Chapter 1: Fundamental Doubts

It was late in the evening when I sat down, as was my recent practice, to open my books. I was a graduate student and a mother of two young children, so time alone was precious and rare. But when the kids were in bed and the homework was done, the evening was mine. From ten o’clock or so until the early morning hours during those days I would cavort shamelessly with the great minds of the ages, communing with my deceased mentors across time and space. They were there; more real than the worn recliner and the ticking clock, and I devoured each word with a hungry fascination.

This affair of mine had been going on for a couple of years at that point. It started when, in a doctoral class, the professor introduced me to the “Great Books” idea developed in the 1920’s and 30’s by a group of prominent academics, including Mortimer Adler, Robert Hutchins, and John Erskine. The idea was that the best learning happens when students are placed in direct contact with the greatest minds of the ages by studying the books these minds produced. Out of that idea came “Great Books of the Western World,” a 54 volume collection of the works within the western tradition that were deemed “mandatory reading” and upon which the core curriculum at the University of Chicago had been built. Having taken my undergraduate education at a Bible training institution, my reading list had been very limited, with many great books being implicitly banned. So this idea of the great books grabbed me; and after arranging to do an independent study with the professor, I sat out to read the Great Books of the western world.

That is when the illicit affair began. It may sound silly to speak of a reading program as an “illicit affair,” but I had been raised, and trained, as a religious fundamentalist. For fundamentalists, the Bible is the only book on the mandatory reading list, and the central icon of faith. It’s like a sacred marriage, this obsession fundamentalists have with the holy scriptures. One must take the Bible, forsaking all other sources of or claims to truth, and never turn a wandering eye until death seals the marriage for eternity. Ironically, this marriage becomes death -- the death of philosophical play and transcendent speculation, which are the very things that make life rich and textured for the intellectually robust. At Central Bible College where I had taken my undergraduate studies, students were gravely warned against playing with fire; fire being the empty ideas of men which would certainly lead us into delusion and ruin. Many of my old associates would attest that this is indeed what happened to me. I soon found that, having denied myself the extravagance of the great books of history, I was ravenous; and my mind had indeed been set gloriously ablaze. The semester and the independent study contract soon came to an end; but my hunger was not satiated. I had found a sweet addiction that, over the course of a few years, would be the impetus for the transformation of my life and thought.

On that night I was reading a contemporary author, a book that I had found digging through the dusty stacks of the Dixon Street Bookstore. In “Living Myth” by D. S. Bond, I read these words:

"It is an odd thing to fall out of a myth. It is like standing on the shore and looking
back in astonishment at the myth from which you’ve so recently emerged, a beached whale lying in the summer sun. Only yesterday you were in the belly of the whale with no idea just how contained you really were, just how much larger the vast sea could really be. Seeing your life now from outside the myth, everything upon which you had formerly stood is revalued, in an instant. And great sadness, like waves rolling along the sand, washes over the realization that such a living body, such a thing of beauty, should lie in silent rigor, exposed to time and long decay until the tide should seek the moon and beat away the bones to untold depths" (Bond, 1993, pg. 27).

I sat for a moment, completely exposed by the raw emotion of the paragraph. I read it again, slowly, and a tear began to roll down my cheek. Here on paper was the deep, ineffable sadness of a solitary seeker. The truth of discovery is that, although wildly exhilarating, it expands you; pushes, pulls, twists and changes you. One day you stop and realize that you have come far on your journey; far from the place you once knew, the home that once embraced you, and the very flesh that once nourished you. There on the road, solitary against the vast expanse of wilderness that calls you on, it is not unusual to glance back and long for the large, warm pulsating body of home, knowing all the while that life has changed – that you have changed—and the safe, true place you once knew is now only a memory.

Looking back, I realized that I had come far indeed.

