Post #9 of 40

Giving Up the Church of My Childhood

I adapted this post from reflections I prepared prior to my confirmation in the Episcopal Church in 2022. This post reflects my own experiences in and impressions of the church of my childhood. Many of my relatives continue to be active in the Church of Christ. I mean no disrespect to them.

I was born in Nashville, Tennessee to parents who were members of the Church of Christ. The Church of Christ, at least in the South in those days, was extremely conservative - forbidding alcohol, dancing, women praying aloud or speaking in church if men were present, and even playing instrumental music during worship. They also believed that all who were not members of the Church of Christ would go to Hell. And, some of us members would be joining the non-members if our faith wasn’t strong enough, or if we hadn’t adequately asked God to forgive us for our sins at the moment of death.

My parents knew we weren’t quite right for the Church of Christ, as they enjoyed an occasional glass of wine, and they believed in women’s rights and respect for all religions, but we attended anyway. My father missed many Sunday services because of his time in the Air Force and later in the Air National Guard. If he only went to church 3 out of 4 Sundays in a month, did the Church of Christ think that was that enough to get him to Heaven?

I had my first exposure to the “other” when our family moved to Okinawa so that my father, a C-130 pilot, could fly missions in Vietnam. I learned a lot about the “other” because I was the “other.” With curiosity, Okinawans touched my toe-headed, cotton candy hair, and I learned enough Japanese to call a bully a “cry-baby” and answer the phone and say, “Just a minute please” if the caller wanted our maid.

Our first house in Okinawa was off base. One of our neighbors was Gladys, a Japanese girl around my older sister’s age, whose father, a civilian, worked for the US military. One of my favorite pictures is of Gladys dressed as a cowgirl along with my sister and me dressed in our kimonos.

One day, Gladys invited me over to her house, and I caught a glimpse of an ornate shrine with lacquered wood and glimmering gold. Somehow, I knew not to touch, but my face got closer and closer as I took in the beauty – until a puff of my breath blew some of Gladys’s ancestor out of the bowl. I don’t remember being invited back, but I do know that my brain has layered onto that memory an admiration for beauty, reverence, and peace that my five-year-old active spirit desired.

When we returned to Tennessee, we joined Hendersonville Church of Christ. The first minister I remember at that church knelt during prayers (uncommon in the CofC), and his name was Prater. As a child, I loved that name because of the way it made me think about praying, and I loved the kneeling.

In sixth grade I attended a Church of Christ school. I was the “city editor” of the class newspaper, and my column about the lack of racial diversity in the school got rejected by the typist-mom. Our family moved from Hendersonville to Nashville at the end of my sixth grade year, so I spent seventh grade at a “Christian School,” which revealed itself to be a refuge for racists. I couldn’t wait to leave that school and begged my parents to allow me to leave before the end of the year.

Our second Tennessee church was Harpeth Hills Church of Christ, and we joined after moving to Nashville. As a preteen and teen, I loved the youth conferences, which included songs, tears, and altar calls. One year, I was asked to address youth conference invitations from a mimeographed address list of other Churches of Christ, making sure to leave off the ones denoted with a “C” for “Colored,” I ignored the instructions and sent invitations to the “C” churches. None of them showed up.

In seventh grade, I felt ready to take the step of being baptized at Harpeth Hills Church of Christ - full immersion - dressed in a thick canvas robe and a shower cap. Was it once down in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit or were there three dunks? I cannot remember, but I do remember feeling like a grownup, one who had decided to take responsibility for my actions and salvation, determined to ask forgiveness for my sins as often as possible.

After my seventh grade year, I returned to public schools with a wonderfully diverse student population. I felt much more at home with friends who weren’t - on the surface - like me. I found “my people” - Methodists, Muslims, Agnostics, Catholics and one Jewish girl. The colors of skin and countries of origin were equally diverse. What we had in common was a thirst for reading, knowledge, music, and big questions.

Right before we moved to Nashville, my father began working for Mr. Lewis Steele, a Presbyterian man who lived his faith without pretense or judgment of others. He encouraged my sister to attend a Presbyterian college, Southwestern at Memphis, now Rhodes College, and I followed her there three years later. Every student entering in 1981 was required to take a class called, “Man in the Light of History and Religion.” That class opened my eyes to the Bible and religion in ways that eighteen years of Church of Christ life had not.

