Pajiba

Softly and Tenderly was what was being sung when I trotted down the aisle to get saved at the soft and tender age of 6.

I can hardly believe it but that clip actually gave me a warm fuzzy nostalgia.

It's a lot like being from Texas, I guess; it's weird, but not in the way outsiders expect it to be, and it still takes a lot of explaining, and there are certain aspects of it I will never be able to accurately communicate to anyone.
As someone who grew up in small fundamentalist churches in TX (and is now Episcopalian in NY), I am impressed with how aptly you put this.

One consequence of that upbringing is that it's easy to impress our priest with my biblical knowledge. I really had those memory verses pounded in at an early age.

Greetings! Thanks for reminding me that I have to get ahold of a copy of Junebug by the way.

first of all:

"A lot of Regnerus' findings, I can attest, are true, including the one about how Christian teens often wind up eschewing birth control because they were taught the religious reasons to avoid sex but not how to safely have it if the occasion arose, which has resulted in more than a few accidental pregnancies."

Yes, yes and yes a thousand times more. Abstinence only education is irresponsible and dangerous, even if you count on the average teenager being able to recognise pregnancy as a possible consequence of unprotected sex they may not be aware of STDs. I've never bought into the idea that teching kids about safe sex is going to give them ideas. I mean, teenagers are going to have sex regardless of what they're told to do so surely teaching them basic safety is a good thing?

I went to a Christian secondary school and we had a fair few "true love waits" types. It was highly amusing watching the "No sex before marriage" argument change to "no sex before you're engaged" when they got their first boyfriends (and then to "No sex before you're in love" when they go their first attractive boyfriends). Aaaah good times, how I miss being ostracised from the main stream because of my sinful ways.

Secondly: If you decide to start a picket line Vermillion then I'll join you. Seriously: the only excuse for that movie being made is if every other plot line in the history of the earth had already been taken and some form of legislation prevented remakes.

All of Junebug is "real" for me, at least as an exploration of a Southern family. The potluck scene is quietly true-to-life for those of us raised in the Southern church.

Thanks for the tip on a book I will definitely check out. 99% of the girls I knew who experienced unplanned, out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy came from my own church/youth group. It became so prevalent that the other area youth groups used to joke about our "reputation". I've long asserted that reason for so many Christian girls getting knocked up is exactly what you proposed: These girls have been convinced that abstinence is the only path so naturally when faced with the situation, swept away by hormones, they are totally unprepared to practice safe sex. Add to this the Christian parents who flat out refuse to support the girls and boys who do ask for birth control guidance for fear it will encourage them to be immoral. Sigh.

I was the black sheep of the youth group who openly admitted that I didn't believe in waiting until marriage because I didn't think I would get married. Why wait for something that would never happen? Made perfect sense to me.

Seeing firsthand the disastrous chain of events unfold out of these pregnant girls' bad choice after bad choice turned me into a woman militant about birth control.

Oh wsapnin! How I sympathize with you! There are the beginnings of the McChurch influence trickling into my little non-denom, especially from the youth minister (He also of jeans and a polo shirt.). He preached this Sunday and used a slide presentation on our screen to accompany his sermon. I felt like I was at a meeting. Not to mention the announcements streaming on the screen before the service gave me the distinct impression I was sitting in the movie theater waiting for the feature to start. I was waiting for a slide to tell me about the refreshments available in the lobby and to please silence my cell phone.

i was born and raised in alabama, by parents from louisiana and central florida. we are southern people. not transplants. southern from wayback. and yet i still don't know what a 'potluck supper' is. does it mean eating leftovers? is it because i am an episcopalian?
and alabama pink, mara and just about everybody else - i was forced to visit a McChurch about a year ago, and maybe it is my episcopalian upbringing, but between the giant screen which presented commercials for god during the service (no, really)and the sermon being delivered from a stage with a freaking set ( front porch complete with 'ivy' on fake pillars and a rocking chair) i was at the very least creeped out. besides disagreeing on so many levels with basically the entire premise, the dumbing down of the language by some middle aged whatever (yo yo god is down!)was pretty insulting.

