[Vomit Comet]

Obviously, your mileage will have varied.

[Skeptic]

The church I attended before I stopped going altogether wasn't that controlling, I don't think. My parents were a lot more fundie than that church was. The kids were into secular things, they had no problem with reading Harry Potter and celebrating Halloween, we did cool things during youth group functions like Super Bowl parties and paintball, it definitely wasn't like xian boot camp. However, they did make their policies known about dating, premarital sex, being a thug, things of that nature. That's where they mostly put their focus. I remember one time when a kid in my youth group was singing the song Minority by Green Day, and one of the leaders told him not to sing it because the lyrics weren't glorifying god. They listened to xian music, but it was like xian rock bands like Skillet and stuff like that, not the frilly bands, you know? We had LAN parties and a lot of the guys were into violent video games. It was a fun church and the people were pretty cool. I would still be friends with the people except our views are totally different and my life would seem very shocking to them, never mind that I'm an atheist.

[Vomit Comet]

Skeptic: that sounds a lot like my old church. Despite being Ass of God, we were fairly laid back. Must have been an L.A. thing. Even the senior pastor was a fan of Harry Potter.

Also, I suspect it's easier to get away with misbehavior if you're in a big anonymous city, where there's six thousand kids at your high school, and most people all around are largely irreligious. Although maybe the flipside is true, as any fundy church worth its salt would, in that comparatively secular environment, have to go the extra mile to exert control over behavior than they would deep in the Bible Belt. Or am I wrong? The teen pregnancy rate in the most religious corners of America seems to attest that social/behavioral control is not so strong as one would assume.

And I often hear Southerners crack jokes about Baptists: "Q. How do you make sure a Baptist doesn't drink all your beer when you take him fishing? A. Take two Baptists!" Such jokes don't make near as much sense in the Southern Californian context, which leads me to believe that fundie churches in such places have to go the extra mile, whereas in the Bible Belt they just figure that... the fact that they're in the Bible Belt (as opposed to somewhere "godless") does most the work for them.

This post has been edited by Vomit Comet: 26 March 2009 - 03:33 PM

[Jedah]

I am sure my parents Pentecostal church would be doing a great deal more if they could, but since this is America you will be hard pressed to find a church that is actually serious about dishing out punishment unless you are deep in the rural areas of the buybull belt. Here in CA, the notion is unheard of.

Instead, Fundamentalist xians here on the Pacific coastlines are simply masters of the pasty fake smile. The same women you see at church with the enourmous fake grin on her face that is so big you wonder if her head will explode... can be seen on the job being snappy and rude to her co-workers the next day. It's all bullshit here. xianity is a three ring circus sideshow. Little more then a cruel joke.

[Deva]

Independent Baptist Fundamentalist in the 70s. As repressive as it gets. Everything was wrong- drinking, sex, dancing, rock music.

Thinking about skipping a service by hiding in your parent's car in the parking lot? Not a chance - the deacons would go out and get you. No one going forward at altar call? The pastor would act personally offended and make everyone sing 20 verses of "Just As I Am".

[Neon Genesis]

It all really depended on what you were trying to wiggle. For the most part, the people at my church didn't care if you listened to rock music with the occasional swear word or read Harry Potter or even played violent video games, but porn was out of the question and while they weren't super-strict, they did feel uncomfortable about blasphemous content. Like fictional stuff like the Da Vinci Code were ok but Bill Maher is going to hell for making Religulous. My parents didn't care so much as long as I wasn't watching anything explicitly pro-gay, pornographic, or Marilyn Manson and they had no problem with me watching anime but everyone had all the usual conversative political beliefs you find in a fundie church. I guess you can say mine was your average fundie church. It wasn't totally batshit insane but they were still pretty averagely fundified.

This post has been edited by Neon Genesis: 26 March 2009 - 04:43 PM

[EmmaRose]

The church I attend is pretty in the middle. I mean, no one in their right mind would call it a "liberal" Chrisitan church, but its not super fundy. Stuff like modesty for girls, purity (though dating is okay, kind of), not watching certain movies, etc. is stressed but its not like their waiting to attack you.

