This past weekend, I went with a group of friends to see the movie Jesus Camp. A documentary about a religious camp in North Dakota for young evangelicals, Jesus Camp is filled with images of kids weeping, trembling, convulsing for the Lord. They speak in tongues, wave their hands around in spiritual ecstasy and say things like, “I became born again when I was five, because I just wanted more out of life.”
Some of my friends thought the movie would be a lark, but I found it distressing – and not necessarily for the obvious reasons. Yes, it feels weird to watch kids being manipulated by hyper-religious adults. It’s freaky and sad to see a new generation of militant, conservative religious fanatics being trained while still in pre-pubescence. But more distressing than all that was recognizing the kind of religious fervor I can still remember feeling myself, many years ago.
My family wasn’t a door-knocking, fire-and-brimstone kind of clan, but our brand of Southern Methodism was several degrees warmer than your average genteel Protestantism. We went to church on Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings and Wednesday nights (for choir practice), and I often slipped into the sanctuary when no one was around, to gaze meaningfully at the giant cross behind the altar. I also had a little portrait of Jesus by my bedside – you know the one, where he’s looking soulfully in the distance, a gentle glow behind his perfect Caucasian face and flowing brown hair – and would turn to glance at it before leaving my room each morning for school.
I wasn’t on fire for the Lord like some people in my school were, though I’d been known to tear up when listening to the end of Jesus Christ Superstar and once got mad at a friend for telling a joke where Jesus, hanging on the cross, calls weakly out to John and says, “I can see your house from here!” But everything changed when my brother, a year ahead of me in school, suddenly got Born Again.
He began carrying his Bible to school, entered into long theological discussions with his Dungeons and Dragons circle, and refused to play Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil” in his fledgling high school rock band. Eventually, he broke all his record albums and began listening only to the local Christian rock station.
As chronicled in earlier posts on this site, my brother never included me in his activities, to my eternal dismay. So when he came to me one day and said very seriously, “Lis, you need to give your life to Jesus,” I thought – wow! Here’s something we can do together! I asked him if he thought I should break all my record albums, and he said, “That would be so great!” He seemed really touched. I couldn’t wait to smash those suckers into pieces.
I took all my albums into the driveway and started breaking them one by one. Styx – Paradise Theater: Crrrrrack! Eagles – Hotel California: Crrrrrack! Bob and Doug McKenzie – Great White North: Smashed! Except that after I broke that one, my brother moaned, “Why’d you do that? You didn’t have to break that one!” Ooops. Got my signals crossed with the Lord. Sorry.
Over the next couple of years, my brother and I explored the paths of righteousness, for, um… his name’s sake. Or whatever. We both kind of figured that, if you believe this stuff, you pretty much have to go all the way with it. I mean, if you truly think people might burn in hell for all eternity, you can’t really do nothing about it, can you? So we each started working on our friends, trying to spread the Word.
By the time I graduated from high school, I was checking out local Pentecostal churches, trying to find one that felt like home. Fortunately my hometown — which in recent years earned the distinction of having the longest-running revival in American history — has no shortage of such bastions of charismatic fervor. I can remember being in one congregation while the music swelled, the people waved and spoke in tongues, and I looked around in awe. I didn’t sob or convulse, like the kids in Jesus Camp, but there was no mistaking the energy I felt coursing through me. This was the place.
I went back the following weekend, ready to commit my life to the Lord. I sat near the back, waiting nervously for the call to the altar as all around me, people swayed and wept. For some reason, I didn’t feel a part of it like I had the week before, so already when the call went up, I felt self-conscious shuffling up to the altar. A beautifully coiffed young preacher stood at the front, laying his hands on people’s foreheads and reducing them to blubbering wrecks. As he reached his hand toward me, I said, “I’m not really sure what I should be feeling or doing here. Um -” If he heard me, he didn’t acknowledge it. He just pushed my forehead roughly, and I stumbled back.
This wasn’t going as planned. I looked around, feeling silly, and glanced to the side hoping to see a door. Fortunately, there was one, and I slunk toward it inconspicuously, sneaking out as the church band continued to raise a holy cacophony. Once in the parking lot, I squinted in the light and shuffled off to my car. And that was the end of my flirtation with the Holy Spirit.
