Department Of This Is Neither Here Nor There,
But Now It’s Here
Some Well-Meaning Person ® didn’t deserve the answer they got when they asked this question about my sleeping schedule:
WMP®:
“So then, you get up at the crack of dawn?”
Moiself:
“It’s more like I get up at the butt crack of dawn.”
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Department Of The Mormon Witnessing Story
Not as in, moiself witnessing to Mormons, or Mormons trying to witness to moiself (hmm, department of, this department needs a better title?). This story involves me being a witness to some folk who were attempting to “witness” (read: condemn and harass) a local Mormon congregation, which I somehow manage to link to the story of what happened to my offspring when they visited relatives for a weekend.
Background for the Mormon witnessing story: a Cliff’s Notes version of why happy heretic moiself and MH used to be members of a Christian church, and took our children there regularly, for many years. I’ve known for decades – as far back as when I was a stellar Lutheran Sunday school student [1] – that I am not a religious believer. However, similar to the experience of many “I-knew-I-was-gay-in-the-third-grade” LGBTQ folk, I mostly kept my non (and even anti-) religious thoughts to moiself, as there were few-to-no options or role models when it came to being out of that particular closet. It seemed obvious to moiself, even/especially as a young’un, that myth and superstition ruled the world; thus, the choice (which children don’t have, until they fledge) was to align yourself with the denomination with the least whackadoodle worldviews.
MH once explained to a friend, who’d questioned MH on his political registration as a Republican despite MH supporting so many causes antithetical to true conservatives, that he felt a duty to support moderate viewpoints within an influential institution that seemed in danger of slipping even further to the right. [2] A similar analogy applies as to why MH and I took our children to a church.
More than one friend or family member has asked moiself, why did I [3] join a Christian church ( a very liberal/progressive one, but still, a Christian church) and take my kids to it for years, despite knowing for as far back as I remember thinking about such things (if not for all of my life) that I was not a religious believer? Well….when MH and I were preparing to have children, I realized that not that much seemed to have changed since I was a child: religious ideas still seemed to run the world; thus, I wanted my kids to get some firsthand knowledge of it…even as I viewed it (religion) in terms of a disease. That is, my participation in religion and allowing my kids to experience and learn about religion was done from a medicinal POV.
Yes, really.
Part of the reasons MH and I joined a church and stayed for so long (until our children were ages 12 and 9, respectively), is that we wanted them to choose or reject religion from knowledge, not ignorance. Despite (or perhaps, because of ) my conclusions as to the false premises of religion, [4] I wanted K and Belle to have an opportunity to learn firsthand about religion. I thought it was important that they understand religion as a common human/cultural expression and institution, but also important that they be kept free of the repulsive ideas common to most religions, such as they would either be rewarded in a heaven or punished in a hell based on what they think about religion ( thus we joined a “liberal” Christian denomination, the UCC [5] ).
We did it as a form of inoculation; we wanted K and Belle to get an education about our nation’s dominant religion, but not in a church where they would hear theologies of condemnation and damnation for those who didn’t agree with cognitive absurdities certain theological tenants. Frankly, I thought it was (and still think it is [6] ) better to expose your children to a relatively benign form of Christianity, like that of the UCC (United Church of Christ denomination) or the Liberal Quakers, than to completely avoid religion. I have heard this practice referred to as the smallpox theory of religion: exposure to a mild form of religion is likely to inoculate your children against more virulent forms of religion. If they didn’t get a mild dose of religion when they were young they might catch a more extreme form of it later on.
So: I was a member of a weekly morning book study group at that afore-mentioned UCC church. Over ten+ years the group read and discussed a theology/comparative religion Ph.D. student’s worth of books analyzing and comparing (and sometimes rebutting) religious history and theology. [7] One morning as the book group session was ending, a church member (who was not a book club member) stopped by to tell us she’d seen something she thought we should know about. The previous evening she’d read a newspaper story about a group of traveling evangelists who were holding tent revival meetings near the local fairgrounds, and after the meeting the leaders of the revival would go and “witness to” (in the form of picketing outside) churches that they considered to be heretical (Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others. [8] ) That morning on her way to work she’d driven on a road which passed the local Mormon church, and she saw protestors on the road outside of the church, holding up signs that….condemned the church and its members? She wasn’t sure; the signs were hard to read, and the road had no safe place to pull over, so she just slowed down and took note. She wanted to alert us as to what seemed to her to be an obvious case of harassment…and maybe we could do something, show support for those being picketed?
