Fleeing Fundamentalism Read online

  Odhran wasn’t about to let Foreman’s flying Jesus go uncontested. He raised his hand and said, “That don’t seem in keepin’ with the Lord’s usual form o’ transportation.”

  Everyone froze. Mr. Foreman hesitated, focused his eyes over the top of his horned spectacles, and growled low, like a dog awakened by a prowler. “My exegesis is sound. Are you challenging that?”

  Since Odhran hadn’t studied Greek, he was left to appeal to common sense, which Mr. Foreman insisted had nothing to do with things. Once the debate ended, a smile crossed the professor’s face, and I knew that the foolish young Odhran had ruined his grade again.

  What bothered me was how Odhran could dive headfirst into a hornet nest, foolish enough to sacrifice his GPA in order to disagree with Mr. Foreman. Didn’t he realize that the school posted our grades in the college newsletter, and that those on the honor roll were considered the best Christians on campus? Honor students became class officers and always won the religious service awards. Odhran needed to stop kicking against the goads, as God warned about in Acts 9, and take a cue from David Brant, “the impeccable Christian scholar,” as Jean called him.

  David was student body president, with a 4.0 grade point average and a famous memory, which allowed him to quote much of the Bible from recall. He was not only smart, but he could preach like the legendary evangelist Billy Sunday, so much so that the faculty had granted him its top preaching award for 1975. Plenty of the girls on campus agreed with Jean when she said, “He’s also the most eligible man on campus.” David had soft black hair that curled gently in waves, its color matching his large, round and mysterious eyes, which seemed aloof until you spoke to him, and then they became warm and intent, like those of an understanding counselor. He discussed important theology with women in the same way he did with men. Unlike some of the guys on campus, who had a hard time taking the girls seriously, David treated them with respect and didn’t seem to entertain the idea that they weren’t equal when it came to intelligence. I knew that Jean liked this best about him. And if brains and sensitivity were not enough, he was six feet tall and broad shouldered and the best forward on the intramural basketball team. I loved to sneak into the gymnasium and watch him dribble gracefully past the other boys, his body twisting into the air in a perfect layup. David also kept himself neat and never came out of the dorm looking ragged or unkempt, but as impeccably dressed as a Wall Street stockbroker. All these good traits aside, everyone admired David for yet another reason—unlike most of the students, who were farm kids or had grown up in the church and never experienced real debauchery, David had been wild before his conversion. When he gave his testimony about how he and his family had been saved from alcoholism, everyone listened openmouthed.

  The story began when David’s father, a chronically inebriated logger, found the Lord. At the time, David too was generally drunk or hungover. Although he had been a fine athelete in high school, David had spent much of that time drinking and shoplifting clothing from the local department store. By the time he enrolled at a community college, he was staggering through most of his classes, intoxicated. Then suddenly one day David watched his father magically transform from a violent man into a zealous teetotaler, preaching salvation to all who would listen. After the miracle had continued for six months, David dedicated his own life to God and became a brand-new person, leaving for Bible college within a month. That had been three years ago. Now he held the distinction of being the most esteemed spiritual leader on campus.

  I’d seen David speak once in chapel. You can tell a lot about a preacher by the way he approaches the pulpit: some swagger up, while others, self-conscious and shy, fairly tiptoe; some glide; some hop, bursting with excitement; while others are so lethargic that you know you’ll be in a virtual coma before the hour is out. David Brant was the gliding kind; his graceful limbs moved nimbly and naturally. He flowed up to the podium with his head slightly cocked to the right, playful and confident, the full wattage of his astonishingly dark-eyed gaze beaming out into the crowd. In the manner of all charismatic pastors, David held his Bible loose yet firm, letting everyone know he would use it as a sword to “rightly divide the Word of Truth.” David’s meticulously knotted silk necktie lay perfectly against a dazzling starched white shirt that hugged his olive skin, making his complexion look creamy and refined—more like a dangerous young Turk than a simple preacher. After adjusting the microphone close to his lips, he laid his hand on the podium and tilted almost imperceptibly back on his heels before pulling himself forward into the pulpit and plunging into his sermon.

