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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
A former Christian fundamentalist recalls a life of ferocious, intractable faith -- and the moments it began to crumble.
Dec 21, 2001 | This morning I drive to work thinking about the lipstick on my front tooth that I can't fix until I exit the freeway, my college freshmen students who will not be prepared for class and firemen, my new heroes. I turn on NPR. An interview.
A scholar explains how difficult it is for a religious fundamentalist to function with the concept of multiple identities. While most of us are comfortable defining ourselves in several different roles, a fundamentalist cannot. She is called to forsake anything that challenges her mission as a single-minded follower of God. Even good things can distract her from the narrow road. Once the image of "zealot" has been forged, the radical will cling to that self-definition and disregard anything but her mission of serving God with her whole heart, soul and strength.
Can the zealot be a city councilman, a lover of literature, an expert at chess or backgammon? Unlikely. These pursuits have the potential to hinder the believer from becoming a sold-out follower of God. The Old Testament God who consumed his servants' sacrifices in a blinding flash of fire is not a God content to be a suburban pursuit, a scheduled event on a crowded calendar. The zealot capitulates in the face of this demand and is rewarded with sure answers secreted in inerrant scriptures and promises of eternal security. In a chaotic world, the clarity of seeing oneself simply and irrefutably as a child of God is immeasurably comforting. No need to quibble about what is important and what is not -- God is important and everything else is not.
I know this to be true. The interviewee on the radio is describing my former incarnation, a religious fundamentalist who would have died defending her faith. Remembering how I spent my youth clinging to a sole identity makes me cry, there on Interstate 235 on my way to teach paragraph development to sleepy and hung-over youngsters.
I was born in Iowa in the middle of the 20th century. My parents dropped me off on Sunday mornings at a small Baptist church with red carpet where I was taught to turn my back on the world, to retreat, hug my truth to myself and pray for the doomed on the outside. It was clearly a case of "us" and "them." We were the sanctified, the born-again, the elect of God. The others were lost. The others didn't have a clue. My seventh-grade Sunday school teacher warned the knobby-kneed bunch of us 12-year-old girls that the unsaved would trip us up, bring us flat and destroy our faith. We were to be watchful. Yes, she told us, tell the unbelievers about Christ, but don't become friends. For the love of Jesus, don't let the unbelievers influence you to compromise or turn away from the one true God.
My exposure to fundamentalism germinated below the surface throughout my adolescence and finally took root when I turned 18. I was a child bride, pregnant and unhappy when I turned to the Sunday school Jesus for my only likely salvation. I surrendered everything -- my will, my thought processes, my questions -- in return for him coming in and straightening the place up. I began to measure everything against the Holy Scriptures and the one true God and his son Jesus Christ. I plotted each event in my life in the grid of God. I saw the hand of God in everything, and I mean everything. Parking spots at a crowded mall were a gift of God. My daughter's earaches were a test from God. The Del Monte vegetables on sale at the market were a sign of God's provision. I called myself his handmaiden and I began each entry in my prayer journal with a plea to be "used by God." What rich pleasure it was to know the Creator of the Universe was inhabiting me, using me as his mouthpiece. I asked God to speak through me and then I believed each word that left my mouth was his word.
