A Brief History of Me and Fundamentalism, Part 1
My journey into fundamentalist Christianity and out again, and how it paved the way to my current understanding of the world.
Every time I attempt to write about the long journey that brought me from where I was to where I am now, I get overwhelmed and give up. It's complicated, and it's hard to explain to people who haven't been there. People don’t really understand what I mean when I say I grew up in Christian fundamentalism. Far-left liberals think all of Christianity is fundamentalist. Some people further right thing it’s cutesy and quaint (Amish! Mennonites! The Duggars! Family values!)
It’s easy enough to tell people I wasn’t allowed to wear pants (not even pajama pants!) because they were “men’s clothes” and that we believed women shouldn’t work outside the home. But it’s harder to explain the mental, emotional, and spiritual oppression of a purity culture so radical that I felt crushing guilt over having a crush on a boy and spent years trying to sort out my sexuality because it was so warped and suppressed during my teen years. Or the everyday things we weren’t allowed to enjoy, such as amusement parks, Saturday morning cartoons, and butterfly hair clips.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
Part of why I feel so sensitive to what I see as extreme fundamentalism on the Left is because I’ve already lived it. What I see now—the constantly shifting goal posts, the twisting of language, the copy and paste arguments, the forced “statements of faith”—feels all too familiar. And, while I don’t feel like I have much in the way of something new to bring to a discussion that is already being held by excellent minds around the English-speaking world, I do feel like I have a unique perspective on some of these trends because of my childhood experiences. (Someone I feel shares this perspective, perhaps in even more of an extreme way than me, is Megan Phelps-Roper, with her background with the infamous Westboro Baptist Church.)
Without further ado, here is A Brief History of Me and Fundamentalism.
A Fairly Standard Evangelical Childhood (1992-2001)
I was born into Christianity; more specifically, the Baptist denomination. My mom was, and still is, a fervent Christian whose life was directed by her beliefs and her passion for Jesus. I’m a naturally spiritual person in the core of my being, and as far back as I can remember, I embraced my faith wholeheartedly. I prayed the prayer for salvation, I raised my hands and closed by eyes during the worship service, read my Bible, knew all the stories by heart, and prayed in front of my Catholic friends for them to “be saved.” My sisters and I were homeschooled, and most of our curriculum revolved around faith. Most of it came from a Baptist curriculum called Abeka, which comes out of Pensacola Christian College in Florida, but some of our textbooks came from Mennonite and Amish companies such as Rod & Staff Publishers.
We were more extreme than many of our Christian counterparts to begin with, but weren’t unrecognizable as fairly normal people. We weren’t allowed to watch Disney movies that had witches or other “satanic” things; we weren’t allowed to watch The Land Before Time because, evolution; we didn’t listen to Britney Spears or watch Rugrats or whatever other things 90s kids got to do. But we weren’t completely separated from everything—I was a huge Star Wars fan, we did gymnastics (albeit at a Christian gymnastics studio), played Wishbone computer games, and subscribed to the Magic School Bus club. We went to Children’s Church on Sundays and listened to the same Contemporary Christian Music everyone else did (I had a huge crush on Jaci Velasquez), and read modern Bible translations. We were a bit one-toe-in, one-toe-out. We were weird, but walking around in Sam’s Club, the only apparently weird thing about us was that we were there during school hours, because when you’re homeschooled, you set your own schedule.
But, back in the day, being homeschooled also meant smaller, insular groups and close proximity to extremist writers, pastors, and 90s-style content makers who shared their homeschooling wisdom with a heavy dose of extremism. And with my mom surrounded by these resources and eager to do whatever it took to honor God (and me following suit), it was an easy slide into the crazier, wackier depths of Christian extremism.
Fundamental Baptist + Mennonite Fusion (2001-2007)
It began with writers like Michael and Debi Pearl and preachers like Jonathan Lindvall and S.M. Davis. Not exactly household names, but they were a major force in ours. As a parent caught in the midst of a divisive time in which the culture has swung from one extreme to another where anything goes, I can understand what drew my parents to teachers and resources like these. It’s a scary world, and these teachers promised security, familiarity, a world where children are respectful and nonviolent, where girls don’t end up in harm’s way sexually, where parents have control over what their children learn rather than letting their children be indoctrinated by “the government” or “the liberals” or whatever the great enemy is. But they were extreme. And they led us down more and more extreme paths, into a world where my sisters and I were told what we could do with our lives and were allowed little to no say, where engagement with opposing viewpoints was forbidden unless it was to convert the other, where we isolated ourselves from friends and family who didn’t meet our purity standard, where we had to make bold statements to let everyone know we were above the standard fray of evil (sound familiar?) We operated under a long and very isolating list of standards:
Dresses must reach below the knee (even when sitting) and necklines should be no lower than two inches below the collarbone (better yet, wear a turtleneck, but wear it under a jumper so no one can see your female shape)
Pants and jeans were forbidden, even as pajamas, because they were men’s clothing.
