I was raised Baptist in small town Ohio. My father was something of a hell-raiser in his youth but by the time I came along, he had found a modicum of religion, which he maintains to this day. His is a decent kind of religion. My mother has been religious since squeezing out of the womb, but her religion is of a gloomier sort, where disaster seems always to loom overhead. They put me in Bible School by age six, which I perversely enjoyed, learning about giant slayers, exotic dancers whose prize was their lover's head, lions in a den, walls tumbling down, seas splitting wide open, and etc. We youngsters dutifully memorized the books of the Bible, which today helps me with crossword puzzles.[Nota Bene: this is a longish post. Sorry, it just gushed out that way. Hope some of you enjoy.]
Bible School was taught by little old ladies mostly in the dank basement of a rather large brick church built in the 1850s. We sang "Glory, glory, glory, glory, down in my heart...," "We are climbing Jacob's Ladder," and "Jesus loves me this I know (for the Bible tells me so.)" We took turns stumbling over strange names in Bible passages, then afterwards all trooped upstairs for the main event. The expansive sanctuary, painted stark white with Alpha and Omega signs picked out in gold, could probably seat 250 people, but on Sunday mornings we were lucky to number 60 or 70, so everyone spread out across the pews maybe to make it look like there were more of us. I don't know. A few hymns, then an hour of preaching, which always concluded with a call for the unsaved to step forth and be saved. For the time being, I had no idea that I was still numbered among the heathen.
We saw a steady stream of preachers, who stayed for a year or so and then moved on. I don't suppose the church could pay them much, but they did get to stay in the parsonage around the comer, a large Victorian with stained glass and an eclectic library built over the years by those who passed through. Most volumes on the shelves were various bible translations, religious tracts, learned disputations of doctrine, concordances. But I do remember a large collection of Zane Gray paperbacks that stood out like ticks on a white dog. In those days, none of these volumes dealt with politics. The religious "right" had yet to troop in and make everything so wrong.
I remember one preacher who insisted on rhyming food with good, as in "give us this day our daily fewd." Weird. We had one preacher, don't recall his name, who was quite liberal for his time, particularly in his insistence that we youngsters learn about other religions. By age ten or so, we were all aware that the Catholic Church on the other side of town was full of people who somehow weren't quite Christians. The Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans weren't really supposed to mix it up with those folks, but this particular preacher insisted on a field trip and took us to view the Catholics up close and personal. We youngin's were awestruck stepping into the sanctuary and seeing the IDOLS so plainly on display! I remember a kindly priest--liked his robes--and the alien-seeming nuns who were somehow married to Jesus. We protestants were the lucky ones. We only had to sit in Bible school for an hour a week. The Catholic kids had to set through an hour of catechism every day. Even more, this particular preacher got up a field trip to the closest city to visit a synagogue!! Whoa, talk about entering alien territory. I was a tad too young to recall all the doctrinal details but I found it immensely interesting to peer behind the curtain of what it meant to be Jewish. The nearest mosque was a good 200 miles away, or the preacher would almost certainly have included it on our educational itinerary. I wish I remembered his name now. He was a good man.
We had a different crop of traveling preachers who passed through once a month or so and performed at special Sunday night services. I think their sole purpose was to frighten us into submission. This was where I was introduced to the Rapture for the first time. I was twelve. This particular preacher's weapon of choice was the flannelgraph. For the uninitiated, a flannelgraph is a large (4 x 4) folding board covered with, yes, flannel. It is opened up and placed on an easel whereupon a variety of colorful card-board figures backed with cloth are placed on the board and moved about to illustrate a story. It's a step up from shadow puppets. The preacher walked us through several familiar and innocuous Bible stories and then delivered his coup de grace. He placed a church, several houses and cars to represent our neighborhood, then lots of happy family members and I think a couple of dogs and a cat. He talked about the joys of family life. We should love and honor our parents. What on earth would we do without our parents? In the upper right-hand comer he set a big white cloud with rays of light streaming out of it. This was heaven. In the end times, he intoned, we shall all be changed in the twinkling of an eye. The saved will be raptured up to heaven and the sinners will be left behind. This was news to me. The preacher must have had his eye on me, for fIrst he lifted (my) mother out of the neighborhood and placed her in the big cloud. Followed deliberately by the father. Next by sister and little brother. I think even the pets may have scurried heavenward. Then there he stood alone, in the midst of a flannel sea, one last sinful older brother who didn't make it. Abandoned to whatever disaster was about to befall him. Then the preacher dramatically held up the flames and waved them slowly back and forth before our eyes. With a flourish, he placed the flames in the lower left-hand comer. At that point, I burst into tears and stumbled down the aisle, wailing that I DIDN'T WANT TO BE LEFT BEHIND... By such prosaic measures I was brought to my knees before the Almighty.
