New families chase down property in this neighborhood like it’s the only one suitable for the Dallas yuppy existence. The old homes are torn down and new modern structures take their place. One building still stands. A Methodist church sits right at a prime intersection, taking up an entire residential block. Nothing about it has changed. The paint is the same faded yellow. The white pillars in the circular driveway and the small gazebo on the front lawn look like a throwback to the 1950s, when they were likely installed. How is it still standing? When she was there during her elementary school years, it was mostly elderly congregants, and they would’ve died decades ago.
These grey-haired parishioners were reserved and stiff and easily startled by the sounds of running feet or youthful giggles and loud chatter. Most of the old ladies smelled of musk perfume and talc powder. The old men wore dated polyester suits and would stealthily sneak up behind the kids to offer them Werther’s Originals from their pockets. Each resented the younger occupants of their church, but they needed them for new money and new programs to grow the congregation. The kids went because their parents went, and the handful of parents that went did so because it was the only church in the neighborhood. ‘Nothing wrong with laying a foundation. You can decide for yourself when you’re older.’ The kids hated going because it meant waking up early on a Sunday after a weekend sleepover. Often after Bible study, when sitting in the pews for the ‘big sermon’, they would tilt their heads down and bring their palms together in front of their face, in a pose of pretending to pray, but actually falling asleep.
Things turned around when the church hired a youth director to bring in new, young blood. He was a young guy himself, in his early twenties. His wife was barely twenty and they had a one-year-old daughter. The church paid for them to live in the shitty rundown apartment complex nestled up behind the church. Did they know of his background when hiring him? He was on a path of redemption after a severe 180* turn. Having previously been an avowed Satanist, devil-worshipper, alcoholic, and heavy metal music-listening goth, he was now a born-again Christian coming to save the youth and prevent anyone from treading down a destructive path. This presented itself in his evangelical approach to teaching. He mainly led with the Book of Revelation. Fear, that’s the way to draw them in! He often told a story of when he initially ‘found God,’ he took all of his heavy metal albums onto the driveway of his parent’s house and caught them on fire. At this point he says, he saw the Devil rise up and scream from the tallest flame. His conviction was just so.
His honesty and relatability and frank story-telling about his past heavily persuaded a few. One girl especially, succumbed to the influence of the holy spirit. What else was anchoring her in her life? She was prime pickings. Her family, neither religious nor church-going in any manner, went along with her new fundamentalism by purchasing her a gold, cross necklace she never took off. His emotional vulnerability coupled with the precociousness of a couple of the younger girls, meant things got a little too familiar for the circumstances. The girls would babysit for him and his wife or simply go hang out at his apartment after church events. He would pick them up after school if the parents were still at work or otherwise engaged. The lines between youth director and close confidant blurred. In the privacy of his home, his were revealed, like the slovenliness of how he and his wife lived and their screaming fights. And actually, he did drink beers occasionally; he did smoke a joint occasionally; and he did still listen to heavy metal music, it was just screaming Christian lyrics this time around. Most unprofessionally, the smoking and drinking were shared in the company of these girls he would also be sermonizing to on Sundays.
Regardless, this newly baptized ten-year-old took upon the task of witnessing to others like it was her calling in life. The enthusiasm wasn’t shared. Her protestations and tears became so intense in the elementary school environment, the sixth-grade teachers called Child Protective Services on her mother. She was scaring the other kids. What was her mother telling her and teaching her? But the mother knew this was all the youth director’s doing; she had seen it brewing in the way her daughter pleaded with her to ask God into her life; getting tearful and afraid that her mother wouldn’t be saved and get into heaven. What torment this child was under! What relief the mother felt, now having reason enough to pull her child back from the brink. The young, impressionable girl was cut off from going to the church and being in any proximity to the youth director like a hormonal teenage girl cut off from her first boyfriend. Cold turkey.
It was like a rubber band snapped and the whole yearlong episode didn’t happen. The youth director was soon removed after word got out. He was too much; he was way too much. The young girls knew the situation with him was shady, but also trusted him in their own ways. Clarity about his irresponsibility hit like a freight train. The repercussions of this one year seeped all desire for any type of organized religion from the girl’s bones. She came to feel repulsed by anyone even speaking with a preachy inflection in their voice. She came to see any type of zealotry as cultish; any type of groupthink as brainwashing. Man is too fallible. Man is only giving his interpretation.
Decades later, she found an old Bible the youth director had gifted her during that year. His full name, she had long ago forgotten, was embossed on the front. A revulsion brewed up inside her. It got tossed into the recycling.
To this day, she jokes that she was baptized twice because she thought the first time didn’t work. It’s the only laugh she gets from the memory. Whether it was the peer pressure or a social contagion from the environment, she’s still not certain the second submergence underwater took hold either. Has she been forgiven all her sins, even the multitudes committed since that young age? Years of distance have given her time to investigate many religions, religious cultures, and spiritual practices. But is there a ‘third time’s a charm’ for finding faith? She has moments of feeling deeply connected to something outside of herself. She has moments of feeling guided, in tune, and aligned. The faith she has now is something quiet and personal. And she’s not pushing it on anybody.
*painting by Belkis Ayon, The Master of the Secret. 1988