Women could not go to college, except maybe to Bible college to meet a godly man, but even then, better to stay at home.
Dating was forbidden. Intentional courtship wasn’t even good enough. Betrothal, a system where the interested man goes first to the father and undergoes a long series of vetting meetings, after which the father presents the proposal to the daughter who has veto power, but not much else.
Crushes were sinful because they were giving away pieces of your heart to someone who wasn’t your future spouse. Attraction was equal to fornication. My journals are full of the agony I felt over a crush I had on a boy and my need to confess my sin to God and my parents, and my frustration over my inability to stop this feeling.
The King James Version of the Bible was the only right version—anyone who read any other version was not a real Christian, and all other versions should be burnt or thrown away— and reading it not once, but multiple times a day was imperative.
Movies, TV shows, and music that weren’t Christian were forbidden. Even Chopin, because he was gay. Somehow Jane Austen got a pass.
Almost nothing went untouched from the intensive scrutiny of our isolated, fundamentalist mindset. I turned my obsession with Star Wars into an obsession with condemning it, even writing a treatise about how it breaks all the Ten Commandments (that include Leia lying about the whereabouts of the rebel base, for shame!) We threw out our earrings because of a verse in the Bible that talks about not making piercings in the flesh. Even amusement parks were evil. Why? Because the word amuse comes from a word that means to delude or to deceive; therefore, amusement parks are meant to delude and deceive us away from God and to keep us from keeping our minds on him.
Even Christmas did not escape. Christmas was bad because Jesus wasn’t actually born on the 25th, because his crucifixion and resurrection were the events we should be focused on rather than his birth, because Santa is an anagram of Satan, and so on. The year I was eleven, we threw out our Christmas tree, our pop-up Christmas books, our Christmas window stickers, our Christmas albums, and our family traditions for a stoic holiday season where we refused to sing the Christmas hymns in church (too Catholic! not Biblical!) and judged others for sending us gifts. We were the true Christians who had seen the light. We pitied everyone else and prayed for them to get right with God.
My sisters and I were dreadfully lonely during this time. We had cut ourselves off from nearly everyone with whom we didn’t agree at least 99%. We made a few friends around 2004, and we were so starved for friendship that we became completely obsessed with them. The bulk of our teenage angst revolved around not getting to see them. I also resorted to imaginary friends. I had a series of books centered around a character named Millie Keith. I read them over and over and over again and considered Millie one of my friends. My mom took the books away because I was too obsessed with them.
We cycled through multiple churches over these years—about one per year, give or take a few months. We were the oddballs everywhere we went. We tried to find churches that held similar beliefs, but no one was ever quite as “faithful” as we were. That said, we ended up in some strange places that further radicalized us in other ways. The first time we visited one church, the sermon was about Satan and the devil and demon possession. It was thrilling. The pastor jumped on the front pew, pumping his fist and sending spit into the audience. He preached about how slits in skirts were created by the devil for women to seduce men (Amen!) He talked about people who weren’t right with God waking up in the middle of the night and seeing demons at the end of their bed—get right with God (Amen!) We stayed at that church until summer came around and we noticed the pastor’s daughter wearing short skirts and “immodest” tops, though in all fairness, there were some genuinely sketchy things that led my parents to want to hightail it out of there. I later found out that the man who took care of the church grounds and lived in the church was a convicted sex offender.
At another church, soul-winning was the driving passion of all. If you weren’t going door-to-door telling people to “get saved” or picking up kids to take them to church every Sunday (“bus ministry”), were you really a faithful Christian? Sermons always ended with “an Invitation”: “Everyone heads down, eyes closed. If you were to die today, are you absolutely, 100% sure you would go to heaven? Is there a time in your life where you turned to Jesus and everything changed?” I would rack my brain for evidence of change—I had “prayed the prayer” when I was maybe five or six and had been obsessed with God and the Bible and prayer and following Jesus as long as I could remember. But I couldn’t point to any drastic changes that the exciting visiting preachers did, with their alcoholism and sex addiction and whatnot. I still argued with my sisters and rolled my eyes at my parents and had crushes on boys—all things that made me “the chief of sinners.” I felt so guilty every Invitation. My stomach would churn, I would be gripped with fear of hellfire and Satan. I would sit there praying that I was really saved. One day I talked to my mom about it and said the prayer again, just in case. For years, I looked at that as the true moment of salvation. But I still argued with my sisters and rolled my eyes at my parents and crushed on boys. And I still feared hell and judgment every Invitation.
