I’ve recently been reflecting on the kind of Pentecostal Christianity that I grew up around, and so much of it seems very drab and murky. So many of the things that my pastors, friends, and family thought were “amazing” and “dynamic” when I was a kid, suddenly seem quite dark and innapropriate.
Maybe you disagree? Maybe you’ve experienced something similar?
I remember at my Parent’s church one time, the senior pastor was praying for me – I was going through some normal teen angst, and because my family are all university educated, and I was interested in furthering my study, I reckon he got a bit nervous about it all, anyway he decided to have a little bit of a stab in the dark, to see if I was possessed by a ‘spirit of intellectualism’, so he proceeds to start using the lingo (language) that pastors use when they are drifting into deliverance ministry, naming the spirit “I speak against any spirit of intellectualism… by the blood of Jesus…. ” etc. etc.
If you’ve experienced or seen anything like this you’re probably going “mmmmhmm…” and if you haven’t you’re probabaly going “what-the…” by now.
So, having seen all this play out before, I “knew” if I was possesed then I was supposed start convulsing on the floor…. but honestly, I just didn’t really feel like it. Once I got over the initial temptation to pretend to “manifest” as a joke, because it all seemed so absurd… I started to realise, the senior pastor of my church was intimidated by my choice to further my studies… everything began to come unravelled for me from that point forth… and it wasn’t long before I politely made an exit, and found a new place to hang out. This is a snippet, and there’s sure more to my story than this… but a lot of my experience of pentecostal churches has been like this.
Aiii Tim,
Thankyou for writing this!!
I was completely floored by the ‘US speaker’ you talked about in your later post… I came thinking the church that was hosting him was a pretty liberal kind of place only to be confronted with complete bigotry.
The ‘pentecostal’ speaker who described himself as well-educated went on to blatantly condemn homosexuality,
identifying it as demonic and described the ways that people have been “set free” from their homosexual “lifestyles” and “urges”. He described a man who was “freed from a homosexual spirit” when he ‘cast out his demons’. The rest of the sermon was about taking up warfare against invisible powers of evil, etc etc., and the homosexual thing was brought up several times.
I was really upset and was encouraged to speak to the man. I won’t go over the details of our conversation but it did not leave me feeling any better.
As a person coming to that church for the second or third time in the hopes of hearing something good, I only had my worst fears about Christianity and the church confimed.
Gays and lesbians are marginalised and oppressed because of people who propagate myths like the ones that were taught on wednesday night. To claim homosexuals are unhappy in their “lifestyles” because they know that it is ‘offensive to God’ and such blanket statements are vested in ignoring the issue that homosexuals are ostracised and made unhappy by the stigmatization they recieve, very often from the very people who claim to be agents of love.
I was astounded that a congregation claiming to be about love sat there and listened to a blatantly bigoted and heterosexist speaker. I wondered “am I the only person here that is upset by this? Is everybody else just
fine with this?”
This supposedly Ivy leauge educated american went on to make utterly simplistic analogies, such as that existentialist philosophy and the writings of Nietsche led directly to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust (again, ‘spirit of intellectualism’ – postmodernism will poison your soul type crap. All it shows is, like you said, insecurity that their belief’s won’t be able to stand up to deconstructionist analysis). It would be equally true in that case, to say that Christian doctrine and the teachings of the Bible led to the crusades, and colonialism and the slaughtering of millions of indigenous people. I actually put this to him and he had nothing to say in response.
I also could not believe the racism inherent in some of the anecdotes that were told. I constantly hear about demon possession having occurred in non-western countries like Africa. If there are such things as demons that can inhabit people, it is ludicrous to believe that they’re all over Africa and not here. I’m sure capitalism is just as evil and oppressive and kills just as many people as African dictatorships and or cults, it just happens indirectly. IT was just another confirmation of his American-nationalistic pro-Western supremacist attitude that the sermon was imbued with.
Despite the introduction claiming to be about ‘Jesus’ (who did not once condemn homosexuality anyway), the sermon was nothing whatsoever about Jesus, but full of judgement and condemnation and warfare against people who already recieve enough abuse at it is.
So, pentecostal’s get a big thumbs down from me, and needless to say I won’t be heading through church doors again for a while.
spirit of intellectualism?
I’ve been to a pentecostal church and I’m not familiar with this.
Is education bad?
Maybe I’m reading it too literally. hehe..
Fill me in?
Hi,
Heather said what I was thinking which is that the pastor can’t have had much faith – in people or in Christianity – to fear that his belief in Jesus wouldn’t stand up to critical thinking. That is far from reassuring isn’t it?
Maija
Maija… Yeah it’s kinda funny isn’t it, when you think it through… the logic of it is a little disturbing.
If he actually believed that knowledge and learning would destroy faith, even subconsciously, then the implication is that he actually thought his faith was irrational and simplistic.
There’s nothing wrong with those things in a way… I don’t see faith as rational or complex… to me its simple and mystic… obscure… paradoxical… but that doesn’t mean I don’t see its value. It’s only if we get totally hooked on deconstructionism, and forget to put it back together again and go on living… that faith stops making sense or being valuable.
