We never called our churches “fundamentalist.” We were Reformed. We were Presbyterian. We were Calvinist. We thought we were the true Christians.
Now that I’ve left, I use new language that I would never have used before to describe my childhood church and the homeschooling world I grew up in: abusive, high-control, legalistic, cult, fundamentalist. These words help me explain what really happened. But of course, they weren’t words that we would have used for ourselves back then . . .
Read MoreWhen I was little, I used to fold pieces of printer paper, staple them together, and write “nature books” in the pages. I loved watching Reading Rainbow because I could learn about new books to borrow from the library. I couldn’t wait till bedtime when my mom read me stories before I fell asleep. In short, I’ve always been obsessed about reading and writing and stories, so it’s probably no surprise that I now work in publishing and spend much of my spare time reading and writing.
For the past few years, I’ve been working on creative nonfiction essays, threads of my life in the Christian patriarchy movement as a stay-at-home daughter. And now I’m starting to weave these threads together into a memoir. It’s not finished quite yet, but I’m getting close. I can feel it coming together. Finally.
Which brings me to some exciting news . . .
Read MoreYou never know who will be impacted by your story.
More than ten years ago, I was a stay-at-home daughter, waiting around for a man to marry me and wandering in Borders bookstore looking for something to read in the meantime.
I was about to leave the store when a book with the image of a girl’s face stood out to me. The book was called Paper Towns. I’d never heard of it, but something about it made me know I needed to bring it home . . .
Read MoreWhen I was a child, I understood the world through a set of absolute rules that required absolute obedience. I heard these rules at home and at church, and I was very good at telling them to the neighbor kids. I was called a “goody two-shoes,” but I didn’t feel too offended because at least I was “good.” I desperately wanted to be good. And to me, that meant following the rules without question.
I can look back now and recognize that my life was controlled by religious fundamentalism—in my case, a Christian ideology framed by a rigid, literal interpretation of the Bible, which I was told was inerrant and completely transferrable to our modern lives.
Being controlled by religious fundamentalism or a high-demand group is a little like living in a very small, dark box . . .
Read MoreIf you’re like me and you grew up under Christian fundamentalist teaching, then you probably know the Bible backward and forward, never dated (or at least wore a purity ring), and were told Democrats are demonic and Halloween is Satan’s holiday. And maybe, like me, you’ve since grown up and learned a lot about the world outside church walls, talked with people from different backgrounds, and looked at the Bible with fresh eyes and lots of questions. You might be deconstructing or reconstructing your faith, finding real freedom in the escape from legalism.
I’ve been working on deconstructing the worldview I was brought up in for quite a while now, and the more I move away, the more I notice fundamentalism, legalism, and patriarchy growing in evangelical churches. And I’ve been thinking about the people in these churches who didn’t grow up with this ideology--who didn’t have the consequences of living with perpetual shame and false guilt--because they probably won’t understand right away the impact that Christian fundamentalism and patriarchy can have on people seeking God. I’m concerned for the children who will grow up being imprisoned by legalism and distanced from the love of God.
So I’ve been thinking about signs or red flags that warn me that fundamentalism is in play in a church, and I hope my laying these out here might be helpful. . . .
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