Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [30]
I was raised in an obscure fundamentalist Christian sect. Our ministers (we called them “workers”) divested themselves of all possessions and went forth two by two, spreading God’s Word by means of gospel meetings held in village halls, bank basements, and American Legion posts. If you came as a stranger you would notice the quietness as the people gathered, removing their caps and hanging their coats without conversation before seating themselves in the neat rows of folding chairs the workers had set beforehand. Just inside the door one of the workers would pass you a copy of Hymns Old and New from an open briefcase at the back of the room. The loaner hymnals were the size of a thin Reader’s Digest and bound in brown plastic, and they were lyrics only—no notes. Still, it wasn’t tough to sing along. We took things slow and kept a lid on it. If there was a piano available, someone might play it, but soberly. One night a tough old farm lady named Florence took a seat on the bench before the aged upright piano in the Prairie Lake Town Hall. Florence wore orthopedic shoes and horn-rimmed bifocals and kept a hanky tucked in her bosom, but when she leaned into that first verse she laid a left-handed barrelhouse rumble beneath the praise such as we had never heard before. Our eyebrows shot up and we swung right along, delighting in the spirit of it. Afterward the older brother worker had a quiet word with her and sadly Florence cut the honky-tonk. Another time an itinerant evangelist showed up late for gospel meeting and crept into the back row with a tambourine, which is like showing up for a Gregorian chant armed with a pink kazoo. I stole glances over my shoulder every time I heard a muffled tinkle.
Ours was an invisible church—a church with no name, and a church that didn’t believe in churches. We were the church. As the New Testament instructed. When it was time for Sunday morning meeting, we convened in private homes. To raise a structure and call it a church was the worldly way. A church made of hands was soon cluttered with altars and crucifixes, and was thereupon idolatrous. These false churches, they were not walking in Truth. They were whistling off to Hades. This was a shame, because I knew some real nice Lutherans. In conversation we spoke of each other as the Friends, and sometimes said we were in the Truth, but there was no letterhead anywhere with “The Truth” stamped across the top. When we said we had no name, we meant it sincerely. Yes, but it has to have a name, we would hear, again and again, as if we were playing a trick. Sometimes the outsiders called us names—the Two-by-Twos, the Dippers, the Black Stockings, the Damnation Army—but these were outsiders. Outsiders—as we were reminded at gospel meetings—were worldly. Not worldly as in “sophisticated.” Worldly as in “set to sizzle.”
Gospel meeting opened with hymns and a prayer. Then the younger worker preached for twenty minutes or so. After we sang another hymn, the elder worker preached the longer second half, and then after one more hymn and prayer we were done. The workers rarely brought the brimstone; rather, they generally spoke in a narrow range of tones somewhere between astringent history teacher and gentle physician. After preaching a town for a few weeks, they might “test” the meeting on the closing night of the run. During the last verse of the final hymn, anyone who hadn’t done so previously was invited to stand and profess their faith in Christ. This was a serious step—in short, it meant you were officially joining up. You were now walking in the Truth.
I admit there are times while traveling in certain circles that I take some perverse joy in letting slip that I was raised in an “obscure fundamentalist Christian sect” because for some disinclined folks the phrase conjures a wild-eyed tribe of charismatic Bible-wingers hoarding automatic weapons and diesel fuel within a walled compound. When I reveal that I am no longer a member, there is the underlying inference that I escaped under cover of darkness and must forevermore avoid Utah. Sadly