  Like the first strides out of the blocks in a hundred-meter sprint, the first blast from the pulpit reveals how the sermon will go. “The story of Joseph has everything,” his sturdy voice rang into the hush, “jealousy, violence, sex, power, money, suspense—and a poignant lesson for all Christians.” Thus began David’s rousing oration. He implored, whispered, and laughed out loud, told jokes and quoted poems, beseeched, entreated, and even sang a chorus or two as he moved across the stage, bringing his mesmerized audience along with him on a spellbinding adventure packed full of anecdotes, challenges, and nuggets of wisdom.

  Intelligence radiated from David like rings on a pond’s broken surface. I took my notebook and a pen and quickly wrote down all the astonishing phrases and new religious vocabulary he was using: complicated words like Eucharist, soteriology, and Septuagint. He had a genius for language, and it occurred to me that he sounded worlds apart from the Montana cowhands I’d grown up listening to. He understood the importance of words and gave them the respect a well-educated scholar could. His vivid verbal illustrations made me want to savor each tidbit of wisdom, each turn of phrase or clever saying, and hoard them for later, stockpiling them until back in my room I could read them over and over. And with Jean scribbling notes furiously next to me, I could tell that I wasn’t the only woman on campus impressed with David’s oratorical skill.

  The next week offered a perfect afternoon for the fall social, a late autumn day when golden leaves fell one by one from the trees, dropping through the air and sticking to car windshields, landing beneath our feet and smelling of dried apples and warm earth. Jean and I pulled on our heavy sweaters and dashed across the road to the administration building. I felt the day’s soft light against my skin, glad that the steam-oven heat of summer was surrendering to the fragrances of pumpkin and bracing autumn air. Jean flung open the heavy door, and there stood David Brant, like a Greek god sculpted in alabaster.

  “Oh, hello, David,” Jean gasped, stepping back bumping into me.

  “Hello, Jean,” David said, his voice low and playful. “Are you having a good quarter?”

  “Good!” Jean blurted out, flushed and short of breath. “I mean, the Lord is good this quarter. Well, we know the Lord is always good, but what I really mean to say is that God is being especially good this quarter!” Jean paused in her stammering, and we stood in silence, looking at one another. “Oh—I’m sorry,” she said. “This is my new roommate, Carlene.”

  “Carlene, I’ve heard about you,” David said, turning his hot-house smile in my direction.

  My heart leaped. What did he mean by that? Maybe someone had done me the favor of a lifetime and told him they thought I was pretty or smart, or maybe—to God be the glory—pretty and smart.

  “You’re Dan’s sister,” he finished his sentence.

  My heart sank. So that was it. The only notable thing about me was that I was Dan’s sister.

  “Yes, Dan’s sister,” I managed to reply, glancing toward the carpet, afraid that he would see the red blush blazing across my cheeks as I thought of his sleek body moving down the basketball court. I was thankful when Jean rescued us both by saying, “We promised Janice Forsberg we’d help her serve punch, so we’d better get going. Nice to see you, David.” I knew that Jean was as anxious to make a run for it as I—like two junior bishops unexpectedly meeting Pope Paul in the Vatican hallway. As we sped away, I could still feel th
e energy that David radiated, hitting my bare skin and giving me goose bumps. There was something intense and mysterious about the guy that worked like an irresistibly strong magnet. Looking at David Brant made me wish that Jesus would postpone the Rapture for a while.

  David’s story of radical conversion only added to his physical allure. He was a perfect example of the life-changing power of salvation, the kind of transformation that Christians were most proud of—a real catch for the team, like acquiring a Heisman Trophy winner during the first round of a pro football draft. David’s untamed life and his addictions were legendary, but they were behind him now; as Corinthians stated, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things have passed away.” It was exciting to know that whatever happened in a person’s life before the religious transformation didn’t matter, because Jesus had covered it with his blood. Everyone knew that part of David’s success came from his conscientious life of prayer—rising at 5:00 a.m. and praying for all his unsaved relatives and friends back home, as well as for President Carter, the earthquake survivors in Uzbekistan, our country in its bicentennial year, and for continued success in his daily battle resisting Satan and his legion of demons.

