I was eleven the night I pulled my sin-ridden body toward the altar to 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 Mother sitting on a cloud in heaven, not giving a thought to her daughter roasting in hell.
Leaving the Faith of our Fathers, the story of my life, tells how, when, and why I left the church. How that impacted my life, my relationships with my family, and how the rest of my life played out with that background. How I found the way forward.
My early memories were of the Northwest Nazarene Church in Nampa, Idaho, which emphasized hell. When I was about twelve, my family 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 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. Those two were the religious influences in my life as a child.
I loved reading. The library was my favorite place. I read the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and many more. Many years later, I would go to England and visit the homes of those authors.
Naturally curious, I asked questions. Coming into being an adult, I talked with others, took classes, read more books, including Michener's The Source, in which he describes the elders of Israel authoring the books of the Old Testament. With divine guidance? I watched Bill Moyers interview Joseph Campbell in the series, The Power of Myth. Slowly, I began to question all I had learned.
Ultimately, I rejected much of what I had been taught, but the goodness that exemplified my mother's life has stayed with me. I never rejected my family, nor did I want to be rejected by them. Those bonds were tight. After I married and had children, we went from California to Idaho to visit family every summer.
Faith is a choice. It should be a free choice for everyone. This story simply tells how I came to make the choice I did, not a decision lightly reached, or obtained all at once. Eventually, I traveled, received college degrees, and my husband died. I wrote out my feelings for over fifty years.
I had to write to understand myself, to deal with all that has come at me through 87 years of life.
When I told the pastor of the church that taught the "kingdom" message that I was going to take some classes at what was then Boise Junior College, he said, "They will put ideas in your head. You'll never come back here!" He was right about that.