After my mom caught the pastor at that church plagiarizing a particularly absurd sermon about America and the End Times, we left that church. Some friends who had moved two hours away told us about this amazing church they had found near their new home—a place where nearly all the families were homeschooled, there was no Children’s Church (which was bad because it separates kids from their parents), the music glorified God, and the sermons were inspiring and truly focused on God. We decided to check it out. And thus began the next chapter of our wild journey.
Bob Jones, ATI, and Heritage—A Mini Cult (2005-2010)
Heritage Baptist Church was a whole new world. Suddenly, we were surrounded by people who were a lot like us, with some variations here and there. They were less focused on politics and sensationalism than the previous churches, but lived unusual lifestyles more similar to ours; the sermons were extremely intellectual-sounding, which challenged and excited my academically-inclined brain; everyone in the church was musical, as was our family, and I loved losing myself in the perfectly coordinated music with its harmonies and moving chords; and above all, we made friends, and we felt like we belonged.
And yes, we drove two hours there and two hours back every Sunday.
The pastor was a graduate of Bob Jones University. He quite literally towered over his congregation. His sermons were so full of big words that it always felt like he was saying something deeply important, even if he wasn’t really saying anything at all—I think he must have had a rule not to use any words shorter than four syllables and that could not be easily alliterated with other words of equal length. His sermons were about glorifying God, though he could seldom give a practical demonstration of how such a thing was accomplished. His family was reclusive and mysterious. After the morning service, all the church families would gather together and eat lunches they had brought separately, and then visit out on the expansive lawn in the summer or around the church building during the winter, but the pastor’s family would walk back to their house as soon as the final chord had been played and only reappeared in time for the afternoon service at 2:00. If you had the honor to exchange a single sentence with any of the pastor’s daughters, it was something to brag about to your friends and preserve in one’s journal with abundant exclamation marks.
Many of the families were large—five or more children—but there were some smaller families like ours too, so we didn’t feel completely like outsiders. Most of them homeschooled; most of them used curriculum from Bob Jones University or they were members of Advanced Training Institute (ATI), the cult-like organization that spawned families like the Duggars (with whom some of the church families had an acquaintance.) Most people were musical, bookish, and spiritually-minded. The friends I made were as judgmental as I was. Boys and girls never interacted—the boys would go talk in their groups, the girls would talk in their own groups, and should the two ever coincide, it was met with shock, scandal, and the thrill of potential wedding bells.
I found Heritage to be a place that indulged my ever-desperate need for more God. The guilt I constantly felt was enhanced while also being fueled by the promise of fulfilment. When we could make it early enough, we would join the sex-segregated prayer times in which small groups of four to six women would be formed and each person would take a turn praying. We didn’t pray for things—none of this “I pray for Mrs. E to be healed from her cancer” or “I pray for those affected by Hurricane X” or any of that. The point of prayer was to “glorify God”—the ever-elusive goal—and everyone used it as an opportunity to show how many Bible verses they could recite and how many words of praise they could offer up to God. I would sit anxiously as the prayers went around, trying to plan what I would say that would sound as holy as everyone else without sounding planned or copied. And then I would feel desperately guilty that I wasn’t sincere enough, and that my prayers were always several minutes shorter than everyone else’s.
A woman I will simply call Mrs. V took me under her wing, as she did many of the other girls who were particularly driven towards a deeply spiritual life. I would sit and talk with her about God and the Bible. My goal was to be just like her. I confessed to her that even though I spent time in “the Word” multiple times a day (I read my Bible in the morning, had an in-depth spiritual discussion with my mom and sisters at breakfast, read the Proverbs and Psalms as a family in the evening, and read the Bible again before bed), I still didn’t feel as close to God as I wanted. She advised me to add another time during the day after lunch to read the Bible and pray and focus on God. So I did. And I felt no closer to God than I did before. If anything, I felt more guilty and more lost. Whenever I got caught up in school, or a story, or a project, and didn’t even think about God for even a short period of time, I felt guilty. I could never, ever reach the bar, and while we were told that Jesus met the bar for us, we were met with the conflicting idea that now that we were saved, we should be able to reach it with Jesus’ help. And yet his help wasn’t enough to get me there. For all my effort, I still felt lost.