That piqued moiself’s interest; after I returned home from book group I did an online search for the news story and found pictures of the traveling revival group (members of a Christian denomination I’d never heard of). At first, I thought the pictures were historical…or just a case of someone playing dress-up. The group leaders – all male, of course – were attired in 18th century garb: black wide-brimmed hats, black duster-length jackets, black pants, black vests over white shirts, skinny bolo-style ties, and black boots.
Later that day, after picking up K from his preschool, I decided to drive by the Mormon church. Sure enough, there were five men who could have passed for Johnny Cash groupies or impersonators (except that they held signs instead of guitars), picketing on the sidewalk on the east side of the road, by the church’s front lawn. No other cars were on the road; no pedestrians; no sign of any occupants in the church (whose parking lot was completely empty). I pulled my car over on the west side of the road, turned off the engine and told K, who was sitting in the back seat, that I wanted to check something and would be back in a sec (he was engrossed in his coloring book; I don’t know if he even heard me).
I had no intention to debate theology (or anything else) with those Men In Black. I was simply and genuinely curious to find out what their signs said. What were they doing there, and why? Did they want to talk with actual Mormons, or just protest, or…? As I began to cross the street one of the MIB saw me, and began to march toward me. As I beheld his face, all comparisons to Johnny Cash (except sartorial) fled my mind.
The man’s eyes were dark, piercing, wild, burning with hatred; his neck veins were visible, purple and throbbing, and he snarled at me, his voice feral with rage:
“What are you doing?!?!?
Get back in your car! Unless you’re here to help, go away!”
I was taken aback, and tried to respond with a reasonable voice, the kind mental health intervention officers use to talk a potential suicide jumper down from a bridge.
“Everything’s okay…I’m just wondering what your signs say, and what you’re ….”
His voice took on an even more menacing tone as he shifted his grip on the sign he held. He wielded it like a sword as he approached me.
“GO AWAY NOW !”
Holy shit, I thought, is this looney going to brain me with his Mormon blah blah blasphemy blah blah child molester blah blah hell sign ? [9] I slowly walked backwards ( no way was I turning my back to this psycho ) and flung some vitriol of my own before getting in my car:
“Oh, go home and pray!”
I know, right?
The thing is, I was shaking as I drove home, and for at least an hour afterward. That encounter had triggered my fight-or-flight reflexes. It’s difficult to describe, but I’d seen it before: “it” being that look of righteous, bloodthirsty, savage certainty in that man’s eyes, and in the eyes of Nazi soldiers who were photographed herding Jews and other “undesirables” to a concentration camp; in the gleam in the eyes of the White mob smirking at the camera as they posed by the bodies of the Black men they’d lynched; in the leering, gleeful expressions of the faces in paintings and woodcuts of the priests torturing heretics and the pastors hurling charges of witchcraft against the women they were preparing to burn; in the news pictures of Rwandan Hutus holding the clubs they used to brain their fellow Rwandans (Tutsis) whom they called “cockroaches”… It is a look found in believers across many political and cultural spectrums but which is made even worse – even more deadly – in religious ideologies, which carry added weight via adherents believing they are follow the holy orders of a deity who holds their lives in its hands.
My body shook with an instinctual recognition of danger: of how that man’s eyes broadcast that he was doing the righteous bidding of his angry god, and he would have no problem crushing me if he thought I was in his way. It was the same shaking I recognized in the voice of my son K, several years later, when he told me about an incident he found disturbing, and frightening.
