church night

Today as I was driving to church, I remembered one aspect of my childhood that most people in my current city have not experienced: having to listen to Baptist kids complain about getting homework on a Wednesday. The evangelical movement that was everywhere in my small town in the ’90s and ’00s isn’t as powerful as it used to be, meaning some of my stranger childhood experiences are relics of a bygone era.

“But it’s church night!” was the inevitable rallying cry for about half my classmates if we had a Thursday test or Wednesday night assignment. As an adult I can see how annoying it must have been for teachers to dish it out on a night where you would not have time to complete an assignment, As a fairly pious tween, I found this offensive. All I heard was my classmates accusing me of not being “Christian enough” or being the wrong kind of Christian since I didn’t go on Wednesday. In case that wasn’t clear, several of my friends attempted to get me to go to their church during this time because they were worried that I wasn’t saved. Methodists don’t “get saved” in the evangelical sense.

I’ve been learning more and more about the conservative/evangelical religious establishment in the US over the past few years. From Good Christian Fun to memoirs from exvangelicals to the Jonas Brothers’ documentary, reactions to the evangelical movement that many of my friends were involved in are everywhere. It’s made several memories from my past snap into clear focus, like why going to FCA or Meet Me at the Pole was so important for these kids (they thought they were being persecuted) or why everyone and their sister went to The Nightmare at Guts Church in Tulsa in October (Halloween is the perfect time to get scared straight).

The most amazing things about going to my current church as an adult is how right and free it feels. Religion in small-town Oklahoma was always tainted for me by a stifling feeling of dust, box fans, and conservatism. Even though the church I grew up attending was okay, the weird theology all my friends were exposed to and their reactions to it made me uncomfortable to even belong to the same religion. Now I attend a church steeped in tradition and love, where I feel comfortable and safe. None of the kids at my church complain about homework on “church night,” and I doubt that many of their classmates do either. Not all endings are unhappy.

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Photo by Akira Hojo on Unsplash