I was converted to Christianity during my senior year of high school back in 1951. After a year at Washington State University I transferred to little Westmont College in California in order to study for the ministry. Words cannot express the cultural and psychological shock I experienced when first adjusting to a totally fundamentalist environment. I had not been raised in a church environment at all and was converted while involved in a small Young Life youth program. I had no familiarity with the Bible, Christian hymns, and Evangelical customs, etc. Both the 300 member student body and faculty were comprised entirely of wonderful, fully committed fundamentalists.
Noone ever swore, smoked, drank, or danced, all of which I had been doing for years. They almost all sang on tune and only Christian songs, none of which I had ever really heard. They all knew a great deal about the Bible (King James version), Billy Graham, and we were not allowed to go to movies. Needless to say, I was way out of my element. Nevertheless, this is the path I had felt led to travel and I was actually very happy amongst these my fellow students. Within these parameters they were indeed happy, interesting and positive minded youngsters. Moreover, I was going to be an important member of the college’s basketball and track teams, as well become really good friends with a good many of my fellow students.
Naturally, this juxtaposition of my former youth and this fundamentalist environment set me up for some awkward, difficult, but also humorous situations. Perhaps the most painful of these were during the singing of hymns in chapel periods. I had never sung a lick in my life, let alone been familiar with Christian hymns. So when it came time to sing together in Chapel services, those students around me, many of whom were becoming my best friends, had a great deal of difficulty restraining their laughter whenever I tried to sing the hymns. Moreover, my obvious ignorance of Christian things, especially of the Bible, frequently got me into rather embarrassing situations. Although I felt liked, I was also often starred at for my lack of knowledge of basic Christian items and customs.
In some situations we were expected to take turns praying aloud in the group, something I had never really done. I often stumbled and then quit. It was not as if my friends made fun of me, or anything like that. It was just that I so often felt out of place and dumb. I really felt like a stranger in a strange land. Fortunately, I made friends easily and many of the other guys on the basketball team made serious effort to include me in their get-togethers, etc. On Sunday mornings before going to church a small group of us team members would visit the city jail to sing to the inmates. I felt more at home there than I often did in the college chapel.
Slowly, over the months of the first semester, I began to feel more comfortable and of course grew in my understanding of the traditional Christian mores and practices. This was the warmest and happiest group of young people I had ever seen and it was a great thing to be accepted by them. Although the whole situation, being a small group of Fundamentalist Christians and attending what really turned out to be more of a non-accredited Bible school than a real college, was far from what I had expected, I stayed there four years and graduated as a full member of the community. I had come to love the school and my many friends.
After graduating I went on to earn a couple of Master’s Degrees and a Doctorate Degree. Even though I have moved a long distance from the theology I was taught at Westmont, I still cherish the way my fellow students embraced me, as well as a few others, as a member of their community. Westmont was a small, simple, and in many ways a stultifying place to try to get an education, but it was where I first experienced genuine Christian love. Theologically it was truly something of a backwater place, but for me at the time it was an introduction to what Christian faith is all about. It was there that I first saw genuine love at work among people of different backgrounds and received my calling to become a Christian professor. A funny paradox, indeed.
6 responses to “A HEATHEN IN HEAVEN”
That’s quite a tribute to Westmont. It’s interesting that some of these small colleges with limited academic resources produced many future successes in grad and professional schools such as yourself.
A very special tale, Jerry. And as I remember, for me that time in my life,
away from home, knowing no one, finding friends and realizing, in my case,
that people could be cruel, was quite an experience as I entered college. I may have grown up in a kind and generous and church centered situation much like you described in your college, but then was dropped into a meaner situation for which I was entirely unprepared . Both experiences are vivid, even at this time in my life, in my 8th decade! I hope I learned something from each!
Hey Nancy – I’m sure you did learn a lot – and it shows today :O) What college was it? Paz, jerry
Upon a re-read, I admit that what started as a direct response here morphs into several further thoughts, as I’ve imagined conversation with you. So I hope a conversational response is welcome. 🙂
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The joy you describe finding in the Westmont community is a joy I’ve known, too. But, probably like you, I know a darker side of religious community, too.
I know the joy from the community outside of Albany, NY that my parents joined when I was about 5 years old. The community started in the mid-70s as a movement within a Catholic parish where an assistant priest supported by some soon-to-be ex-parishoners was excommunicated for offering communion to non-Catholics, among related grievances. The community thus born continued to embrace all kinds of people — a rich array of ex-nuns, -priests, and laity, along with seekers artsy, cool, musical, and eccentric, and the rest of us. It interpreted the Gospel as calling us to help those in harm’s way — perhaps especially harm our taxes pay to perpetrate. They believed that God wanted the community to sponsor as many Nicaraguan teenagers as it could, including Sandinistas in the crosshairs of the Contras, to come to college in the U.S. That turned out to be about 20 individuals.
I am grateful for half a decade worth of especially formative years with those young Nicaraguan men and women. There was a great and dynamic flow of love in the community that surrounded us. Maybe in some ways, it was similar to what you describe at Westmont.
But within 10 years of inception, that community was de facto hijacked through a merger with another community in which — ironically — right-wing political Evangelicals held sway. I remember one leader from that group inviting the church to watch and discuss a pro-Ronald Regan video after one service; I remember joining the church at Planned Parenthood in protests against abortion; I remember joining the church at Albany City Hall opposing proposed renter protections for homosexuals. I remember gay members leaving the church and others seeking in futility to “pray away the gay.” (Al Franken’s “Supply Side Jesus” presents another face of our new American Jesus, who gained sway in that community, too, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8xU-gKK17A.)
