a lifetime journey

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

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. 

When children try to explain the theology developed over centuries by men, it was mostly men, they always reduce 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. 

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 believed 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. I was an ignorant teenager. 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. 

However, as I grew into adulthood, I would challenge these beliefs, while maintaining good relationships with my siblings. We shared a past and from our togetherness as children, we had bonded.

Belief in the Bible or God is based on faith, not fact. I’d begun questioning the beliefs of my family almost as soon as I left home, in my early twenties, but had still managed to keep peace with the family, though it was strained at times. This became more challenging starting in about 2015 when White Supremacists began to show up frequently in the news. I watched them march and say, “Jews will not replace us!” I shuddered. I didn’t think my siblings were White Supremacists, but they had a lot in common with them.

I’d always respected my sister though we didn’t agree on politics or religion. She preached the Kingdom message but seemed reasonable when I spoke to her. That respect was challenged when I learned some of my Idaho family supported Donald Trump. As his reign and influence grew, my respect for his followers declined. In 2022, I knew my siblings would be celebrating the overturning of Roe vs. Wade at the same time I was mourning it.

I watched “Christians” show little respect for women or for anyone who didn’t agree with them. Many were quite ready to take up arms to enforce their beliefs. I shuddered as I thought of Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. The patriarchy marched. White males had been running the world for centuries; finally, they were challenged. These beliefs about God and politics would eventually separate and divide the nation.

It was this militant “Christianity” that led me to write this book, explaining how I ended up on the opposite side from the siblings I’d grown up with. For me, that was a journey of discovery. It would take years to sort all this out, to learn, to think, and experience the world, and find the words that brought me freedom and joy.