Harry Potter is pretty much frowned upon, but people listen to all sorts of music. Its a diverse group. Well, as diverse as you get for being a Baptist church.

[white_raven23]

Mine was a Free Methodist church. Most of the controls were based on the whole social norm and disapproval type.

I was pretty strongly disapproved of....as was my family....UNLESS dad was needed to do free electrical work for the church.

The top clique bitches for my old youth group tried to "discourage" my membership by...oops..."forgetting" to invite me to parties, movies, coffee outings....

I'd seen them run off other's who didn't lick their boots, I actually enjoyed being a thorn in their side. Battle of wills and what not. They'd be bitchy...I'd keep showing up. They'd be rude, I'd tie everyones shoelaces together at the door (pick up one shoe....you get everyones shoes). Sometimes I'd hide the shoes too for good measure (I was 15 and NOT a vandal....so yeah goofy but no permanent harm).

It finally got to be too boring and predictable to be any fun anymore. Last time I saw any of them, I think I was 25.

[gypsy79]

My church was superfundy Southern Baptist: no drinking, no dancing unless it was the ballroom type or just by yourself (nonsexily, of course), no rock or rap music (they didn't even like Christian rock and rap but tolerated it sometimes, which was better than my parents who did not tolerate it at all), no R-rated movies, no TV in the house was a church phase for a couple of years, no cartoons with SEX in the clouds LOL, no Harry Potter, no Halloween, no dating until you're 16 and even then no French kissing dammit, no sex until marriage, no porn, no missing any church services or Sunday School or other classes, no secular colleges, no shorts above the fingertips, no cleavage, no spaghetti straps, no Catholics or Mormons or homosexuals, no Jesus on the cross because he is risen, no religion (it's a relationship!), no consorting with nonbelievers except to witness door to door, no cursing or even bywords like crap or freaking, NO saying Oh my God or even Jeez since that is short for Jesus, and dangit if you don't read your Bible and pray every day for at least an hour of "quiet time" you are the most sinful Christian who ever lived.

Oh my gosh, I could go on and on and on. I still pretty much chose the middle on all the answers, though, because it's not like they would excommunicate you or anything. They would just come "talk to you" about it and "pray for you" about, or if you were a teenager, they would, of course, tell your parents, which is where the real trouble came in. I was grounded solid from about 14-18, all for doing things that WEREN'T EVEN WRONG. I cannot think of one single thing I got in trouble for that was ACTUALLY wrong. Sigh.

This post has been edited by gypsy79: 26 March 2009 - 05:24 PM

[Skeptic]

I didn't grow up in Tennessee. I moved here about 2 years ago. The last church that I went to was in a suburb outside of Pittsburgh, PA. I can't imagine what church in the bible belt would be like *shudder*

[par4dcourse]

Why, wriggling is almost dancing, and most certainly sinful in the CoG.

[OpheliaGinger]

In one of the Church of Christ churches that I was forced to attend literally believed that if you didn't believe the CoC doctrine to the fullest (and no questions asked) you were a heretic deserving to be ostracized. If you sinned, you better keep it under wraps lest you risked being called out in the congregation (I personally never saw that happen but I wouldn't doubt if it ever happened).

[Babelfish]

DevaLight, on Mar 26 2009, 05:05 PM, said:

Thinking about skipping a service by hiding in your parent's car in the parking lot? Not a chance - the deacons would go out and get you. No one going forward at altar call? The pastor would act personally offended and make everyone sing 20 verses of "Just As I Am".

Ugh, I hated this. Our pastor didn't get offended if no one came forward, we just sang all 5 verses normally. But if someone DID come forward, we had to stand around singing it over and over until they were done praying or talking to the pastor.

For the most part in my Church social pressure was the extent of their attempt to enforce doctrine. And they were pretty laid back when it came to things that weren't explicitly forbidden by the bible, like dress code and such. For the last couple years I attended I showed up to Sunday services in shorts and a t shirt. One guy did inform my parents when he heard me talking to a friend about a Metallica song. I remember one of the youth leaders talking about how he'd heard some Matchbox 20 and they were such a sinful band. :lmao: Sometimes, toward the end, it took a lot of restraint not to pull into the parking lot for youth group blasting Cradle of Filth.

