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Why I am not a Southern Baptist

Dr. (Ms.) Michael S. Whitt

    When I was a girl of ten, my mother said to me in a falsely casual voice, “Michael you’re old enough to join the church if you want. “
    Nothing about the Protestant Church had ever had any significant meaning to me, either positive or negative. Neither at the cognitive or the feeling level was I able to identify with the “truths” and values promoted by the Southern Baptist Church to which she belonged. In short, until now the theology of the Baptists was outside of me. I gave it little thought. When I foolishly decided to follow my mother’s manipulative suggestion, I was a conventionally moral child. In this case, I made my moral decision on the basis of whether or not it pleased my significant other. The other aspect of this moral level is “my country, church, society, group, right or wrong,”
    My decision was thus made partly as “nice” girl who was pleasing her mother. It also occurred to me that perhaps the values and meanings would become significant to me, and at the same time, I might become a better person. After answering the Baptists’ absurd “Alter Call” one Sunday morning, and participating in a soggy immersion baptism two weeks later, no such changes came about. The only alteration I experienced was that in addition to attending Sunday School, I was made to sit through what was from the beginning an intolerably boring Sunday morning church service.
    
    All too soon I began to feel serious hostilities toward the church and my mother. They became worse when she began to insist that I attend the evening service, and prior to that at 6:30 P. M., Training Union. The purpose of the latter I never did get. It seemed to be a tedious repetition of only a slightly less dull Sunday School. I was beginning to despise Sunday School. Previously it had been a social occasion I did not mind. Now though I minded anything that had to do with organized religion.
    This was encouraged by the fact that I soon moved beyond conventional morality. I could perceive the flaws in the conventional stage of moral reasoning and actions. Persons at this level believed their perspectives were the sole correct ones. Seeing the negatives for human relations and affairs connected with these stances was accompanied by increases in the feelings of being violated by an authoritarian, rigid, narrow-minded, and bigoted Baptist theology.
    I was not free from this coercion until I entered college. By this time I despised my mother in the area of spirituality. I despised the church as well. I received a sadistic pleasure out of refusing to accompany my mother to church during the Christmas break. I had become a conscious agnostic when I was less than thirteen. Soon after I left for college, I was openly an atheist. As I began to declare my identity to my peers, I was surprised that most of my friends were “god fearing” Christians and many of those attended church regularly. Only a few of these friends, who were born into the most progressive Jewish families, were an exception to this discouraging conformity.
    I have reflected at length as to why I never embraced the Christianity promoted by the Southern Baptists or any religion. Much of it had to do with the people other than my mother with whom I had associations with as a child and youth. The most important of these was my paternal grandfather who with my grandmother lived across the street from me until I left for college. All of the evidence points to the fact Pop, or Justin, was an unqualified atheist. From the time he was twelve he never darkened the door of a church to my knowledge, except as a pallbearer at a funeral. Neither did my grandmother with the sole exception of when she visited her daughter who had married an unusually progressive and socially conscious Baptist minister. However, she was never as vocal about these matters as Justin.
     He rebelled against going to church with his parents when he was twelve. His parents had been religious abolitionists during and prior to the Civil War. They were not strong enough to oppose slavery on human values alone. They had to have god on their side. Unlike, my authoritarian mother and wimpy father, my great grandparents were true progressive democrats. To them god was a democrat who championed all of the progressive causes. They even included all children in the circle of respect and human rights. They accepted Justin’s decision to stop attending church.
    Justin was fond of saying, “When you’re dead, you’re dead.” If asked to explain he would say that, “We know nothing of death, other than we are relatively certain it awaits each person at the end of his or her life. What lies beyond death, we haven’t a clue. However, there is no rational or empirical reason why we should postulate an after life.” Another clue to his feelings came out shortly after he and my grandmother moved with their children back to Florida in the 1920’s. He was forty-five at the time. Justin had lived in Florida for ten years in his youth when his family moved there from Connecticut in 1885. My grandmother, Sarah Morse Simmons, told me this story about my grandfather. A bible thumping woman accosted him for not attending church. Pop said to her, “Look Mrs. So-and-So, I went to church enough in my younger days to last a life time.”
    My father’s role in my oppression was inexcusable. He rarely attended church except to please my mother. When I asked him why he supported her in coercing me, his explanation was utterly inane and totally hilarious. It was also hypocritical. He told me that I was receiving a religious education at that bigoted Baptist Church. If I did not receive it, he insisted, I might fall prey to some fundamentalist type who would convert me into “being a religious fanatic.” He could not have been so stupid as to believe what I was receiving was an education. Even the most naîve adult and most children can readily perceive that what the Southern Baptist promoted was hardly worthy of that term. It perpetuated propaganda, bigotry, authoritarianism, sexism, and several other negative descriptors.
    Besides the hostility with which I had to deal for a number of years, there was another aspect to this dismal scene that was agonizing for a child to wrestle. My father had not joined any organized church. To the Southern Baptist this was a ticket to a hot eternity. Moreover, one’s membership had better be in one of the Protestant sects just to be safe. I asked my mother if she bought this aspect of the Baptist beliefs. Instead of giving an intelligent and responsible answer the tyrant said, “Maybe he will join the church before he dies.”
    I was in psychic pain for a few days. I wept, worried, and fretted. In the end, however, it turned out to be a good thing. Whatever my dad’s faults, he was one of the most kind, generous, warm hearted and loving human beings I ever knew. After a few days I decided that I could neither trust, love, or even believe in a god who would send him and his father to hell. I was freed to become an atheist.

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