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Theology

distance, disconnection, and leaving fundamentalism

By the time I returned to my extremely conservative Christian college for my sophomore year, I was glad the summer was over. I’d endured a hell-hole of a summer camp, been excommunicated and shunned by people I considered “family,” and was forbidden from speaking to my best friend ever again.

However, I was going back to the same type of environment that had caused all of that trauma, although I didn’t really see it that way at the time. At least, at college, I could sit at the same table as a boy, wear knee-length skirts without being termed a “woman of the night,” and I could be among people who thought that music was important to worshiping God.

Looking back, though, while those “freedoms” seemed huge and I enjoyed the “rebellious” nature of some of the decisions I was allowed to make, I really had no idea that the environment at school was just as spiritually oppressive as the environment at church. And what I also didn’t realize, at the time, was that everything about my faith was about to fall apart and make me vulnerable to more violence and abuse.

Something that I’ve realized since then is that my particular “faith journey,” at this point, is not unique. It’s certainly not one that gets talked a lot about, because it isn’t terribly dramatic. On the surface, I was still attending a Baptist college. I was still going to church. I still prayed, I still “believed” in God, and I still could feel guilted into having a “quiet time” or “devotions.”

The stories you more frequently hear involve someone going through a spiritual 360– in a dramatic swerve, they turn into an agnostic, or an atheist, or they renounce Christianity and become “spiritual,” but, then, somehow, miraculously, something happens that brings them back to an orthodox Christianity.

My journey doesn’t look like that, mostly because it wasn’t allowed to. I couldn’t, practically, make the decision to no longer attend church. My college administration had effective ways and means of making sure every student attended every church service. I rebelled, some, when I was at home, by “playing sick” most Sunday mornings and grudgingly going to church on Sunday night and Wednesday.

Neither did I do anything else that was particularly crazy. I didn’t become promiscuous, even emotionally, didn’t suddenly develop a fascination for death metal, didn’t do drugs–but, I did disengage.

Everything about God, faith, or spirituality no longer seemed to matter to me. I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything at all remotely religious. I went through the motions, and I think if you had asked anyone who knew me at the time they would have said that I was fine. Healthy, even. My sophomore year was the year I met one of my best friends, and I even helped disciple her a bit. Since this time in my life, however, it’s become possible for me to label depression in my own life for what it is, and this was one of those times.

I could barely drag myself out of bed. I stopped caring about anything to do with fashion, as clothes (“standards”) represented a lot of the evil I was struggling with. My personal relationships fell apart–some, quite violently. One friendship ended when she slapped me across the face, and another friendship ended when she tried to deck me in public. My grades fell, I started losing weight, and I was constantly returning to my room to sleep. At one point, when I was at the campus clinic, the nurse there wisely asked me to fill out a questionnaire. After I’d filled it out, she tried to gently tell me that I was depressed, but I scoffed at the very notion. Christians can’t get depressed, didn’t you know? We have Jesus, and depression is only demonic oppression. A depressed Christian is an oxymoron, and one who takes anti-depressants is at the very height of sin, because he would be rejecting Jesus and turning to the “world” to fix his problem.

Toward the end of my sophomore year, a few things happened. One of them was that I decided that “being a Christian” had to mean something different than what I’d always thought. What I was feeling, what I had to drag myself through every day, just could not be right.

I have no idea what brought me to that realization. There was no epiphany, no chapel message, no gentle urging from a friend to start seeking answers. I went from not-knowing-or-caring to thinking-and-caring gradually, in a process so slow it is impossible to see, even now. But I remember waking up one day, and feeling something more, something beyond, and I knew that my answers lay completely outside anything I had heretofore experienced.

I’d grown up in an environment that idolizes spiritual leaders– in an interesting twist of fate, IFB folks are more sola ecclesia than Catholics– and, in that environment, it’s difficult to have a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” even though they are constantly admonishing us to do so. This is largely due, I think, to the very public nature of Christianity in IFB circles. Everything we do is judged as objectively as possible, and I understand the appeal of that. Subjectivity means that there will be gray areas and uncertainties, and “personal” is synonymous with “subjective.” It’s really nice to have an objective trump card that you can throw out with a triumphant “ha!” Ironically, bandying around words like “abomination” are comforting, simply because of the absolute nature of the rhetoric. IFB teachings limit our faith to public spheres– dress, behavior, community, church attendance, how much you “amen, preacher!” during a service, whether or not you show up for “door-knocking” evangelization nights, and a whole host of other things.

