I was reading Michael Spencers latest article entitled
The Kids Are All Right: Ten Gift Ideas For A Fundamentalist Young Person Near You and it really made me think about my childhood / teen years in pentecostalism.

As I read Spencer’s article and the many responses (mine included), I came to the realization that in many ways, you could very easily substitute the word “Fundamentalist” with the word “Pentecostal” and still have the same environment because in many ways, Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism are more similar than ever imagined.

However, an article as good as this one is not something you just consume and move on. You savor the contents… Twenty four hours after reading the article, I went back to read the additional comments from last night and I finally had a repressed memory come out that led me to some flash t-shirt generator sites to come up with this concoction that would be cool to wear

After looking at the image, you are probably now wondering

What are you talking about?

It’s very simple. As I was reading Spencer’s article and thinking how the content paralleled pentecostalism, the first thing I thought about was my good buddy ‘Triple-P’ and all the stories we shared together that were so common. His stories came from an independent fundamental Baptist perspective while my stories came from a pentecostal / holiness perspective. As I was reminiscing and amazed how two diametrically opposite spectrums of modern Christianity share so much in common, one particular story from two different places but commonly threaded came into my mind.

The annual youth rally service.

Usually they were very low budget meetings where the cheapest youth evangelist who you never heard of (and never heard from again) would show up for this ‘once in a lifetime youth rally’ with kool-aid and the ‘nine dozen thin butter cookies (they were good) for 69 cents’ package (literally one package for all these youth) available afterwards.

Everything was ‘controlled’ from the youth seated in the front (to be watched by the adults) to which youth you got to sit beside (boys at the front pews, girls at the middle pews, adults in the rear pews), to the offering plate that netted seven dollars in various coinage from all the youth.

It always started out with either a flannel board presentation, a puppet show, or a two person drama skit about the ‘real world’ (that was nowhere like the world I lived in). After this was over with, then the backwards masking portion began with the album so marked up to where you hear only seconds of the song to be stopped and the 33 1/3 LP spun around backwards with the index finger at around 2 revolutions per minute and done so inconsistently to produce the ‘desired result’ of the ‘messages’ to the ‘ooohs’ of the parents.

Followed by a brief exercise and jumping called ‘rapture practice’ (I kid you not)

In later years, this was also followed by a very quick one hour session of the famous book Turmoil In The Toybox or the Rebecca Brown books or a comedy clip followed by excerpts from The Satan Seller by Mike Warnke.

The ten minute bathroom break (strictly enforced and supervised) was next followed by the actual 30 minute sermon where as my friend Triple-P likes to say

Everythingggg, is of the devilllllllllll (pronounced ‘debble’ in fundamental Baptist environments while pronounced ‘deb-bull’ in pentecostal / holiness environments.)

Then the most intriguing thing of the night would always take place.

The Altar Call

That five minute time of excessive guilt tripping of either leaving right with ‘gawddd’, leaving unsaved for another opportunity, leaving for eternal torment, or leaving knowing you will miss that rapture. As that five minutes took place with everyone silent, eyes closed, heads bowed, and clanging music from the untuned piano in the background played by the pastor’s wife (piano skills a prerequisite to marry a pastor), the sales pitch, fear tactics and anxiety of were you still saved even though you got saved at last years youth rally (repeated every year at that time) began.

And it happened….. (like it happened every year)

Someone snickered and caught the attention of the youth revivalist and we then had to hear the story

You know you laughed, I heard you laugh…….. (a Napoleon XIV reference)

Instead, this story was not about a man named Brady….

This story was always about a young teenage boy (it was never a girl – so much for equal opportunity sinners) who did not listen to the youth revivalist and continued to laugh and snicker at him and eventually left the service without getting saved and how hours after the service was over, this young teenage boy with a very bright future was discovered down the street “dead and into eternal torment” from where he lost control of his freshly waxed Camaro (he bought by mowing lawns and getting a job and tithing fifteen percent to get a decent set of Cragar Wheels) and wrapped the Camaro around the big oak tree at ‘dead man’s curve’.

After the story was told, then the youth revivalist would open up his bookmarked Bible to 2 Kings 2:23-25 and read the verses out loud. From there, there was another thirty minute sermon where the youth revivalist paralleled the story of Elisha, the young mockers, and the two bears to the youth revivalist, the snickerering young boy, and the big oak tree where

Elisha = the youth revivalist

The young lads who came out from the city and mocked him = The teenagers who laughed at the youth revivalist.

The two bears = The oak tree

The judgment for mocking Elisha = The judgment for mocking the ‘man of God’ (aka the youth revivalist)

And just like the funeral that Father MacKensie preached at (Eleanor Rigby reference)

No one was saved

And afterwards, we went to the fellowship hall for our kool-aid and butter cookies while the ‘rebel’ snuck outside to the back unlit outside corner of the building for a ’sneak smoke’, the ‘covert couple’ went moments later to that same corner for a quick kiss, and the anxious one went to the bathroom hyperventilating because ‘he escaped a ‘rebuke’ and could let down his defenses and finally relax but still wondering if he was going to wreck his vette (Chevette not Corvette) later on that night…..

