December 30, 2005

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  Several folks who read my web log have expressed how mystified they are at how I could have grown up as a Southern Baptist, attended a Southern Baptist college and seminary, spent 17 years in the ministry, and wound up as an unabashed liberal who at times comes across in this forum as being anti-religion (for a vivid example of my liberal leanings, read my “year in review” post below). I thought I would commit an entry or two to the subject. Therefore I humbly offer:

  
  

   

  
  

  

  
  

   

  
  

  MY JOURNEY AWAY FROM FUNDAMENTALISM, PART 1: WHAT I LOVED ABOUT BEING A FUNDAMENTALIST.

  
  

   

  
  

  I was listening to an interview on “All Things Considered” on NPR the other day with Christine Rosen the author of My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Childhood.  In her book she discusses what it was like to grow up attending a very fundamentalist Christian school. Although she has abandoned the beliefs of her childhood and no longer considers herself a fundamentalist, she describes her elementary education with absolutely no rancor. In fact, she describes her childhood with a tremendous amount of affection and delight.

  
  

   

  
  

  As I listened to her describe her journey, I thought about how closely it resembles mine.

  
  

   

  
  

  When I was seven, my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In retrospect, I think she knew how turbulent our lives would become. She wanted to provide me with some stability and so she decided to start taking me to church. Prior to that, I only remember being inside a church one other time. At the invitation of a friend, we began attending a Southern Baptist church in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.  My mother’s premonition about the need for stability proved correct. As her illness progressed my father became less and less able to cope with her erratic behavior. He began to travel extensively for his job and was generally only home two weekends a month. When he was home he was often abusive and he and my mother would fight loudly and violently. As an only child, it became my responsibility to be my mother’s protector and mediator to the world. Stability was defiantly in order, and the church quickly became my surrogate parent.

  
  

   

  
  

  As the years rolled by and I went to High School and then to College, the church became the center of my life. It was the one place I flourished.  It was the one place I excelled and was accepted. It was the one place that kept me sane.

  
  

   

  
  

  Here are some of the things I loved about my life as a Southern Baptist:

  
  

   

  
  

  I loved my Sunday school teacher that year I first started coming to church. I liked to collect rocks and it happened that he was a geologist for an oil company. Each week he would look for unusual rocks on the job and he would bring them to me on Sunday morning. I thought he was a god. He knew about my situation at home, but he never let on, he just made me feel special and important.

  
  

   

  
  

  I loved Vacation Bible School. I especially loved crafts time. To this day, I can build almost anything out of popsicle sticks. I loved the pageantry of marching into the sanctuary with the American and Christian flags and the Bible. I loved “sword drills” (for you uninitiated, this is a contest on how quickly you can look up passages in the Bible).  I loved the Kool Aid and the stale cookies. I loved getting gold stars for memorizing scripture.

  
  

   

  
  

  As a teenager I loved all of the activities the church provided. I sang in a youth choir that toured all over the United States. I went on interesting mission trips to exotic places. I have wonderful memories of church camp. I loved my youth director. And frankly, I loved being in a position of leadership. I was usually youth group president and I was usually the one who got to lead the music or preach on “youth Sunday.” It was certainly ego boosting at a time I needed some ego boosting. I loved the way I got a standing ovation from the congregation the Sunday I came forward and told the pastor I “felt called” into the ministry.

  
  

   

  
  

  I loved going to Oklahoma Baptist University.  OBU has been listed by U.S. News and World Report as one of the top 10 universities in the west for 14 of the past 16 years.  I got a fabulous education there. It has one of the most highly regarded schools of music in the Midwest, and I am honored to have a music degree from there. Even though it was a “Christian” college, I was encouraged to think outside the box. Many of the professors were “Baptist” in name only and brought a wealth of varied backgrounds and beliefs to my college experience.

  
  

   

  
  

  Once I was in the ministry, I loved the things the Southern Baptist Convention stood for.  Rather than individual churches supporting individual missionaries, the 43,000 Southern Baptist Churches across the U.S. pool their resources and support over 5,300 missionaries world wide. No other single charitable group in the world does more food distribution to impoverished areas than the SBC does. I loved the fact that when they talked about being against abortion they put their money where their mouth was and funded homes for unwed pregnant teenagers across the country. I worked as a house father in one of those homes for three years and even though it was difficult, I look back at it as being one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

  
  

   

  
  

  I have no doubt that my fundamentalist upbringing saved my life. I have nothing but love and respect for the people in my church that loved and supported me through some very difficult years.

  
  

   

  
  

  I imagine I sound like a cheerleader or public relations person for fundamentalism. So what happened to bring me to where I am now? Well…that’s in part 2.

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