I was born late in 1961; during the days of Camelot and right before the 60’s revolution. My world during those early years was a world of crisp cotton dresses and banana curls, Barbie dolls, Betty Crocker, and Church, the overarching theme that tied everything else together. My sister and I spent the long summer days playing barefoot in the grass, milking the cows with grandma and exploring the woods just behind our house. In the afternoon as the sun slipped behind the trees, we’d dart in and out of the mist created by the garden hose as my mother watered the garden. I loved the sensations of the water on my face and the mud in my toes, and those late afternoon frolics in the water were delicious to me. Too often, though, they were cut short as my sister and I were hurried in the house to trade our play clothes for matching cotton dresses as we got dressed for church. That we would be in church on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights was a given; but there were also revival meetings and social activities that punctuated the days and provided a scaffolding on which all the other activities of life were arranged.

It was during one of these evening revival meetings when, at 6 years old, I made the all important walk down the aisle to meet Jesus and implore him to snatch my soul from the fires of hell. I don’t remember much about that night, except that there was a lady missionary speaking, and she played a beautiful song on the piano that sounded like hundreds of ringing bells. At the end of the sermon, she was pleading with us, recounting once again the precarious position we held, balancing on the edge of the abyss. This was especially significant for me, since I had been hiding a terrible secret for months; I had committed the unpardonable sin.
One of the great paradoxes of my childhood was the juxtaposition of the sunny, idyllic days to the dark, terrible nights. In many ways, it was the juxtaposition of God as love to God as the angry, hell-stoking tyrant – a paradox with which my six year old consciousness struggled with. And it was the idea of hell that seemed to form the backdrop of my religious reckonings during those early years.

I’ve heard hundreds of sermons that dealt with the unspeakable horrors of this awful place. While its popularity as a subject among most of the preachers I heard in those early years no doubt had something to do with their conviction that most of the people they knew going there, I suspect that another driving factor was the deliciously dark and evocative imagery it provided. For a movement that would later sponsor “record burning” events, where kiss and AC/DC records would be tossed into the blazing bonfires as church members prayed and swayed on the sidelines, the sketches of hell conjured up by its ministers were more frightening than anything Gene Simmons could ever have invented.

I’m sure that these images found their way into my psyche very early, and were emblazoned deep into the sub-conscious mind long before my powers of recall had been developed. The first conscious memory I have of a confrontation with hell came on a day a few months before that walk down the aisle; that fateful day when I sinned a grievous and unforgivable sin.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and my sister and I were playing in the hallway, re-enacting a scene we had watched earlier on morning cartoons. My sister was a prison laborer, and I was an overlord cracking a whip. Repeating the words I had heard from the cartoon oppressor, I yelled “you fool!”

My mother was in the bathroom rolling her hair in pink plastic curlers. When she heard my words, the curler stopped rolling in midair. She turned to me with a look horrified disapproval, and said “don’t you know that the Bible says that he who calls his brother a fool is in danger of hell fire?” In one defining moment, I saw my six year old soul cast down into the fiery pit that had been so brilliantly illustrated on the canvas of my mind. My mother, no doubt, thought that a positive teaching moment had occurred. What she didn’t realize was that she had pronounced a damnation upon my soul – a damnation that would haunt me in the still darkness of the night ahead, and every other night for years to come.

My parents thought that I had a terrible fear of the darkness. I wasn’t afraid of the dark. . . I was afraid of the hell that burned in my mind when the house was quiet and I was alone with my thoughts. My mind would conjure up the fire and drop me in the middle of it. I would imagine the pain that would go on forever and ever; not only the pain of melting flesh, but of suffering alone, without mom, or dad, or any of the good people at church to witness my torment. Sometimes I would sneak into my mother’s room and climb in bed beside her, seeking comfort from the images.

It was with this unbearable burden of transgression weighing on my heart that I made that walk down the aisle that night. I threw myself into the arms of Jesus, imploring him to save me in spite of my blasphemous utterance. Fundamentalism is quite effective in transforming sensitive 6 year old spirits into guilt-ridden, weary old sinner souls.