I am a 22 year old female living in NC with one college degree who is working on her second. I have a steady boyfriend who I have been with for the last three years, which should make me appear sane and rational. If I were to tell my Southern Baptist mother that I am no longer a virgin and I am using birth control, I would likely be banned from her home for quite a long time. Possibly family holidays and gatherings too, and I would hate to miss Christmas.

Oh, btw, I didn't have my first "lady exam" until I was 21 because my mom thought it would lead to promiscuity. Now THAT'S safe thinking. In closing, I should mention she's a nurse too. Yep.

I was at a First Communion recently where there were obvious creeping-ins of McChurch-style shenanigans (hand-waving, hand-holding, etc). It really bothered me. One of the reasons, I'm a non-practising Catholic (in addition to being uncomfortable with hypocrasy) is that I hate when churches try to make a religious experience seem like New Year's Eve. I want no part of false merriment or group hysteria. I just want to be in a quiet awe-inspiring atmosphere and have my own few quiet words with a power that (I'll be honest) I hope exists but I'm not sure. Why do all churches think we need to be touching each other and yelling and singing and gesticulating? What ever happened to facilitating contemplation?

Oh Daniel, Daniel.

I think the Ebenezer comment was particularly funny, and of course reminded me of the hymn.

"Here I raise my Ebenezer, here by Thy great help I've come."

And of course, as I type it, that takes on all sorts of horrible connotations now. Thank you.

Oh, btw, I didn't have my first "lady exam" until I was 21 because my mom thought it would lead to promiscuity. Now THAT'S safe thinking. In closing, I should mention she's a nurse too.

Eeeek!

BLA, that sounds like an Indian friend of mine whose father 'blamed' her mom for having nothing but girls. And guess what, he's a practicing MD.

Eeeeek! Eeeeek!

PS kb - Not sure potluck is even a qualifiable "Southern" thing or "religious" thing. I seem to encounter potlucks at every demographic, at least here in the Northeast. Hell, Mr. Ranylt and I are famous for our own annual potluck parties, and they be populated with a fair share of Canadian heathens...

(When all your friends are great cooks, potluck is the only way to go.)

Potluck is the only way to go, IMO.

My sister and I would have foreign movie theme nights and everyone had to bring a dish from that country's cuisine. It's a great way to explore 'foreign' food while not breaking the bank.

Sometimes I forget that the religious atmosphere in which I was raised -- which was pretty much an evangelical one, though I was definitely on the loose end of the spectrum -- can be a puzzlement to everyone else.

I was raised in the "mini-Bible belt", i.e., Central PA, and I concur with this sentiment. In my high school, everyone knew that one kid that didn't go to church, and he was always invited over to various people's houses on Sundays. We had potlucks at least once a month.

About the McChurch, though, there are different kinds. My hometown church now has a "contemporary service", which I initially thought was dumbing down the message. It turns out to be the same service with newer songs, though- the sermons aren't any different, and although I prefer traditional music, many people seem to like the guitar and drums.

You have not met scary, though, until you have been to a "modern" born-again service. I was tricked into going to one with my youth group when I was younger, b/c we were told it was an interdenominational prayer service for the Oklahoma City bombings. There was a man actually tied to a cross and hung from the rafters, all while a preacher was extorting us to "come over to the light side, with JESUS!" The younger kids started crying, and my group left en masse.

Ebenezer - is that what the kids are calling it these days? Yikes.

RE Adam movie: sounds like extreme suckitude to me, but religious people have no one but themselves to blame. After bitching for decades about how their values/stories/whatever weren't being recognized by the entertainment powers that be, watch as Hollywood fucks up your viewpoint the way they have everyone else's. Make Passion of the Christ and Narnia profitable enough and you should have guessed something like this would happen. I'm only surprised they haven't remade "The Ten Commandments" yet. Any day now...

PaddyDog,

Have you seen NASCAR's ratings lately? There's a lot of demographic overlap.

Hee, hee...Nashville.

Phaeolus: Creepy experience! Yikes.