But what I realized, slowly, is that if I am to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, it can only be just that. Personal. Subjective. Different. Unique. Relative.

Photo by Hartwig
January 28, 2013 by
Theology

facts, and how beeing a know-it-all can be a good thing

There are a couple verses that IFB preachers start throwing around when their congregation has the audacity to do things like, y’know, ask questions. They usually revolve around having the “faith of a child,” and you can find them in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Basically, it goes something like this: “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” (<— I just committed a huge crime right there, by using the, oh, horrors, English Standard Version instead of the God-Breathed, infallible, plenary-inspired Word of God, otherwise known as the Authorized Version, if you’re going to be fancy, the KJV if you’re not.)

Setting aside any honest practice of bibliology or hermeneutics, the typical IFB man interprets this verse as “unless you come to God with unquestioning-of-the-man-of-God, blind obedience, you’re a-gonna go to hell.” Not in so many words, of course, but when you couple the hammering of these verses with the fact that they’re usually hammered into the people asking questions, what you get is “shut up and color.”

The interesting thing to note that questioning the pastor’s interpretation of Scripture is almost always equal to questioning Scripture itself in the way it usually gets handled. So it’s not surprising that questioning the pastor at all can land you in a peck of trouble.

Take, for example, my encounter with one IFB pastor in Georgia.

I’d just finished my freshman year at a radically conservative Christian college, and that summer my parents packed my sister and I off to summer camp. It was the first time I’d get to be a “camp counselor,” although since most of the girls going were 16+, it seemed a little redundant. This camp was in the middle of a swamp, and if you’ve ever been in a swamp, in Georgia, in the middle of July, you’ll understand the level of torture this was. The mattresses had bed bugs, the showers were open-air, filled with mud and daddy-long-legs, and the “camp” involved going to chapel five times a day. Twice in the morning, once in the afternoon, and twice in the evening. Participation in sports was mandatory. As a maladroit girl, that was worse than sitting under five different “hacking preachers” daily. (If you don’t already know what a “hacking preacher” is, I’m sorry, you’re missing out on one of the funniest things you’ll ever hear, but it can’t be explained. It involves lots of gasping and spitting.)

Another mandatory event was to answer a Bible trivia question before you could get into the chow hall to eat. Usually, they were pretty simple. Name a disciple. Name a judge. Name a place.

The “name a place” is where I got tripped up. I was waiting in line in the sweltering, sauna-like heat with the sun pounding down, when the young man in front of me answered the “name a place” with Syracuse. The pastor who was guarding the entrance like St. Peter himself, told this young man that no, Syracuse, was most definitely not in the Bible.

“Wait a minute, yes it is.” I blurt out.

Unfortunately, I am one of those people who have trouble letting factual inaccuracies, no matter how minor, slide. I’m basically Ted from How I Met your Mother when it comes to this. I, just… can’t. It’s reflexive. Horrible, I know, but I’ve kinda given up on fixing it. If it means you can’t be my friend, well, I understand, and that’s ok. We all do annoying things. This is mine.

It also gets me into trouble occasionally. Like now.

The pastor leered down at me, smugly and obviously superior. “Now lookee here little lady, Syracuse is not in the Bible.” (I swear I’m only exaggerating for effect a little bit. But only a little.)

But, you see, I’d just finished my first semester at a radically conservative Bible college, and I’d just finished two semesters of New Testament surveys, including an overview of the missionary journeys of Paul. For some reason, my brain had latched onto the Syracuse bit in Acts 28:12 and connected it with the voyages of Sinbad and the Book of Peace. So yes, I knew it was in the Bible, and just as luck would have it, lunch immediately followed two rounds of church, so guess what I had with me?

You guessed it. My KJV Bible.

And guess what I also remembered, for the first time in my life?

A reference.

I whipped it open to Acts 28, where Paul cures diseases, snakebites, and stays in Alexandria for a bit, and point to the word “Syracuse” in verse 12.

“Huh,” and the pastor waved the young mad inside, who, sadly, did not appreciate my help. A girl had just stuck up for him, and that’s not exactly cool anywhere, but especially not there.

One of my girlfriends at the time also happened to be my pastor’s daughter, and she could barely restrain herself before we got inside. She grabbed my arm and physically hauled me out of the lunch line. Away from the fried chicken– so frustrating.

“What in the world do you think you were doing?” She hissed.

“What?”

“You can’t correct a man of God like that.”

