“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” ~ Vladimir Lenin ~
“Give me the child for the first seven years and I will show you the man.” ~ Ignatius of Loyala ~
“Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.’ ~ Matthew 19:14, King James Version of the Bible ~
Throughout history, there seems to be a consensus that children are particularly vulnerable to being taught what a teacher wants them to learn. Nowhere is this more true than in our political/social/religious institutions. I cannot attest to the effectiveness of the madrassas that provide religious education for many children of the Islamic faith, nor can I speak with specific knowledge of the narrow religious focus of the schools for the ultra-orthodox of the Jewish faith, nor the efficacy of the bar mitzvah classes suffered by so many of my Jewish friends. I know little of the of the catechesis designed to teach the ins and outs of Catholic doctrine, but for my purposes it is enough to know that this focus on the religious indoctrination of children is widespread and, in many cases, required for inclusion in the faith. It certainly affected me in my childhood. And given that the Protestant component of the world of believers is not as formally organized as those of their fellow travelers in other faith communities, it is there nevertheless. Let me share my own experience during the first phase of my religious journey.
I cannot remember the church being an important element of my life until about age ten. My father was an ex-communicated Catholic, and my mother was a fairly weak-kneed Methodist or Baptist or Presbyterian… I never really knew which. She did, however, refuse to raise her children in the Catholic Church, which led to my father’s expulsion from the church of his birth. In 1953 my father was transferred to Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, and in an effort to achieve a modicum of social acceptance, we began to attend services at the Hillcrest Baptist Church of the Southern Baptist Convention. When I say attend, I mean really seriously attend. They had a copious variety of services, and we were there every time they opened the doors. They had Sunday morning Sunday School, several Sunday Church Services, the Wednesday evening Royal Ambassadors (targeting pre-teens) and Prayer Meeting, the Thursday Choir Practice, and a few visits to shut-ins along the way… Oh, I shouldn’t forget the extremely boring summertime Vacation Bible School or the annual Church Camp, which at least had the benefit (to me) of being away from home.
So the church had several shots at me each week… not to mention the periodic Revival Meetings and the Revival Schools that accompanied the itinerant preachers that led these evangelical meetings. Sunday School wasn’t too bad, as the adult leaders were usually enthusiastic and anxious for the approval of their charges. I generally behaved, but refused to close my eyes during the overly-long prayers that opened and closed these sessions. The dreaded Sunday Church Service was the low point of my religious week. I survived by seeking to be seated in one of the last two rows, from which I could sneak out from time to time (ordinarily during one of the many “with all eyes closed, and every head bowed” times). If no opportunity for escape presented itself, I passed the time by either counting the number of deacons who nodded off or by filling in all the “o”s in the church program. I must admit to enjoying some of the music, the exception being the hymns used to entice the gullible into presenting themselves to the preacher for a “re-dedication of their life” or the occasional actual saving of a soul in public. The Sunday Evening Service was a problematic as well. The problem was Maverick. You know, the TV show “Maverick,” in which James Garner played a clever, good guy with a gun? In 1957 and 1958 it was the most popular show running. I really didn’t want to miss it, so it became a weekly battle in our house.
Royal Ambassadors (RA) was a different thing altogether. It had some brain washing elements to it, but it was at least competitive. It had attainment levels and contests of biblical knowledge as a center point of its curricula. The ultimate level of attainment was to achieve the title of Ambassador Plenipotentiary. I kid you not. I never knew what plenipotentiary meant, but I knew I wanted to be one. And I was. The youngest one ever. I guess it was kind of like being a junior religious Eagle Scout. The highlight of the RA year was the annual Sword Drill. At a designated Sunday evening service, all church kids, including RA’s, Girl Ambassadors (GA’s), and anyone else that wanted to, competed to see who could find a designated Bible verse the fastest. I always won. Always. Probably I still could. Now after almost 70 years I’m ready to admit that I gave myself a little edge… In my personal KJV, I used my fingernail to nick a dividing line between the Old and New Testaments. Was that cheating? I don’t think so, because you still had to know whether Ecclesiastes was in the Old or the New. One of the downsides of RA was that there were no girls allowed. They had their own deal. And as time went on, this became more and more meaningful. See below…
My own falling away from the church began when I was about thirteen or fourteen. It didn’t happen all at once and it didn’t end there. I recall three things that precipitated the second phase of my religious journey.
