Conversions and De-conversions - Losing the fire, the spirit and innocence

So far, I am enjoying writing about my Conversions and De-conversions. I am noticing certain trends, and piecing together aspects of my young life that would lead to my continued entrenchment into religion, and my ultimate de-conversion from religion.

What, in my story so far, has led to my de-conversion?

My parents were not rooted in a strong religious tradition. They were just as spiritually adrift as I was.

I had an early, if undeveloped, exposure to evolution, paleontology, and astronomy.

I loved to read, even at an early age. I loved picture books, but I was not afraid of reading more advanced material – even if I did not understand it all.

I was already critiquing the very human nature of worship by seeing the artificial patterns in it.

I was inspired by personalities on television that were unlike anybody I knew in my real life. Television scientists seems so much more interesting than our ranting pastor, Grandpa Wagner.

But there were also things adrift in my life that would eventually lead me deeper into religious belief:

I was becoming increasingly aloof, alone, depressed, confused, and even angry.

I was raised in a stifling environment. I knew no other perspectives or points of view. Unlike my desert isolation in New Mexico, I knew alternate religious traditions were out there. I was aware of Methodists and Unitarians in Cape Girardeau. But they were not in my sphere of influence, and I had no compelling reason to investigate them. I had my Truth. My religious destiny seemed forced on me by a channel of ignorance.

Those were the ‘Seeds of Change’ in my young life. Each of these items would only intensify after my family moved to southeast Missouri, and I entered my high school years. One more item would be added in those years, and I am not sure if it caused my de-conversion from religion, or my entrenchment into religion. Probably both. I will discuss that in my next installment of this series.

I never felt more out of place, I was never more a fish out of water, than when I was living in Southeast Missouri. I still remember my first morning there, as I woke up in a tent Grandpa Wagner had pitched on somebody’s farm. I remember the smell of freshly cut alfalfa, rolled into giant circular bales, unlike the square bales I was used to seeing in New Mexico. I remember an intense humidity unlike anything I had ever experienced. I remember the peculiar Midwestern food, which was completely absent of beans, red chile, or corn tortillas. Nobody spoke Spanish, and there were no mud brick homes.

There were no long-haired Jesus Freaks who wore patched bellbottoms and ill-fitting, hand-sewn, embroidered vests. Except us.

The whole reason the entire Wagner family and church followed Grandpa Wagner in his move to Missouri was to spread his vision of Pentecostal Christianity. But the church that Grandpa Wagner wanted to start never materialized. Grandma Wagner, ‘Old Toothless’ as my dad called her, had died sometime around our move. In hindsight, I suspect she was the quiet glue that held the whole church together. She seemed to be a Christian relic from another time. She was a haggard, humorless, stern, frightening woman, and upon her death the whole church, along with the Wagner family disintegrated. Grandpa Wagner eventually married a younger Midwestern woman (‘younger’ meaning mid-40s), and retired to a life of selling his woodcrafts in local art shows. I don’t think he ever preached again.

The Wagner family and church split and went their separate ways in the southeastern Missouri region. Michael Wagner and my mom spent the next couple of years moving from one tiny farm town to another, looking for some kind of employment. We eventually settled in Cape Girardeau, Missouri where I was enrolled in 7th grade. My grades in school had already started to deteriorate before we left New Mexico. In Missouri, they completely tanked. The school bullying increased to an almost unbearable level. The classes in my new school were much larger than the tiny school rooms I was used to in Jemez Valley Elementary, and because I had earlier advanced a grade, I was still the youngest and among the smallest in my class. I was viewed as an outsider, an oddball, and a complete misfit in the Midwest. Public school, for me, was a complete and utter waste of time, and most of my time was just spent trying to avoid trouble. I am ashamed to admit that in being bullied, I sometimes, rarely but sometimes, became myself a bully. In my frustration, I sometimes beat up youngsters who were even weaker than I was – most of those with some kind of mental disability that we all did not mind laughing at. What a miserable and depressing time! In hindsight, I can honestly say that my high school years were by far the worst years of my life.

Those first few years were especially rough. I would sometimes skip school altogether, and instead of taking the school bus, I would walk to the public library and spend the day there. I still loved to read, and the library was my escape portal to the outside world.

July 20th 1976 was a monumental day for me. I had hoped that Viking, the giant probe then orbiting the planet Mars, would land on the planet’s surface on the nation’s Bicentennial, but it eventually landed on the 20th of July. In September, I saw the first pictures from Viking, when a photo of the planet’s surface made the cover of National Geographic. I was astonished. That photo I was looking at was the surface of another world! That tiny red dot in the sky, the wanderer that was named after the Roman god of war looked just like Death Valley in California! The photo I was looking at was of an alien world that no human had ever spoiled with a single footprint or had ever once been gazed upon. The Viking Lander absolutely astounded me in my youth. I desperately wanted to be a part of it, to be associated with something that immense, but had no idea how. Instead, I spent my time skipping as much class as I could get away with.

From what I remember, the religious culture of Cape Girardeau was quite diverse, but was mostly made up of various Pentecostal denominations and some Methodist churches. Of course, everybody in town claimed to be Christian, but I had been taught that most of the churches, especially the large ones that rung bells every day at noon, were dead, lifeless and without the Holy Ghost. They were no better than Catholics. They relied on dry liturgies, formulas, and ritual. My family looked for the smaller churches, those with little organization, and that got their power straight from the Holy Ghost. We found that in Missouri, especially in the backwoods areas, this could be carried to amazing extremes. We visited churches that were frightening even by our own ecstatic, tongue speaking standards. I remember one tiny country church, where a young man, completely out of control while he screamed in tongues, almost lost grip of his baby, which he held coiled in his arm like a football. Such chaotic displays were too much even for my mother. We eventually found a small, but growing ‘non-denominational’ church that was to our liking. I will call it the New Hope Church, led by Pastor Jack. I remember Pastor Jack and people of New Hope to be all very good people. Mom and Michael met many people there in the years we spent at that church, and my mom still has nothing but good things to say about the people there. New Hope welcomed us into their congregation, and most of the friends we made in Missouri were associated with that church. New Hope certainly manifested the spiritual gift of Other Tongues, along with interpretation, and Pastor Jack could certainly get excitable. But the chaos of being Slain in the Spirit and the frightening rants of Grandpa Wagner were over. New Hope seemed much more stable then the tiny, unhinged church that we left in San Ysidro.

My religious beliefs started to fully mature during this time. Jesus was becoming less of my invisible, magical friend, and instead becoming more of a god whom I must learn to obey and worship. It was at New Hope where concepts like the Trinity, the dual natures of Christ, Justification and Sanctification began to find their definition in my mind. The infallibility of the Bible was more emphasized than I had ever heard from Grandpa Wagner. Jesus Christ was God Almighty from eternity past, and was the creator of our Universe. Jesus was the second member of the Trinity, which was the sole nature of God in three Persons, being God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Trinity was analogous to water being in the forms of vapor, liquid and ice – not quite, but good enough a model for a teenager. Adam and Eve were the first humans on the newly created planet. Because of their rebellion, mankind was lost in Sin, and were thenceforth forever separated from the Holy nature of God. But the only Son of the Father, Jesus, because of his love for us, became fully human while somehow still remaining fully divine. Actually, Jesus was sometimes said to have humbled himself and stripped himself of his divinity, and other times was said to be both simultaneously divine and human. Confusing, true, but I did not at the time worry myself with those technicalities. Jesus descended to planet Earth, and as the sinless and perfect man, sacrificed himself to his vengeful Father, to redeem and justify mankind from their Sin. Our human obligation was to repent, turn to God, and accept the sacrifice of His only Son, thus rejecting our own inherent sinful nature, so we could become fully acceptable to His holy nature. The Bible was the sole authority of our knowledge of God, our sinful nature, and his gift of Salvation. The Bible was inspired and inerrant, meaning it was without error, and above doubt, question and critique.

Quite what this all meant, I don’t think I was fully sure. But I fully believed it all. I had no choice but to believe it. I might as well have tried not believing in my own Being as to not believe in what I was taught about God, Jesus, the Bible, and the predicament of His creation. It was the only paradigm I knew. I was vaguely aware that other religions existed, including dead and heretical Christian denominations and Catholicism, but I had little reason to consider them, at least not until my curiosity got the better of me in my last year of high school. My Christian Beliefs were the only Necessary Beliefs and there was no need or desire to question them. If somebody had asked me why I believed what I did, I don’t know what my answer would have been. I suspect the very question would have puzzled me. Why ask? The thought of even asking for reasons was beyond my religious horizon. I lived the life of pure Faith. There was no reason. It simply Was.