To me faith is pragmatic… its a psychological/emotional necessecity to believe in positive potential for the future. What kind of faith any one individual may choose, is something largely (I’m glad to say) outside of my control!
Samantha… my former pastor seemed to think education was bad… because he didn’t really encourage people to do it, and he acted like he was intimidated by it. A bit of a shame really.
Hi Tim
Thanks for what you are exploring here. It’s great to see people exploring some of these ideas too.
I would like to say that I am appalled as I read the account of your experience growing up. As I hear it from your record, I see it, in its ugliness. I experience my own response to that which is too big and personal to share here. And I also recall, with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, similar experiences that I had myself growing up.
I guess in fairness, I’d like to say that SOME of those same pastor types you refer to, also did try to avoid encouraging public displays of odd behaviour/deliverance. That was policy for them. It happened elsewhere instead. But as you say – it happened. When I was growing up, it happened/ was produced anywhere and everywhere and yes, it was disturbing.
When you are inside a particular worldview it can seem ‘natural’, though perhaps there are occasionally little qualms that you feel obliged not to heed. And sometimes those qualms are not so small. If you have someone with whom you can share some of those qualms, as I did with my son and with certain friends, at times, you can learn to heed the voice of concern within yourself. It’s a voice that says “Altho this is supposed to be the ‘best of all possible worlds’ / the abundant christian life / the joy unspeakable and full of glory / the hope of the world .. sometimes it just smells a bit like rotten fish.” No wait! I’m not meant to think that. That must be a wrong thought. I actually have experienced joy and love and warmth here so maybe I just need to go back to the Bible and seek my way there. But when you are used to reading the Bible with the voices of the training you’ve had, it has only one way of speaking to you and that is a way that reinforces the worldview you have had since childhood.
Once I had a mental picture of myself as one of the hobbits in either Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. There’s a place in the story where a huge spider comes and spins sticky thread around the hobbit and hangs it up for later consumption. I think some of our early life experiences can be like sticky threads that encase and keep us where people want us so that we are no trouble and so that we can continue to feed their system. In my case as a woman that sometimes meant by dutiful, compliant and if possible, decorous support of whatever the programs/agendas were. So many people can add to those sticky threads. It is possible for well meaning (or not) people to add their layers. I think especially that when layers of advice/control are offered in warm or loving ways it can be harder to realise that they may not serve our ultimate best interests. This life that is meant to be so abundant should not tie us in restrictive knots. Nor should it prohibit us from using ‘God’ given intellect. A guy called John Shelby Spong asks the question whether we worship a God who ‘imperils our humanity’. Damn good question I think. And relevant to the idea of abundant life so often claimed. Much of that Biblical language makes me want to puke these days. Not that it is bad in itself. It is not necessarily, I think – but it has been heard so often in contexts that are not life-enhancing – that it can come to be associated with harm. I think I need to find fresh words to speak the things I value. It may be in fact that no words are adequate and that not speaking at all may be better, but having spent a large part of my life in churches listening to the fine opinions, wonderful concepts, guaranteed good oil of others, I guess I’m ready to spill a few words before I give up on language.
Nuff said for now. Thanks for the space. Barb
This is why I started this blog.
Chatting with Steve again on msn tonight… and realised how much just putting a voice to things that have been felt for a long time but never spoken, takes some of the venom out of them… stops them from poisoning my soul.
The truth of the mistakes, lies, and I think we must agree, abuses that have been perpetuated in the name of Church, of Christ, and of Faith can’t be hidden or kept in secret. It oozes out through our skins… and bubbles to the surface like a stain, like an oil stain BP would love to forget.
I don’t know that we can ever fix these things wholly in ourselves or in the world, but I do believe that ending the silence, personally, and together, contributes something good to the process of growing beyond.
It has become increasingly important to me to voice these things publicly, so that other people can hear and understand… some of us as victims, others as perpetuators of these things, many of us as both.
That there are good things in faith, and in belief in Christ, I do believe… but being free to name what we discern as false and harmful must be an important part in knowing what is actually good!!! If for decades we have been forbidden to discern, to feel, to percieve… then it may take us decades to rediscover those (probably God given) instincts and aversions to harm.
In the context of abuse especially, we see in so many contexts that its not enough simply to stop the abuse, and send the abusers away somewhere quiet. The voices of the victims must be heard.
I’m back. Endorse your comments. Can’t fix things – but ending the silence is essential: ‘contributes something to the process of growing beyond’. Stuff needs to be voiced, and yes, publicly. I used to see you doing that and wondered why, wondered what did you hope to achieve by that? But I do agree that we must find ways to speak. It is the rising of the sap, the refusal to lie down and die, to be silenced in the face of nonsense. I think that I would like to have a degree of choice re how, when and where to use reclaimed voice, but I think there is little doubt that I WILL use it.
A Year 11 student I’m working with has to find CLICHES in the news. Hard for him. He’s Chinese. How does he know what expressions our society has used to death?!! He could spend hours combing the newspapers. Here’s one I just thought of.
THE TRUTH WILL OUT.
(i.e. Usurp, exploit, suppress, trample – and sooner or later the land or the people abused will rise like air from their graves. Blood will cry from the ground. It seems to be an inevitable law of life. Not vengeance necessarily, but a voice that WILL be heard.)