Dateline: Several years after that “Mormon witnessing” event. My sister (“YS”) had invited my son K and my daughter Belle to spend a long weekend with her family (her and her husband and their four children, two of whom are K’s and Belle’s respective ages). My kids didn’t see their cousins often (they lived 600+ miles away from us) and were eager to spend more time with them. As I helped my kids pack for their flight, I let them know that, seeing as how it was a weekend visit, it was likely that they would be expected to attend YS’s family’s church on Sunday. Both K and Belle gave long suffering, oh brother/the-things-we-do-for-family sighs. I knew YS and hubby held conservative religious beliefs, so I thought it prudent to warn inform my offspring that “their church is different from the one you’re used to…it’ll probably be no big deal, maybe even interesting…. And if there are things said or done that you find strange, just pretend to be cultural anthropologists: you don’t have to say anything, just observe, and take notes, on a new experience.”
That weekend, K the budding anthropologist got an eye-and-earful, and I got the latter, when K’s time at YS’s church was over. Under the guise of being homesick, K asked YS if he could use their phone to call me. He did so from the privacy of YS’s bedroom, and from his first two words I could tell that he was distraught. K spoke in run-on sentences; he was upset, something about YS’s church…. I got him to calm down, take a few deep breaths, and tell me what happened. What had he seen or heard that upset him? One of the things that bothered him the most, he said, was wondering about about his relatives: “Is this what they think, do they really believe *this*?
*This* turned out to be a basic tenet of almost all religions: Believing in our theology/scriptures/god is the correct and only way to believe, and those who believe elsewise are wrong, and doomed, and need “saving.”
*This* also turned out to be the focus of the Sunday School class K attended. [10]
K was in the Sunday School class with his same age cousin, “Oscar.” Just K’s luck, the class topic of the day was witnessing to non-Christians. Righgt from the get-o, K found the teacher to be a bloviating ignoramus. K sat in his chair, seething quietly, as the teacher
– described the many ways “non-Christians” are missing out on life and what will happen to them for “rejecting Jesus;”
-expressed his opinions-as-facts about what Buddhist and other “false religions” believe;
– told his students that it was the duty of Christian kids to witness to their friends, family and classmates in order to “save” them.
Several times K bravely raised his hand and, when called upon, challenged statements other kids had made which were demonstrably untrue and/or anti-science, or which made fun of other religions. [11] K also said to the teacher that it was unfair to label kids with heir parents’ religion, when kids aren’t old enough to understand or make their own decisions – after all, when it came to religion they had to do what their parents did, go to their parents’ churches… K stopped offering his comments when he realized that the other kids were staring at him, all except for Oscar, wouldn’t make eye contact with him.
The SS teacher told his Sunday school charges that, since it was their duty to witness to non-Christians, they needed to know how to tell if someone is not a Christian. Who had any ideas as to how to do that? Eager sheep religious bigots evangelists in training raised their hands to the heavens. “Oh oh oh, I know, I know – they’d be sinning!” one boy gushed. K was somehow able to stifle his snort of derision at that remark (they’d be sinning? Uh…specifics, please?) “Yeah,” another child chimed in, “they’d probably be mean, and do bad things.” “They’d look unhappy!” came another suggestion. “They’d be, like, saying the wrong prayers, Buddhist chants or stuff”…”They’d be sad, or angry, or….”
It went on and on, with the teacher (in K’s view) encouraging his students’ absurdities. But K had taken to heart one of my most sacred (ahem) teachings – that in the presence of ignorance and bullying, silence implies acquiescence. Alas and finally, he could no longer remain silent.
“You could just ask them,” K offered.
There was dead silence; all eyes in the classroom turned to him. The teacher asked K to explain; K replied that if you truly want to know what someone thinks or believes, you should ask them, instead of assuming.
This was near the end of the class; the How To Identifier A Sinner ® discussion continued for another minute, then the teacher led his students in prayer before dismissing the class. He asked the students to bow their heads and close their eyes and join him in praying for the strength to witness to the unsaved, and for a few other requests K couldn’t remember, and to ask (their) god to “touch the hearts and show the right way to the unbelievers among us.”