My senior year, I took a class about the Book of John led by Richard Batey, a scholar who had grown up in the Church of Christ in Nashville. I was amazed to hear him talk about the “signs” – when I had worked so hard to convince myself about the magic of the miracles. Professor Batey was open to different interpretations of scripture until a fellow student voiced his view of the signs as absolute miracles. I was struck by how quickly this young man’s literalist interpretation was shut down.

When my sister was planning her wedding to be at Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in 1985, the elders held a special meeting to discuss the rumor that my parents had decided to serve alcohol at the reception. Additionally, I ended up in an argument with the minister at the rehearsal when he refused to allow me to sing the Lord’s Prayer as an actual prayer since I am a woman. The upshot was no alcohol, but I did sing the prayer.

My sister and I gave up the Church of Christ at that point, and my parents left a few years later.

I met Tom Barr the evening before my college Baccalaureate. He was a young, handsome, mathematics professor and church organist, and I was a graduating senior. We had mutual friends, and my sister and his sister had been sorority sisters and good friends in college. We began dating on the summer solstice of 1985 and married on December 27, 1986 at West End United Methodist Church in Nashville, where he had attended while at Vanderbilt earning his PhD. There would be no Church of Christ wedding for me. I joked with anyone who knew about the Church of Christ’s acapella-only hymn singing (at least at that time) that my big rebellion in life was marrying a church organist.

Becoming a Presbyterian in Memphis was a simple transition for me. When Tom and I were dating, I joined the choir, and who knows whether it was to spend more time with him or to have more opportunities to sing? One Sunday, he was playing Widor’s Toccata from the Fifth Organ Symphony in F as the postlude, and Ray Allen, an active member at Idlewild Presbyterian and former Dean of Admissions at Rhodes, saw me watching this organist and listening intently, and whispered in my ear, “I think you should marry that man!” His comment caught me off guard because we were engaged but were waiting to be public until we told our parents in person. I smiled back at him and said, “I think I might!” Tom and I were both active at the church, and he was already a member. I didn’t make an official commitment until we were ready to have children.

Over the next thirty years, I earned a master’s degree, had three children, served at Idlewild Presbyterian Church in Memphis and later at Mountain Brook Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama. I volunteered to work on various committees and boards, sang and taught, and even helped dismantle an organ. During one of Tom’s sabbatical years, I organized, opened, and ran a childcare center for a Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee.

For eleven years, I worked at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal School. My time at GSL influenced me to the point that I would tell people I was 5/7 Episcopalian, 1/7 Presbyterian, and 1/7 undecided. I never quite “got over” the beauty of the liturgy during chapel and Sunday services. Tom gave me a leather-bound Book of Common Prayer for Christmas in 2000 because he knew how much I connected with the words, the history, and the elegance of the Episcopal Church.

When moving to Rhode Island a few years ago, Tom and I couldn’t decide on a church and delayed any decision or regular attendance, but I became attracted to St. Martin’ Episcopal Church, first for their thrift shop, and later for their worship services. The pandemic hit about the time I was ready to start attending regularly. I rented a classroom from St. Martin’s for a learning pod during the 2020-2021 school year, and when I saw an opening for someone to work on the St. Martin’s website and newsletter, I applied. Now I work for St. Martin’s as the Director of Digital Marketing and as the Co-Director of Children’s Education.

I may have given up the church of my childhood, but I have found a home in the Episcopal Church. at St. Martin’s where I can be myself and also be part of a larger community committed to inclusion, love, forgiveness, peace, and justice.

I love the weekly Eucharist, a throwback to the best of my Church of Christ days. I am excited to take part in the beauty of the liturgy and the reverence for the Holy Spirit. And, when I kneel, I sometimes think of “Brother Prater” over fifty years ago, influencing a six year old girl.

Maybe becoming officially Episcopalian last January felt special to me because it is the first time in my life that my decision about religion has been totally independent from others. My Church of Christ days were mandated by my parents, and my Presbyterian days were largely influenced by my college and my husband.

And, while I say this decision is “independent,” I believe that the Holy Spirit has been with me every day giving me a puff here and a puff there, helping me to arrive in this place at this time. And, perhaps in some way, the Holy Spirit provided the little puff that moved a bit of Gladys’s ancestor, oh so long ago, to help me remember to seek God, to work for peace and justice, and to love all.