Lately people/life(?) have prompted me in a few ways to speak – give voice to my thoughts in controversial areas where I have previously thought much, but spoken little. And I have accepted those invitations. Found words. The notion of being a silent bystander witnessing/ experiencing control or abuse of any sort is disturbing. I have pondered it a bit lately and films, comments, events seem to have fed into it. Yet how to speak? How to be heard?
Speaking has value in its own right – but some ways of speaking are also more effective than others. And some ways of speaking just contribute to social noise and to increased deafness.
I wonder sometimes why charisma is ‘given’ to people who misuse it. There are those who can speak and others want to listen. Hitler was said to possess it. Social power? What is the source of that? It can’t simply be merit – crowds follow some pretty dubious characters. Sad to say, I know that in some instances, I too have followed, while imagining all along, that I retained control of my choices. (Enticed, dazzled by charisma, the promise of a better world, something ‘shiny’.) Other times I hear profound stuff but no-one seems to be listening/hearing. Perhaps the ‘charismatic’ speaker knows (like advertisers) how to tap into some need/desire within others, how to manipulate that for their purposes. With Hitler – national pride, the desire to be great (as a nation).
I heard a speaker recently speak of a charismatic Sunday school teacher who packaged God’s story along with the racism of his own small, evil worldview. Yet someone else was present in that kid’s world who disrupted those messages, by modelling openness, curiosity, acceptance and valuing of otherness.
Should we be suspicious of giftedness and talent? It can seduce us so easily, lead us down destructive pathways.
And the shimmer of charisma can blind us so easily to the stench of decay in the content/character of the message.
Re the voice of victims being heard …
Think about this quote ..
“Teach grown men and women a nursery version of their history and you will make babies of them when it comes to grasping the actual workings of their own society, and of their nation in the wider world.” If we substitute the words family/church/community for society and nation, it all comes even closer to home. Now the finger is pointing to me and the life I have lived, to the ways my community has impacted me and the ways I have passed on that impact. If we want one simple, good story about how fine and great we are, this writer says we will write false history. Real stories she says, are often lumpy, complex and can be confusing.
She gives the example of South Africa where “under the old regime, racial division and gross inequality were sustained by state violence, and caused incalculable social misery.” Desmond Tutu, as head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wanted the new state to begin”not with no history, not with false history, but with a true history forged out of its divided but shared past. And it worked. Vengeance, reparation, even justice, turned out to be less important than knowledge. .. the worst of the agony has been assuaged and rendered unavailable for disreputable use by that extraordinary collective enterprise in good history.”
As I wrote yesterday that I’d like to say – I’m ‘appalled’ by the tale you tell from your past, Tim, I was thinking too, that to be appalled might suggest that I am innocent of any participation in this whole scenario. I don’t think I believe that the world is divided up into good and evil people. This is where there is not one simple good story aligned against the forces of evil.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Paolo Freire) shows that the oppressed absorb the mindset of the oppressors. In overthrowing oppressors they often impose a new system of oppression, where the formerly oppressed become the new oppressors. True liberation PF claims, comes not from above but from within(?), from the oppressed showing oppressors that oppression doesn’t work to achieve what you want, what any of us want. (Been a while since I read him and have loaned him out, but that’s an important part of what I recall & understand him to be saying.)
cheers
barb
yeah i got warned about studying psychology at uni, that it challenges fundamentalism, and replaces absolutes with relativism. i studied quite a bit of it in the end and i can only say it’s strengthened my mind and faith.
yes i am now averse to people claiming truth as absolute, and prefer to understand everything as unproveable. I keep my faith free of fundamentals; my faith is personal and difficult to verbalize
but
that means my faith is not cognitive
it is in my spirit
i know Christianity to be not only true but the best faith system
and the most forgiving
and that is why my christianity is REAL.
Glad you found that you could explore some positives from psychology despite those negative messages, Kat. Sounds like some good exploring has taken place. You feel that Christianity is the ‘best faith system’. You may well be right but …. that almost sounds a bit absolutist to me. I wonder how well acquainted you are with other faith systems. Don’t have an indepth knowledge of other systems myself – but comparisons are tricky from standpoint of limited knowledge, it seems to me.
lol my mother’s name is barb
and you caught me
i guess i can have fundamentals…the ones that i create of course
i do have several friends from buddhism and spiritualism and stuff but other religions have never attracted me.
i think it is because Christianity [i prefer to call it Jesusness to escape the connotations] doesn’t claim to reduce fate, pain, or crucifixion like the karma philosophy does [and all the othe religions i have come across]
the idea of following a religion just to make my life better makes me feel meaningless and lonely.
Jesusness is the only ‘faith system’ in which the participants aim to shine amidst suffering, because that’s what God created us to do and that’s what our maximum beauty is. it is an amazing thing to see in real life.
that’s why i say it’s the best faith to have.
and yes i have had difficulties in life, i’ve had family members die and trauma at a young age and all the other things the psychologists are fascinated by
and i’m 27 and i have a brain tumour.
i was trying to keep this short
but i got carried away