  The morning after I met David, I slipped out of my bunk precisely at 5:00 and sneaked down the hallway. If I were going to be the kind of Christian that David Brant was, and find the discipline not to have inappropriate thoughts about his strong, virile body, I would have to work on my prayer life. I opened the door to the janitor’s closet, pushed aside the mop smelling of Lysol Pine and mildew, and knelt on the green linoleum floor. “God, help me possess the gifts of the spirit: kindness, meekness, gentleness, temperance—yes, God, mostly temperance concerning my wayward thoughts.” Then I started down a mental list of my unsaved relatives—which was dauntingly long—asking God to save them from the judgment to come. Within ten minutes my legs began to shiver, making it hard to concentrate on my ever-growing inventory of personal offenses and potential converts, so I decided to think about the sufferings of our Lord: the crown of thorns gashing His head, the lance wound in his side, his hands and feet ripped by the rusty spikes. Cold limbs were nothing to complain about, I told myself. Another ten minutes passed. Even considering the far worse agonies of Christ, I was still sorely tempted to save my throbbing knees, so I started to concentrate on the torments of the martyrs, which Jean loved to read to me from her thick hardback entitled Fox’s Book of Martyrs.

  Jean would read excerpts out loud while I lay on my bunk. “Hey, listen to this one: ‘When Saturnius, the bishop of Toulouse, refused to sacrifice to idols, he was fastened by the feet to the tail of a bull, and the enraged animal was driven down the steps of the temple, bashing the worthy martyr’s brains out.’ Whew!” Jean would flip the pages until she found another particularly gruesome section. “Diocletian, condemned for his faith at Antioch, was scourged, put to the rack, torn with hooks, cut with knives, his face slashed, and his teeth beaten from their sockets.” I put my pillow over my head and imagined what it would be like to have hooks tearing at my flesh, and my teeth beaten out. My God, being a Christian in the first century had to be worse than living through the coming Tribulation! Jean flipped furiously. “Peter, a pious eunuch, was laid on a gridiron and broiled over a slow fire until he expired. … Timothy, a deacon of Mauritania, was burnt, his eyes were put out, and then he was crucified upside down.”

  “Stop, stop!” I’d holler out from the top bunk.

  But now, months later, thinking about those poor abused martyrs helped me stick with my prayers each morning. Not to mention the suffering of Jesus with his flesh torn out and the crown of thorns pushed into his head—all of this pain for the sake of my salvation. Thinking about the suffering of Jesus gave me a strange peace, knowing that God would leave heaven and come to earth in the form of a man to endure such agony for me. Instead of being repulsed by such torment, I knew that I needed to consider it, ponder it, and even bask in it. If Jesus and the early saints could face this unbelievable persecution, I could certainly pray for an hour each morning in the janitor’s closet, I told myself as I heard people turning on the hot showers in the lavatory next door. So I stayed on my knees and thought about warm, soothing water running over my skin.

  Three

  The Lord’s Work

  WITH MY RESOLVE to serve God now in full swing, I determined to find a Christian service assignment the second semester, something that would be truly remarkable, something out of the ordinary. I read down the list of new opportunities posted in the student union building: kindergarten Sunday school teacher at Bible Baptist Church … organ player at the Christian Alliance Church … assistant to Mrs. Robins’s Sunday school class at Temple Baptist Church. But it was the nearly illegible handwritten note at the bottom of the board that sounded the most intriguing of all:

  NEEDED: BIBLE TEACHERS FOR THE HUTTERITE COLONY OUTSIDE GRASS RANGE. THIS ASSIGNMENT IS HIGHLY SENSITIVE. PLEASE SHOW UP IN ROOM 213 ON FRIDAY AT 3:30 FOR DETAILS.