The most authoritarian incident I remember was during a youth retreat. A guy and a girl were chatting on cell phones or walkie talkies or something from their respective cabins and when the youth leaders found out they were forbidden to associate with one another, the electronics were confiscated and their parents were called.

[sharkindeepwater]

My old school? A girl was expelled for being pregnant. Our teachers told us that whatever got in the way of one's walk with god was evil; even things that people really enjoyed could do that.

One teacher held up the example of a girl who gave up music.

[Amethyst]

My old Christian school and church was Lutheran (same building). They were fairly strict but not prison-camp strict. We still had to be very careful of what we did or said.

[Crazycatlady]

RCC. The amount of wiggle room varied based on topic and by priest (the second was the least strict; the third/current for that congregation wants to go back to the middle ages). One certainly had to be discreet about one's indiscretions (and confess them promptly, of course). Attending services at another denomination (unless also attending a RCC service the same day and not participating at communion at the non-RCC service) was a big no-no.

[Vendredie]

My old church was in some ways laid back and in others pretty strict. Of course the in-crowd would say rather rude things behind your back if you did something that was forwned-upon. We weren't allowed to swear (I did, just not in church), wear two-piece bathing suits (If I still went to that church, I would have to wear a burqini, assuming they make one that small, becuase no one piece has fit me since age 12) wear shorts above the fingertips (we were only allowed to wear things we could wear to school), wear spaghetti straps, come to the HAlloween youth groups dressed as devils, witches, etc., read HArry Potter (some did anyway), watch Harry Potter, listen to secular music (lots of Linkin Park at the time, here)... etc.

Of course the church couldn't do much about it. The only real social control was that the in-crowd would get pissy.

[ghostchild]

My church (the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad) had very, very strict rules that were basically unenforceable. In my experience, they *wanted* to control every aspect of people's lives and had a lot to say on how to live, up to and including trying to ban novels, smoking, popular music (including christian music) and anything else that wasn't directly related to christianity. Any media where it was possible to pretend there might be non-christian influences (i.e. most disney movies) was not ok. Outside friendships were frowned on. Clothing was strictly controlled as well (floor length skirts for girls, boys less limited but no short sleeves in church and even outside church you had to dress very carefully or you'd get the evil eye) as were hairstyles (long and plain for girls, short and neat for boys, no dye ever).

However, I quickly found out after I started pushing the limits of their control in my late teens that if I didn't care what they thought of me they couldn't really do a damn thing about my lifestyle. I kept the most controversial stuff secret, and occasionally my movies and such would be thrown in the bin but that was all they could really do other than harass me and throw guilt at me. Eventually they started trying to make out that I was a bad influence on the children, and made out like I was teaching them to swear and tried to pin all their bad behavior on me.. and that I was bullying and other total nonsense, but by that point I hardly cared. When I eventually told them I was out of it I already had an escape plan in motion and nothing they could do would stop me.

[R. S. Martin]

Vomit Comet, on Mar 26 2009, 04:32 PM, said:

Skeptic: that sounds a lot like my old church. Despite being Ass of God, we were fairly laid back. Must have been an L.A. thing. Even the senior pastor was a fan of Harry Potter.

Also, I suspect it's easier to get away with misbehavior if you're in a big anonymous city, where there's six thousand kids at your high school, and most people all around are largely irreligious. Although maybe the flipside is true, as any fundy church worth its salt would, in that comparatively secular environment, have to go the extra mile to exert control over behavior than they would deep in the Bible Belt. Or am I wrong? The teen pregnancy rate in the most religious corners of America seems to attest that social/behavioral control is not so strong as one would assume.

And I often hear Southerners crack jokes about Baptists: "Q. How do you make sure a Baptist doesn't drink all your beer when you take him fishing? A. Take two Baptists!" Such jokes don't make near as much sense in the Southern Californian context, which leads me to believe that fundie churches in such places have to go the extra mile, whereas in the Bible Belt they just figure that... the fact that they're in the Bible Belt (as opposed to somewhere "godless") does most the work for them.

