Sheldon's note: This post is a guest post from blogger Jeri of Heresy in the Heartland. Jeri is an ex-fundamentalist who left the organization of Independent Fundamental Baptist cult leader Bill Gothard when she was 23 years old. I highly recommend that you read her 6 part series on that transition, start reading about it here.
By age 23 I had made a full circuit of the American
Christianity buffet table and if I hadn’t tasted everything, I had at least
gotten near enough to smell it.
I was dedicated to the Protestant God by my parents and a
Pastor Dibble at a Christian & Missionary Alliance church in a college town
in Pennsylvania. My parents, raised Lutheran from infancy, had been rebaptized
there (by immersion). They were enthusiastic about Bible study and campus
evangelism.
When we moved to another state, we attended a charismatic
non-denominational church where people prayed out loud, prophesied in tongues,
and danced or raised their hands in worship. I associate that church with
guitars, a board of elders instead of a pastor, and lyrics displayed with
overhead projectors. Tithes and offerings were collected in inconspicuous boxes
with mail slots against the back wall of the auditorium.
My dad baptized me in the Great Lakes in a small ceremony
with one other family. We sang “Our God Reigns”, my friend’s mom wrapped me in
my bath towel with the elephant on it, and I was excited because now Mom and
Dad would let me share communion. Elders would stand in the aisles at church
holding bottles of grape juice, ready to refill the the common cup as it passed
down the rows. The cubes of homemade unleavened bread were fragrant with
coriander and star thistle honey. I always tried to nonchalantly pick the
biggest piece when the plate made its way to me.
My parents came to object to sensuality in the church. The
church “orchestra” became more of a band, and this made my parents
uncomfortable. They were more concerned about several of their friends’
marriages falling apart and about two divorcees from the church marrying each
other. This upset my mom so much that we left that church and started attending
a Friends meeting.
This particular group of Friends was unique in that they did
occasionally celebrate Communion, with grape juice and fluffy white bread.
Everyone tore off a piece as the loaf was passed down the row. The congregation
was small and the old wooden meetinghouse drafty, so they set up chairs in the
basement for services through the winter.
The pastor was young, with a wife and
baby boy. Through every sermon he would
remove his glasses, set them on the lectern, put them back on, take them off,
and so on. There was no band, no overhead projector. In the middle of the
service, everyone sat down, even the pastor, for fifteen minutes of “quiet
time”.
Dad took us all to midweek hymn sings and prayer meetings at
the parsonage, where I learned to follow along from a hymnal. I recall a boring
video series called “Ordering Your Private World” by Gordon MacDonald, former
chairman of the board of World Vision. About the time we were watching
MacDonald on a TV screen, he was resigning as president of InterVarsity
Christian Fellowship after admitting to an adulterous affair. But the Internet
had not yet been born, so we knew nothing of MacDonald’s private world.
Another video presentation was more memorable. It warned of
the AIDS crisis: the American population was forecast to be decimated in ten
years’ time, or was it twenty? I didn’t really know what they were talking
about, only that public restrooms could expose me to a deadly virus. The video
had a lot to say about “homosexuality”. Dad leaned over from his folding metal
chair next to me in the dim room and whispered into my ear, “That’s when a man
sticks his penis into another man’s bottom”. My eyes must have widened, but
there was nothing to say.
I was twelve or thirteen the Easter that some of the church
ladies decided it would be cute to have a children’s choir. They taught us a
Michael Card song (that included the line: “You can choose what not to believe
in…”). There were perhaps eight of us on the stage. Standing there in the new
skirt and blouse Mom and I had sewn for the occasion, I was painfully aware of
being the oldest.
When the congregation withdrew from the Quaker denomination,
I joined the adults in voting for a new church name and was pleased when my
favorite won out. “Cornerstone” soon voted to align themselves with the
Evangelical Free denomination. We parted ways with them at that point, because
the “E. Free” allowed divorced men to be pastors and my mother’s interpretation
of the New Testament did not permit such low standards.
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