and resurrected and now sits on the right hand of the father, and he did all of this to save us from our sins doesn’t qualify you for Christianity, I’d like to see what does. Fundamentalism is an especially pernicious sub-culture in Christianity, but it’s not something totally different. They believe a lot of the exact same stuff that most Christians do– which was a huge shock when I eventually figured that one out. But, they take the hard-edged stance that they’re the only true Christians. So, it’s always funny to me when a non-fundamentalist says the exact same thing a fundamentalist would say about them.

13. “Be careful you don’t lose your faith.” — Hännah

People are genuinely concerned about us, and just want to make sure that we’re ok. However, the concept that we could be “ok” without religion, without Christianity– it’s a little bit too far outside the box for a lot of Christians. To a lot of the people I know, living without their faith would be pretty unthinkable. Thoughts like “I don’t know how people survive without Jesus” (which is a modern remix of “you can do all things through Christ”) are pretty common among Christians– and they mean it. To be honest, I’ve said that sort of thing on more than one occasion. But, let me assure you: we are just fine. For a lot of us, “losing our faith” was the best– and hardest– thing that ever happened to us.

14. “I’ll pray for you.” — Lana

And what they mean by this is “I hope God shows you exactly how wrong you are soon!” (Thanks to Angela). Also, please avoid this one. If there’s a more empty, meaningless phrase in all of Christianity, I’d like to hear it, because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist. When someone says something like this, what most recovering fundies hear is “I don’t care about your problems, I want to exit this conversation, and please don’t even mention the fact that you’ve had a bad experience to me ever again.”

15. “Your critiques of Christianity aren’t valid, because you’re just confusing it with your fundamentalist background.”

And, for me, this is the one that makes me want to rage-stomp. Because yes, my background was pretty bad. Yes, the church I grew up in was pretty crazy. Yes, the easiest way I have of describing my experience is by calling the whole thing a cult.

However, fundamentalism is really just a microcosm of Christianity in general. It’s not that there’s anything about fundamentalism that is super off-the-radar crazy that makes it obviously bad. All it is, really, is a concentrated version of Christianity. Think of every single thing you’ve ever run into at your completely normal, run-of-the-mill Protestant churches, and I guarantee you that you’ll find it in a fundamentalist church. They’re not different, really, they’re just intensified. Because of that, my background makes me more qualified to speak about some issues, because I have more experience with more aspects of it than your typical church-goer. I actually know what some of these teachings do when they’re consistently enforced.

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And . . . that wraps it up for me. What about you? What are some things you’ve heard that just make you go crazy?

UPDATE: I’ve written two follow-up posts. One is on the things you should say, and the other explains more about fundamentalism as a sub-set of Christianity.

September 11, 2013 by SamanthaField

Theology

what Christian fundamentalism means to us

I started my series on Christian fundamentalism (definitions and a history lesson) for a variety of reasons. First, one of my very good friends was worried that my definition of fundamentalism might be different from the definition of my readers. Handsome likes making sure everyone is on the same page, just on principle, so he agreed.

Then, I began an interesting interaction with a reader who goes by the handle “fundamentalist pastor.” My conversation with him, which has been polite and illuminating, combined with the advice of people I care about, prompted me to start explaining what I thought Christian fundamentalism was. One of the questions that this pastor asked me had to do with the abusive and cult-like nature of the fundamentalist church I was raised in:

“Based upon what you know of me & my ministry from our brief dialogue, if you had grown up in my Fundamental church – as opposed to the other Fundamental churches that you experienced – would you have left my church? Would you have entirely abandoned Fundamentalism in that case?”

My answer is yes– I would have left fundamentalism, even if the church I’d been raised in hadn’t been an abusive cult. The primary reason is that, as I matured into adulthood, I realized that fundamentalism, at least in my opinion, is unnecessary. There’s conservative evangelical culture, there’s Protestant orthodoxy, there’s rigorous theological debate among scholars and thinkers and critics and church-goers. Fundamentalism doesn’t bring anything to this table except a sword– a sword of biblical literalism, isolationism, and absolute certainty.

However, these types of questions also led me to asking what fundamentalism means to you, my readers. I wanted a discussion, I wanted stories. And I got both of those in abundance. So, to wrap up this series, I wanted to solidify many of the ideas that were brought up– to identify the common themes, the common narratives. I still highly encourage you to read the entire discussion, as that will be more nuanced and complicated than this summary.