We continued to believe in the near return of Jesus in the form of the Rapture, and the beginning of the Great Tribulation, which was the seven-year reign of the Beast, popularly known as the Anti-Christ, upon Earth. A popular and amazingly influential writer named Hal Lindsey was becoming well known during this time. Nearly everybody read, or at least owned, his books The Late Great Planet Earth, Satan is Alive and Well, and There’s a New World Coming. These books, which were Lindsey’s interpretation of the Apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation and implausibly read into newspaper headlines, formed the backbone of many of Pastor Jack’s sermons. Instead of Grandpa Wagner’s hellfire rants, Pastor Jack calmly lectured us, with the aid of an overhead projector, the confusing interpretations of the bowls, seals, trumpets and other bizarre apocalyptic imagery. I did not understand much of it, except that the imagery of impending Holy War and the End of the Age was very frightening. I remember one sermon in particular, that I thought demonstrated the amazing prophetic vision of the Bible. Pastor Jack, with the aid of maps and hand drawn pictures on his overhead projector, showed how the blessing of Moses:

And of Asher he said, [Let] Asher [be] blessed with children; let him be acceptable to his brethren, and let him dip his foot in oil. Thy shoes [shall be] iron and brass; and as thy days, [so shall] thy strength [be]
– Deut 33:24-25.

was actually a prediction of some newly discovered Israeli oil wells located somewhere near Mt Tabor, which amazingly enough was in the ‘toe’ portion of the boot-shaped Asher. Most maps show Zebulon and Issachar to be where Pastor Jack included Asher, and I am not sure if oil was ever found near Mt Tabor, but we were quite impressed nevertheless. Driving home I told mom I was amazed by Pastor Jack’s sermon and demonstration that the Bible could predict the future so accurately. She agreed.

I owned a comic book, which summarized the popular apocalyptic beliefs of New Hope Church in the late 1970s. Surprisingly enough, it was made by the same people who put out Archie Comics, and I was shocked when I saw it again on the Internet. This comic, which I must have read a million times, is a good synopsis of my view of the impending world, and how to avoid being damned in the crossfire, by our loving Savior Jesus. I also find it quite nostalgic. I owned lots of these Spire Christian Comics, including The Hiding Place, Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys and Hello, I'm Johnny Cash. While not as horrific in worldview as Chick Tracks, they accurately represent my Fundamentalist beliefs of that time. Like Chick Tracks, I probably got the majority of my theology from memorable comics like these. Check them out.

Looking back, and comparing my young years of Christianity in New Mexico to those in Missouri, I can detect very subtle changes in our spiritual lives. Life in Missouri was immensely more complicated than the relatively simple, yet primitive desert life of New Mexico. As Fundamentalist as New Hope was, Grandpa Wagner and his home Pentecostal church offered a life of unquestioned absolutes. Things were simple when there was a single Holy Ghost, Fire Breathing, Tongue Speaking, Miracle and Healing Pentecostal church and a single heretical Satanic Catholic church in the town. Things were uncomplicated in the desert, where we made a simple living by selling goat milk and cheese to the hippies who came down from the Jemez mountains to our humble, mud-brick home. We were Holy Ghost empowered because we could be. We could sing and dance to homemade Gospel songs all night, with not a care in the world. Our penniless, Jesus Freak, hippy lifestyle was a temporary life in an alternate universe. Things were different in Missouri. Suddenly, family obligations became more demanding. Mortgages and bills had to be paid, and laws requiring children to be in school were enforced. Somehow, the Holy Ghost Fire that we had in New Mexico vanished. There were more outside influences from the larger population of Cape Girardeau, more religious diversity to contend with and alternate points of view. Mom and her three children were getting older. Our religion, though still Pentecostal, was becoming even more formulaic. The wild Jesus Freaks from New Mexico were becoming domesticated. Innocence was not quite lost, but she was slipping away like a dream.

As a born-again Christian, I was supposed to be living a life of sanctification, and continually emboldened and made into the image of Jesus by the power of the Holy Ghost. But in truth, there was nothing special about this Born Again child of God. I was a very confused, somewhat rebellious, hormonally driven, misfit teenager. School was a continued source of torment. I was certainly smart enough, but I was apathetic. I was given no direction for my future by my parents, pastor or school. I simply drifted by, trying to avoid others. I was to graduate high school in the summer of 1981, but I flunked one too many basic algebra courses. I was simultaneously enthralled by Carl Sagan’s PBS series Cosmos, intrigued by Steve Allen’s other PBS series Meeting of the Minds, yet I could not pass a stupid math class, and had to repeat my entire senior year of high school. My continued depression sank me to crushing lows. Mom was at wits end. As ashamed of myself as I was, I fought with mom against sending me back to Cape Central High School for another year. I could not bear another year of torment in that school. Mom finally and reluctantly enrolled me in a small private school owned by a Baptist church, which we had never attended.

I spent my final year of high school enrolled in Cape Baptist Christian School (again - a bogus name), the smallest school I would ever attend. This was my first time being affiliated with the Baptist denomination, and I again stepped into another world of religious stagnation.

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Conversions and Deconversions – Learning of Science and Sin

Worshipping Jesus was not my thing. It seemed too human. The patterns that I detected within the chaos were too predictable. Too transparent. At the same time, I was becoming more socially aloof at school. Because I had skipped the 2nd grade, I was the youngest, and usually the smallest in my class. I was always the best reader in my class, and I was viewed as the Teacher’s Pet. Some teachers displayed their affection for me a little too openly. I received some dopey school award in 3rd grade, and another teacher gave me an enormous animal picture book. It was a deadly combination that lead to being bullied by some of the bigger kids. My self-esteem started to deteriorate, and I stopped spending any time with schoolmates. The only other kids I spent time with were those in my church. Typically, I found escape in the school library, away from the teasing of the other kids.

My reading began very early in my youth. My mother taught me how to read while on our travels, well before I started public school. I loved picture books, but I was not afraid of some of the heavier stuff either. I remember being exposed to National Geographic magazines very early, and although quite a few people in my church objected to such young children seing those magazines due to the nudity in some articles, my mom did not object. I had seen plenty of nudity during my time in hippie communes, so I think I developed a healthy innoculation towards the shock of seeing naked bodies. The articles with naked people did not really interest me anyway, since they were usually about primitive cultures I had never heard of, nor cared about. I read National Geographic for one primary reason – their articles on animals and dinosaurs. I loved that stuff!

I hiked a lot in the desert, sometimes miles from the house, alone with some friends from our church, armed with a couple of Daisy air rifles. We roamed all over the desert arroyos and mesas, a couple of springs that I knew of, and some narrow canyons that filled with water every spring. I saw lots of geology and lots of wildlife. I had developed a real curiosity about the world around me. The night sky in the high desert of New Mexico is breathtaking! I pity people who tell me that they have never seen the Milky Way. I wasted many hours of my life staring at the vast expanse of stars over my head, reciting the names of stars and constellations, or just letting my mind drift in wonder. Sometimes, my curiosity of nature outweighed my fear of its dangers. Upon encountering a rattlesnake in the desert (something which happens frequently), I would stop and stare at it from beyond striking distance, wondering how it rattled, why it rattled, and why it flicked its tongue. I would make no motions, but just stand my ground and watch. The snake would remain coiled, rattling, rattling, rattling, until it finally got bored with me and crawled off. I would memorize names of animals and dinosaurs from my picture books and magazine articles. Mom and Michael saw some kind of aptitude in me, and bought me a cheap microscope. I spent time looking at pond scum, river water, horse tank muck, and plenty of, what every boy with a microscope eventually looks at, my own blood, snot and spit.

My earlist scientific influence was probably a TV weatherman from Albuquerque named George Fischbeck. Dr George (as everybody called him) sprinkled his weather forecasts with quick anecdotes about how weather forecasting actually worked, and how the science was done. His charisma certainly helped. He was quick, lively, fun, entertaining, and very smart. On weekends, Dr Fischbeck broadcast another show, aimed at youngsters like myself, on the local PBS station. He performed simple science experiments for us kids, told us how they were done and what they meant, all with a few corny jokes sprinkled in. A rival TV network featured another charismatic weatherman, whose name I have long forgotten, who painted dinosaurs as a hobby. He would occasionally feature one of his dinosaur paintings with a brief explanation before beginning his weather forecast. “This is a rhamphorhynchus, a small flying pterosaur. It looks like a bat, but unlike a bat, its wing membrane is framed only to a single elongated finger…and now let’s look at the today’s weather”. I found these men irresistible. They were completely unlike anybody I knew in my little community of hippies, Jesus Freaks and Pentecostals. For the next few years, when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I responded with ‘meteorologist’. This was the humble beginning of my science education.