VC, I haven't read the rest of this thread yet but I want to comment on this post. This pattern agrees exactly with the Mennonite community. If I remember correctly, your working on a doctorate in sociology, so maybe I can explain in a way that it makes sense. The conservative Mennonite situation in Southern Ontario is seriously complex to outsiders but it is seriously important to insiders to keep every last group totally separate from every other group. Group identity is a huge issue. "We are better than [fill in the blank] because [fill in the blank]" is the attitude of all groups. No one has education beyond Grade 8 or 10. All are agriculture-based and live by a conservative-to-liberal system based on a material-theological system inherited from the German Peasants of the 1500s. So far as I know, the KJV is bedrock truth for English-speaking denominations and Martin Luther's German Bible for the others. I'm sure no one is more distantly related than 6th cousin and they all live in a geographical square of rural country about fifteen miles across each way. Everyone knows everyone else and few "strangers" or "outsiders" live in that area.

I'll list the denominations or groups from ultra conservative to liberal:

Horse and buggy 1 too small to organize, eventually moved to another area to organize and are now thriving; drew membership from the other two horse and buggy groups, and also from the States.
Horse and buggy 2 (HB2) very large stand-alone group, rumor has it that shot-gun weddings are frequent; very poor relations with other groups.
Horse and buggy 3 Old Order Mennonite (OOM; my group) largest conservative Mennonite group in the province by the count of one sociologist though not all live inside this fifteen mile square
Black Car 1 share schools and meeting houses (meet on separate Sundays) with OOM, but use cars and fancier dress and large farm implements
Black Car 2 split from Black Car 1. Not sure why. possibly allow music on tapes or CD.
Black Car 3 Black Car 3&4 are into evangelical teachings but retain different levels of the plain garb and lifestyle. Allow radio
Black Car 4 fancier cars (not totally black) is about all I know but I don't know too much about them; they all look the same to me. Allow radio. Marriage for life and no premarrital sex from this group up.
Modern Mennonite live and dress like mainstream society; no dress code. TV, cut hair and no prayer veil for women, also pants on women and female preachers. Vary all the way across the spectrum from conservative to progressive re contemporary issues. Divorce and remarriage are seen as inevitable, though unfortunate, issues of life. I did not know any divorced individuals in the modern Mennonite community of that geographical area.
Evangelical (don't call themselves Mennonite but are of the same biological stock) Very few in the rural area and greatly feared because of their subtle evangelizing tricks. High-school education. I don't know much about them.

VC, in your descriptions of the two "southern" Christian groups of the US, I think the OOM compare with the Californians and the HB2 group with the Southerners. The OOM mix rather freely with the other more liberal Mennonite groups in the area socially and for education and work. Very seldom do they attend church in one of the other denominations, but doing so is not forbidden. They attend funerals quite freely at other denominations, except for the HB2 group; they don't feel welcome there. The other two horse and buggy groups don't; in their churches it is strictly forbidden to attend a funeral even for immediate family members.

Identity issues for the OOM are with the Black Car 1 group. Relationships are very open and free, yet it is considered a sin for the OOM to get driver's license or to marry one of that group. People will be automatically excommunicated if they do either. Many other items are not so clear-cut. Clothing patterns, home decor, and baby names, for example. The lines are blurred. But that is small stuff.

Take it to the theological level. Head-coverings for unmarried women was an issue when I was young. Age of baptism was another. A neighbour girl from Black Car 3 came to school with a head-covering when she was in Grade 8. None of us other Mennonite kids had ever seen such a thing. She got mocked out of the house, so to speak. She was older than I was. As I got older and read the Bible, I saw where it said women should have their hair covered. The OOM taught that this applied only to married women. This made no sense to me. Allegory was applied to most other things that were harder to figure out than this passage in Corinthians about the prayer veil. I was sure Paul meant for all females to wear a prayer veil when they prayed. And he said to pray without ceasing. I knew the Amish girls wore the head-covering. Why didn't our church teach it? I was age 12 to 14.

When I got baptized at age 17, I thought I should now do so. Mom wouldn't let me. She said all the churches that let young unmarried women wear the head-covering went more liberal. She mentioned some of the groups I listed above. So I had to choose between two clear commandments in the Bible: Wear a head-covering and Obey your parents. The book didn't cozy up to me and send me on guilt trips the way Mom did so I listened to her, though somewhat uneasily. We did profess to serve the same God all the other churches did.