I'm going to make the statement that overall I hate McChurch's as much as the next guy (we go to a small church) but I think they have their place in God's sphere of speaking to people's hearts. In our American culture people often need something that will let them sit back before they're willing to make a choice. I don't think denominational differences are necessarily bad either...some people feel more comfortable with Orthodox liturgy than E-free guitars.

www.bebemiqui.blogspot.com

Hell, Mr. Ranylt and I are famous for our own annual potluck parties, and they be populated with a fair share of Canadian heathens...

Ahem.....I'll be looking for my invitation to the next one, Ranylt. Potluck + Canadian heathens sound like my kind of party.

I have to see Junebug. That clip sealed it for me.

I really hope that the next Narnia installment is good. The first one was okay, but the Peavensey kids were a bit bitchy. I don't remember them being that bitchy in the book. And I would say something about that animated Adam and Eve movie but I will break out in hives of rage if I dwell on it anymore. I think the filmmakers are going to buy themselves an express pass to Hell with that one. ;-)

I was raised Catholic in a conservative church (not conservative politically, conservative as in stuck with what the Vatican II Council developed). My childhood priest was a sweet little Irish man named Father Mike. He married my husband and I. Doesn't that warm the cockles of your heart? Anyway, my high school youth group went to one of those horrible True Love Waits seminars. I don't know why a youth group from a conservative Catholic parish went to a seminar given by a holy-rollin' McChurch, but we did. And it was horrible. The guy giving the seminar had his unmarried daughter and her baby girl up there with him. He was parading her around and essentially saying, "Look at me loose, slutty daughter. I love her and my grandchild even though she got pregnant out of wedlock, but don't you do what she did. Oh no. Otherwise you will end up like her, pregnant and humiliated by your own father in front of hundreds of people." I felt so bad for that poor girl. I wanted to hit her father in the face.

Luckily for me, my mother is a nurse and brought me up with a full education and a talk that went something like "wait till you're married please, but if you must do it before your married at least know he's the one." Sadly for some girls in my youth group, they did not receive that same talk and were left with the True Love Waits message. One ended up pregnant and a few went through enough guys to make an STD a certainty.

Now my husband and I are lucky enough to go to the tiniest little Catholic church you have ever seen. It is also conservative because the bishop of the diocese holds everyone to the Vatican II standards. None of this McChurch crap like poor PaddyDog had to suffer through. You want to know how awesome my priest is? He actually said the words "existential" and "Jesus" in the same sentence.

Oh, I've got to see "Junebug" now. I was raised in the Church of Christ, and even though I rarely attend now, the old hymns sung in a capella harmony style can bring a lump to my throat. I've have often thought that if I ever return to regular church attendance, it will be because of the simple, unaccompanied singing by the congregation. I may argue with the message and I am not as sure as I once was that God exists and listens to us, but I can still be moved by the music.

Also, potlucks are not necessarily religious events. I have participated in these meals for all sorts of organizations. They give everyone a chance to bring out recipes for the heaviest, most calorie-dense casseroles and desserts possible. You haven't lived until you've had 2 or 3 different green bean casseroles, jello salads with fruit or marshmallows in them, or desserts with lots of pudding, whipped cream or nuts in them, all at the same meal. The sound you hear is all my arteries slamming shut.

I was raised in a rural NC Evangelical Southern Baptist Church. We had Lottie Moon offerings twice a year. I was saved at the age of 6 in an arbor with sawdust floors and wooden pews during a hot August revival service. Homecoming is still the second week in August every year, and boasts the largest potluck in the north end of the county. My last name is on 17 headstones in the cemetery (my daughter has counted them). I bought into the whole scene, and fell in love with the music. When my husband, who is an athiest, and I moved back to this town to raise our daughter near my family, it was naturally assumed that I would come back to the church and join the choir and raise my young'un up right. I can't bring myself to do it. (Even though it pretty much means I've had to give up performing.) My family and neighbors have finally given up on my coming back to church but constantly offer to come by and pick up my daughter on Sundays "if she wants to go". I guess they think that even if I'VE had a falling out with God, surely I'd want HER to have a proper upbringing.