I also liked the syndicated show, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, hosted by Marlin Perkins. Every week he, along with his assistant Jim Fowler, would travel someplace on the planet to capture some animal, usually just to tag it and release it back into the wild. As much as I loved this and similar programs, there was a bit of a problem. There was usually a segment, only a moment or two, when the evolutionary history of the featured animal was discussed. Every time this segment was on television, my face would flush red with embarrassment. It was that hot feeling I got when I was embarrassed about seeing something I knew I should not be seeing. I knew what my church said about fossils, evolution and an ancient Earth. I knew that God created the world in six days about 6000 years ago. But I also knew about fossils. I could easily find scads of seashells in the desert, and for some reason, I trusted Marlin Perkins when he described the vast age of Earth. My young brain was not yet ready to try to reconcile these contradictory views of Nature. I accepted both, even though I knew that Grandpa Wagner thought that Evolution was Satanic. I will never forget the day that Grandpa Wagner’s haggard and toothless old wife took my favorite set of dinosaur flashcards and threw them into the woodstove, right before my eyes, mumbling something about tricks of the devil.

I trusted my sensory intuition. It involved things I could see, or at least reasonably infer. I could look through the toy microscope, view the heavens, dig for fossils and arrowheads, and actually view tangible evidence of with my own two hands. It also involved a love of books. Jesus did not involve anything I could see or touch, but he came to me through another book. As I said, I came to a point where I stopped enjoying the singing in Christian Worship. I felt like I was outgrowing much of the emotional outflow of worship. I started paying more attention to the hymn lyrics that I was singing, and found that they made little actual sense to me. But one thing I could do was read that Book, that special Book that I was told was God’s love letter to me. If I wanted to learn about Jesus, I had to read the Book, and pray to him. Since books taught me about planets, animals and dinosaurs, I figured that the Book, the Bible, would teach me about Jesus.

I did not own a Bible of my own except for my Children’s Picture Bible, and some of my cousins owned a giant family Bible with old paintings that were pretty exciting. I was mighty impressed with my step-dad Michael’s giant, leather-bound Scofield Study Bible. Tiny print on over 1000 nearly transparent pages. It had articles in the back on all manner of subjects, and I remember lots of photos from archeological digs. His had a big, black cover with a zipper, and pockets on the inside that could hold pencils and pens. I had never seen a book like that before, and something about the size of it, and the auxiliary features that came along with it. He had the text all marked up with colored pencils according to topic, and I liked to flip through the pages, scan the text of the sacred book, and look at the even smaller footnotes. While they were still dating, Michael Wagner gave my mom a large black Thompson Chain Reference Bible. It was also very large, but not quite as large as Michael’s Scofield Study Bible, but it was impressive enough to mom that she could finally replace her cheap paperback Good News Bible, and do some serious Bible studying. I still enjoyed my Children’s Picture Bible, but I rejoiced when Mom and Michael gave me a small, leather-bound Bible of my own. Not an annotated study bible, but a small King James version with my name embossed in gold right on the front cover.

Even though I was a voracious reader, I don’t know if mom and Michael were actually expecting me to read that Bible. But I viewed the Bible, the book written by God, as something more concrete than worship. I did not need the frenzy of crowds to make it work. There were no patterns or scripts involved in reading. I could just sit in the house, alone and in peace, and read that special book that God wrote – just for me.

I did not read the entire Bible. Thanks to my Children’s Picture Bible (which was surprisingly comprehensive!), I had a fair idea what was in there, and where to find it. Like most newcomers to the Bible, I got stuck in the Mosaic Law, but I just skipped over that for the juicy stuff. Contrary to most newcomers, I loved scouring the Bible’s many geneologies. I enjoyed names, numbers, figures, dates. I loved the stories about Elijah and Elisha, the miracle working prophets of the Old Testament. During particularly hot and dry days, I would imagine a tiny cloud in the sky, about the size of my hand, that could move overhead and bring a miraculous downpour. I knew that Jesus told me that I could move mountains if I only had enough Faith, and I also knew that Elijah had enough Faith to call down fire from Heaven. There were plenty of bullies in school that I desperately wanted to get the better of, and I longed to call fire down from Heaven to show them a thing or two. I remember consciously planning on building up enough Faith to actually perform this miracle, but nobody told me quite how to ‘build up Faith’, so that plan sort of fizzled out. Too bad. I wanted a burning stone altar of my own.

I did my best to read the apocalypic visions in the book of Revelation. My church paid special attention to Jesus’ warnings of the future and signs of the End of the Age. We believed that Christ’s return was immanent, which was obvious to us all from the warning signs Jesus gave in Matthew 24. Wars, famines, nuclear proliferation and uncertain times all lead us to think that the Rature was near, that we would all float off the ground and meet Jesus in the clouds, thus ushering in the Great Tribulation. Hal Lindsay was just becoming wellknown in Pentecostal circles, and End Times Prophecy, and sermons devoted to ‘unlocking Revelation” were suddenly all the rage. At least a few times, my church urged my mom to keep me out of school, holed up together in the house, so that we could wait for Jesus to take us home. I am not sure how long we were kept out of school – a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, but eventually our Messianic hopes were short lived and we returned to class.

I also read all the red colored text in the Gospels - the very words of Jesus himself. I prayed and talked to Jesus often, I sometimes imagined him walking with me, dressed in a white robe, with shoulder length hair, beard and sandles. His kind face was soothing to gaze upon, but I never imagined him speaking back. I had to rely on what he spoke to his disciples, 2000 years ago. I did my best to understand. It was not long until I chanced upon these threatening words from my best friend:

Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. – Matt 12:31-32

It is the dreaded Blasphemy of the Holy Ghost, the one and only unpardonable sin! I took this to mean, according to the context from which it is quoted from, to attribute signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit to be from the power of the Devil. In these years, my self-esteem and assurance was already sinking due to my conflicted view of the world, and my aloof nature with schoolmates. I was also somewhat obsessive with ideas. Once an idea was in my head, I could not help but toy and play with it, even if it was a bad idea. And the thought that just a mere utterance, the spoken attribution to the Devil what belonged to the Holy Ghost, would land me into Eternal HellFire, both scared and fascinated me. How could God send a person to hell, forever, just for uttering a simple phrase? Upon learning this dangerous information, I felt that I was recklessly dangling over an impossibly high cliff; slightly off balance so that one breath would tip me over to certain doom.

What if that boy evangelist that my church raved about was really not sent from God? What if it was all a trick from…. ? What if his miraculous cures were from the power of ….? What if we were not being Slain in the Spirit, but instead being Slain in the …? I don’t know how long I consciously avoided attributing the power of the Holy Ghost empowered child evangelist to the Devil, but it was only a matter of time before my obsessive mind caved in to my darker nature:

“That boy evangelist got his power from the Devil!”

I don’t know how long I panicked over this utterance. I don’t know how often I prayed, and begged God for forgiveness. All I remember is that for several days, maybe even weeks, I was quiet, prone to tears, and sought solitude in the desert so I could repent of my blasphemous behavior to my Best Friend. I did think I was truly hellbound. I did not know who I could speak to.

One day in class, for no good reason, I burst into tears. Mrs Cristola, my 5th grade teacher, knew I was frequently bullied, and she supposed somebody was being particularly cruel to me. But that was not the case. It was unprovoked. I simply cried, sobbed and whined in pathetic self-pity in front of the rest of my gradeschool class. Mrs Cristola asked me what was wrong. I said nothing. How could I?

She led me out of the class, leaving a classroom full of kids to certainly mock and laugh at my odd behavior. She found the nearest private room, which was the janitor’s mop closet. She sat across from me, and with her face mere inches from mine, implored:

“What is wrong? Tell me. What is wrong? Is somebody hurting you? Tell me. Nobody can hear.”

How could I tell this woman? How could I tell my schoolteacher, who was not a member of my church, that I was crying, not because I was being bullied, not because my grades were suffering, but because I had doomed myself to eternal damnation by blaspheming the Holy Ghost. In an episode that would later repeat itself several times in my life, I was left speechless, with absolutely no excuse for my miserable behavior.

Absorbed with self-pity, I asked God to kill me. This was not the first time, and certainly not the last. I was very confused. I did not understand my classmates. I did not understand my Jesus. I did not understand my family. Nothing made sense, except the horrible price I was learning to pay for my own Sin. That millstone of guilt would live on with me for many years.

