Fundamental Hate

Trigger Warning: for the sake of authenticity certain religious, culturally, and ethnically insensitive words, including the possibility of referencing particular racial slurs are to follow. The author in no way supports the terminology used, but chooses to do so in order to, as accurately and closely as possible, depict the following piece true to memory's sake. 

                               
His steely gray stare is eyeing me, bloodshot pupils making my own burn. He's been at it an hour now, the booming voice echoing off the sanctuary walls around us. The congregation is attentive, taking in every word and action. This Carolinian mountain boy preacher, proudly void of a degree in theology, is shouting up a storm while pausing for his signature thumbs tugging at the pair of suspenders he wears. The rant against the upcoming election, that the now former President Barack Obama would eventually go on to win his second term much to the horror of my group then, and the overflow of mass immigration has him sidetracked from his sermon notes.

"And instead of Bible-believing, blood washed, God fearing, saved from this filthy world, we're having mosques pop up." The preacher pauses to wipe a damp white hankie along his sweat dotted brow. "Have you ever seen a rag head in the church house? No, I didn't think so. In order to obey God they'd have to first remove that...what is it? Tur-ba-n from his head," The white haired man of God chuckles, demonstrating his best guess on how that would go, inciting a laugh of amusement from the midweek crowd in the pews, before he smiles wide. "But that's right...they don't want us saying that. But bless God, this old preacher boy loves God and ain't afraid to call it what it is. Wickedness!"

I've heard this tirade before; it's the second one in three days during this annual weekly meeting, and instead of shouting the preacher on I'm glancing down at my notes, trying to make sense of the last point made when his voice grows louder, prompting me to glance up in time to see him heading in my direction.

With this realization I start my own prayer and it goes something like this, "Please, not my pew. Please, not the spit. Anything but the spit." He chooses the pew directly behind me, but it's too late—my face gets splattered with the preacher's saliva and I hold back a cringe, giving my all at not obsessing over the tiny speckles on my skin that are turning my stomach into knots. My final thought, one that seems to be a reoccurring one, regardless of the speaker, is that I should choose a different seat.

Discreetly I use my hand to dab at my own face as he heads back to the platform where the pulpit waits, bypassing the Remembrance Table and leaving the gold plated offering plates where they sit instead of dumping the fives and twenties, along with the few quarters that would slip to the bottom after a child would proudly drop it into the plate. This particular evangelist likes to hurl them whenever the Spirit moves him. Ironically, the church treasurer always caught them from where he sat up front.

Now back behind the pulpit, the sermon continues: Enduring persecution for the cause of Christ brings great reward. I scribble down that point, along with a passage reference out of the Book of Revelation. I feel the back of my neck prickle, and the familiar nervous dread wash over me as I turn my KJV Bible's pages, coming to a stop just in time to read along silently with the evangelist's scratchy voice. It's not long before he goes rogue again.

                               
"I have a friend. I can't get into all the details, but this friend, he, uh, has friends in high places." He continues, smiling while stepping away from his notes yet again. "In the mountains of West Virginia, so not too far from here, there's a secret brewing. A government site and guess what else? A bunker," The white haired preacher lowers his voice. "They're preparing for war, folks. They're making coffin after coffin by the thousands. Why? Because they expect us—you and me—to fill them. Those of us that are the Saints of God, we're hated by this world. Hated by our country that has turned her back on the Precious Lamb of God. Hated by our Muslim, president. You and me, we are despised by this filthy world. So, why they're preparing to fight, while they keep mass producing those boxes that they expect us to be put into, they are going to get a rude awakening. And what an awakening! The trump of God is going to shout! And we're getting out of here!"

I admit, looking back and even then, I was skeptical over the secret bunker for the apocalypse. Conspiracy theories were sometimes widely accepted in my former group. My own pastor would make sermon notes from daily conservative talk show radio icons like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh, then preach those messages to his congregation on Sunday evenings and midweek services. If an election was on the horizon it sometimes felt as if we were intimidated into voting by using Old Testament passages depicting rules to the Israelites and led to believe that those rules applied to us in some degree. Once, when a fellow believer who was visiting spoke up to strongly disagree with the utilizing of Sunday services to preach politics, he was admonished and escorted out of the building after being told never to "touch God's anointed."

Signs of Far-Right politics, conspiracy theories, and misinformation found strong roots in my Christian Fundamentalist community. So did Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments that were widely embraced. It didn't matter if the majority of IFB members from my neck of the woods never met a practicing Muslim, their idea of a Muslim was anyone that appeared to be of Middle Eastern decent. Those of the Muslim faith were considered evil and reprobate, much like Catholics, and Jehovah's Witnesses who were mostly referred to with the added adjective of 'False' to explain which kind of prophets.

                               
But Muslims especially reserved a place for themselves in the disliked category. So why were those that practiced Islam considered in such negative terms? Three reasons: they were said to have rejected Jesus Christ as the Son of God for salvation; Muslims were supposed to be against God's Chosen People of Israel; and finally, because of 9/11—to be Muslim translated to being a terrorist.

Growing up war was very captivating. Whether from the Old Testament battles of Joshua leading the Israelites to the Promise Land and the slaying of the Philistines, or to the gruesome details of a young shepherd boy killing a great giant with a single propelled stone from a water brook—war was a fascination for many of us. Our unique culture within IFB aided us in this. In Sunday school there were songs that replaced many of our nursery rhymes by rallying young girls and boys into make belief soldiers in the "Lord's Army." This mentality, in my opinion, engaged our young minds into being put in a state of always being prepared for the absolute worst.