I had enough ability to interpret experience by then to be surprised by the hateful turn. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but to a perhaps shameful degree participated in it. Going through that planted deep seeds in me — seeds which you, Jerry, helped tend as my struggle to disentangle from fundamentalism unfolded. 🙏🏻
But how could that community’s transition from a prevalent spirit of love to the rule of a spirit of hate have happened? In the case of THAT community, I think its free-flowing spirituality and openness to “the gifts of the spirit” (and maybe its negative dialectical entanglement with Catholicism?) made it easier to parasitize.
But those are arguably not the only causes. It’s NOT just that community: A lot of Evangelicals have by now proven to be pretty low-hanging fruit for Trump. Might there not have been a whole wave of stories of churches shifting from what we might think of as “real Gospel” (offered by an embracing community) to hijacked Gospel (offered by an othering community)? Or maybe many were always that way. But from what I understand, there’s a slew of evidence that Evangelicals stand out from other religious groups in the U.S. for their embrace of Trump and of unsupported conspiracies. https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/february/white-evangelicals-qanon-election-conspiracy-trump-aei.html
One possibility is that the correlation is a fluke. I doubt it. Another possibility is that there’s something about (some of? all of?) these communities that makes them vulnerable to manipulation. I think that’s hard to deny for at least many “Evangelical” and/or fundamentalist communities, and, as you probably know, I tend to suspect a lack of support for critical thinking in those faith communities to be a big part of this. But it would be a good critical thinking move on my part to check for evidence that I’m wrong, evidence that might lead to recognizing important distinctions between groups that pollsters lump together. For instance, a hypothesis I haven’t seen pursued by the media (or by me) is the one I hereby pursue now: Perhaps some “Evangelical” communities are showing resistance to manipulation, even under the assault of propaganda. Data about such communities could in some measure undermine the poll-driven stereotype of Evangelicals-as-a-whole as more gullible than other population groups. It might be many but an important “not all.”
I’m too ignorant when it comes to stats about religious demographics to weigh in with any authority. It looks, for instance, like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America plus Episcopals comprises 2.4% of our nation’s population, and United Methodists another 3.6% — and their denominations recognize reproductive rights. All together, that’s 6% of the U.S. population. Big whoop? Even they aren’t all LGBTQ+ friendly. Are we leaving out major Christian demographics? Yes, protestants as a whole are, in fact, more supportive of reproductive rights (not as much as the general public, though), and nor do protestants GENERALLY exude that fervent love you described. It would actually be startling in some communities. And white evangelicals? They’re LEAST supportive, as a group, of reproductive rights (https://religionnews.com/2022/05/06/survey-white-evangelicals-oppose-abortion-other-religious-groups-support-it/). All of this both leads me to suspect a baffling lack of support for (and perhaps attack on) critical thinking across a spectrum of groups, and also suggests a failure to meet a standard of empathy I look for. Plus, although I’m seeking the most favorable statistics, I can’t say even of the groups that make the cut as resistant to right-wing hate generally exude the love you described that made such a difference to you, that helped shape your idea about what the Gospel meant.
Do fill me in, though, on the legit curve-busting data points you know about. I know a UCC church that could become a candidate community, but maybe some anabaptist or other groups are. I don’t know. My experience leads me to doubt there are many “little engines that could” which can claim both the love-fervor you described (with staying power) AND inhospitality to the politics of hate (with staying power). Which leads me to wonder whether it might be idiosyncratic to those communities that check all the boxes rather than something that can be found in Evangelical — or more generally Christian — communities per se. I can’t say I personally know ANY such communities that support these things AND critical thinking in general, with no exclusionary walls around a canon. I am hopeful that this just reflects my ignorance.
But as to those religious communities — Evangelical or otherwise — that display immunity to hateful spiritual pathogens, where does that non-susceptibility come from? Part of me wishes it came down to being a community truly powered by love (which might require that each ego has a pretty open channel to agape). That’s not generally going to be the case, as it wasn’t ultimately my experience of community. Perhaps it is historically rare to find in stable form the kind of inspiring healthy love you wrote about, and that I tasted in an unstable form. Maybe such love is inherently unstable (emerging here and there, then disappearing), and even less likely recoverable in our cultural milieu than in others — especially given that in ours, identities are shaped by social media (another, more Kierkegaardian discussion!).
On the more optimistic “other hand,” IF there is a feature which, in addition to genuine love, DOES help immunize religious communities against hate, what is it? I’m especially interested in hypotheses with multiple supports as opposed to one-offs based on tenuous support (e.g., “having dynamic Wednesday night home groups just like church X does it”). But I’m interested in any that display sustained 1. support for critical thinking, 2. embracing love, and 3. resistance to hate. Most groups that come to my mind display two of those characteristics.
It would be great to hear that there are religious — perhaps even Christian — communities in which such love not only exists but persists and preserves itself, and that in those communities, there is also support for critical thinking that does not exclude doctrine from inquiry.
Would such communities be religious?
Okay, I cease rambling!
♥️
Hey Bren – its not rambling :O) VERY thoughtful and accurate account of things – especially of your own upgrowing. Two things seem prominent to me: 1) there is an important difference between “evangelicals” and “fundamentalists” – the former are often much more open to change and “liberal” ideas. Among the colleges that might be mentioned, for instance, Westmont has changed from the latter to the former, as has Wheaton. Likewise for several churches we have joined, both presbyterian and catholic. Secondly, our current times are much more fluid and diverse than were the churches and schools of yester-year. Populations and areas have grown and changed a lot. Its tuff to label folks as groups these days. Paz, J
Thanks, Jer. The slipperiness of labeling reinforces (for me, at least) the idea that if “Evangelical” is going to be a polling category, it’s worth looking inside it it for “important distinctions between groups that pollsters lump together” — perhaps, for instance, groups showing greater openness also show resistance to manipulation.
Hugs!