For some reason that I have never been able to understand, we suddenly moved from San Ysidro. The Wagner family and their church, who had fled from Jamestown, New York, suddenly had an inexplicable urge to move again, this time to a place my family had never traveled. I recently asked mom why they decided to move to southeast Missouri, but to this day she still does not understand. Nobody in the church had any family or friends there. Nobody had any work or employment waiting there. But, mom had married into the Wagner family, so we packed our meager belongings, left the desert, and arrived on the fertile farmlands of Missouri in the summer of 1975. It was time for us to start over again.

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Conversions and De-conversions – Learning the Script

The seeds of my eventual de-conversion were already in place in my young life. I was not introduced to religious belief until after I had explored the western United States with my family. I had enough of an understanding of science, particularly Evolution, to allow that seed to germinate over many years, only to blossom when I became an adult. I was also very good at finding patterns, particularly in the behavior of my new religious family. Perhaps my Christian beliefs were doomed from the beginning.

I only remember a few things that my newly converted mother said to me concerning her new Jesus Freak beliefs:

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“Mom, isn’t Grandma going to Heaven?”

“No. I am afraid not. She has not been born again.”

“But she is good. She knows about churches. She taught me! Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors…”

“That does not matter. Even if she goes to church, it does not matter. She has not been born again. She does not know Jesus”

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A fundraiser for starving, sub-Saharan Africans is showing on television. We have all seen them. Emaciated woman clutching onto fly covered toddlers with distended bellies. Some sick and filthy children with crusty eyes are eating food from relief workers that looks something like what we slopped the pigs with. And for your gift of only 25 cents per day, the price of a cup of coffee, you can feed one desperate child. Mom cuts split ends from her hair while she considers their terrible plight.

“Oh dear. They need Jesus. If only they knew Jesus.”

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Mom spoke to me one evening by the warmth of the wood stove, “Remember, we will live in heaven forever. Do you know how long ‘forever’ is? Imagine a boulder of granite. Not that soft sandstone like we have here, but the hardest rock you can imagine. Imagine a boulder that is 1000 feet on ever side. A huge boulder, 1000 feet long, 1000 feet high and 1000 feet deep. Imagine that every 1000 years a bird lands on the boulder, sharpens its beak on the boulder, and then flies off. A bird sharpens its beak on the boulder every thousand years. When that boulder of granite is finally worn down from those tiny birds sharpening their beaks on it, then that is when only 1 day has passed in Heaven. Can you imagine that?”

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This was smattering of the things I heard from my mother during those early years of belief. I was very young, and my Christian theology was infantile. I had no conception of Trinity, Christology or any other form of theological sophistication. My beliefs did not come from the pulpit of Grandpa Wagner, since I remember few specifics any of his Holy Ghost empowered rants. Basically, I all knew in that time of early belief was that there was a Man who lived in Heaven, named Jesus. Jesus used to live on Earth long, long ago, but he was killed because of who he was, but he came alive again, then he rose up into Heaven. Heaven was up there, beyond the clouds. Maybe Heaven was even beyond the planets that I was learning about from my astronomy poster. Heaven was where Jesus lived with his Father, whose name was God, and that was where we would go when we died. Jesus loved me very much, and I was to love him back because he died for me. Jesus could do anything, but he also wanted to spend time with me and be my friend. He wanted to play with me and would protect me while I was exploring the desert or swimming in the irrigation ditch. He could read my mind. He could tell what I was thinking, and if my thoughts were good or bad. Jesus did not want me to sin. This meant that he did not want me to lie, cheat, steal, kill or do anything else wrong. I could not smoke (like my dad), cuss (like my dad), gamble (like dad) or drink (like dad). I could not play with myself. Witches were evil, and I could not watch TV shows like Bewitched. I could not think bad thoughts, because Jesus could always tell what I was thinking. I could always pray to Jesus because he was my friend. If I wanted to go to Heaven, I had to Repent and become Born Again. It did not matter how good I was, it just mattered that I was Born Again. If I was not Born Again, I would go to Hell and burn forever. There was a bad guy who flew around trying to make me do bad things. His name was The Devil, or Satan. He was God’s enemy, but apparently if we prayed loud enough, we could ‘bind’ The Devil, and then The Devil couldn’t do anything bad to us. Jesus was going to come back very, very soon, and take all of us up into the clouds with him, and the world would end.

That is about it. Most of my theology in those years came from bits and pieces I picked up from hear and there, my own wishful thinking, and Chick Tracks, which were starting to become very popular. These short, cartoon pamphlets were much more memorable than any sermon I heard from church, or from our hymnals or Bible readings. They were easy for me to read, the drawings were funny, and they were amazingly memorable. I could read them over and over, and let the propaganda sink deep into my psyche. I am not sure where these tracts came from, or who brought them into our church, but my favorites were Holy Joe, Big Daddy, and This Was Your Life, Somebody Loves Me, and A Demon’s Nightmare. I encourage anybody reading this who is not familiar with Chick Tracts to click on the links and check out my gradeschool reading material. I seriously doubt any o my Catholic friends know what these are, but they were very common in homes and tent revivals during the early-mid 1970s. Looking back at these things, I cannot believe what a warped mockery they make of the world. It is almost as if the movie Constantine was a documentary.

[note – it looks like Big Daddy has been heavily revised since I read it as a kid. The first and last few panels are the same, the stuff in the middle looks like all updated material. Luckily, the frame which explains that the binding force of atomic nuclei is actually Jesus is still in the comic.]

Our ‘church’, if it can be called that, was usually led by Grandpa Wagner, but anybody else, as long as they were male, could fill in if they desired. We sometimes met outside by the horse tank if we planned on a water baptism; sometimes we met in a friend’s house. Usually though, our church met in a small adobe house down the road from ours, where the front room had enough space for about 30 people. Grandpa Wagner fashioned himself as the pastor of our tiny church, and his sermons were usually some extrapolation from a Biblical verse or two, and usually included yelling, jumping, and stamping his feet on the floor in fits of passion. I remember him preaching on things like the fact that we would never be good enough to go to Heaven, the filling of the Holy Ghost, demon possession, and Jesus’ soon return from Heaven to judge the Earth. I remember only the most primitive theology being preached by him, and I doubt he had anything more to offer. The songs that we sang from old hymnals were not memorable to me, but I remember that our singing was accompanied with a guitar, accordion, and about a dozen tambourines. During and after singing, everybody would speak, sometimes very loudly, in ‘Tongues’. I always felt strange watching my mother chant in this strange way. The scene was always chaotic. Everybody stood, lifted their arms and cried as the otherworldly language took hold of them. Sometimes all control was lost. People would occasionally fall and gyrate on the floor. Sometimes they did this while crying, other times while laughing, singing or screaming. On rare occasions, somebody had ‘demons’ cast out of them by Grandpa Wagner and the congregation.

We often drove in a caravan to traveling tent crusades and revivals in the neighboring town of Bernallilo and even in Albuquerque. These must have been hugely popular in the wake of the Jesus Movement in the early 1970’s because I remember lots of these things. It was usually an odd mix of the older, more conservative Evangelical trying to accept the younger crowd of fervent, long-haired Jesus Freaks sharing their space. Our church once caravanned all the way up to Farmington to watch Rex Humbard perform at one of his healing crusades. I don’t remember seeing Kathryn Kuhlman, but I do remember mom saying she saw her, and that she performed the healing miracle of lengthening a man’s leg. Mom recounted the story, with astonishment and wonder, of seeing the miracle with her very own eyes I also remember watching some kid, not much older than myself, preach every night for a week, in some community hall in Albuquerque. He was billed as the world’s youngest evangelist, one of probably dozens billed in the same way, and he was certainly dynamic. I remember leaving each night, and listening to adults as they marveled at his miraculous gifts of the Spirit. I remember this young boy, dressed in shirt and tie, as he marched up and down the aisle between folding chairs, preach with the confidence of a veteran. At the end of each service, we would form a long line in front of him, so he could place his hand on us, pray, and we would then be ‘Slain in the Spirit’. Of course, I had been slain in the spirit many times, by Grandpa Wagner and by numerous other traveling evangelists, and because everybody was wailing and bemoaning their own sin and unworthy state, my own face was almost always hot and wet with tears. But I will never forget the knot in my throat as this child placed his hands on mom’s head and yelled, as she fell over backwards to be caught by some assistants. I also remember my own strange feeling as hands were placed on me, and I knew, as if reading a script for a play, that this was the time in which I was to fall over and be ‘Slain’. So fall over I did. And I would lie there as people stepped around my prostrate body and the pandemonium continued.

Patterns. I started to see patterns in the chaos. Somewhere in the frenzy of these revivals, I detected a subtle script that was nevertheless being followed. Was I just part of an act?