While I had been told that this act of repentance would save me from eternity in the fiery pit, I found to my dismay that I still returned to the terrorizing image of hell in the still of the night. The older I got, the more odd it seemed to me that folks could listen to a sermon about the horrors of hell and then moments later, laugh and joke in lighthearted fellowship as they feasted on fried chicken and potatoes at the potluck dinner. The juxtaposition of the ultimate concern for lost souls before 12:00 and the apparent obliviousness to the immanent destruction of friends and family after 12:00 is another one of the bizarre contradictions that would eventually lead me to question the mythology of my childhood.

Soon after I walked the aisle, I was baptized. It was Sunday morning, and we had changed the location of the worship service from the church house to the banks of the Tavern Creek. I waded out into the water with the other baptizees, and the water was cold and alive. It pulled at my dress, but the frock had been secured with a safety pin between my legs to keep it demurely in place. The small but enthusiastic congregation stood on the gravel bank and I watched, half frightened and half curious. My teeth were chattering and my heart racing when I felt the pastor’s hand on the back of my head and saw his other hand coming toward my face. I felt the hankerchief cover my nose, and in an instant I was dipped below the surface of the water and lifted back up again. As I sputtered and spat and wiped the creek water from my eyes, I could hear the shouts of the saints rising from the bank. Some were swaying, others crying, but most had their hands in the air; some were shouting “glory!” and others spoke in tongues, that Pentecostal “language of heaven”. Whatever the expression, it was clear that they were celebrating my conversion; my baptism and my escape, through the grace of god, from a life of sin and depravity. All at just six years of age.

It may seem like yet, another contradiction, that a religious culture that held so much terror for a child could also be the source of nurturance and the bosom of safety for the same child. In truth, there are few groups who do familial affiliation and care better than fundamentalist religious communities. According to Wuthrow (1998), fundamentalists are “dwellers” rather than “seekers.” While seekers are always exploring and expanding their religious understanding, dwellers find safety in inhabiting a familiar religious space. For fundamentalist dwellers, faith is about sharing a space – a very familiar, protected space – with others who see the world in the same way. These spaces are havens of familial relationship, close knit communities where the outside world is kept at a safe distance.

When I think back over my childhood, almost all of the rites of passage and the moments of self-definition happened within the context of my faith community. Social events and holiday celebrations revolved around the church, and the youth group offered an array of activities that buffered teenagers from the outside world. In fact, for many kids raised in a fundamentalist religious culture, the youth group is the primary social context during the formative years. Our church basement was the party center for not only our youth group, but many of the kids from neighboring congregations as well. We had fifth quarter parties after every ballgame, game nights during the long winter nights, and skating parties to connect us with kids from other churches in other towns. There were youth retreats, youth camp in the summer, youth convention in the winter, and youth rallies every month. During those early years, social life and spiritual life was a seamless continuum. My faith was not an aspect of my life, it was my life; and the parameters were closely guarded by the “brothers and sisters” in the congregation. For me, as for fundamentalists in general, the faith community was the ground from which all “meaning and purpose” arose; the context within which all life experiences were interpreted” (Hood & Hill, 2005).

I knew early on that I wanted to be a preacher. My first “sermon illustration” came to me soon after that walk down the aisle. I was playing outside on the sliding board – trying to climb up instead of sliding down. I pulled myself up the slick metal surface by grasping the sides of the sliding board. Upward I struggled until the metal rails at the top landing were within my reach. I grabbed hold and relaxed my tense muscles, letting my legs dangle down the length of the slide, my body being held aloft by my firm grip on the handles. “hmm. . .” I thought, “this is how it is to be saved. You have to hold on tight, or else you’ll backslide.” I thought myself quite clever, and knew at that moment that my life’s work should be to proclaim the message of salvation, to help lost souls get hold of the God handle and hold on for dear life.