The Black Car 3 girl had gotten baptized at age 13 or 14, which is why she came to school with a head-covering. I wanted to get baptized at age 17, which was contraversially early for our church. My secret plan was to become a teacher the following year and I had heard my parents say that a girl should be baptized before she became a teacher. So I planned my life accordingly. (Nobody hired me, in the end even though I was qualified, but that's another story.)

So here's the pattern: Evangelicalism=prayer veil and early baptism.
Black Car 3 was into evangelicalism. Black Car 1 was slowly drifting in that direction. There was no Black Car 2 in our immediate neighbourhood. Our group would be next if nobody dug in their heels.

My mother remembered the days when the Modern Mennonite women wore the prayer veil. My study of Mennonite history shows that around 1960 the Modern Mennonites decided to let go of the dress code. I was about four years old at the time. My mother would remember the trend very well. She had a sister and family in that church. That church was into evangelicalism, missionary work, and I think back then they were baptizing children (as in eight-year-olds; not infants). Well, my mother very definitely did not want to contribute to this liberal trend so she did not let me wear a head-covering either at age 14 or at age 17 when I got baptized. We wore one for church but that's all.

Another "iffy" issue was the conscience against dancing that some of us young people were developing. That, too, was a "new trend" coming in from the Black Car 1 and 3 that was new for our parents. The same goes for some of the new hymnbooks we wanted to use for our gatherings. Mom managed to make us feel guilty for everything we did. I managed to find spiritual defenses/arguments because it was impossible to live up to all her protests. Not to mention that the protests against the "no dancing" idea made absolutely no sense; I think the Bible says God killed a batch of people for dancing. Of course, David got to dance naked--just one more of his doings that one had to pretend wasn't meant the way it sounded.

When I joined the Modern Mennonites, people of my generation talked about not being allowed to dance when they had been young, and how wrong it was to have been deprived of that fun. They talked about having had to wear the head-covering and thick black stockings and how oppressive that had been. They now attended worship service with beautiful long hair and bare legs. As for the hymnbooks--what was new for us had been from their parents' generation. None of this mattered to me.

They couldn't begin to sing as good as my people had done even though they had piano and other instrumental accompaniment. We had no instruments. Their endeavors at identifying with me fell so far short I wished they'd answer my questions and listen to my problems, rather than assume they knew it all. And when they told me certain types of education were frowned upon--they might as well have talked to a dead and rotted tree stump. They had no actual rule against advanced degrees and that was what mattered.

In the end, I quit going to church long before I finished my MA and I'm not going further. That should make them all happy. Except that I kicked out god.

Oops!

Anyway, I wanted to say that your thesis about the Southerners and Californians makes a great deal of sense when I compare it with the Mennonites in Southern Ontario. The groups that have to fight for identity seem to have stricter rules for their young people than the groups that feel secure because they lack competition. I cannot verify whether the HB2 group is more promiscuous than the OOM. However, they seem not to be part of the trend for items like head-coverings. All the groups have changed over the past forty years. I would say the HB2 group followed a different pattern of change from the other groups.

For example, they have cell phones and internet access for their businesses, but forbid rubber tires on their buggies and tractors for field work. All the other groups except HB1 have rubber tires on their buggy wheels (only one) and tractors for field work.

There is no option in the poll for such clear-cut rules that are the back-bone of how my life has always been structured, and how society has always been organized in my mind. It's taken every minute of all the years since the mid-90s to get where I am today--from feeling conscience-driven to wear a head-covering to feeling confident walking the city streets bareheaded and comfortable among university students or the homeless. I can't imagine ever getting rid of the traditional dress because it is who I am. Thanks for starting this thread; there's not many opportunities where it feels appropriate to talk about these things in detail yet they are important to my transition.

[ghostchild]

My parents were born evangelical mennonite in saskatchewan, where oldschool conservative mennonite faith seems to be mostly gone, as far as I know. (could be wrong, but my extended family's all evangelical, not practicing mennonite, except my grandpa) It's kind of funny that they later found themselves a religion at least as conservative as the hardcore mennonites can be, though.