I remember more than once, consciously deciding to not fall when hands were placed on me. I was not trying to be rebellious, I was just trying to detect the power of the Holy Ghost. I was a firm believer in Jesus, but I had a sense that I was being slain only because everybody else around me was being slain, and falling over was something that was just expected of me. The evangelist placed his hands on the forehead of a praying believer, sometimes with his finger dipped in a bit of oil, and after a second or two, and on cue, the believer would slowly tip over backward. It seemed suspiciously rehearsed. I once heard a story about an obstinate man who braced himself with his leg so he would not be slain, and his leg ended up broken. So I did not brace myself by placing my leg behind me, I just stood there as the evangelist placed his hands on my forehead and prayed. I consciously did not fall. I half expected him to keep trying, to pray even harder, to throw a command at me. But no, he simply passed over me to the next person in line.

So, at a very young age, as a young Christian who loved Jesus, I learned that my being Slain in the Spirit was a function of the crowd around me. I imagined everybody in the crowd, including mom, falling over at the command of the evangelist, overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit. I could tell that I was not falling over by any power other than my own, rather I was only doing it because momentum from the believing crowd encouraged me to. This was one of the first things of a critical and skeptical nature that I picked up on as a very young Christian.

I could not, at the time, imagine any psychological trickery going on. I could see the script that was being followed, and I could read the patterns that were being laid out in each service, but I did not think to imagine if anybody could be Slain in the Spirit without the emotional crowd present, say in the privacy of the pastor’s office. My critique of the situation made me imagine that there was something wrong, not with the crowd, not with the religion, but with me. Perhaps my Faith in Jesus was not strong enough, or that I was not truly sincere in my belief, and I just compensated by allowing myself to fall over in order to fool everybody else. I imagined all my friends and family around me, being legitimately overwhelmed by the power of the Holy Ghost, all control of the bodies being taken over by divine command, while I had to be content with merely imitating everybody else. I did not feel too guilty over this particular lapse of faith however - that would come later. Relief was in sight from my friend Dino. I remember once laying on the floor after being Slain, eyes shut, then opening to look Dino, Grandpa Wagner’s young grandson, who was lying next to me.

“sssshhh” he quietly whispered. “Keep your eyes shut”.

OK. I was not the only one pretending.

Still, I could not help thinking that there was something wrong with me. It was not only the fact that I felt I was following a script when I was Slain in the Spirit, it was that I could not, to my shame, yet Speak with Other Tongues.

Our church taught, along with many other Pentecostals, that since Jeuss promised that his followers would speak with tongues and drive out demons (Mark 16:17), it then followed that only those that did show this evidence were truly saved and going to heaven. Everybody in our church spoke in tongues, including my mother. I had certainly seen demons cast out of people by the congregation. But I could not Speak in Tongues. I never could. I cannot count the number of altar calls I tearfully accepted, just in case I was not sincere enough the last time I tearfully accepted an altar call. I do not know how many times I was baptized in the river or horse tank, trying to show my willingness to be Faithful to Jesus, whom I was supposed to love. It did not matter that everybody in our church regularly accepted altar calls, repented, and was dunked (our chuch was tiny after all). None of that mattered. The fact was, I could not bring myself to Speak in Tongues. I was very troubled with my inability to be filled with the Holy Ghost and speak with Other Tongues much more than my own faults at being Slain in the Spirit.

Some of us kids used to meet in one of our bedrooms and ‘play’ church. I would whip out my Children’s Picture Bible and tell some story of the Biblical Patriarchs or something, then we would all sing a few songs. Once during playtime, Dino, my troublesome friend, started speaking in tongues in a mocking manner.

“Dino, stop! You are going to get us in trouble!”
“Shandalahai!”
“Stop it Dino!”
“C’mon, speaking in tongues is easy! Shandalahai!”

“Shandalahai. Shandalahai la la Shandala la la da Shandalahai.”

I picked up more patterns at my young age. Even though I was troubled by my inability to Speak in Tongues, I could detect that the language as spoken by my church mostly consisted of the same words and syllables repeated over and over. Even by mom. Some variation of ‘Shandalahai’ seemed to be a favorite. And Dino was just mischevious enough to not only pick up on that, like I did, but also mock it.

“Shandalahai! Everybody does it this way!”

Still, like being Slain in the Spirit, I refused to just read the Script. I did not want to follow the crowd and just chant “Shandalahai” over and over. I wanted to be filled with the Holy Ghost, and I sincerely desired the power of the Holy Ghost to take over my body and speak through me. I was intensely conscious of my own actions.

Once, during some service, I asked Grandpa Wagner and the congregation to pray for me so that I could be filled with the Holy Ghost and speak with new tongues.

What followed was a cacophony of prayers, chanting, yelling, urging, hand-laying, and demon-binding. Voices rose and shouting began. I cried. They yelled. My face and tears were hot. I tried to loosen my throat, to allow my tongue to flap of its own will. Voices urging me amidst the pandemonium of prayer, “Just let it out! Just let it out! Pray with other tongues, in Jesus name!” I pleaded with God. “Please God. Please Jesus. Fill me with the Holy Ghost. Come into my body! Please save me! Please save me! Let me speak in Tongues!! Please!

I cried, I prayed, I begged. They shouted, they prayed, they urged me on. Finally, I just let my tongue smack against the roof of my mouth.

“…duh duh du du do do du du do do dud dudududu dodoodoud dou do duo du do…”

Shouting! Cheering! Rejoicing! Everybody clapped. I continued to stammer with my eyes shut, tears flowing, flushed, drained, but with arms raised in praise to my Jesus. Jesus, who had finally given me the gift of the Holy Spirit!

“…du do do du du du do do dodood dudo…”

But why did I not speak with anything that sounded like words? I could do nothing but repeatedly stammer. Grandpa Wagner reassured me. I was just in the baby stages of speaking in Tongues, and just like a baby who babbles, my spiritual speech would soon develop into a full language. Very soon now. Very soon. I was relieved.

I remember several weeks had gone by. For a very short time, I freely and proudly spoke with other Tongues, because I felt that I had finally recieved that power from the Holy Ghost. After the prescribed number hymns were sung, and the proper intensity of prayer was reached, we would all stand to our feet, we would all raise are arms, and without any verbal commands but on cue nonetheless, we would all Speak in the Tongues of Angels, in unison. While the more mature believers wailed forth, ‘Shandalahai!’, I finally felt like a true believer with all of them, as I lifted my own arms, half bent at the elbows, eyes shut, and quietly spoke to God in my spiritual language of stammering utterances. But my babblings never developed into a language. Several weeks went by, and I continued to stammer. I felt no language developing and no maturity in my speech. I think I was just relieved that I could do it, and do it before witnesses. But after several weeks, I quit speaking in tongues. I tried it, and I had not advanced beyond a baby language, so I must have felt dissatisfied with it. I never attempted to Speak in Tongues again. I was satisfied with what I had. I was convinced that I had been filled with the Holy Ghost as evidenced by my speech. I could let it pass.

At a very young age, I could recognize the unwritten and unspoken patterns in Christian worship, prayer, hymn singing and fellowship. They were obvious to me, and would become only more obvious as my Christian life developed. I could tell when people would become Slain in the Spirit, and under what conditions. I could tell when people would speak in Tongues, what their speech would sound like, how long it would last, who would stand up to give some kind of interpretation, and what that interpretation would be. Even as a very young Christian, fully intent on living to please Jesus, I could see patterns of behavior, and these patterns just allowed me to the memorize the Script of Christian behavior that we all followed.

But I did not make the connection that something was wrong with the belief. That was not thought of. It was simply out of the range of possibility. Rather, something was wrong with me. I was never Faithful enough. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!

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Conversions and De-conversions – A godless childhood

The first thing I remember about my childhood in San Ysidro, New Mexico was the unusual people who lived there. True, I met many oddballs, hippies, vagrants and all-around misfits during my parent’s 18 months on the road. We traveled across the western United States, packed into a Volkswagen microbus, from one bizarre hippie commune to another. Sometimes we stayed for a couple of days, others we lingered for months. We lived at one particular state park in northern California for 3 weeks, along with a dozen or so tentbound societal outcasts. Lots of driving, lots of exploring, free love, pot and music. I was out of school, probably illegally, so my mom compensated by teaching me to read, write and understand basic math. I remember many times, sitting in the van, drawing wild animals that I had seen out the window, or indulging in my new obsession with dinosaurs. The huge area that we drove through was filled with geological marvels and fossil museums, and I learned early about those fantastic monsters that once filled the land. I still have crude drawings, buried somewhere in my closet, of ferocious red-eyed tyrannosaurs attacking long-necked brontosaurs. I remember mom teaching me the Theory of Evolution, as she understood it. She told me, for instance, that giraffes evolved from antelopes many thousands of years ago. Generations of antelopes stretched their necks to reach the tender leaves from treetops, each successive generation growing a slightly longer neck, with the final result being our modern giraffe. She also told me that while dinosaurs were long extinct, their modern day ancestors lived on as lizards, alligators and other reptiles. And while mom got the specifics of evolutionary theory wrong, the basic idea that animals somehow changed from one creature to another over spans of millions of years was taught to me at a very early age. Mom’s crude understanding, visiting fossil museums and traveling through desert terrain were all I had to explain the animals and fossils that I saw, and where the dinosaurs went. I do not remember at that early age any conception of our special creation from a deity – only a scientific explanation. It all made perfect sense to me. Here is a dirty secret – even during the years of my most fervent religious convictions, I was always convinced by the theory of evolution. Too many hikes in the desert observing nature, I suppose.