Elementary school was for the most part typical and uneventful, except for the constant feeling of being an “outsider.” This outsider pose is an identity that fundamentalists embrace. How often I heard from the pulpit that we were “set apart” from the world; how often I was admonished to “come out from among them.” For the fundamentalist, life was lived in two different realms; the Church and the world. The realm of “church” was where God lived; but the world, and all that was in it, was the realm of Satan.

One had to be on guard constantly for subtle attacks, or pitfalls into which you might fall quite innocently. I sat on the sidelines during square dancing week in 4th grade physical education class because dancing was banned by my religion. Make-up was suspect, and school activities occurring on Sunday or Wednesday nights were out of the question. It’s hard to be really comfortable or to form close friendships when you are in enemy territory.

Convinced of immanent destruction and determined to make amends for my early transgressions, I entered high school with focused devotion. My life revolved around two points of identity; athletics and God. Afternoons were spent on the court or the field, running, sweating, pushing and playing hard. Evenings and week-ends were spent in the bosom of my church family. During the summer, I would spend weeks at youth camp – one week as a camper and the other four as a worker. Even though the pay was less than one dollar per hour, I loved the weeks I spent working in the dish room. For six hours a day I’d be in the basement of the mess hall, standing at the mouth of the giant belching, steaming, growling dishwasher with the rest of the dish crew. The guys would scrape and load, and the girls would pull out the steaming hot trays of porcelain bowls and silverware, wiping each one and stacking them securely for the ride back up the elevator. Bowls clicking and silverware clanging in the hot muggy air, we flew through an endless procession of trays, anxious to finish the dishes and get to the docks for a few hours between meals.

The campground was situated on an elevated cape that reached into the warm waters of the Lake of the Ozarks. It was a beautiful site, with shaded cabins lining the edge of the cape and gravel roads snaking its surface. A grand tabernacle, the centerpiece of the campground, dominated the neatly manicured point of the cape. The swimming docks were situated on a quiet cove on the west side of the cape. This was our daily destination as we made our way down the gravel path, long-legged Barbie dolls in neon bikinis, oversized towels and shampoo bottles in hand. While the unfortunate campers sat through Bible classes and craft sessions, we’d bask in the sun and swim in the sun-warmed waters all afternoon. Just before time to head back up the hill, we’d gather for the final ritual. Taking up the shampoo bottles, we’d squeeze generous mounds of the blue, green, or amber goo into our wet hair and work it into a fruity, frothy, chemical meringue. With our hot, toasty bodies topped off with a dollop of foam, we’d take one final plunge into the lake. I can still feel the sensation of my sun-warmed body suspended in the cool, watery womb of the lake as I dove deep beyond the reach of the sun, my fingers sliding through the soft clean hair as I nudged out the last traces of the shampoo. It was a delicious end to a delicious afternoon . . . a sensuous prelude to the evening of spiritual delights that awaited us in the all important evening service; the reason for the whole camp experience.

After dinner and another shift in the dish room we rushed back to the dorms, where box fans hummed in the windows and girls chatted and swarmed, passing off curling irons and make-up as they slid into summer dresses and cork-heeled clogs. When the feathered bangs were finally in place, we headed out the door and down the gravel road, converging with others on the pilgrimage to the large white building at the end of the point. By 6:45 the tabernacle was alive with anticipation and a bit of sexual tension as teenage boys in crisp, clean shirts and slick hair, still wet from the showers, made plans with the girls for post-service “dates” before finding their seats in the gender-segregated pews.

The service began at 7:00, kicked off by the worship leader, a small man with boundless energy and a booming voice who lead us in choruses. . . mantras set to music with driving beats, catchy melodies and words lifted right out of scripture. These we would sing over and over, hands clapping, drums and piano pounding, until the energy in the room was thick and electric and the entire group was united in a mystic euphoria. When finally the guest speaker stepped to the microphone, the crowd was primed and ready.

