Leaving, Part 2

As I walk through the hallways of my memory, I want to pause. Breathe.

I write my story as part of my healing from christian fundamentalism. For me, these entries are times to sit down on the side of the road for a rest, take off my backpack, sort through the contents and check my map. Thank you for reading and leaving me your comments. I enjoy the company.

Returning to my story, after I graduated from BJU, I taught in Christian schools in Florida, Tennessee and Hawaii before returning to teach at Bob Jones Academy (BJA). In Florida, I taught elementary art for one year, before I was offered a job in Tennessee teaching every elective a Christian school can offer.

The year in Tennessee was full of arguments with my family. Well, maybe I should rephrase that - my mother and I argued. She struggled accepting my attendance at West Park Baptist Church (WPBC), the church the family had left because the music was too contemporary. When my family first started attending WPBC, the church was part of the community of christian fundamentalism. The pastors had attended BJU, all of the music came from fundamentalist publishers, AWANA clubs were offered, there was weekly visitation and yearly revival services and missions conferences. On top of that, the church was growing so quickly that new buildings were continually going up. Slowly, through my teenage years the leadership introduced soundtracks into the worship service. The organ was played less and less, eventually being replaced by a digital keyboard. An orchestra joined the keyboard, guitars joined the orchestra and finally came the drums. For my parents, the drums signaled the beginning of the end. In their eyes, WPBC had compromised its purity and was sliding down the slippery slope of evangelical Christianity that ends in apostasy. As a family, we were happy there. We made friends and were an integral part of the church family.

I knew that my parents were deeply troubled by the music in the church and toyed with leaving for a couple of years. One night during those years, I overheard my grandfather counseling my father to leave WPBC before he lost his other kids. My grandfather used the word lost to describe me. According to him, I was lost because I was openly rebellious. My rebellion took the form of obeying my parents' rules while arguing that they were too strict. Nothing more. The rules governed every area of our lives, including our clothing (no pants in church), entertainment(no movie theatres, one youth group activity per month), television viewing (Andy Griffith, but not the ones in color - because he lies on those shows), music choices (classical, fundamentalist christian music), and curfew (ten o'clock, all the way through college). My grandfather's counsel won out in the end and my family left WPBC.

We came home from church one Sunday evening in early January, my senior year of college and my father called a family meeting. We were told that we were leaving WPBC effective immediately. The instructions included a ban on telling any of our friends. I was furious and stayed up most of the night completing a drawing for my senior art show. The piece was called 40 Frogs, and it fit my mood. I colored hard and fast, my hand cramping, while comparing my life to the Egyptian's plague in Exodus. Two days later, I returned to BJU to finish my senior year. During that semester, BJU refused to allow me to become a graduate assistant.

Skipping ahead a year, I moved from Florida to Tennessee and began attending WPBC again. My mother felt betrayed by my choice of churches. She wanted to know what was going on at the church, but when I would tell her, she would get angry. Sundays seemed to be the easiest day to get into an argument. I don't remember the arguments being over anything substantial, but my mother was hurt by them and she eventually asked me not to come home for Sunday dinners. The school I was teaching at decided to switch to a computer based curriculum. All their teachers were terminated at the end of the school year. Little did I know that this difficulty would result in a two year stint in Hawaii and rebuilding the relationship with my family. Funny how 5,000 miles makes family bonding so much easier.