Eventually a life with no income and three children wore my parents down, so we settled on some property owned by my mother’s parents. San Ysidro was a small farming community about 40 miles from my grandparents birthplace, and probably not much bigger. For the next four years, we lived in a tiny adobe house, in the most primitive of conditions. As I already mentioned, the tiny town of Mexican farmers was at that time being overrun with very unusual people. My parents were one of a number of hippies and outcasts who arrived in San Ysidro, and northern New Mexico in general, trying to escape modernity.

I met two children who occupied a half eroded adobe house with their grandfather. I have a vivid memory of them shaving their grandfather’s thick toenails with a pocketknife, while he lay back on a couch talking to my parents. Like so many transients that I met in San Ysidro, they only stayed for a short time before moving on. We met a young cowboy with an older wife and his inherited eight children. I remember they once shared with us all they could on our first Christmas Eve in San Ysidro – some boiled potatoes, Jello, and bear meat that was tougher than shoe leather. They also moved out of town very soon after we met them. I have often wondered about the children I met in San Ysidro, where they now live, and if they could write similar articles about transient life in New Mexico. We often saw drunk Indians from the two neighboring pueblos, Jemez and Zia, and they were commonly seen stumbling or passed out on the road, meeting outside behind the town’s several bars to drink with friends, or even wandering onto our property or even our house! Alcoholism was a terrible problem with the Natives of New Mexico.

Mom enrolled me in the local public school, but my advanced reading and writing skills allowed me to quickly skip a grade. I moved straight from 1st to 3rd grade thanks to my mother’s education. Today, she considers granting the school permission to move me up a grade to be one of her worst parenting decisions. For the next 8 years or so, I was the youngest and smallest kid in my class, and I would later pay for it dearly.

Dad quickly found work as a lumberjack in the mountains. I remember him coming home from work, filthy with sawdust and oil, and sharpening his enormous chainsaws. He also drank more. His abuse and violence continued against mom and me. He frequently got in fights at the bar, and since he hated stupid Indians he would often go to the bar just to drink and look for trouble with them. In those days in northern New Mexico, we never, and I mean never, saw a police officer. San Ysidro was, like Cabezon before it, a relic from the Wild West. I believe the nearest police station was in Bernalillo 25 miles away, and they never ventured into our part of the county. Dad could get away with pretty much anything if he wished, and vigilante justice ruled. I remember one perverse day when dad took me to the bar in the neighboring town of Jemez Springs, got me to puke on two shots of tequila, had me shoot pool with some of his logging buddies, then on the drive home gave me the one and only expression he ever gave of his hopes and dreams for my future. I have heard that most dads are proud of their sons for showing some kind of aptitude and a potential for a successful adult life. After taking me to drink, my dad told me that I shot pool and drank like a man, and he could not wait for me to grow up so we could go out drinking together and beat up Indians. It would be another 30 years before he directed another expression of pride towards his son.

Eventually, mom had to leave dad. I believe they divorced around 1972. He went to live in Jemez Springs with his new girlfriend, and mom was left with no job, no skills and three children to care for in an isolated New Mexico town that offered no opportunity. If she did not live in an adobe house owned by her parents, I don’t know what would have happened. I don’t blame her for being desperate. She got a job at the local trading post/feed store, about a mile down the road. She still did not know how to drive a car, and things were looking kind of grim for us.

In all this time, my life was godless. There was never any talk of religion, God, Jesus, miracles – nothing. I had no conception of any of it.

That would quickly change. More transients moved into San Ysidro. Most were young hippies who longed to drop out from society, but we finally met some who were from Southern California. They were heavily influenced by Chuck Smith’s Christian ministry, and converted to his charismatic brand of Evangelical Christianity. They spoke a bizarre new lingo like ‘Jesus Freaks’, ‘One Way’, ‘Jesus saves’ and ‘Jesus is coming again’. I don’t remember the first time I met these people, or was introduced to their religion, but like so many other transients we met, they seemed to come into town, stay a few days or weeks, then move on.

Another family moved into town, this time from Jamestown, New York. I never knew why they traveled across the United States to settle in little San Ysidro, New Mexico, but like a traveling band of Mormons, they braved the wilderness until they found their Promised Land. The Wagner Family (not their real name) was three generations of Pentecostal Christians who suddenly moved into our tiny town, where there was only one small Catholic church, intent on building a church to their liking. Mom, soon after meeting this family, converted. This young woman, who had rejected her family’s religion and heritage of Catholicism, quickly became a Pentecostal Christian. She became a part of the family. Like I said, she was desperate.

The Wagner family patriarch was a man whom we all called ‘Grandpa Wagner’. Dad loathed him, and called his wife ‘Old Toothless’. He was an old-fashioned hellfire preacher whom I am certain would get along just fine with the likes of Fred Phelps. They moved to San Ysidro with their four grown children and spouses, numerous grandchildren, and even a few members of their Jamestown church. We quickly became friends with all these people. It was in this cult-like religious atmosphere that we lived for the next few years, and it is in this environment that I was first exposed to Christianity.

Mom was desperate, and perhaps she accepted her new family and their religion because of that desperation. Perhaps she did not know at the time, when she married Grandpa Wagner’s oldest son, that she was desperate. Perhaps she really was in love. Perhaps she only thought she was in love. Who knows? All I know is that Michael Wagner (again a pseudonym) was single, had no children, and had the marketable skills necessary to care for three very poor children. Mom was desperate, and she had to do what she had to do. She married into the family of an old traveling preacher, and converted to their religion. In return, she was cared for, and we were fed.

And I learned to Love Jesus.

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Conversions and De-conversions – Dad

As far back as my mother can trace, her ancestry is exclusively from the high-desert farmlands of New Mexico. She is of unmistakable Hispanic heritage. Dad is a typical European mutt. He once made it a mission to trace his ancestry as far back in time as he possibly could – a story that I will come to again later. He found that he was of English, Scottish, Danish and Dutch stock – essentially the northwestern rim of Europe. Dad’s European heritage was certainly a mix of Lutheran and Anglican, but I will never know of what extent that heritage was, or why my dad’s family became impassive towards it. His parents and grandparents never made their religious beliefs known to me, and grandmom only spoke in the vaguest of spiritual generalities. As far as I know, they were thoroughly apathetic towards religious beliefs of any kind. In all my life, I have never seen anybody in dad’s family in a church. That is, until dad converted. But I am again getting ahead of myself.

Grandpa died before I was born, but grandmom is still alive and living in Los Angeles. She remarried a very kind man who I considered my grandfather, just because I never knew my real one, and camping and fishing with my grandparents are some of my most treasured childhood memories. Grandmom was born in 1920, the third child of a Dutch/Scottish couple who drove to Los Angeles from Iowa sometime around 1915. ‘Drove’ seems like such a pedestrian term in our world of interstate highways, but before my great-grandmother died in 1993, she used to tell me stories of being ambushed by wild Indians in Oklahoma during their cross-country trek. I am certain these stories were embellished, but on their arrival to the growing city of Los Angeles, they made a small fortune selling real estate around the growing metropolis. One prized photo in the family album shows my great-grandfather’s company trucks lining an empty road and loaded down with lumber, ready to build. They caught the housing boom in Los Angeles just in time to retire early. They spent the rest of their lives traveling and indulging in one hunting and fishing safari after another.