The topic of the message that followed was always anticipated, as the “formula” for youth camp was predictable from week to week. Monday night was “rededication” night, where those who had slipped into worldly lifestyles since last year’s camp would be encouraged to repent and rededicate. Tuesday night was salvation night for first year campers, and any “demons” that had come along for the ride were handily cast out of hard-core campers. Wednesday night was “consecration” night, when youth who felt the “call to ministry” would be urged to come forward and commit themselves to God and their destiny. Thursday night – the final night of camp – was always “Holy Spirit” night.

With demons evicted, lost souls saved, and a whole new crop of future ministers consecrated, it was time to get everyone speaking in tongues. . . evidence that they had received the spiritual fill-up necessary for life in the world. After an hour of choruses and a rousing sermon on the necessity of being “filled with the Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues,” the initiation ceremony began.

All those who were already filled would be called forward to line the center aisle on both sides from the back door all the way down to the altars. Those who needed the “infilling” would then be instructed to form a line at the back of the building. This line of inductees would then make their way through the gauntlet, eyes closed and hands in the air, while those in the prayer line lifted their voices heavenward in a chaotic chorus of unintelligible sound. When the initiates emerged from the human tunnel that ended at the altars, the expectation was that they had received the blessing and would be speaking in tongues. If this hadn’t yet happened, they were instructed to kneel at the long wooden benches and “tarry” until the blessing came. While the altar services were long every night during camp, the altar service on “holy Ghost” night was always exceptionally long, continuing on into the early morning hours as the most dedicated souls continued to pray and tarry.

In describing the “formula” here, my intention is not to make light of the experience. For those who have never been in a culture such as this, I’m sure the whole thing sounds strange, and perhaps even a bit cultish or bizarre. In truth, practitioners of mystic religion have always appeared strange and bizarre to the general public; but that general perception does not mean that mystical worship and practice is invalid or uninspired. Mystic faith seeks to encounter the infinite divine, the supernatural; therefore, it is bound to appear unnatural to onlookers. I do not discount mystical experience; but what bothered me as a teen and continues to bother me today is the formulaic nature of the experience. Walter Terrence Stace (1952) says that “either God is a mystery, or he is nothing at all.” When we reduce the mystical experience of the infinite divine to a carefully orchestrated sequence, then I fear that what we have created is a description of mystical experience that becomes the experience itself – whether the infinite divine is present within it or not. It would not be questions about the reality of mystical experience, but these larger questions of forms and definitions that would continue to rattle around in the depths of my mind as I went on college and later, into the world to attempt to fulfill my call.

During my senior year of high school, I began the process of selecting a college; not a small task for one raised within a Christian fundamentalist community. Higher education is a topic that is often met with a high level of ambivalence among the brothers and sisters. While most give lip service to the value of a college education, a thread of anti-intellectualism runs deep in the psyche, and believers often fear that the college environment is one in which liberalism, atheism, and downright hostility towards the faith is rampant. It is secretly feared that education will lead to doubt and apostasy – the total abandonment of the faith. While some may see these fears as irrational, the truth is that anti-intellectualism has been and continues to be inherent in fundamental Christianity, a theme that will be taken up more fully in the next chapter.

While this thread of anti-intellectualism and separatism was rarely touted outright, it was implicit in all the discussions on college and “secular” learning that were carried out in the various church sponsored youth meetings. Most of my mentors during those discussions agreed that it would be best to attend a church sponsored college where I could get a “Christian” education; and, given that I had felt the call to ministry, I focused on those colleges that were narrowly dedicated to ministerial training. After a short year of rebellion – attending a Baptist liberal arts college where I could play softball – I gave in to the call and enrolled at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri; the flagship institution for ministerial training within our own denomination.