In the days after the Columbine Massacre and years before headlines of mass shootings taking place in places of worship, our pastor was known to walk the aisles, asking if a masked gunman entered the building, demanding us to denounce Christ, would we be ready? Young girls and boys were encouraged to never deny Christ and be ready to sacrifice all in His name. I recall having nightmares about the scenario the man of God planted so vividly in our young, impressionable minds. I sometimes became distraught over whether or not I was dedicated and surrendered fully to God, because I was unsure I could answer as a Christian if that fateful day came. Instead, I found myself noting every exit, any possible place to hide in the church's building to survive an inevitable attack. I suspected I would find myself denying Christ as Peter from the Gospels did and comforted myself with the knowledge that I could find forgiveness somehow.

This mindset, I believe, played a huge role in the acceptance of such bizarre theories such as a bunker in West Virginia being preparation for Armageddon and the beginning signs of the End Times persecution of Christians. This is why group members hanged onto every word of mountain preachers spewing hate and misinformation. Why fears were stoked and conspiracies embraced. Why someone who believed differently and from a different part of the world were viewed as potential threats. In a small world of isolation, in Oceanias, differences are terrifying and the only way to control them is by forbidding anything that goes against the fray and its rules. In the end, the result is separation and segregation, and  outsiders becoming equivalent to enemies against the war for our particular twisted brand of Christianity.

I still occasionally get chills seeing similarities between my former Christian Fundamentalism and some of the hate groups and extremists of today. I never dreamt that being in God's Army could possibly mean I had White Supremacist sentiments instilled in me by viewing other races as lesser than my white skin; that although preached salvation was for all, a person with a darker skin tone somehow became less likely to enter Heaven. That African-Americans were even cursed. I never imagined that the absolute disdain for different religions could align with another hateful ideology that went on to hurt others. That the belief that members of the LGBTQ Community were damned sodomites and pedophiles in need of death.

These points of hate, along with so many others, were second nature to me. As a child, a chance encounter with a practicing Muslim had me convinced I had seen my first terrorist ever and that by shaking a gay man's hand meant I would become diseased.

As pre-trib, pre-wrath IFB this meant I would be raptured out before the End Times, but I knew persecution would come first. With enemies always popping up in sermons nearly every week there was no doubt I and those I loved would experience this. Implanted fear ignited hate and fanned flames of extreme thought at every turn. Christian Fundamentalism was the holiest of all fights and its lies are still things I continue to have to unlearn.

It's been nearly five years since I have left it and still I hear the dog whistles calling, raising red flags, and catching my attention. I hear it in today's controversial politics and see it in the hate for immigrants. I've witnessed it in the lack of empathy for slain worship goers of mosques and the insistence that a great America is a Christian-Only one.

I lived, hearing those soundbites dropped into the sermons preached against the wickedness of our world and the fighting for gaining America back in the music we sang. The parallels were everywhere and shamefully for many years I embraced those things.

               (We Want America Back; a song I recall singing.)

Ignorance only breeds more ignorance and with it, intolerance. The lack of exposure to differences provides ways for these hateful myths to only grow.

Gradually, overtime through experiencing kindness from those "enemies" and the exposure to information outside of my Oceania, I started to leave those racists and bigoted stances behind. It was the humanizing of those I was taught to hate that helped remove the blinders on my eyes, allowing me to witness the kindness all around me from people who were to be incapable of such goodness. With every story I read of a Muslim treating their neighbor kindly, then learning what Islam consisted of, and finally seeing the suffering of so many, it was then that I felt a change start in me. It was finding myself feeling such raw emotions such as compassion, watching the plot of refugees around the world and reading a personal story of a former fundamentalist Muslim who was born and raised in another isolated community, experiencing in many ways some of the same misinformation and hurtful interpretations of religion that planted hate in our minds, tainting our souls for a season.

It was countless little moments that slowly chipped away those false teachings deeply ingrained in me from the day I was born. And it's still those constant moments I still experience often that help guide my way away from those memorized teachings.

Because for every distorted and hate fueled teaching depicted as righteous and godly, something that was said to be a part of Christianity, many other former fundamentalists such as myself, have to fight not to return to past ways of thinking. Living a life filled with extreme thought for a long period of time means sometimes you have to consciously choose differently to prevent yourself from old instilled survival instincts. I have found that with time and choosing kindness towards differences is the key to dispelling those myths. 

For all the bad taught to be in this world there is also beauty at every turn. Leaving fundamentalism just opened me up to seeing it in places I never dreamt I could. In many ways, it provided more to love instead of hate. But not the love I thought I was experiencing. Oceania's love is also tainted just as its compassion was and their definitions are misguided. Real love doesn't have to have limitations and in Christian Fundamentalism there are always limitations. 

No, the emotion I'm referring to is the one each human, regardless of differences, encompasses. It's the goodness that even with extreme teachings can sometimes find a way to change a person by reminding them they are in fact human. It's those kind of emotions that make it possible for even those most extreme beliefs to lose their hold on a person. It means that people like me can have hope of leaving the boxes assigned to us by those that were once in control. It's what can make some of us formers.

Photos courtesy: Google images

To read an original poem on the Syrian Refugee crisis, click here to view Silenced So Others Could Be Heard.