Blue in a Red Church

Ok, so let’s just say I got lost and followed the wrong people home one day. Ok, let’s not, it’s not that easy. But now, I'm a bit embarrassed to tell that I attended a Baptist church for twenty years. My good feminist friend would say to me, “I don’t know how you go to that church you go to.” It wasn’t a question, it was a slow, side to side shake of the head comment.

At this church, women couldn’t be ministers, unless it was children’s ministry; and women couldn’t be deacons, nor vote on anything in the church. It was a born-again, Bible believing (literally), more or less health and wealth believing congregation, and yep, I was a part of it. I followed my sister to this church when I moved from Minneapolis to Owatonna. I left the Catholic church, and became born-again, against all the things I had hoped to hold on to, including the idea that I would never go too far down just one road. My dad thought my sister had way too much sway over me. Perhaps he was right.

I think I was lonely and wanted a place to belong. I was a young mom, new to town, with a husband who was rarely around and a sister who just loved her church and her church friends. I was her little sister, and I started attending with her. I wonder where my head was, going to this church.

When my sister told me about the minister sneaking off to nearby towns, to go to a movie, so as not to offend anyone who was still thinking movies were sinful, I should have known. He had explained to my sister, that while he and his wife didn’t think it was a sin to go to movies, some people in the church did, and so that’s why they drove out of town to go to movies.

I remember going out to one of the only nice restaurants in town with my husband, excited to be out, but then when our waitress was someone from church, I was nervous to order the glass of wine I couldn’t wait to have. I wondered, “Was it OK to drink, if it wasn’t OK to watch movies in town? Is this how this small town life worked? Was this the price I was paying for a nice house and a big yard?” I ordered the glass of wine. Perhaps that’s what saved me.

Maybe I was looking for a way to believe in God that was based on something easier to understand than hundreds of years of Catholic church doctrine. I think I was looking for a place to feel safe in a big world. The longer I stayed, the wronger it turned out to be. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t safe at all.