During the Heritage years, the intensity of our fundamentalist, separatist life slowly started to unravel. In 2007, my grandmother died from cancer. When we went to visit her, we didn’t have access to habitable housing and stayed in a camper in 40 degree weather. To address that need, we bought horrifically ugly sweat pants and sweat shirts to stay warm—our first pants in about six years. After my grandmother died, my mom began to reevaluate why we had distanced ourselves so much from our family and friends and she started to acknowledge that we had put too much weight on things that maybe didn’t really matter as much as we thought.
But the unraveling sped up as we neared 2010. The church became more and more cult-like. Mrs. V was rebuked from the pulpit for hosting Bible studies with other women, and was told to disband them and not take on a leadership role even among other women, because it was not under the women’s husbands’ authority. A dad that brought kites to church to entertain the children between services was rebuked and told not to bring kites anymore because it took people’s minds off of God. People were told that they should keep their conversations on God and not on “frivolous” things. The pastor conducted a series of sermons in which he discussed the “one anothers” of the New Testament, but took each of them and twisted them completely out of recognition; for instance, “bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ” was turned into “don’t burden other people with your burdens; keep them to yourself.” Several women in the church were diagnosed with cancer around the same time; we were told not to talk to them about it, even to ask them how they were doing or to offer help.
Then it suddenly became much more personal. My parents were having extreme marital difficulties, and my mom spoke to Mrs. V about it, asking for prayer. Mrs. V then took it to the pastor, who then preached a sermon on a day when we were absent, rebuking my mom and reminding women not to talk negatively about their husbands to each other. He also wrote an email to my dad, telling him that my mom was going around gossiping to other women about him, and told him to get her in check.
That December, the church split. Many of the elders of the church called out the pastor’s increasingly authoritarian measures, and he responded by saying they were Calvinists and trying to lead the congregation astray. About half the church left, including us. But our journey with Heritage wasn’t over.
The Heritage Aftermath (2010-2012)
Shortly after this, my sister got engaged to the young man she’d been talking with for over a year—a long-time member of the church, the son of one of the elders, and a graduate of a respected Christian university. My parents didn’t like him and didn’t endorse the engagement, so my sister ran away, and our family nearly split apart. It went against the courtship and betrothal models we had been told we should follow for all those years; my parents’ authority was undermined; and my trust was shaken in them as I saw them react explosively to the situation. The pastor at Heritage got wind of it and sent out a letter that no one who knew my sister or her fiancé should attend their wedding or share any words of blessing. We were ostracized even by some of the people who had also left—me for supporting my sister, my parents for not having my sister under control, my mom for her marriage crisis, etc.
Thankfully, we had found another church which, while still affiliated with the same groups as Heritage, was a more supportive place for my family. Pastor Chris, whom I will always respect despite our differences, helped my parents navigate the situation with my sister and prioritize peace and family over power dynamics and differences. My parents came around and eventually gave their blessing, and my family all attended the wedding. (Few people from Heritage did. Even after my parents gave their blessing, the pastor at Heritage continued to command his flock to ostracize us.)
My mom and my younger sister settled into Pastor Chris’s church for a while. My older sister and her husband started attending a moderately liberal Mennonite church. My dad stopped attending church entirely. I was caught in the middle, feeling confused, betrayed, lost. Because that wasn’t the end of our struggles. My sister’s engagement and marriage was a watershed moment for me, but it was coupled with many other things that only accelerated the change. My parents’ marriage nearly fell apart. My other grandmother died after living out her last few months in our home—I listened to her as she slowly died over the course of a day, and lay in bed hearing as she slowly reached her end, one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. My dad’s best friend was nearly killed in an accident caused by a driver who was under the influence of drugs, and was left in an intensely altered state in which he, to this day, is unable to communicate easily or care for himself at all. This came on the heels of three separate tragedies—a childhood friend who was accidentally shot and killed by a deer hunter, a cousin through marriage who died from a seizure, and another cousin through marriage and her two small children who died in a house fire. Quite suddenly, everything I had ever believed was falling apart, down to the very bones of my religious belief—how could I believe in a God that was simultaneously good and omnipotent?
I began my subtle style of rebellion against my upbringing. I sneakily read forbidden books online (I’m talking things like The Chronicles of Narnia—not even something crazy.) I found websites that told me the basics about sex—a conversation I had never had. I started dating my first boyfriend. And then I moved out and went to college on my own dime, a decision that would solify my journey out of fundamentalism and usher me into a new world of normalcy and slowly, slowly, back to the edges of another fundamentalism with a very different face.
To be continued.