  Don Jones, the man coordinating the program, was a lumbering giant who peppered his sentences with questionable language like “Jeez” and “Holy Toledo,” and belly-laughed at all the wrong times. Each semester he put together unconventional Christian service teams like the one that preached outside cowboy bars in Great Falls or the group that traveled to Deer Lodge to teach Bible classes to convicts at the state penitentiary. His plan to take a team into Montana’s isolated Hutterite colony was just as eccentric. Although Don was friendly, people thought he was an oddball, a verbal stumblebum not cut out for the ministry. He lived in a messy shack in the mountains, wore wrinkled T-shirts, and had decaying teeth. They said his personal hygiene alone would disqualify him for anything other than a tiny rural church. Beyond his lack of physical and spiritual decorum, however, no one knew much about him; he never mentioned having a family, only that he had grown up in Chicago and in his personal life he was something of a loner.

  I arrived in room 213 with a scattering of people seated in front. Jones waved his enormous hamlike arm and yelled, “Come on in and sit yourself down.” When everyone was seated, he continued, “This is a touchy situation. The Hutterites have never let outsiders in to teach religion. They aren’t officially asking us either. It’s an interesting deal. I met our host, Samuel, at a revival meeting—you know, a Holy Roller, speakin’ in tongues kind of meeting—and by golly, I talked him into letting us teach a study at his house. At the colony, no less!”

  “Do the Hutterite elders know we’re coming?” someone asked.

  “No, that’s why it’s so sensitive,” Don answered. “You gotta be serious about this if you’re going. I’m not exactly sure what’ll happen.”

  The assignment sounded more exciting than assisting Mrs. Robins with her Sunday school class, so I told Don I was in. It was early on a chilly, wet January morning when I set out to learn more about these Hutterites. The mountain ash trees above me were bare of leaves as I jumped a narrow ditch filled with ivy and took a shortcut to the library. Inside I thumbed through the card catalog, finding the library’s only book on Hutterite history. I took it and nestled into a corner chair under a tall window of a dozen panes. There I learned that the original Hutterian Brethren had been Anabaptist refugees from Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. In 1528 they assembled near the present-day Czech Republic and, following the apostles’ example in the Book of Acts, combined all they owned and vowed to live communally. Apparently the Hutterite lifestyle has remained the same since then, for almost five hundred years, making them one of the oldest surviving religious communes in the world. They still live in settlements of 80 to 130 people, and when their numbers approach 150, they split off into a new colony. Although their collective living has always attracted suspicion, over the centuries their refusal to serve in the military, to vote, or to participate in any outside social interaction has brought them even more trouble. In 1536, German religious leaders burned their founder, Jakob Hutter, at the stake. Because Protestants a
nd Catholics alike believed that baptism by submersion was heresy, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they offered a bounty on every Anabaptist seized. Governments tortured and killed them, setting in motion a legacy of constant persecution and flight. Finally, in 1864, they fled from Russia to the plains of America in search of a secluded haven. Although they had not experienced physical persecution in Montana, they were often treated with disdain and labeled as “Hoots” or “Blackbirds.” The local farmers there resented their puritan efficiency, which gave them a corner on 60 percent of the state’s pig market, half its egg production, and 17 percent of its dairy sales.

  To my astonishment, the book told me that the Hutterite colony we were about to visit outside Grass Range was the oldest in Montana, and it stated that they had maintained a more reclusive lifestyle than almost any sect in North America. They operated their own schools, raised their own food, and made their own clothing. Their elders forbade televisions, radios, cars, and musical instruments, along with dancing, jewelry, eye makeup, and even photography, which was considered a show of vainglory and a violation of the second commandment, in which God prohibited man from making any graven images. The colony still spoke German except in rare interactions with outsiders; their religious texts and schoolbooks were written in German; they wrote, prayed, and sang in German.

  The women followed the apostle Paul’s dictates to keep their attire simple and wore dark floor-length dresses with long sleeves and aprons and no lace, ruffles, trim, or embroidery—garments made for hundreds of years from the same patterns. The Grass Range Hutterite women did not cut or style their hair but parted their bangs down the middle and rolled them into cylindrical sections, which were wrapped around the head, secured to the back of the neck, and then covered with a scarf, with only the tubular bangs showing. Women had no vote in colony decision making, which was the exclusive right of baptized men over the age of twenty-five. Reading all this, I wiggled excitedly in my chair; entering the Grass Range colony would be like traveling back in time to sixteenth-century Europe.