Being saved is of course followed shortly thereafter by the baptism. My mother was actually baptized in a river, as was her mother before her, dunked full under by a preacher in shirt and tie, holding a Bible over his head, and wet to his armpits. She came up sputtering, filled to overflowing with the Spirit. Somewhere there's a faded black-and-white photograph. (Remember the three-by-threes with the scalloped edges?) Our church being in the center of town had no easy access to a river, and besides this had come to be seen as old fashioned, perhaps even a tad on the unhygienic side. Instead, two ushers rolled the big walnut pulpit to one side and lifted off a trap door set in the stage to reveal the "baptismal font." Three steps leading down into about a hundred gallon tank. How they filled it or if they ever changed the water, I have not a clue. It wasn't really used all that often.
I wore swimming trunks and a T-shirt disguised by the special white polyester choir robe-the one reserved for the dunking--my pale bare feet poking out from beneath the hem. Ah, but before descending into the tank, I had one final hurdle--the private discussion with the preacher in his back office in which he was, I thought, to reveal to me the Baptist Arcana, the Protestant Kabala, the ultimate biblical Mystery of Life. Out front and muffled by a dark wooden door with immense hinges, the choir and congregation ran through a variety of hymns with Nellie blazing away on the big organ. She always played too loudly, and louder as the years passed. I think she was slowly losing her hearing.
The preacher sat me down in an overstuffed leather chair (first chair I'd ever seen of the type) and opened a tome of some sort on the desk that was illustrated with quaint diagrams. Oh, here's where they keep the divine wisdom, thought I. He stood over me and rehearsed the basic tenets of the Baptist faith and then showed me an unusual diagram that filled a page. There was Jeezus on the cross (for that's how HIS name was always pronounced). Next there was a dead Jeezus taken down off the cross. Next there was a living Jeezus descended evidently into the bowels of the earth to minister to the sinners, because there were lots of flames. Finally, a radiant Jeezus stepping out of his tomb, flanked by angels. "Jesus took upon himself the sins of the world," he pronounced. "Upon his death he descended into hell itself, suffering the pangs of humanity. After three days he returned to earth without sin." He paused dramatically and dropped his question like a heavy stone into a bucket. "Where did the sin go?" I panicked. I had not an inkling. "Where did the sin go??" he insisted. "Under the ground?" I offered hesitantly. He seemed vexed and went over the whole three-step, three-day process once more, enunciating his words more precisely as though he was dealing with a very dense one here or talking to a foreigner. I gave it another shot. My salvation evidently depended on it. "Well, if he had the sin on the cross," I reasoned carefully, "and he didn't have it when he returned alive to earth, then the sin must be underground somewhere. Like in hell??" At this point he seemed angry, but he calmed down somewhat when the organ out there built into a crescendo. That was the cue for the main event. I bowed my confused head while he prayed. Then we passed through the heavy door and onto the stage. To this day, I have no earthly idea what he expected me to answer.
Three steps down into the cold water, preacher coming down with me. The prayer...in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost... then the dunking. Like my mother before me I came up sputtering but for a different reason perhaps. I had not fully closed my mouth. The organ swelled, while I coughed up some water. The congregation took up a hymn. Well, that was that. My spiritual transformation was not all that I expected it to be. Looking back, I think I expected an instant transformation, as though some trapdoor in the back of my mind would be lifted and I could peer deeply into the baptismal font of my soul. But I accepted the experience as sufficient to the task. I guess I can go to heaven now?
My religiosity lasted for some few years until I gradually discovered girls and rock-and-roll. The next preacher had a daughter who was something of a make-out artist and who introduced all of us boys (one at a time, of course) to a different kind of rapture on the couch at the parsonage. What a tease she was! You could almost get to third base and then run into a double play.
One thing about being baptized is that you moved into the advanced class in Bible School where they at last get around to talking about the last book of the Bible, The Revelation of Saint John. This book was deemed unsuitable for smaller children, which indeed it is, with all its violent imagery, the Beast, the Harlot (try explaining that to children before they reach puberty), the End of the World, and Armageddon in which the GOOD (us) finally defeats the EVIL (them). This was one scary book even back then.
It was years later that I discovered that Gospel John and Revelation John were two very different human beings. I had trouble with that at the time. Gospel John talked of love and charity. Revelation John talked of hate, revenge, and misogyny. What was the key to St. John's transformation from lover to hater? How could these books be related? Turns out, they weren't. I think our Bible School teachers saved Revelation for last because no-one in the congregation understood it. They sort of just threw it out there and implied, "we're screwed." Or more ominously, all of the unbelievers are screwed but WE'RE saved--a false hope.
The concept of the Rapture is introduced in Revelation. This is the book that undermined the brotherly/sisterly love of the New Testament. This is the book that drove me away from Christianity toward, shall we say--a more nuanced spirituality. Armageddon is stressed in the Revelation only because evildoers get thrashed. I want them to be redeemed, not thrashed.
So what became of my Baptist church in small town Ohio? I moved away to escape Ohio. My father for many years continued as a church usher. He greeted everyone with a handshake and a smile and found them a spread-out place in the pews. One day a new preacher demanded that the ushers hand out anti-abortion pamphlets at the front door. My father refused. He never went back. He moved to Florida. Lord only knows what the parsonage library now holds.
In conclusion, all this BS about the end times, the Rapture, the War to End All Wars...go back and look at its origins. It's just some 12-year-old kid who's afraid of losing his mamma. Very sad, but true.