So I let her go to Sunday school with my parents one morning. And when she came back, she said she'd had a good time. They'd played games and colored and sang songs. So I leveled with her. "Kid", I said (I call her kid), "I'm going to tell you something about the churches around here that the people who go to them will NEVER tell you. There are three very important things you need to know about what these people believe before you decided spend time with them. First, they believe boys are better than girls. They might not put it in so many words, but that's what they really believe. Second, they don't accept your right to question what they say. You just have to accept it all without argument. Third (and I knew this would clinch it), they ABSOLUTELY do not believe in evolution. Or in any of the science that goes along with it." My wanna-be archaeologist kid was horrified. She didn't want any part of it.

Those are Solo cups. Duh.

I went to a Christian school that seemed to get more and more conservative as I got older...or maybe I actually started thinking for myself and realising I didn't believe half of what they were teaching. I don't even remember having any sex education after about grade 7 - and that was the most basic 'birds and bees' type crap. I think they liked to pretend that at 14 those girls were just joking about their mothers forcing them to have pregnancy tests...

I'm all for abstinence before marriage, but only if people are smart about it. The most hardcore 'waiters' I know all ended up married in a hurry...

Stardust Savant: The irony is that Vatican II is now considered quite liberal due to the conservatism of the church under the last Pope and the current one!

Ah, Daphne--somehow I suspect you would fit right in!

Thanks, bebemiqui! I feel the same way, now. When I was a kid, I was super-bummed that women weren't permitted to be preachers or deacons. After a lot of prayer, the church even decided that women should not teach Sunday School classes attended by men. That kind of belief is pretty common here where I grew up. The thing is, they're all fine folks. They'd do anything to help you if you needed it. And they're so darn HAPPY it sometimes makes me wish I could just fall into that life again and not be the kind of person who lies awake at night worried about the earth and the war and all those other worrisome things. But I know who I am now, anyway. And I know a good deal more, besides. And that's what matters and what I have to pass on to my daughter, not some nebulous accusation that she's evil and needs to be redeemed. OK, I'm hushin'.

But before you feel too sad about my church experience, I'll admit I've had my share of moving moments. They all involved music, which is the way my soul gets its swerve on. When I hear Handel or Bach or Brahms, I believe in a loving God, even if I heartily dislike his church!

What fascinates me most about this whole thread is the seemingly automatic association of "modern religion" with bad. That's a broad and unforgiving claim, I realize. There are posts that seem more level-headed, too.

And, by way of showing that I'm not ENTIRELY ignorant as to the nature of the site or its target demo, I truly do get from what side of the cultural divide these discussions will always generate.

But my point is, and maybe it's just screaming in the wind, there are rational, modern, traditional (*gasp* conservative!) organized religious experiences to be had. I get, too, that no experience exists in a vacuum, and that if/when someone has a profoundly distasteful experience with something as personal as religion it can and often does turn them off completely from the whole thing.

However, if you can get past the bad taste in your mouth-- and if you are as open-minded as you want people to believe you are-- you can find intelligent traditionalist discussion.

We're not all fire-breathing, heathen-damning, bigotry-spewing asshats.

nevermind. i looked it up. turns out the potluck is not at all unfamiliar, i just didn't know that the word "potluck" was what was happening. it's always just been called "everybody's bringin' somethin'."

One of my favorite pajiba postings ever.

Couple of things:
It's interesting to note that most of, if not all of, the objections to the 'church' are based on experiences with misinformed/misguided 'believers'.
It's important to seperate the Word from the people, as it is to seperate jihadists from what they purport to believe.
I've been extremely lucky in that i've been exposed to the right people who wanted to follow JESUS because they saw something there that spoke to them, not people who wanted to follow their PARENTS. I went through years of disbelief of all things and pursued a CS Lewis type of journey of discovery, which eventually led me back to a place of faith.
Despite what i see as the silliness of some of these forms of worship, the Gospel itself still remains mysterious and brilliant and revolutionary, in my opinion. It's worth not only a look, but a study. And it doesnt necessarily propose misogyny (spel?) as it may appear to at first glance.
Oh and regardless of my past, i dont have sex and am happily unmarried and approaching my mid twenties. all things in moderation.
Most Pajibans are a logical, rational people whom i respect. i approach what i believe from a RATIONAL standpoint because, believe it or not, faith is supposed to be based on fact (read:apologetics), not emotion (read: sunday revivals).
oh, and those purity balls are going to keep me awake at night.