“Huh– wha, wait– why? He was wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s a man of God. You don’t get to do that, not to him.”

“But he was wrong.”

“That doesn’t matter. You’re more wrong. He made an honest mistake, but what you did, that was sin.”

“That’s so stupid! What if it’s not just some little silly little fact that barely matters at all, and it actually matters if he’s wrong?”

“Men of God can’t be wrong, don’t be ridiculous.”

~~~~~~~~~

And that last statement sums up a lot of what’s wrong with IFB preachers and the way they become the end-all-be-all of Scripture to their churches. I got into trouble with my pastor later, as the IFB-St. Peter and my friend both told him what I’d done. I ended up spending the next four days in the kitchen scrubbing pots and pans, but that was just fine with me.

I got to escape going to the church services, and got to hang out with all the other reprobates like me.

Photo by Ryk Neethling
January 26, 2013 by
Feminism

on how wearing pants didn’t turn me into a hooker

The first time I ever bought myself a pair of jeans is a vivid memory, complete with distinct recollections of every pair of jeans I tried on (six different stores, a grand total of twenty-one jeans). You might think this is odd. How old was I, twelve?

I was twenty.

I wore pants when I was a kid, up until I was nine. I was a military brat, and it never occurred to me to think of pants as I would later come to view them– as immodest, as unfeminine, as wordly, and frankly, when hip-huggers + thongs became a popular thing when I was teenager, as slutty. Interestingly enough, when I was eight and a Sparky in AWANAS, my mother mandated that I must wear pants to the activities, since we played active, flamboyant games and she’d caught a seven-year-old boy peeking up the girls’ skirts.

But, when I was nine, we moved to northwest Florida, to a town that was roughly twenty minutes away from the Alabama border, and we started attending an Independent Fundamental, hellfire-and-brimstone-preaching Baptist Church (IFB). And there went my pants. Mom didn’t even bother to donate them to the rescue mission. She cut them up and Dad used them for rags.

So, as a sophomore in college, I hadn’t worn pants in eleven years– certainly not after I’d sprouted “child-bearing” hips and an ass when I was fourteen. However, my family had finally left the IFB church and been excommunicated and shunned, and we were doing all kinds of crazy things like going to movie theaters and exercising in public. My mother even (gasp) cut her hair. One of my best friends decided it was high time that I own a pair of jeans.

To the mall we went.

We went to JCPenney’s first, back when they were uncool, and my friend outright forbade me from buying mom-jeans. But how, I thought glumly to myself, am I going to find jeans that are modest?

She dragged me, forcibly, to Aeropostale, the sluttiest of slutty teen stores at our mall. At least, in my opinion. At the time. I had no idea that things like the Body Shop, Wet Seal, and 5-7-9 existed. The day I determined to buy a “little black dress” and I went into a Body Shop is a whole ‘nother tale.  She threw me into a changing booth with a pair of jeans and told me to put them on.

Five minutes later, I still hadn’t emerged from the changing room.

“Well?” Her tone was bordering on the impatient.

“I can’t come out!”

“Why the hell not?” (My friend had a ‘potty mouth.’ It was invigorating.)

I practically whimpered. “You can see my butt.”

She laughed. Uproariously. “I think that’s kinda the point, dearie.” (My friend also had pet names for me.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I eventually bought a size-too-large pair of boyfriend-style jeans from the GAP. Now, five years later, I’m a jeans-and-hoodie girl. I even bought skinny jeans… last year. Took me a while to catch on to the whole “pants are not the devil” idea.

What took me almost just as long to realize is that the over-emphasis on modesty is a (one of many) false-front on a huge ideological problem: that women are nothing more than sexual objects. It’s laughable to me that the IFB movement spends so much time preaching against the over-sexualization of our girls when the very same preachers are guilty of the exact same crime against “womanhood” and “femininity.” I once heard a preacher claim  that wearing any item of clothing with a zipper in the front was immodest. Bizarrely, he said that a woman placing anything in front of her ahem “maidenly parts” called a man’s attention to her hoo-ha.

Because we all know that a woman’s ankles will force a man to lust after her in his heart, after all. Men have no self-control whatsoever, no sir. They see a collarbone and tip over from all the blood in their head rushing away. Women must guard men’s minds, you see. They’re base animals, nothing more than horndogs.

Which begs an interesting question… if men are all incapable of acting responsibly, why do they spend so much time talking about vaginas in church?

Photo by Francisco Osorio
January 25, 2013 by