The first thing I do any time I go to the library is check out the new non-fiction shelf. Keeps me abreast of what's out there. So yesterday I went to pick up the movie Fall of the House of Usher, the old one with Vincent Price (great cheesy horror flick. Hard to beat Price), and of course I stop by the new book section. Apparently Franky Schaeffer - son of Francis and Edith Shaeffer and current HuffPo writer/occasional talking head/ex-fundie activist - has written a new book about his mom. The title was "Sex, God, and..." can't remember the rest. Typical Frankie though, making sure sex is somewhere in the title. He seems obsessed with the subject, as a lot of former fundies seem to be. I get the reasons why, but it really has gotten sort of trite by now, the whole "it was kept out of my sight so now that I've shuffled off my fundy past I gotta do my whole journey of sexual discovery" thing. So basically Frankie has become a sort of thinking man's Sam Kininson.
Frankie has built something of a reputation for himself due to his seeming need to expose every nook, cranny, foible, flaw, and skeleton in his parents' lives. This is supposed to be some sort of cathartic healing process exercise, I guess. He feels that the Evangelical community has made his parents into idealized heroes and believes it's his duty to make sure everyone understands that they were definitely NOT the people everyone makes them out to be. I guess there's some merit to that. But a lot of people feel he also dredged up a lot of dirt that was just unseemly. It came off sounding like he's a guy with a lot of unresolved issues who used this apparent need for transparency to drag his parents through the mud and therefore get a little payback for his miserable childhood. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
Anyway, I don't even know why I spent so much time ranting about that. I guess the guy annoys me. But the point of even mentioning him was that it was part of a larger theme on my mind this week. I've read through 6 years of blog posts from a guy who is, by his own description, a 49-year old "fundegelical". He's fundamental doctrinal, but generally evangelical in methodology. It's a growing trend as people raised as fundies try to work through a lot of excess witnessed over a lifetime raised in the strict environment of clapboard Baptist, suit and tie, no-facial hair wearin', King James Only religion. Got me thinking about my own religious upbringing.
I'm sort of a mongrel. Actually, I grew up Catholic. Did the whole catechism class, Confirmation thing. As with most Catholics, it was an interesting, if somewhat odd, part of life one morning per week, with very little effect on my daily life. We became Baptists somewhat abruptly after my Dad got "saved" at a country Baptist church way out in the country. A couple of guys he worked with had been steadily witnessing to him for years, and had invited him to their church. When he first drove us out there my sister and I suspected he'd joined a cult (that's pretty much how people where I grew up saw, and still see, such folks). The idea that anyone would be going to church on a Wednesday, let alone expected to on a regular basis, was kinda odd to us (my guess is it still is to most non-Baptists).
So we became Baptists. Fundie Baptists. KJV only, Chick Tracts in the Track Rack (a small display of various gospel literature found in the foyer of any self-respecting Baptist church), Suit and tie for the men, ankle-length skirts for the ladies, and lots of shoutin' on both sides of the pulpit. The first time I entered the sanctuary I wondered, "Where's the statues? The stained glass? The paintings? The Candles?" It looked more like a warehouse to me than a church. Instead of stations of the Cross they had missionary portraits with recent prayer letters. Instead of a little side room with candles and Mary they had what looked like a big hottub in the front which turned out to be the baptistry. And apparently the Pastor had been raised as a Christian Scientist because he was constantly talking about how terrible that bunch was.
We eventually left that church for another because it was so far to drive. The one we went to instead may have been in the city, but it was basically the same. Well, almost. Not quite as old fashioned. Skirts to the knee were generally accepted. Sometimes they had a quartet play that had guitars. But the pastor was interesting in his own way. I think my sister and I really worried him. Can't say I entirely blame him, since by this time I had finished my initial phase of being a good baptist kid and resumed my downhill slide - drinking, smoking pot, etc. And I really was a pain. Flirting with my girlfriend the whole time in the back row. Getting up to go to the bathroom pretty much every week in the middle of his sermon. One day he finally had enough and called me out when I was in mid stride down the aisle. Gave me the third degree right there, with me standing in the middle of the church.
I also remember him having a real issue with Amy Grant. This was back when "Baby Baby" was a hit. Boy, I wonder what he'd say now about CCM.
I don't think he'd ever been happier to see a kid graduate and get out of his church in his entire life (we also started going to the Christian school attached to that church about the same time we started going to that church). I really don't blame him. I was a serious pain in the neck and honestly on balance probably caused more grief than it was worth keeping me there for. But still...I'm glad they didn't kick me out because in the state I was in, if I had been put back in public school I would have really gone down the tubes.
Just how much of a pain was I?
- sprayed buck lure all over my teacher's seat once. His wife wanted me expelled.
- my buddies I was in a band with would often come to pick me up after school. One time one of our revolving guitar players (think Spinal Tap but with new guitarists every month instead of drummers) drove into a parking barrier, breaking it. He then wandered the school looking for me (high on paint), and when he ran into the Pastor, got within an inch of his face and asked, "Dude, where's Jim?". There were at least two Jims at that school (yes, it was that small), and there was no doubt whatsoever in the Pastor's mind which one he was looking for.
- brought a case of beer to a youth event. The poor guy that was serving as youth leader had organized a movie night at one of the kids' homes. I showed up with a case of Bud, which a few of us imbibed behind the one kids' garage, then proceeded to go back in and watch the movie while acting very inappropriately ( I won't go into details). A couple days later the youth leader came to my house to confront me about it. I admitted what I did was wrong. I should have been brought front and center with the Pastor, my parents, and the youth leader, but I guess he was hoping I wouldn't see him as a snitch and thereby gain my confidence. Sorry, but bad idea.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Did fundamentalism hurt me? Yes and No. No because in all honesty I actually needed even tighter control over my actions than I had. That was mostly a parental thing. I don't blame my church at all. If anything my church and school provided what little restraint I had and kept me from getting even worse. Sorta hard to skip class and get away with it when your class has only 7 kids. I would say theologically it was pretty shallow, but I got the general outline. A lot of KJV onlyism, which took me a while to work out, but I was never exactly militant about that. Sorta hard to be when you spend most of your time partying.
I guess it did do me some harm in the sense that no one every really seemed to explain in a way I could grasp what the whole discipleship thing was, how it worked. Being a Christian boiled down to go to church, wear modest clothes, don't cuss, rock and roll is demonic, etc. Then again, as with many, maybe someone did try to make it deeper and I was just too hard headed and dead set on hitting all the high points of what I thought the good life for a 16 year old was to hear it. There was definitely a strange dichotomy at work. I was pretty adamant about how people needed to believe the Bible, trust in Jesus, etc. My girlfriend at the time was Catholic and we had a number of pretty intense discussions on how that was wrong, that she needed to be saved. But she wouldn't, and it wasn't enough to convince me we shouldn't be dating. I can personally attest to the fact that teenagers have a strange ability to completely divorce their beliefs from their actions. Actually that's not fair. Plenty of adults do it too.
That's a snapshot of what it was like for me growing up fundie. There's more, and how things worked out will be the subject of future posts, maybe. I guess my message to Frankie would be this: lighten up. Yeah, there were some rotten things back there. There's rotten things everywhere. Quit making your wounds a meal ticket.
No comments:
Post a Comment