For those who identified, to varying degrees, with fundamentalism, one of the common elements in their response was to distance themselves from what they saw as more extreme fundamentalists. They emphasized that they disliked the legalism and the lack of tolerance to different ideas that frequently crops up in fundamentalist circles. What they valued about fundamentalism also shared some common elements: they liked that their experiences with fundamentalism encouraged them to a deeper study of the Bible, theology, or apologetics.

I can personally attest to this. If anything about my experience in fundamentalism could be considered at all valuable, is that I was given an overwhelming amount of information. From my observations, this is motivated by a few problematic ideas. Fundamentalists encourage this heavy absorption in order to create “soldiers of God,” who can put on the “full armor.” The full armor metaphor is pulled from Ephesians 6, where knowledge of the Bible and how to defend the faith are seen as crucial elements to being a Christian. So, I disagree with the reason— as well as the method. I was taught to be familiar with words like sanctification and justification and substitutionary atonement and transubstantiation and baptismal regeneration and unlimited inspiration– sure. I could hold my own in a conversation with most seminary students, absolutely. But I was taught these things from a very narrow, very limited perspective. A perspective where we had all the right answers.

I believe, with all my heart, that most fundamentalists aren’t anything like the leader of my church-cult. I believe that most fundamentalists, including fundamentalist pastors, are only doing what they think is the best thing– the right thing. I consider fundamentalists to be my brothers and sisters in Christ, because I believe in finding common ground among the essentials, and we have that.

For those who felt attracted to fundamentalism, the most common response was they were drawn to the sureness and the certainty. This “certainty” looked different, depending on the person. For Vyckie at No Longer Quivering, what she saw was a “lovely vision of godly families.” She wanted to have the ability to make sure her life, and her family, followed biblical principles. This led her to absorbing more and more fundamentalist teachings and practices– because they guaranteed her a godly family. Reta, in the comments there, pointed out the black and white nature of fundamentalism– and that this approach is “simple.” I’ve been there, personally– fundamentalism is easy. You can have sureness and confidence, without any doubt. This is an incredibly comfortable place to be. Lana Hobbs (who commented here) echoed these ideas, saying that fundamentalism meant “safety” and “security.” Nearly everyone who’d been a fundamentalist at some point resonated with this: there was God’s side, and then there was the wrong side, and being a fundamentalist was being positive you were on God’s side.

For those who had been burned by fundamentalism, there were still common patterns, although the experiences could have huge differences. But, almost unanimously, if we were burned by fundamentalism, it all had to do with questions. Asking a question was seen as “doubting” and doubting was vilified. They were ostracized, they were reprimanded, they were disciplined, they were excommunicated. Not toeing the line resulted in some kind of harm for them– and it didn’t have to be an important line. Or, if we left, it was because of sentiments like revulsion, disgust, shock, horror . . . and none of those words are exaggerations. At some point, it all just got to be too much– and what was “too much” was different for every person. For some, it was that they couldn’t find a fundamentalist church truly willing to engage with social concerns or help the needy– which is not universal in fundamentalism, but this attitude is common.

But, for those of us who grew up and left our fundamentalist nests, it was caused by our engagement with reality– for most of us, for the very first time. We befriended people in the LGBTQ community, and realized that everything we’d been taught about homosexuality (the BTQ part was completely dismissed) was either deeply misguided or just plain wrong. We encountered science for the first time, and for many of us who were taught that Genesis 1-11 was the bedrock of the entire Bible, finding out that AiG and ICR had misrepresented evolutionary theory when we were younger was the first nail in our theological coffins. For many of us, it was simply meeting people. We made friends with Christians who weren’t fundamentalists– we made friends with people who weren’t Christians, and it shook us profoundly. We met atheists and agnostics for the very first time, and suddenly, all our “right answers” couldn’t make sense. For many of us, the psychological dissonance was so bad we abandoned Christianity completely.

Sometimes, we abandoned Christianity for a time, but then we came back– and our Christianity looked utterly different. Some of us are Unitarian now. Some of us are Progressive. Some are Universalist. Some of us are Catholic, or just liturgical. Some of us hold the basic truth that God loves us, and we are trying to see the world through that love and nothing else.

