I’ve joined a Facebook group called Recovering Evangelicals. The members sometimes share humorous accounts of their evangelical pasts, able now to look back, seeing the website as a means to recount a once-real past that now exists only in memory. I’ve never posted there, but here’s a piece of my past.
A loud evangelist hit our church each year and bivouacked for a week while we, the faithful, watched his show. Every year a different holy troubadour scared the dickens out of me as he brayed about hellfire, making me shiver with fright. Lots of children were afraid of clowns. I was afraid of preachers who scared little children on purpose.
I sat there like watching a beheading; the theological niceties escaped me. Once, my mild-mannered parents told me not to worry so much about the pulpit mayhem. Which helped, somewhat.
Every year my parents invited the evangelist and our pastor over for one of my mother’s famous meals, renowned throughout the church. For days she worried and futzed over preparations, which always paid rich dividends — she was a superb cook.