So, I never got to the point that those kids in Jesus Camp did. I did cry occasionally for Jesus, but only in a passing, how-sad-that-he-had-to-die kind of way. But watching the movie, remembering the fervor I once felt, and feeling amazement at how very far from that I am now, was an unsettling experience. Especially since my brother has stayed the course, home-schooling his kids and making the church the center of his life. There, but for the grace of… whom? go I.
wow. so many things i could say about this. i’ll limit to one anecdote: when steph and i were first together, in our early 20s, we still were church-goers for a short time. one of the things we were asked to do was teach sunday school to a bunch of 5-year-olds. watching up close the religious indoctrination of young kids (via songs, cartoons, bible stories, etc.) and seeing how controlling it was (“Heavenly Father will be unhappy with you if you don’t sit still and fold your arms”) was one of the things that pushed us over the edge. (Having kids of our own sealed it: we couldn’t justify saddling them with all that epistemological and cosmological baggage.) But i remember one kid in particular, a little girl, who said to us one day, in tears: “Daddy says if I don’t learn to read soon I’ll never be able to read scripture on my own and then I’ll never get a testimony of my own!” She was sobbing. Of course, she’s the same little girl who said, one day, “Mommy keeps taking all the pills out of the bottle and taking them and taking them until they’re all gone and then she has to go to the hospital!” Since church was such a huge part of our childhoods we’ve sometimes found it difficult to let go, though. Even when we moved to New York we threw it out to the girls and asked if they would want to go to the Unitarian church in Brooklyn. Anna, who as about 8, said: “Well, I don’t really think we’re really church going types.” Good enough for me.
Yeah, I’ve been surprised by the lack of comments also, especially given the quality of posts today, not to mention the fact that we have so many former Jesus Campers in our midst… Anyway, since this post deals with both religion and… well, camping (two of my greatest aversions), this post could’ve been titled “Not in my nature, part II.”
So, where are all the anecdotes about childhood Jesus trauma? (C’mon, people–I know you have some real doozies… By the way, I loved yours, Bryan.)
I wasn’t raised religious. My only serious exposure to religion came when my dad would drag me out of bed on sunday morning to attend whatever church his wife or girlfriend at the time happened to be attending. methodist, episcopalian, mormon (I’m told that, yes, my dad actually went to a mormon church a few times)–it didn’t matter. and if there was no wife/girlfriend in the picture, there was no church. And so I wasn’t really subjected to too much intense proselytzing. However, my scariest scared-of-burning-in-Hell moment came on the school bus, in elementary school, when some kid told me I was gonna “burn for eternity” if I didn’t take Jesus as my personal savior right away. At that age, everything always seemed so urgent, so I felt I had to do that right away, like I had totally missed out on this CRUCIAL event (and why didn’t anyone tell me this sooner… I could die right here on the school bus and then what?). I prayed that night, and not for a new bike this time. That summer, my grandparents coaxed me to make it official… I remember, though, not long after, feeling like I had been duped, not unlike that time with Santa… and the unicorns! But I can still remember that initial fervor of the recently indoctrinated…
And, have you come back to us for good, Lisa?
to be fair, jeremy, i think of my own childhood experience with religion as being less insidious than what lisa describes from the film. certainly there were communal pressures to feel a certain way or have a certain emotional response. certainly we picked up rhetorical gestures by rote repetition. we didn’t really have *camp*, per se, and we were taught to be *reverent* rather than convulsive. i also don’t think we had the urgency to be born again: there was no concept of original sin. we were scott free until we were 8. we certainly couldn’t have imagined being sent to hell as children. that said, i find religious indoctrination of children to be pretty troubling in general, even as i admit i’ve indoctrinated my children to be liberal humanists (which is sort of religious, i suppose, without putting god in the middle, though also more ecumenical than most religions). still, we want our kids to grow up 1) to be critical thinkers 2) to be tolerant of religious diversity and to celebrate cultural and sexual diversity (to be cosmopolitans) and 3) to be good community members. it’s a core set of values that conflicts with what most religions convey to children but we hope it gives them a more effective toolbox for living in the real world. jesus camp won’t last forever, though maybe it will now that we no longer have a constitution. and certainly it does in some parts of the country where specific religious cultures are the dominant cultures.
Hey everyone, sorry that the west coast seems to have disappointed everyone today. Does this say something, however, about an imbalanced, California-leaning preponderance of comments lately? I happen to think so…but we all get busy.
I loved this post and have my own “childhood Jesus trauma” to share, if you like. My parents divorced when I was six and my brother and I spent every other weekend, some vacations, and even whole summers at my dad’s place. He was a great guy in so many ways; he taught me to paint still-lifes and instructed me in the rules of tennis. He was also into motorcycles, rock and roll, and occasionally, cocaine. He lived with his new wife, Jane, who I loved because she “boogied” instead of danced and taught me Beatles’ lyrics and how to snap my gum. We all stood in a circle on the day that John Lennon was shot, holding hands, having a moment of silence.
