Escaping God- Part 2
After my parents resumed regular church attendance, life was very different for us all. I was 4 years old and scheduled to begin public kindergarten. School shopping consisted of browsing dozens of stores looking for jean skirts, culots (split skirts), and and long dresses. Sometimes my mother would recruit the help of the older ladies in the church and they would sew these items for me. My hair was completely uncut and hung down my back past my waist. Although these things seem trivial and even vain to mention, they served the purpose of creating an "us vs. them" mentality, not only in my own mind but also to my fellow schoolmates. I remember feeling self conscious at recess when attempts to swing or climb the jungle gym were overshadowed by the possibility of my underpants being exposed. Not only were these restrictions impractical, I feel they were also the root of my lifelong battle with self-consciousness. No child wants to be the odd-man out, and I was no exception. The church was very fond of 1 Peter 2:9 which says (KJV, of course): "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people: that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." I was taught that we were privileged to know the truth, and that being different both inside and out was a necessity.
We attended church frequently, Sunday-school on Sunday mornings, Sunday evening service, Wednesday night Bible Study, and usually a Tuesday night prayer meeting. We never. ever. EVER skipped church. If we were sick, we still went. If we were on vacation, we would find a church in the area, even if it meant an hour long drive. Sometimes these churches were tiny store-fronts whose 10 members would turn around in their seats and stare at us as we walked to our metal fold-up chairs. Even on off-nights my mother would try to find some revival service for us to attend, possibly a tent revival or a youth service. We would drive hours to get to these services and would get home well after midnight. There are many points to be made about our frequency of church attendance. Religion can be a drug. The more one consumes, the greater his addiction becomes. He needs it to get through the day, to feel good about himself, to achieve a maximum spiritual experience. I was always warned that failure to gather in the house of God meant a swift decline in my personal relationship with Christ, and so we would gather to get our "fix" as many times as we could.
Saturday mornings were reserved for outreach. My mother would take me to the church where she would pray in the sanctuary for roughly an hour while I played in the fellowship hall. After that, she and I would drive into a poor neighborhood and invite people to Sunday school. I can't explain to you how awkward it was as a child to be coaxed and pressured into inviting strangers to church. Most of the time we were promptly rejected by adults, but it was common for groups of bored children to decide they wanted to go and we would pick them up the next morning. I don't remember ever going to gated communities (even if the gate was open). We mainly targeted poor black neighborhoods whose parents would willingly send their children with us to Sunday school. At one point we were picking up so many children that the pastor purchased an old passenger van and appointed the only black man in the church as the bus driver. After we had a steady group of black children attending Sunday school, the Sunday school teachers requested that the children be allowed to stay for the Sunday morning worship service and sermon, which was held directly after Sunday school. Everyone agreed that these children needed exposure to "the power of the Holy Spirit," and so, for a few weeks, the children were allowed into the service. These children were not quiet, they were not clean, they were not accustomed to sitting in church, but mostly, they were not white. It wasn't long before complaints were arriving on the pastor's desk. Someone had threatened to discontinue his tithe-paying if these children were allowed to continue "disrupting the service." The children were not allowed in Sunday morning service any longer, and eventually they all quit coming to Sunday school as well. This greatly angered my mother but, with no other churches nearby who upheld the specific doctrine of the UPCI, we continued our attendance.She would rather attend a church pastored by a weak racist than lose her salvation by attending a church that taught false doctrine.
My own childhood experience with the church went quite differently. Every summer I would attend youth camp where hundreds of other pentecostal children from North and South Carolina would gather together and be taught about how sinful and bad we were. Days consisted of church and classes, and nights were filled with sermons detailing our sins and how we could be saved from them. Children as young as 3 years old would weep and cry out to God for salvation. We would crowd around the altar and sob uncontrollably while ministers would lay hands on our heads and encourage us to "let go and speak in tongues," which is considered the initial evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit. I was 8 years old the morning my best friend was "filled with the Holy Spirit" and I was quite jealous. All the adults were praising her and everyone seemed so happy. That night during altar call, I tried my very best to receive the same. I snotted and wept until the words coming out of my mouth were a garbled mix of words and stammering. The adults were screaming, "That's it! You got it! You got it!" They were so proud of me although inside I felt no differently, I had not even spoken in tongues. Upon returning home, I was baptized outside in a horse trough and was given a certificate of baptism. I was a bona fide, born-again, holy-roller, tongue talking Christian at the age of 8, or so everyone told me.
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