Leaving the Faith of our Fathers:

I was eleven the night I pulled my sin-ridden body toward the altar to beg for God’s forgiveness and mercy once again. 

While the choir hummed, “Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me,” the preacher, his voice, earlier calm and measured, now ramped it up to an emotional high. 

“If you don’t get saved tonight, you might be killed in an automobile accident on the way home. Then, you’ll burn in hell forever. Your mother will look down from heaven, and see your flesh burning, but she will feel no compassion or sadness for you. There’s only happiness in heaven. Do you want to take that chance? Come to Jesus tonight! Know the joy of loving the Lord! Or burn in hell forever!”

Even then, I couldn’t quite picture my mother happily sitting on a cloud in heaven, not giving a thought to her daughter roasting in Hell.

The Northwest Nazarene Church in Nampa, Idaho was our church for the first years of my life. We went to Sunday morning and evening services, Wednesday night prayer meetings, and sometimes special services. The summer tent revival—when all five of the Nazarene churches in town joined together and brought in well-known evangelists to preach – was a highlight.

That warm summer evening in 1950 began with a family picnic. Then it was on to the revival. My four siblings and I looked forward to the meeting because the crowds were large, we could slip away from the service, run with other kids, peek in the back of cars where teenagers were making out, startle the neckers, and run away laughing. The thrill of escaping the oft-repeated story of sin and redemption, these were our delights. We could still hear the service going on in the background. 

As children, if we tried to explain what we’d been taught in church, we always reduced everything to the lowest common denominator. In the parlance of my peers, churches were rated on how much freedom they allowed. It went like this: Catholics can do anything—stay out all night, mess around, whatever. The next day, they go to confession, say what they did, buy a candle, and are forgiven. Some Protestant churches were what we called, “Once in grace, always in grace,” churches. Confess your sins and ask for forgiveness once. You were pretty well covered. But in our church, you could sin in word, thought, or deed at any time and when you did, you were headed for Hell. 

I guess I was born into the wrong family!

These were the only churches I knew at the time. By the time I was eleven, we started attending another church, which taught us about a “kingdom” message, later known by various names, such as the Christian Identity Movement, which believes that the White Europeans who settled America were the lost ten tribes of Israel, destined to settle this land and start a nation. The Jewish Conspiracy—the moneylenders—were the Synagogue of Satan. They controlled much of health care, education, entertainment, banks, the government, so we could not put our faith in any of those establishments.

At that time, I was fine with all that. What did I know? Nothing at all about any faiths other than Christian ones. My mother presented these ideas in a benevolent fashion. We were to be a servant nation to bring the world to the Christian God. Heaven would be on Earth. 

When I moved away from home, talked to people with different beliefs, read books, thought about it all, I began to question these beliefs. Belief in the Bible or God is based on faith, not fact. Did I have that faith?

I perhaps would never have written this book except for political events in recent years. I remember the anxiety spreading through me when I heard protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 say, “Jews will not replace us!” 

I’d always thought that the beliefs of the Kingdom message, which I learned as a teenager, were held by a tiny number of people, so small as to be inconsequential. With the Charlottesville protest and the January 6th attempt to take over the U.S. government by many who proclaimed themselves to be White Supremacists, I was jarred to realize how wrong I’d been, and the terrible consequences possible when one race and one religion holds themselves to be “the one and only” and wants that to be the law of the land. This land. Think of the Taliban, of all countries where politics and religion are one and the same. Think Afghanistan where women are forced to wear outfits that cover them completely and aren’t allowed to go to school.

I had to share the stories I’d written over many years. Poems and stories in which what I believe changes as time and experience has impacted me. The faith I have now is in my own experiences. That brings me fulfillment and joy. I don’t have to worry if what I’m reading, writing, or experiencing is contrary to any religious pronouncements.