A History of Religion: Part 1

When I was growing up, my family belonged to a rural, American Baptist church (Not to be confused with the Southern Baptists, those heathens. Really, that's what we thought.). There, I learned about how Jesus Loves Me and about the Roman Road and about Once-Saved-Always-Saved. When I was around seven, I sat down with my preacher in one of the Sunday School rooms and I prayed the "sinner's prayer." I had been saved. Born Again. The next Sunday night when they played "Just As I Am" during the invitation, I walked down the interminable sanctuary aisle to officially join the church by Profession of Faith. A few weeks later, I was submerged beneath the baptismal waters in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

After that, I lived my faith. I had no choice. We were at church, literally, every time the doors were open. Sunday School and "Big Church" on Sunday morning, Choir practice and BTC (Baptist Training Course) and "Big Church" on Sunday night, and Girls' Auxiliary (GAs!) on Wednesday nights. Two of my best friends and I alternated playing the piano for Sunday evening congregational singing.

At Christmastime, my mother would gather donated fruit from the local grocer, and all of the GAs would convene in the Fellowship Hall to assemble holiday fruit baskets under her direction. Then, we piled into the church van and delivered the baskets to the sick and shut-in of the church. In each of the homes, we would all sing a Christmas carol, and one of the girls would lead a prayer. There was one elderly lady that cried every time we visited her.

Our Sunday School teachers hosted slumber parties for us girls in the Fellowship Hall, where we would raid the closet full of Christmas decorations to assemble "evening gowns" for our mock beauty pageants. We would stay up all night long talking about boys, fixing each other's hair, experimenting with make-up, eating chips and dips and cookies, telling ghost stories and freezing the training bras of the girls who had dared to go to sleep before the rest of us. One time, one of the more daring of us sneaked in a cassette tape of Blondie. We were living on the edge that night, listening, red-faced, to the Devil's music through headphones in the dark.

In the summers after I was too old to attend children's Vacation Bible School, I helped the teachers during the children's VBS during the day and attended Youth VBS at night. After our VBS devotionals and Bible study, we'd all head out to the volleyball court to take part in the traditional VBS Volleyball Tournament. We were not allowed to wear shorts, so we played our volleyball games in blue jeans and T-shirts in the muggy heat of the East Texas evenings. Our summer church camps were always held at a pine-forested encampment far, far away from the real world. I can still remember the smell of the dining hall and hear the giggling of my best friends in the bunk above mine. I attended Music Camp, where we joined other American Baptist church groups in one big Baptist Tabernacle Choir and sang contemporary Christian music by artists like Michael W. Smith and Sandi Patty and Amy Grant, back before she crossed over to the dark side. And every year, I went to Youth Camp where we competed in Olympic-themed athletic matches (yes, in blue jeans) and never participated in "mixed bathing."

Writing it all out, it seems a little oppressive and suffocating, but it wasn't. I loved it. Some of my best memories happened there. It was all I knew.

But then, I got my driver's license and a waitressing job in a neighboring town. My parents got divorced. I made friends with some of those raucous Southern Baptist girls at school, and there were some close encounters with a boyfriend or two. By the end of my senior year in high school, I was getting curious and a lot more worldly. I began praying for forgiveness a whole lot more and attending church a whole lot less.