Deconstructing My Religion (Part 2)
Why I'm fairly certain I am NOT a Christian
(A photo of my grandparents taken during Those Happy Golden Years.)
THOSE HAPPY GOLDEN YEARS (1967- Early 1970’s)
I was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on a Sunday evening. The day of the week holds great significance in the story of my life - at least, that’s how it was told to me. More than once my grandma explained how she had skipped church on a Sunday evening to be at the hospital with my mother when I was born.
But let me back up. My grandpa was the preacher at the little country church in the North Georgia mountains where my dad met my mom. My dad was more interested in my mom than he was in church. Eventually, the free-spirited mountain boy eloped with the preacher’s daughter. About 14 months after they married, I was born.
My Daddy wasn’t a Christian. Try as they might, my grandparents could not convince him of his need to “be saved”. When I became very ill and was hospitalized, my daddy changed his mind. The nurses’ efforts to reduce my fever with medications and baths were unsuccessful. Fearing for the life of his infant daughter, my dad “asked Jesus into his heart”. Daddy never said he made a deal with God, but I did hear him say, “I knew if I didn’t get saved, then Tammy would die.” Soon after my daddy prayed, my fever broke and the crisis passed.
My grandpa left the little mountain church in Georgia and accepted a position at a small church in DeSoto, Missouri when I was around six months of age. Soon, my parents joined them in the little town just south of St. Louis. My baby brother Jimmy was born about three years later.
Jimmy and I were frequently with my grandparents in the church building. In many ways, it was a second home to us. Often, my grandmother took us with her when she was working in the church. We had no problems entertaining ourselves! I would sit in the big chairs on the stage where my grandpa and the song leader sat during services. The chairs looked like thrones, and I pretended I was the queen. I loved the baptistry and the two adjoining rooms, one for men and one for women. Sometimes the big, metal tank was full of water and I wanted to swim in it. My grandma didn’t let me swim in the baptistry, but let me go inside when it was dry. I would stand looking out through the big window, down into the church sanctuary, wondering what it was like to be baptized.
Sometimes while playing in the church, I banged on the piano and tried to play the organ. Other times, I stood where my grandfather stood, behind the pulpit, and wondered what it was like to deliver a sermon to an attentive crowd. (I never pretended to be the preacher though, because girls weren’t allowed to be preachers.) There was a pretty lady with short hair and short skirts who played her guitar and sang songs on Sunday mornings. Her eyes were bright with makeup and her eyelashes were long and dark. She reminded me of someone famous and I liked to pretend that I could sing like her.
My grandpa would let me play in his “study”. The walls were lined with books, his desk was big, and his chair had wheels. I could spend a long time rolling around the room in his chair and he kept mints in his desk drawer. I could eat as many of them as I liked.
There was a finished attic space above the sanctuary with a window where one could look down. That was my favorite room. There were boxes of things in there and sometimes my grandma let us look in the boxes. One day, we found an old Teddy Bear which Jimmy kept forever. It became his favorite toy.
Sometimes my grandma would let Jimmy crawl up the steps. Patiently she would carry him down and let him do it all over again. I ran up and down the steps as fast as I could. I wanted to prove I was “bigger” and could do more than him.
On church days, there was an air of excitement, acceptance, and joy in the church. The empty building where my brother and I played was full of happy people. We often spent additional time with our friends attending baby showers, wedding showers, birthday parties, picnics, meals, and other outings.
Things changed for me when my grandparents accepted a church position in North Pole, Alaska. My parents found a new church after my grandparents left Missouri. I was very young, but aware that the new church had strict rules. There were rules about how women were to dress and how long a man could grow his hair. They had rules about music and what preachers were welcome in the pulpit. They talked badly about Southern Baptist and I didn’t understand. My grandpa was a Southern Baptist and he was good. The preachers loved to repeatedly declare that the church was “Independent, Fundamental, King James Version Bible-believing Baptist” and their sermons were long. The Sunday School teachers were also different from what I had previously known. I had never really known a fear of God previously.
One Sunday, the teacher told us to bow our heads and close our eyes, I could only stare straight ahead. I was confused and thinking about all the things he said. I was scared of going to hell. The teacher came to me after the class and asked if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart so that I could go to heaven when I died. Of course, I wanted to go to heaven. I said, “Yes”. He showed me some verses in the Bible and asked me to pray, which I did. Then he told my parents that I became a Christian.
My becoming a Christian seemed to make my parents happy and I liked making them happy. They told me that I could get baptized, and I liked that as well. I would finally get into that big metal tank when it was full of water and I could begin taking “The Lord’s Supper” which had previously been off-limits to me.
(2025) WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH NOW?
I recently began questioning why our current political climate is causing me so much angst. Bishop Mariann Budde’s comments to Donald Trump didn’t trigger me, but rather the division among Christians and the way that has been elevated. I don’t believe the divisions are any more extreme than they have been at any other time in history. It’s just that many of us are invested and focused on them at this time. It feels like I have been an observor of battles fought in the name of Christ my entire life. As I considered this, I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that I could contextually tell my entire life story by observing it through the lens of my religious upbringing.
From birth, I was taught that God’s influence is over everything: he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. I learned early of God’s judment and was taught to greatly fear “not being ready” to meet Him either in death or with the “Second Coming of Christ”. I was also taught that “everything happens for a reason” and “God uses everything that happens to us as a spiritual lesson”. Of course, I was also taught that Jesus loved me and that God was full of mercy and grace. However, even as a child and young teen, I struggled with how a God of grace and mercy could be so exacting and cold. What kind of “Loving Father” intentionally directs heartache toward His children to teach them valuable lessons? These lessons I was learning were setting me up for a life of pain and abuse, not only potentially within the church but also in my personal life.
Segments of this story are dark, but as you can see from the stories I shared of my grandparents, there was light and love as well. It’s a dirty process to sift through the muck to find the gold, but I have gathered beautiful pieces from the story of my life and I hope to share those with you as well. While my relationship with the Divine might not look anything how it began, my faith never waivered even when my religion crumbled. Sometimes when I am fearful and all the legalism creeps back into my thinking and I wonder if I will be punished for asking questions and seeking the answers, I am gently reminded that this process of deconstruction takes an even greater faith than blindly believing the things I was taught.
I John 4:16 KJV
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
(Scripture shared from the KJV which was the only translation allowed in the Independent Baptist Churches I attended from age seven through eighteen.)
Note:
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