- I was informed that dancing (with a girl) was a sin and would not be permitted. This thunderbolt was thrust upon me just before I was scheduled to begin the traditional 8th grade ballroom dancing class, which culminated in the 8th grade Grand Ball. No way I was going to miss this! (I wonder now what they would have said about a boy dancing with a boy?)
- I was introduced to the Baptist doctrine regarding the “visitation of sin.” It happened at one of those dreaded Revival educational sessions. A visiting church elder conducted a series of nighttime sessions to insure that we were acquainted with the intricacies of Baptist Church dogma. He informed us that the deformed arm of his son was god’s punishment for his own sins. Huh? God would punish a child for the past sin(s) of his father? “No way,” I argued, “No god would do that…” But then he gave me the chapter and verse. So began my doubts.
- But I’d also been told there was no doubting allowed. Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but in all of my religious education no one ever posited the idea that doubt was a good thing. No one ever encouraged a fulsome discussion about the divinity of Jesus. No Baptist preacher ever acknowledged that it was okay to question the inerrancy of the Bible. Faith was required; doubt, not so much.
I must admit that in the midst of the ebbing away of my religious indoctrination, I was caught up in it emotionally from time to time. I was the star attraction for an Evening Service at which I accompanied myself on a steel guitar and sang a smaltzy version of the “Old Rugged Cross.” The standing applause by the audience was very heady stuff, and caused me to envision a tour of all the great churches of the land to wow their members with my divinely inspired talent. Thankfully, that feeling was not supported by my talent (or lack thereof) and didn’t last long.
And then there was my missionary period. As you may know, the missionary zeal of the Baptists to retrieve the heathens of foreign lands from eternal damnation was front and center of their doctrine. Rarely did a Sunday pass where thanks were not given and a special fund-raising mounted for the heroic fellows… our missionaries. I couldn’t quite feature myself bringing savage souls to the Lord, but the next best thing would be to become a medical missionary. I wouldn’t be saving souls, but I could heal their bodies. Alas, this was a short-lived ambition as well when I discovered that one had to go to medical school and become a doctor for this lofty position. No chance of that. I always turned my head at the sight of blood and was a mediocre student of the physical sciences.
So for five formative years of my life I was immersed (yes, I was baptized by total immersion too) in the life and theology of the Southern Baptist Church and all of its trappings… Then it all fell away almost as fast as it had come. Among my other doubts, about this time I also discovered that the Southern Baptist movement and its formal amalgamation of churches was initially prompted by the pro-slavery philosophy. And then came the hammer…
At the beginning of my sophomore year in high school we moved away, then a year later we moved again to Ames, Iowa. No Southern Baptists there. I was, however, targeted by the young, dynamic leader of a small, charismatic mission (Southern Baptist) trying to establish itself in the area. I have never known how or why he focused on me but he did. Perhaps he saw the vulnerability of a young person new to the culture and structure of yet another new place to live. I attended a few meetings with him, trying to recruit others to his embryonic church mission, and it was on one of these trips that he brought up Glossolalia. Yes, I said Glossolalia… the Divine Language cited prominently by St. Paul in the Corinthians and elsewhere. You may know it as “speaking in tongues.” Biblical scholars of all stripes can point you to the chapters and verses that attest to this phenomenon, but I will not subject you to the details of this scholarship. Oddly, even though it has the attestation of the inerrancy of the Bible, its practice and use has been largely restricted to the Pentecostal church, and evidently also to the young missionary seeking to proselytize me to his peculiar set of beliefs. This revelation had, however, just the opposite effect, and I ran for cover, philosophically. In fact, it opened the door to full-fledged doubt.
I suspect, but don’t know for sure, that any one single event (or doubt) does not complete one’s philosophical foundation. At least that is true in my own case. Rather, a series of only loosely connected events, conversations, and readings over a period of years led me to know that unquestioning faith was not the way for me. I knew that the manifest right and opportunity to question accepted dogma was essential to the development of my personal belief system.
This, then, was the beginning of my Falling Away From Faith.