Which gives us another core problem to face in fundamentalism: the absolute certainty, the absolute necessity of possessing “all the right answers” is coupled with another concept known as foundationalism. It’s the notion that there are “bedrock” ideas (like inerrancy and young earth creationism) and that, if those fall, everything else falls with it. And this has held true in many of our lives– our faith, when we took it out into the real world, was nothing more than a house of cards. And it wasn’t because we didn’t believe enough, or weren’t taught correctly enough, or hadn’t been instructed enough, or that we were secretly never believers and just couldn’t wait to “get out.” It was because of what were taught, it was because of what we believed– that Christ was not really enough.

April 22, 2013 by SamanthaField

Uncategorized

on contemplating tone and direction

One of the things that I like to think about myself is that I’m willing to listen.

It’s not easy, and I don’t always (i.e., rarely) do it well, but I hope I’m at least willing to engage with different ideas, new thoughts, unique perspectives– even when those opinions, and the voicing of them, are difficult to hear.

One of my close friends is visiting at the moment, and our conversations have shown me something that I hadn’t really thought about. Wasn’t really capable of thinking about on my own. My writing here, I believe, is extraordinarily important. What I’ve had to say has caused me to lose friends, to strain relationships. I’ve gotten angry, blustering, threatening comments, I’ve gotten e-mails and facebook messages that have attacked what I’m saying. At times, I don’t want to do it anymore. It would be so much easier to go hide under a rock and never speak about these things again.

But . . . there’s the dozens and dozens of comments, e-mails, and facebook messages that have reached out to me. Some of you have told me your story. Some of you have encouraged me at moments when I really needed it. Some of you have ferociously disagreed with me at times, but you’ve been willing to engage with me instead of just dismissing what I have to say– and I’ve loved every second of it. It’s a miracle that the things that I’ve written have helped some of you, and I am thankful for that. It’s why I’ll continue writing about the same topics– I will continue attacking evil and defending truth and justice whenever and however I can. And I will continue to confront evil wherever I see it, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

But, I’m human. I’m capable of making mistakes. I’m not immune to seeing “evil” where it’s not really evil, and is just reminiscent of evil I’ve experienced. I am not above tilting at windmills.

There’s another side of my journey that, interestingly, is even more difficult for me to share. So much of deconstructing my beliefs and my upbringing is about facing dead-on the wrong, evil, twisted things that have been so deeply ingrained in me that I have a hard time knowing they are there. But, what is so much more difficult than identifying the evil inside of me is rooting it out and planting something new, something healthy, in its place. That is where the battle really is, for me– and I find it almost impossible to talk about, because most of the questions I have don’t have answers yet.

But, when I was talking about my seedling of a new understanding surrounding Ephesians 5:21-33, and our conversation led me to explaining my fledgling awareness of a different articulation of headship and the metaphor of marriage to describe Christ and the church. When I finished, she simply commented: “I wish you would talk about this on your blog.”

I’ve hesitated to do this. I’m not a theologian. I’m not a Bible scholar. So much of this goes so far over my head it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around it at times. But these new understandings, this new approach to discussing and thinking about Christ and Scripture, have been a large part of my journey. I can talk about the abusive patterns and practices in fundamentalism ad nauseum, because that is what I know and understand more than anything else. I understand more about the fundamentalist perspective than I do about the Bible.

But you, the readers I have, deserve more than just a constant deconstruction of evil. I named my blog Defeating the Dragons because this is what I want to do more than anything else. I want to expose injustice and wrong as much as I can– I want to slay dragons. It’s also a reference to a favorite quotation by G. K. Chesteron: “Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist; but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

However, I can’t forget that the story shouldn’t really end when St. George thrusts his great sword deep into the heart of a dragon. It continues when the people rally together to rebuild what was destroyed. They tear down the burnt-out husks of their homes and piece their lives back together. They replant. They look forward to a new harvest.

There are still plenty of dragons roaming my country side, and I will fight them one at a time. But I’ll also plant. And harvest. And build a better, more loving, more honest, more human understanding of my world and the faith I need to live in it.

I hope you’ll build it with me.

April 3, 2013 by SamanthaField

Theology

the day I watched my god die

Picasso_Pablo-Crucifixion [Picasso’s Crucifixion]

Tears washed my face in the night; my heart echoed al0ng with the cries of “why can’t you save yourself? Why can’t you save me?” Why did I carry a back-breaking cross in your name?

They carried him away and buried him under a mountain of shame and terror. I sealed the door shut with guilt and fear and betrayal and anger and rage.

He was dead. The god of my childhood was nothing more than a corpse.

March 29, 2013 by SamanthaField