Somehow, with missing details that I never asked my parents for, the tall, handsome, muscular European man met the tiny, Hispanic woman. The mismatched couple wed and eventually had three children, of which I was the oldest. Dad had a troubled childhood. As big as my dad was, he had an older brother who was even bigger, and apparently had a nasty mean streak. When dad was young, his dad and older brother regularly beat him. I don’t really know what caused the beatings. Dad told me some stories about his dad’s temper exploding after he got in some kind of school trouble, but I suspect these were only lame excuses to justify more beatings. My dad’s father, who died years before I was born, was always somewhat sickly. My grandmom once said that he was born just for the purpose to die. But my uncle, my dad’s older brother, has always struck me as a mean and bitter man. I don’t think he would have needed much of a reason to bully a favorite victim. The beatings must have left severe emotional wounds on my dad’s soul – since the last time I saw him three years ago, he was still telling stories of decades-old abuse. I have always known about the trouble he had with his father and older brother, but he shocked me recently by telling me of his mother, who once punished him by repeatedly shoving his head under water. It is so hard for me to imagine my sweet grandmother, who lives in the fondest memories of my childhood, engaged in such abuse. I don’t know how much in these stories are true, and how much is my dad’s unintended embellishment. Dad has only bothered to tell me a single side of every pitiable story in his difficult life.

As strained as his immediate family relations were, he idolized his adventurous grandparents. My grandmom’s parents spent their real estate earnings on numerous hunting and fishing expeditions. Grandmom’s house was crammed with wildlife trophies, stuffed and mounted deer heads, giant fish and bear rugs. Dad and his cousins sometimes traveled with them on weekend outings, and spent as much time as they could away from the city and exploring the deserts of southern California, hunting game and training carrier pigeons. Dad grew to love the outdoor lifestyle that his grandparents instilled in him, and he became less and less comfortable with the crowded and complicated city environment. Los Angeles was becoming unbearable for him.

Dad worked as a gardener, tending the grounds of Los Angeles’ wealthy. Mom was employed as a telephone operator. Mom was never taught to drive - or taught much anything else for that matter. If she did not make the bus, dad had to drive her to work. I remember once sitting in the car while dad tried to give mom driving lessons. He got angry and frustrated, punched the car interior, and drove home hurling curses and insults the whole way. Knowing my mom as I do now, it is amazing for me to look back at what I remember of her in the late 1960’s. For a woman who rebelled against the religious traditions of her parents, she was unbelievably prone to influence and outside pressures. I remember her once hiding me under the bedroom window while she peeked out at a salesman ringing the doorbell. “Be quiet! That is a robber outside trying to get in!” I did not know at the time that she just too timid to deny a sales pitch.

Dad treated me the way he was treated growing up. He treated me the only way he knew how. I hesitate to write of the physical abuse that dad inflicted on mom or myself, because it does not fit the central theme of these blog articles. But those actions undoubtedly shaped me into the person that I am today. He did it. It happened. I might sprinkle an incident here or there in forthcoming blog entries, but it is not something that I want to spend much time writing about. Strangely, the treatment I got from dad does not seem particularly abnormal to me, but I suppose that is because my childhood is the only childhood I ever knew, and making comparisons with a supposed ideal childhood is arbitrary and impossible. I do not have scars, not physical ones anyway, I did not endure torture, and my dad’s outbursts were usually swift and alcohol induced. I don’t even like the term abuse, since it trivializes those poor children who have endured much worse than me. But in talking to friends over the years, they have expressed the concern that dad would certainly be doing some jail time had he acted the way he did in our 21st century, childcentric, bully-free zone. At the risk of validating Christian apologists who suggest that atheism is the result of a dysfunctional relationship with a father, I will say that I never really knew my father. I still don’t know him. Unlike the relationship I still have with mom, and despite years of trying, I have never been close to dad. He has certainly changed over the years, as we all have, and he will feature prominently in my story in future entries, but I can honestly say that he still remains a mystery to me. His abuse was more psychological than physical. A punch in my face only hurts just so long as I am choking down blood from my nose, but the emotional pain lasts for years. Even decades later, after I had grown and he had matured, even after we both tried our best to learn to love each other, he still intimidated the hell out of me.

In 1969, I was attending Kindergarten in Gardena, California. The school was two blocks from the house and in those days mom let me walk, alone, to school. One of the first memories I have of school is my teacher, Mrs. Michener, telling us youngsters to be quiet so she could listen to the news on the radio. Apparently something important was happening with astronauts who were travelling to the Moon, and Mrs. Michener later told us all about daring astronauts and the marvels of space travel. My introduction to science had thus begun.

For many years, I suspected dad was a Vietnam War draft dodger. Recently, mom assured me that this was not the case. I have always wondered why, in late 1969, my parents sold all their belongings, including the house, packed me, my toddler younger brother, and baby little sister, into a 1963 Volkswagon Microbus, and left Los Angeles. The transition was so sudden it was enough to induce whiplash. One day, we were living comfortably in a nice brick home just outside of Los Angeles, the next, we were on the road, with no income, no destination, no plan, no idea of what would happen next. Mom assures me that dad was not a draft dodger. He just found the city increasingly stifling, and he needed the freedom of the hills that he had learned from the grandparents he so loved. Reckless? Irresponsible? Who can say, but I must say that it was also the climate and changing culture of the time. Dad was letting his hair and beard grow. Mom shed her dress and started wearing pants. Rebellious and experimental music blared from everywhere and expressed the feelings of all young people - Janis Joplin, Canned Heat, Iron Butterfly, and dad’s personal favorite, Bob Dylan. I still remember ‘Somebody to Love’ by Jefferson Airplane, probably the first song chorus I ever learned to sing, playing from the bus radio as we drove north and left our grandparents and all remaining family traditions and ties forever behind.

Little could I have suspected, but at that very moment, just 30 miles to the south of our house in Gardena, down south of Long Beach in neighboring Coast Mesa, a middle-aged Pentacostal preacher named Chuck Smith was shocking the evangelical world by inviting drug addicted hippies into his small church and converting them to Christianity. The Protestant Church, recently home to stiff 1950’s post-war formalism, was suddenly flooded with long-haired Jesus Freaks baptizing in the Pacific Ocean, performing signs and wonders, and creating a hybrid musical form called Christian Rock. This had no immediate effect on me, since at this time in my life, my religiously indifferent family had never introduced me to the concepts of God, Jesus or other Christian paraphernalia. However, these simple but shocking acts, performed in a church not far south of our Gardena home, produced ripples that were to affect our lives for many years to come.

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I will continue this story after the Holidays. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everybody!

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Conversions and De-conversions – Mom

One thing I notice in many stories of leaving religious Faith is the pain of telling family members of newfound faithlessness. The United States has no state religion, so religious traditions are passed down solely through family ties. Even the most religiously apathetic are raised in some kind of religious tradition cemented through deep roots in the family. Leaving Faith often means painful breaking with unquestioned family traditions. Fortunately, I never had this problem. I had no deep family traditions to concern myself with. My mother’s parents were the most religious of my family, but they did not successfully pass that tradition down through their children. My grandfather, Papa as everybody called him, died well before I left the Faith. I callously insulted my grandmother’s Faith soon after Papa’s death. I had not yet learned that when religious tradition is insulted, the person who holds the tradition is also insulted. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Mama is the sole torchbearer of any religious tradition in my family. She is still alive and well at 95, and still lives with the rest of my mother’s family in north-central New Mexico. I never felt the burden to tell her that I left the Christian Faith, and although there are other religious people in my family, they do not carry the tradition that Mama failed to pass down. I have some family members who are Protestant Evangelicals. Mama and Papa were strict Catholics.

Mama was born in Cabezon, New Mexico in 1916. Cabezon is a ghost town now, although I have visited the collapsing mud-brick homes of that town many times. It was abandoned around 1940 when the Rio Puerco, the sole source of the town’s water, dried up. Coincidentally, this was when the War was beginning to consume the planet, and work was to be found in Los Angeles. So Mama and Papa moved to Los Angeles and Papa found work by joining the Navy. The strict, Catholic, isolated, Wild West town in New Mexico was abandoned for a new life in the city.

‘Wild West’ is not hyperbole when describing Cabezon. To this day, there is a single, 20-mile long dirt road connecting the abandoned town of Cabezon to the nearest paved highway, then from there another 30 miles or so to the nearest small town. Mama never spoke much about what life was like living there when she was young, only that it was nothing but pleasure. I think that kind of talk is all romantic nostalgia. I do know that farming in the deserts of New Mexico at any distance from the Rio Grande is immensely difficult, and water is the precious gold of the rural highlands. I do know that the tiny Rio Puerco created a heavily eroded arroyo just outside of town, and navigating down to the water involves a treacherous hike down soft silt and packed desert dirt. Water had to be hauled up daily from the muddy river, first for cooking and drinking, then for farming and the animals, then, if there was any left, for washing.