But I think the cocaine naturally caused my dad to “swing” through moods and one of them was heavy guilt, which led to watching late night televangelists on TBN, specifically, Paul and Jan Crouch (here’s a pic of Jan: http://members.tripod.com/~anxietyny/jeezusjan.html), and getting born again, not once or twice, but countless times. It was arm-chair religion, easy redemption for my dad, and it eventually affected us all, including my step-mom, who, like Lisa P., broke all of the suddenly-tainted rock and roll records my dad had collected (including Styx “Paradise Theater!”). I was especially shocked when I saw the two halves of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which my dad had made me listen to on the head phones so that I could experience its “full effects.”
What happened? My brother and I got on our knees in front of the TV to be saved along with the audience during one midnight hour. Paul and Jan sent each of us a “born again” certificate through the mail, saying we were saved by Jesus and my step-mom framed them. I was proud of my relationship with God and bought a children’s Bible. We all tried attending church on occasional Sundays, too, but, you’ve probably guessed by now, it didn’t stick. My dad reconciled himself by becoming a pot smoker instead of a coke addict, bought a new LP of The Wall, and told me to work on the light reflections in my still lifes. I don’t know what happened to my certificate or my children’s Bible, but I will forever love the song “Mother,” Satan or no Satan.
Hey, this is the third time my comment hasn’t showed up on the right hand main page listing! Weird. I also would like one of you editors to show me how to do a proper link on the whatsit so I don’t look so ignorant with all that html. xo.
Hi, Lisa. I happen to have a note on this point already prepared:
“Hey all. Quick note on links. If you’re a TGW contributor and not logged in to your account and you include a link in your comment, your message will end up in “moderation.” You can push it on by logging in, clicking on “comments in moderation” and marking it as approved. (At least I think all contributors have this option.) Or, if you’re already logged in, the comment with link should post just fine. Also, it’s just more aesthetically pleasing if you use the little button with the diagonal arrow on the comments toolbox and embed the hyperlink rather than simply cutting and pasting it. Then again, I’m not sure if that toolbox appears the same way to Mac users as PC users or Firefox vs Windows explorer, etc. Anyway–just thought I’d throw that out. It explains why Adriana’s [and now Lisa’s] comment showed up a couple rungs down the ladder. I caught it only after some other comments had gone up.
love you all — bw”
Short answer: get your photo and bio to Dave and demand to be added to the contributors page and “authors” e-mail list!
ps Lisa T: i loved your story!
Well, I was raised by atheists, but that never really stopped me from getting paranoid about my eternal soul. In 7th grade one of my fellow misfit friends found god, along with a few other teens in a sort of “up-with-people” youth group. He broke and/or buried (buried!) all his rock records, too. (I remember he had every album by The Sweet there was.) He passed out pamphlets that had short graphic stories about central characters either getting saved or damned.
Those things really did scare me, but not enough for me to rebel against my parents (!) and attend the born-again meetings my friend invited me to. He never really seemed very happy about his salvation or anything, just like he was trying to find a group to fit into, but even then didn’t quite jibe with the others. (There’s one that connects to Bryan’s teen aliens post.) Eventually, he went to a Christian college, dropped out, started taking drugs, and lived, well, just as dissaffectedly everafter as he would have in the church.
I still get wigged out when confronted by someone testifying or threatening damnation. A couple Halloweens ago, Jen and I went to a re-creation of a Hell House here in LA. It was very campy and ironic (it’s Hollywood, people, not the South!), but I still found myself sweating at the thought of spending eternity in a steaming cauldron. Strange, because I never ever ever got anything like that from my family.
hey — i’m going to a hell house in a couple weeks! i’m so looking forward to it. i don’t know which room will be better — the abortion room, the AIDS ward, or the liberal ironists! (i swear, the liberal ironists have their own room in the hell house!)
bryan… we had a jesus camp! and when i was at camp, filled with the holy ghost, i broke all of my cds one by one… blink 182… snap. pearl jam… snap. nirvana… snap. but i’m glad i was only 15 and didn’t have the collection i have now : )
wow. i never heard of such a thing — and in my own family! i think my dad’s eternal willingness to hang onto his own old rolling stones records, even if he went through moments of ambivalence, left me a lot of leg room not to feel too guilty about cassette tapes of the sex pistols. they did ask me to keep my yaz tape to myself in my bedroom, though, because they didn’t like the version of the lord’s prayer.
lane — didn’t your brother destroy a record collection in a spectacular way? what a sad, sad thing. not the worst thing religion has produced on this planet, but record destroying makes me want to cry.