Observant unbeliever that he was, K left his eyes open during the prayer. He saw that when the teacher made the unbelievers among us remark, several students opened their eyes to take a peek at him, then quickly turned away and shut their eyes….but he’d gotten the message. As had I, when K told me what had happened. That S.O.B. bully Sunday School teacher had made my preteen son a target, as the object of a supposed “prayer of concern.”
We talked (translation: I let K sound off) for a long time. I told him how proud I was of him, and advised him, perhaps mistakenly, that if he was still upset about it, maybe he could talk to his aunt? He didn’t. Looking back, it’s probably good that he didn’t. After hanging up from that call, I was aching for my son despite realizing that what had happened to him was a valuable, Oy, Such is Life ® experience. I in turn had a milder version of his own shaking experience, as I began to recall similar incidents, including the one with that Raging Mormon Witnessing Dude.
It is viscerally unsettling, to be the target of irrational fear and anger and us v. them ideology, and to realize that something as seemingly innocuous as a Sunday school class can transmit the dynamic of otherness. It is a basic, almost instinctual fear, IMO, wherein such encounters you have a gut-level realization of the history of your species: people have been and continue to be judged, shunned, bullied, abused, and even tortured and killed by their fellow human beings because of being The Other/The Heretic/The Unbeliever. Something deep in my DNA recognized the look in that Raging Mormon Witnessing Dude, and understood the warning my intuition was sending me:
This is how ‘good’ people can, and do, go bad. Feeling so strongly about something – that this is what your god commands, and those who disagree with you are disagreeing with your god, and not only are they wrong, they are (possessed by) evil –this is how human beings eventually justify killing other human beings.
When my offspring returned from their visit I asked Belle about her experience at YS’s church. Being three years younger, the Sunday School class she went to with her same-age cousin was focused more on doing churchy-crafty things, and Belle told me that she really didn’t pay attention to “the rest of it” (read: any “god talk.”). Just as Belle did in her own church’s SS class, she ignored the churchy/Jesusy stuff and concentrated on crafting her popsicle stick recreation of Noah’s ark or whatever.
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Freethinkers’ Thought(s) Of The Week [12]
* It is immoral to brand children with religion. ‘This is a Catholic child.’ ‘That is a Muslim child.’ I want everyone to flinch when they hear such a phrase, just as they would if they heard, ‘That is a Marxist child.’
* Do not ever tell a child, ‘You belong to this religion,’ – that is child abuse.
* I am persuaded that ‘child abuse’ is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like…eternal hell.
( Richard Dawkins, British evolutionary biologist, zoologist, author,
one of “The Four Horsemen“)
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Parting Shot: I love it when/I hate it when…
I love it when a child has the integrity to challenge and speak the truth to those in power. This is how people are truly “saved.”
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May you know when to stand up to bullies;
May you know when it’s wiser to back away from a ruthlessly righteous bully;
May you rise at whatever time around dawn is best for you;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] I just got props for being a good student, even though Sunday School teachers didn’t give out grades
[2] MH’s political party registration has changed several times over the years (as has mine, although I’ve been “no party for over a decade now), depending on the candidates and primaries.
[3] and MH, although you’d have to ask him for his own reasons.
[4] Chief among those being that the natural world is the way it is due to a supernatural world.
[5] MH and I both were from families which were members of the most liberal Lutheran denomination, the ALC, which is now the ELCA.
[6] Which is why I’m in favor of comparative religion classes in schools – not teaching the rightness or wrongness of any particular religion, but merely the history and existence of various faiths.
[7] We took turns suggesting books; after I left the church, a fellow long time book study member said he wasn’t surprised, considering the titles and topics I always suggested.
[8] Basically, anyone who wasn’t them was on the wrong side of religion.
[9] The only words I could make out on his sign…there were a lot more
[10] I can’t remember if YS’s church, like many churches, had children and their parents present during the first part of the church service, then about halfway through (before the sermon) dismissed the kids to their Sunday school classes.
[11] Some kids made cutting remarks about Buddhism, Islam and other worldviews.
[12] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.
No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