Back around 1995, some volunteers refurbished the long abandoned Catholic Church in Cabezon. The graveyard in the back was cleared of brush and tumbleweeds, the old Stations of the Cross were fixed, the pews repainted, the old adobe bricks replastered, and Mass was held there for the first time in about 40 years. I was there during that celebration, and some of the older people from the area, people who remembered living there decades before, came to attend the Mass. I was certain I was related, in some distant and remote way, to most everybody there. Everybody, good Catholics that they were, knew the routine once the Mass started. I could only follow along by watching what everybody else was doing. Mama and Papa did not pass their religious traditions down to their grandchildren, and my cousins and I did not understand the religious celebrations and rituals there that had tied the entire community together. We were just thinking of the enchiladas, beans and red chile that waited to be eaten after Mass was finished.

The community planned to hold Mass in the old Cabezon church four times per year for all the old-timers. Unfortunately this plan did not last long. People who had once lived in Cabezon got older and died, and the younger generations did not remember the old ghost town of their grandparents. Today, the entire town is again melting into piles of mud where adobe bricks once stood, desert scrub again clogs the town cemetery, and the dirt road into town is gated and locked. The recently refurbished Catholic church is the only building in town not in danger of completely eroding again into the surrounding red earth.

I have often wondered why Mama and Papa were not able to pass down their Catholic traditions to their three children. I have never seen my mother, my aunt or my uncle all together in a Catholic church except at Papa’s funeral – and none of them participated in the Mass. Most families that I have witnessed, both here in the Catholic Southwest and in Philippines pass their religious traditions down through their children with seemingly no effort. Why was my family so different? This is one mystery that my mother has never given the complete explanation for, but I suspect, and it is only a suspicion, that it was the culture shock after moving from Cabezon to Los Angeles in 1942. My uncle and aunt, their two oldest children, were born in Cabezon and were raised speaking Spanish. My mom was born in Los Angeles and the Spanish language was dropped after the children entered public school there. During the wartime culture in Los Angeles, American citizenry was the top priority. The Spanish language was dropped when English became the only permissible language. I suspect that the Catholic Faith, while not dropped, was just no longer emphasized.

My mother once told me that she never accepted the Catholic Faith. She just never believed it because it never made sense to her. I think there is something more to this story, just because neither her older sister nor brother ever became devout Catholics, and that coincidence just makes me somewhat suspicious. I will have to ask her about this when I see her next week over Christmas. The three children, my mom and her older brother and sister, were baptized, went through confirmation, occasionally attended confession, and performed all the other expected Catholic rituals. But for some reason her oldest brother, the only one of the siblings to enroll in college, rejected the Catholic faith. Because of the pressure from her parents, mom remained a Catholic in name only. I was baptized as a baby in order for mom to keep peace with Mama and Papa, but that was the last of my sacraments. I never attended catechism, received first communion, or went through confirmation. I had no idea what a Catholic really was until decades later.

My young non-believing mother was still influenced by strict Catholic culture in one small but significant way. Mom married her tall, handsome, and non-Catholic high school sweetheart. Somehow, these two young, mismatched and immature people wed in a non-Catholic ceremony. I was born in Los Angeles, California in 1964. Dad was 19 years old when I was born, and was woefully unprepared for the responsibilities of fatherhood. Mom had certainly forsaken her parents’ religious tradition, but I don’t think dad ever had a tradition to forsake. The first few years of my life were completely and totally devoid of God, Jesus, tradition, ritual or religious character of any kind.

Edit 09 April 2012:
My mom read this article, and as I suspected I got a few details in this story wrong. A few factual errors have been fixed.

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It is time

When I was in my early 30’s, I picked up a book written by one of my musical heroes, Seeds of Change – the Spiritual Quest of Kerry Livgren. Livgren’s autobiography chronicles his religious and spiritual thinking from his early years as a nominal Christian, to exploring various philosophies while in college, experimenting with Hinduism and Urantia as one of the 1970’s most successful rock musicians, then ultimately to ‘give his life to Jesus’ and leading his own Christian rock band in the 1980’s and beyond. Unlike many popular rock musicians of the 1970’s, Livgren used his music as a vehicle for exploring and questioning his beliefs rather than just grinding out party tunes. I have always enjoyed Livgren’s book, written by a musician and songwriter who helped influence my own adolescent and formative thoughts, but also from an obviously sincere and intelligent person, whose songwriting reflected his own changing and turbulent religious beliefs.

I always remember this book when I hear what Christians call ‘testimonies’ and atheists call ‘de-conversion stories’. Most Christian testimonies that I have heard, usually from those brave enough to answer the pastor’s call for a willing testimony from the congregation, are very similar. “I led a life of rebellion and sin against God. I did drugs. I drank. I cheated on my wife. But then I found a Man, who would take me as I am - a dirty and wretched sinner, and he washed me white as snow!” Most de-conversion stories are also strikingly similar. “I was as devout a Christian as any. I witnessed. I prayed. I read my Bible. But then I found a book by a man that told me I am the measure of all things, convinced me that evolution is true, and that God is a Delusion!” I loved testimonies when I was a Christian, and I love de-conversion stories as an apostate, but in both cases, the stories always seem both too similar and too simple. I guess that is why I have always enjoyed Livgren’s book, even as one who does not agree with his ultimate conclusion. He demonstrates that his conversion did not simply occur, as he relates, in a lonely hotel room while on tour with his band. Rather, his conversion started decades earlier, when he was a child in Kansas staring at a bookshelf and letting his mind wander. Similarly, when I was a more active blogger in the wake of my own de-conversion 4 years ago, people would ask me for my own de-conversion story. I could have simply repeated the pattern that is so often followed in de-conversion stories, and it would have been accurate, but only as a skeleton. I have always felt that, to be honest with myself, I could not repeat the simple ‘de-conversion pattern’. To this day, I have been hesitant to tell my de-conversion story, because I simply cannot pinpoint when my de-conversion actually began. I firmly left the Christian Faith at about the age of 43, yet I can see ‘Seeds of Change’ in my own life beginning before I even professed to be a Christian. Unlike Livgren, who has sadly not updated his autobiography in 20 years, I recognize that my spiritual quest, if I must call it that, has not ended upon my de-conversion. Conversion, De-conversion, call it what you will, has for me been a life-long process, that will likely, I hope, continue for the rest of my life. As I have said before, the story of my de-conversion is necessarily the story of my life. You want my de-conversion story? I have to start at the beginning.

But I think it is time. It is time for that story to be told.

I have been mulling it over for some time. True, nobody has asked me to share my story since I quit writing at de-conversion.com. But RoseMary has lately been asking probing questions about my past. These are questions that I welcome, but I find I sometimes have trouble piecing together vague and disjointed memories. I have been asking a lot of questions of my unsuspecting mother in the last few months – questions that fill in empty gaps from my youth. I had to ask her about certain things that I had either forgotten, or those strange mysteries that I had always wondered about but never dared ask. As I get older, and events fade further into the past, I feel them begin to slip out of my memory. Names, places, details – many of those are long gone. Most of my memories come from associations with photos taken years earlier – unfortunately my parents never owned a camera when I was young, and the only photos taken during my pre-high school years were taken by my grandparents when they occasionally came to visit. The record of my youth is scant. The other night, RoseMary and I struggled to remember the names of fellow church members who would visit the weekly Bible Studies that we hosted in our home. My fleeting memory, and the mere wisp of thread that holds it in my mind scares me. I feel the need to create a record of some kind to my past. Livgren has a record to his past, left in the legacy of the music and songs he wrote. When asked if he repudiated those old songs that dabble in Hinduism and Urantia, Livgren said absolutely not. They were an honest record of what he was thinking and experiencing at the time they were written. I am almost 48 years old now. I increasingly feel the need to leave that honest record of where I came from, mistakes, simple-mindedness, blunders and all.

It is time for me to write my de-conversion story.

Where to start? I am a physicist by trade, and I am trained as a technical writer. When I write, I usually start with paragraph or section headers and fill in the gaps. I usually start somewhere in the middle, and simultaneously work my way to the beginning and end. I flesh things out as I go, and I nearly always have an end in sight. The abstract and titles are the absolute last things to be set to paper. Blogging, in contrast, has always been somewhat difficult for me. It is a style of writing that I am still not yet comfortable with. And writing my de-conversion story? I tried starting it as I do with my research papers – first outline it with subject headers – or in this case, separate blog titles, then work my out and flesh in the details. Bah! I quickly realized that would never do. I will have to do the terrifying – start at the beginning with no middle or end in sight, and type my way through unknown and uncharted waters. I have nothing pre-written. No outline. No nothing. When I click ‘Publish’, I will have nothing but this intimidating reminder that I am now on record to finish this de-conversion story. Be patient with me, Dear Reader.

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