The saddest part was that among the records was an original “stamped” Apple label version of “The Beatles” (white album).
My brother has since repented of his fervor and is quite embarrased by this event.
am i making this up, or did he shoot them? someone tells a story about flinging records up over the edge of a canyon and shooting them, skeet style.
I want to go to a real Hell House, not an ironic version. Is there one in Jersey or PA somewhere?
Nathan’s comment made me think back. We did have weeklong daycamps for “youth” (12-18, or 12-16, or something like that). Perky blond extroverts from Utah came down and sang Mormonized Christian pop (some of which they’d written themselves!) and gave workshops on “creative dating” — things like a group of guys asking a group of girls out and arranging a scavenger hunt with a picnic and homemade pies at the end. “See!” went the subtext, “we can have fun with the opposite sex without touching their private places!” (As you can imagine, the hormone level at these events was off the charts.) There was always a really intense “testimony meeting” where you’d be overcome by the Holy Ghost and talk about how much the Gospel meant to you and (if you were a girl) how much you loved your friends. And there was a dance or two at the end of the week where they’d play Depeche Mode and I would awkwardly ask a couple of girls to dance and even more awkwardly swing my arms around New Wave style. I credit those youth conferences, as they were called, with developing my irreverence — you just couldn’t take the whole thing seriously as a manifestation of any kind of Divine will; it was too heavy with cultural Utah Mormonism. Still, I spent years, even my first couple of years in college, trying to follow the scripts I’d learned at youth conference regarding the opposite sex and and a feel-good, salesmanlike spirituality.
I was put through nothing so intense when I was five or eight or ten, though. Thank …?
All this record smashing is killin me!! What the HELL does that have to do with God? If there were a God he would love rock and roll! Bryan, I think you’re thinking of John Entwistle in “The Kids are Alright” taking down all his gold records off the wall and shooting them, as the deep bass fairy’s voice tells him “You Will Play Carnegie Hall.” Anyone?
Jeremy – Yes, I’m back for good. Finally got the book project back under control, hurrah!
LT – I LOVE this story. Particularly the image of you and your brother kneeling in front of the TV to pray. That’s what I call salvation.
Steph – The breaking records thing was explained to me thusly: Whatever doesn’t glorify god profanes him. So, if song lyrics aren’t specifically worshipful, they’re harmful. On the other hand, instrumental music was somehow deemed okay, so I spent about six months listening to the “Chariots of Fire” soundtrack over and over because I couldn’t stand the Christian rock station. And because I was reading the book Helter Skelter at the time (yes, I know this makes no sense from a “glorify” point of view), now whenever I hear the soaring strains of that Vangelis theme song – duhhhh duh-duh-duh duhhhhhhhhhhh duhhhhhhhhhhhhhh – I think of mass murder.
Glad to know there are multiple other album-smashers out there! I only had about 8, so it didn’t take long.
Wow. That binaryabout the albums is SO “if you’re not with us you’re against us.” Coincidence, GWB? I don’t think so.
I haven’t yet seen Jesus Camp, we live in the four to six month time warp of DVD release date/Netflix cultural relevancy, but loved the Hell House documentary.
My favorite part is the guy who notes with pride that the (absurdly long and involved) web address he spray painted on the wall of the rave room-rave’s being well known for their URL grafitti-was of course his own.
I don’t remember much religious/secular tension in terms of someone wanting to burn my Kiss records as a kid. I mean, it was the 70’s in SoCal, Mom and Dad were rock and rolling on the couch (well…not mine but you know what I mean) and too busy to spark up any bonfires for my bitchin’ vinyl collection.
But I do recall record destruction in terms of a rock vs. disco dichotomy. Anyone else remember that promotion at a major league ballpark where they burned disco records?
How’s this for an image-I was at the local skating rink (yeah, I know) and the hulking older teen in front of me is sporting his concert jersey t-shirt with the words “death before disco” and a picture of a knife or sword going through a disco ball. I didn’t feel bold enough at the time to ask the tough guy how defiantly rawk he felt skating in a circle with 10-year-olds like me while listening to Journey.
Lastly, will own up to the whole Jesus Camp thing as being so other than me that I can truly relate to it only as a joke or an abhorrent form of child abuse. It interests me what good thoughtful tolerant types can truly stomach-guns were clearly a turn off for many of you but this kind of hateful indoctrination is near the top of my incomprehensible offenses.
And yes Bryan, there is a circle of hell for liberal ironists. It began for me in November of 2000…
At TGW convention, can the entertainment be Dave swinging his arms around awkwardly New Wave Style? Please.