take a bite of this nice shiny apple and learn to see

I was raised Evangelical. My dad was an ordained Baptist minister, although he chose to go into academia instead of the pastorate. I spent my childhood going to church every time our church was open. I went to Christian camps in the summer, I sang in the youth choir, I listened to Christian music and studied my Bible, and I prayed a lot. When it came time to choose a college, I chose an Evangelical Christian one, because of course.

I believed. I bought the whole thing, the whole ball of wax, the whole shooting match, every cliché you can think of. I did all the things, and I had a lot of cool experiences as a result. I went to Explo '76 in Dallas with my parents and heard Billy Graham and Andrae Crouch, and we seriously believed the world was being changed. I attended concerts by Second Chapter of Acts and Amy Grant and others I can't even remember that left me feeling joyously transcendent; I went to fireside talks at camp (and even gave a couple when I was in college) that felt meaningful, like we were really making a difference. I believed it was all about love, God's love, and as Christians, our love for each other. They'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.

But the chinks in my faith were already starting to show, because (of course) Christians don't always act in loving ways, and Evangelical theology usually ends up more about whether or not you've got it Right, whether or not you are correctly supporting the party line, than whether or not you are acting out of love. Going off to a Christian college didn't help. I thought it was going to be like four years of going to my beloved summer camp, but it was just like high school. There were cliques and popular people, and the kids who came from wealthy families or famous Christian families were more popular than the rest of us. 

I had some great experiences there, and I will never regret going. But it didn't help my frustration with the limitations of the theology I was being taught, the theology that we weren't allowed to question. There were certain ways of thinking about the Bible and heaven and hell and salvation that weren't optional. You couldn't say, "The Bible is an amazingly varied historical document with the wisdom of the ancients embedded in it, the history of the Jewish people, and the start of a new religion as described in the Christian New Testament, but I don't believe it contains literal, word-for-word instructions for right now." If you said something like that, you were wrong. Not just a polite disagreement over the dinner table, but you-are-going-to-hell Wrong.

I didn't know there were any alternatives. I thought you either were a Christian (which for me, back then, was synonymous with being an Evangelical Christian), or you were going to hell. I didn't find out until I started visiting other churches in college that there were people--millions of them-- who considered themselves to be Christian, but who didn't believe in the Bible the way I was raised to believe. I thought it was either believe the whole thing, or you're out. And being out was unthinkable, because I had a whole life of sweet, lovely, transcendent spiritual experiences that I equated with being Evangelical. 

But by the time I was 23 or 24, I just couldn't make it work anymore. I started attending one of those other churches, and I gradually extricated myself from the way I was raised. It's a long, slow process that involves a lot of grieving for the way you thought the world was, and the people you wanted to belong to, not to mention a fair amount of self-judgment because why couldn't I make it work? If you're going through it, all I can say is: just keep going. It gets better. But you never entirely get over it. My heart still lifts when I hear those old Evangelical songs.

Then the Moral Majority came along, and Evangelicalism became even less recognizable as the religion of Jesus who transformed the world through subversive acts of love. It became the religion of purity, the religion of 1950s sexuality, the religion of outward acts of moral conformity that had nothing to do with what was happening in your heart and mind. And then Trump happened, and I just can't even begin to figure out how the religion I believed in so deeply when I was growing up has turned into the mass of lies and delusions and the judgmental lack of mercy that characterizes the far religious right today. It breaks my heart that good-hearted people are being preyed upon by power mongers and conspiracy theorists who get a charge out of proving that they can delude people into believing whatever they make up. ---------

-------- This is another one from my drafts folder. I think I felt like people who are new might need some background, but it is surprisingly difficult to believe that this is interesting to anyone but me, so it has been sitting there for months. Also, I compressed a very long, convoluted process into a handful of paragraphs, so if it sounds ridiculously over-simplified, that's because it is. I spent a couple of years in my old blog writing about the process of leaving my childhood faith behind, and even that wasn't enough to really describe it. But at least it gives you a bit of context.

This week's nostalgia listens: Peace of Mind by Boston, and Jet Airliner by Steve Miller Band. I think after this week I will let you find your own nostalgia listens, because the ones that take me right back are going to be different than the ones that take you back. The trick to finding a good one is to find one that you haven't heard much in the meantime. I went through a Led Zeppelin phase when I was in my 40s, so "D'Yer Mak'er"-- which used to take me straight back to the summer between fourth and fifth grade (for very specific but boring reasons)-- now reminds me more of being 44 than it does of being ten.

Have a great weekend.