Central Bible College was a small institution, only about 1200 students at the time I attended, but pulsating with a passionate intensity; a powerful energy that resonated within me the first time I set foot on the campus. I began at CBC in the spring semester of 1982 and would complete my bachelor’s degree in Biblical studies 2 and ½ years later. During that 2 ½ years, CBC was a hot house for spiritual growth and discipline that would feed my god-hunger in a deep and satisfying way. In the cloistered environment of CBC, the security of a black and white faith kept its students safe and warm, untainted by the technicolor complexity of the world outside.

Central Bible College was a great place to be, and I still look back on my time there with fondness. After 4 years of intensive study, many of the students were sent out into congregations across the nation; beautifully tended greenhouse flowers of fundamental faith. It is not a bad life, not for those who are content to spend a lifetime within the walls of the church, feeding of the bones of the Whale. But for those of us who crave the rich, earthy peat of the real word, who dare to read the forbidden books and think the forbidden thoughts, the cloister eventually becomes a prison. While CBC encouraged my spiritual growth, the parameters of that growth were narrow and clearly defined.

For some of us, the pots are very early too small. We push into the soil, seeking the bedrock of reality. Instead, we hit the bottom of the pot – man made structures that restrict us from going deeper. This is a painful dilemma. Root-bound and dying, we must choose to stop growing or push against the pot; exploding and shattering that which once protected us. And for that, we will never be forgiven.

And so I had pushed against the pot with stacks of wonderful, wise words from those outside the fundamentalist world. When the pot shattered (as it always does), the earth as I knew it fell away. Free-falling in the bright sunlight, I began to see things as I never did before. And this was the second great, unpardonable sin that I have committed in my life; I dared to question the sacred truths of the denomination. What I found was, that upon close and painfully honest scrutiny, the “fundamental truths” that had been handed down to me began to fall like a domino trail. As I conversed with the greatest minds of the ages, God as Truth became larger and brighter, more mysterious, complex, and utterly desirable that I had ever imagined him to be.
But to my dismay, as my mind opened and dominoes fell, the doors and hearts within the faith community of my childhood began to close. I found myself in exile. And that was the reason for the tears on that night. I cried from the heart of sadness that Abraham must have felt more than 2,400 years ago, walking around in foreign territory, living in a tent; missing the comforts and familiarity of Ur, but knowing that he couldn't go back. Not now, not yet; not since he had heard that voice on that fateful day.

I can’t say that I hadn’t been warned of the fate of the seeker; In fact, I remember the day well. It was sometime during my doctoral program, and I was sitting at the computer. I was working on a paper, but my mind was wandering, still engaged with my intellectual cohorts from the night before. Then, as if in a waking dream, I found myself suddenly transported to a high ridge in desert scrubland. I was watching Abraham, and Lot; but I was Lot and Abraham was God.

"Choose" he said.

"Choose What?" I, as Lot, said.

"Choose your path," God as Abraham said. "YOU must choose your path.”

I looked in one direction, and there was the green, well watered plain. I knew in an instant that life would be comfortable there. They knew me down there; I had proven myself and life would be predictable, prosperous, and probably capped off with some nice gold stars from my colleagues.

I looked the other direction. It was rough; mountainous, vast, rugged and untamed -- but as much a part of God's creation as the well-watered plain. And it called to me. God as Abraham heard it call to me, too. "It'll be hard. Your colleagues won't understand. The terrain is rugged and unchartered for the most part. You'll have to fight for every foothold." then God as Abraham whispered, “but if you go, I’ll go with you. . . and I’ll give you as far as your eyes can see – and your mind dares to reach.”

It wasn’t a choice really; it was a wonderful invitation. “I want to know truth; whatever it is and wherever it takes me.” In that moment I surrendered completely to the journey. And God did not disappoint.

That decisive moment took place more than 10 years ago. This book is a chronicle of the truth I have come to know, truths that are still being sought out and shaped in my heart and mind. This book is about my journey out of fundamentalism and into a new understanding of God and faith. This book is written for all those who have been called beyond the safety and tradition of the plain; for all those who wander in exile, searching alone for the next step in their evolution of faith.