Old Redneck has a diary up about the Palin-Graham connection and as I read about Billy Graham's "(reformed) cokehead son" I recalled, quite vividly, my own experience with evangelical christians, and how they changed my view of religion.
Snarkily, I refer to myself as a "recovering Catholic - guilt-free for over 30 years now". What I actually believe, when it comes to god, is that he/she is a metaphor for the self. I don't know if that makes me a secular humanist, an athiest, or an agnostic, and really, the label is not important. Spirituality is, in my opinion, an individual endeavor.
As I implied above, I grew up Catholic. I went to a parochial elementary school, was a kick-ass altar-boy (the altar boy in ski boots on Sunday nights during ski season, as my parents would drag us to church on the way home from the mountain after a day of skiing--a trade-off for getting first tracks in the morning. I often wore my ski boots since they were leather lace-ups and a pain to get on/off, so I put them on before the drive up to Mt. Shasta and took them off when we got home. Some Sunday evenings, there'd be only one altar boy, so I'd trudge down the aisle and join the other altar-boy with the 'neck-slicer'(catch tray) to help the second priest with communion.), was in the choir, all that jazz. The nearest Catholic high school was 30 miles away, however, and as my older brothers had all gone to public high school (and done bad things like smoke cigarrettes), my parents decided that a Baptist school in town might be good for me.
Grace Baptist Church had a K-12 (Grace Baptist Elementary/Liberty Christian High) school with maybe 300 students in the combined institutions. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" wasn't just a cute saying to them, it was an obsession. Corporal punishment was the preferred method of dealing with any insurrection. (It turns out, many of the kids there were 'troubled'--kicked out of public schools, drug users, on parole, etc. but had parents with a little cash who could afford to send them to this high school. There were good Xians too, of course, but not a lot of them.) For example, one teacher was a Mr. Shirley. All the kids called him "Shirley-baby" and seemed to get along with him. In my first week of school, I made the mistake of assuming that I, too, could use this nick-name and I called, "hey Shirley-baby, pass me the ball" during a soccer game in PE class. He immediately stopped, called me to the side of the field, and escorted me into the storage shed where the football, baseball, etc. crap was stored. He left me there for fifteen minutes while he went to get the vice-principal (the principal's wife). He then brandished a wooden paddle and gave me three 'swats' for disrespecting him while she smiled down on me. It wasn't the last time I got swats--I was given them several times that year for even more minor infractions.
Back to the 'evangelical' nature of this school. Being new to LCHS, I kind of wanted, and needed, friends. I met a girl who I thought was cute, so I introduced myself to her. I said, "Hi, my name is Sean." She replied, "Are you saved?" I said I didn't know what that meant, and it was several minutes before I learned her name. I actually ran into her in college years later and she'd matured into a reasonable human being(i.e. she lost that noun-verb-jesus speaking style that most kids and teachers at LCHS had) and we were pretty good friends for a few years. Other kids were more up-front. "You're a Catholic. Catholics are idol-worshippers. Catholics are all going to burn in hell." This wasn't just something the kids said in their simplistic interpretations of what 'saved' meant...the teachers said this too. When I tried to explain that the statues were merely representations of the saints and not actual idols we prayed to, I was repeatedly shot down--one teacher claimed to be a former Catholic, so I had no authority to speak of my religion.
Wednesdays were "Chapel" days. It was kind of like an assembly-meets-teabagger rally. We'd gather in the church, Pastor Roberts (no, not Oral) would come out and speak for a bit, there were prayers, a pledge to the American flag, and a pledge to the Christian flag (irony, anyone?), more prayers, way too much reading from the bible, and a lecture about saving our friends from the fate that awaited heathens like myself. During one of these rallies, as we talked about hell (a popular topic) and how everyone who wasn't saved was going there, I had the opportunity to ask the pastor, in open forum, if there might not be some wiggle room.
"Is it possible that god loves everybody?" I asked.
"Of course, God loves everyone." replied the pastor.
"Is it possible that all religions are right--Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics, Baptists--and that there's no wrong way to believe in god?"
"No. The bible says...blah blah blah" replied the pastor.
In short, he said it's all about John 3:16 and if you didn't accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior (and abandon any other religious doctrine) you were going to hell. This, as you can imagine, didn't sit very well with me. I was only 14 years old, mind you, but I was struck by the pettiness of it all. I said, "I find hit hard to believe god would punish someone for all eternity just because they didn't believe in this exact way." Yeah, there were swats that followed, but not officially for that remark. I was swatted for telling the person behind me in English class to stop talking to me during a lecture(i.e. I was talking in class), I had a girl pass me a note in Bible, for which I got swats (i.e. I was passing notes)...and the teachers pretty much treated me like garbage (and I was actually a pretty sweet kid, though a bit of a class clown).
Another thing that didn't help me with this school was my attending Monty Python's "Life of Brian"...when I got to the theatre, the pastor, some teachers, several students from my class, etc. were all out in front of the theatre with signs protesting the movie (seriously!). They saw me and said, "Hey, Sean's here to protest too!" I said, "No, I'm here to see the movie." and walked in with my brother...they were shocked, SHOCKED! I tell you. They even told me I shouldn't go in. I told them it was Monty Python and those movies are funny.
Anyway, the swatting continued for several weeks. To survive, I 'feigned salvation'...yes, I lied to these assholes and at a combination rally with another Xian school in town, got up on stage, forced some tears out, got on my knees, and got 'saved' by some guy who claimed he used to be a roadie for Janis Joplin (hey, I loved her music). The change in my treatment was profound. The swatting stopped almost immediately, though I did earn it once when I was asked to lead the class in the pledge to the American and Christian flags as the teacher left the room. After the American pledge, I got most of the 18 kids in my freshman class to do a nazi salute to the Christian flag as we recited the pledge...I didn't think about the ramifications of it--I was only 14 for chrissakes--but the teacher came in to see us all with arms outstretched and those were the most severe swats I got all year--five or six of them. Looking back thirty years later, and looking at the behavior of the Bachmann/Palin crowds, I think I might have been right in getting those kids to extend their arms up like that.
But I was done with god after that. I figured if all religions besides Baptists were wrong, then so were the Baptists. When I studied world mythology in college, I realized that gods are common in all cultures, and none are more right or wrong than the other.
As Xenophanes wrote, "If horses could paint, they'd paint gods as horses."
Okay, I've rambled enough. Happy Thanksgiving everyone, whatever it is you give thanks to.
(Fuck! It's Xenophanes, not xeophanes...thanks to codairem for pointing out my typo). Oh well, I didn't think my diary was complete without saying 'fuck' at least once.