In a way, the annual youth rally reminds me of the old 1980’s movie ‘The Breakfast Club’ where the youth rally felt more like detention hall except we didn’t get a chance to talk about our ‘real worlds’ and write a creative essay. It was where the essay was read to us and we learned about ‘Paul McCartney being dead’, The Smurfs were agents of Satan, our favorite cassette tapes were anointed by witches as soon as they came off the assembly line, along with movies, kissing, watching cartoons, ‘the Force’, and saying ‘darn’ would send us to hell.

As I thought about the end of The Breakfast Club, those students left the school breaking down the walls of their respective cliques only to have to go back to them when getting into their parents vehicles and when Monday morning came. The rebel became the rebel again as he walked away into the football field. The athlete became the athlete getting into his dad’s truck seeing the ex-athlete dad wannabe pro football player. The geek became the geek as his father pondered how could a straight A student fail shop and get into trouble. The recluse became the recluse unrecognizable by her own parents. The preppie became the preppie as she got into her parent’s Cadillac after giving the rebel her diamond earring.

Youth rallies were pretty much the same thing. We broke down our ‘cliques’ to get along at church only to restore them when we went home and to school the next morning and only said ‘hi’ when our respective cliques weren’t around. The emotionalism of euphoric ‘change’ wore off that evening at sleep as the tests and the two hundred lines of Shakespeare we were supposed to memorize for the next day occupied our minds (but because we sacrificed Shakespeare for the youth rally, God would miraculously change our mental capacity and somehow place those soliloquies we never read in our mind for us to get an “A”… that’s was what they told us… and if it didn’t happen… secret sin, lack of faith…….you know the excuses by now)

No, I never wrapped a car around an oak tree as you can see by me writing this article today. In fact, I never owned a Camaro. Every teenage Ricky Redneck had one and I preferred the sporty, dignified, powerful, luxury styling, and cheaper cost of the Monte Carlo’s myself and very few teenagers wanted them. However, the t-shirt is really the memory and survival of a spiritual car wreck called ‘hyper-fundamentalism’ or ‘hyper-pentecostalism/holiness’ where the things we over-reacted, boycotted, and burned twenty years ago was not the real enemy nor was it the proverbial ‘Oak tree you’re in my way’ that we were prophesied to wrap ourselves around if we didn’t get saved (or re-saved) quickly. The real enemy is a real Satan and we fired weapons thinking we made progress…..

Neither were the hyper-legalisms we adhered to was not the real relationship with Jesus Christ. Instead, faith became a formula to follow and spirituality became a superstition to step around…..

To keep from being doomed. To make sure we did not miss the rapture. To keep the devil from having a field day with us….

By making sure we never disagreed, making sure we had enough faith, making sure our hair was at least 1/4 inch from the earlobes and neckline, making sure we tithed on time, making sure (ladies) the skirt length was long enough, making sure we didn’t listen to Quiet Riot

All around this great big world
All the crap we had to take
Bombs and basement fallout shelters
All our lives at stake
The bloody revolution
All the warheads in it’s wake
All the fear and suffering
All a big mistake
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?

Rush – Heresy

I don’t expect a ‘reparation’ nor do I want one for the nights when I awoke to the lightning in the sky and wondered if I forgot to confess something and missed the rapture and being uneasy until I saw a ‘real Christian’ the next morning. Nor do I want one for listening to the advice to take a left turn because ‘God said so’ when I should have taken a right turn because it really was the right thing to do in the long run. Nor do I want one for shaking, sweating, and being in anxiety when the ‘prophet’ showed up fearing a ‘Charismatic call-out’ for some unconfessed disagreement, not giving enough money, or some ‘lack of faith’. Nor do I want one for shaking, sweating, and being in anxiety when the spiritual warfare wackjobs started rebuking everything and you feared that if you left because you couldn’t stand the environment, you would be labeled as being the ‘demon possessed enemy’ and people would want to cast demons out of you….

Instead, the question that is found at the bridge of the song is the most important thing…

Do we have to be forgiving at last?
What else can we do?
What else can we do?
Do we have to say goodbye to the past?
Yes I guess we do
Yes I guess we do

That is what I choose. I choose forgiveness and saying goodbye to the past. I choose peace over worry and anxiety. I choose freedom over legalism.

I choose Jesus Christ

As I still work at going Onward, Forward, Toward…

Tags: backwards masking, fundamentalism, Internet Monk, Michael Spencer, ole-time youth rallies, pentecostalism, Rebecca Brown, scare tactics, turmoil in the toybox, youth rallies