You probably wouldn't think to look for - let alone, to find - an oasis of feminism in a Pentecostal church in a tiny little town with no post office, in the southern coal fields of West Virginia.
All that's left of that oasis now is the family pew. The brass plaque, neatly affixed with two brass tacks, bears our family's name. That is to say, it bears my father's full name, with "The" and "Family" bookending his.
Someday, I'm gonna go reclaim my rightful place in that pew, and I'm gonna testify. I'll be speaking to the congregation in English, but for some there, it will no doubt seem as if I'm
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4432735&mesg_id=4432735">speaking in tongues. Only without the regularly-scheduled translation.
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Some of my earliest and fondest memories involve the "old" church.
I accidentally caught Mary F.'s hair on fire during the Christmas Choir when I was 3.
During O! Holy Night!
It ruined the candle-lit ambience, but people still talk about it. And if camcorders and America's Funniest had both existed back then, the congregation could've avoided passing the plate for a year or more.
Who puts that much hairspray on the hair of a 4 year old, anyway?
By Easter, the singed hair on the back of Mary's head had finally begun to grow back. I got the distinction between Christmas and the Resurrection pretty early. Those hairs will rise again!
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My mom directed the Christmas Programs every year. She had a knack for getting kids of all ages - from shy toddlers to enthusiastic youngsters, from surly teens to overgrown kids at heart - to participate.
She had a knack for finding the hidden talent in any child.
So it was probably fitting that I was the one who brought the whole thing screeching to a halt.
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Dad wasn't in the congregation that year. Dad stayed at home and watched TV or did yardwork or tended to our small garden, while Mom and I walked the short walk, hand-in-hand, to the little old church. If the weather was really bad, Dad would drop us off and pick us up.
I wanted to stay home with dad, bare-chested, like him, in front of the TV, watching The Little Rascals, or The Three Stooges, or Looney Tunes. Not Hee Haw though. Not the Yankees, neither!
Dad didn't start coming with us until after the mining accident that ruptured two discs, compressed his spine, pinched the nerves in his back, and forever changed him.
The wail Mom made when the phone call came from the mine that early morning still haunts me.
When he could walk again, Dad started coming with us to church.
He got that ol' time religion, big time.
Even though she'd been active for many years already, he was quickly installed as a deacon. He took to it like a duck to water.
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Rebecca came along that same year that Dad was hurt in the mines. In fact, she was already on the way. Kevin came along a couple years later. From their point of view, Dad and Mom always went to church. And the five of us always sat in the pew, with our family's name on it.
In the "new" church, right next door to the "old" one.
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When the congregation outgrew the old church, Dad and the other deacons came up with a plan to build a bigger sanctuary, keeping the old church intact for Sunday School classes.
Dad - a natural-born activist, who quickly adapted to his physical limitations - spoke with local merchants about discounts on building materials, getting some donated, some at cost, and the rest at a heavily cut rate. The new church building project put wind back in Dad's sails. He was in his element.
Mom, meanwhile, kept the church's books. She took turns with the other women, keeping the church clean. She led the choir. She taught Sunday School. She did all the things women were allowed to do in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_God_%28Cleveland%2C_Tennessee%29">The Church of God.
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She was an outstanding and engaging teacher, keeping the attention of even the most squirrely kids. You never knew - even if you lived with her - what she had up her sleeve for that week's lesson.
Sometimes, she borrowed the Kodak slide projector from the Mullens library, to show us slides of nature in faraway places in America and beyond - God's Creation - and to teach us how we were expected to be good stewards of the Earth.
Environmentalism. Global thinking.
Sometimes, she used a flannel board and paper cutouts to teach us about stories like The Good Samaritan.
Charitable giving.
Sometimes, she answered, "I don't know. What do you think?" to a student's question.
Critical thinking.
As you might expect, she was a particular favorite of the kids in our congregation. Young and old.
One thing especially stood out about her teaching, though.
She refused to ignore the women in the Bible.
Feminism.
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If I had to hazard a guess,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Ruth">Ruth is her favorite.
My mother's mother (wheelchair-bound from a series of strokes since Mom was 9) died when I was only 9 months old. My mother's father had died when Mom was only 11.
Mom's mother-in-law, my beloved Maw Maw, became
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_%28Bible%29">Naomi to Mom's Ruth. My Maw Maw is a limitless well of love, patience, good humor, and understanding.
But there were other women in the Bible that Mom taught the boys and girls about, "off-agenda" from the approved Church of God curriculum.
Like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_%28Bible%29">Hannah.
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Many is the time I walked down to the church some Saturday, to see what was keeping Mom so long. Only to find her weeping, quietly, at the altar, the vacuum cleaner cord already neatly bound up to the church vaccuum cleaner, the cleaning done. Weeping quietly at the altar.
Like Hannah.
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As a child, I learned to hate Sunday mornings, at home before church, in May.
Double whammy: Mother's Day and Memorial Day.
Mom would weep, and no matter how hard I tried to console her, the tears had to come out. So I sat there on the floor with her, and cried too.
On Mother's Day, the church would give out roses of different colors to the Mothers in the congregation. One rose each for every child, with different colors for the living and the dead. One rose for the Mother's mother, with different colors for the living and the dead.
That was the rose that caused the tears to silently stream down her cheeks.
Nowadays, these congregations have a new color of rose: yellow, for children lost in combat.
After the Memorial Day service, we would go decorate my Mom's Mom's grave. It had no headstone, just a numbered marker. On the side of a mountain with a view that makes the headstart to Heaven that much more unfair to anyone buried closer to sea level.
We eventually remedied the missing headstone, but those are expensive.
As a child, I learned that - once the numbered markers of her parents' gravesites were cleared away of any weeds the groundskeepers had missed, and the gravesite decorated with fresh flowers - the sun would break through in the clouds, and May would turn to June for Mom.
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As I have discussed here before,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2561309&mesg_id=2561309">Mom challenged our pastor's ("the Sonofa's") woefully uneducated understanding of the Scriptures.
Question authority. Challenge orthodoxy. Women have minds, too.
My favorite story, recounted in detail in that earlier thread, is how she consulted her leatherbound Bible concordance - I can still smell exactly how it smelled, in my mind's nose - and took him to task for his needle thru the eye of the camel Schtikfigure Sermon (yes, yes, I know: it's a camel through the eye of a needle, but she kinda stuck his needle where the sun don't shine).
Hoo, boy, was he mad!
How dare a WOMAN suggest that SHE had a better understanding than him, a MAN of God, in The Church of God?
He held that grudge tight.
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When my parents separated, The Sonofa did his pastoral duty. At first. He counseled them on ways to repair the hurts. He tried to persuade them of all the Biblical reasons why they should not go beyond just taking a short breather.
But when he found out that Mom had signed the application for a divorce, she went from Hannah to Harlot in a penstroke.
The pastoral care was revoked not only from her, but from the three of us kids, too. At first, she tried sending us still, without her. But the hurtful, hateful, and hate-filled things he said put that to a quick end.
He came closer than anyone before or since to causing my fist to fly in fury.
At just shy of 16, I didn't have Crohn's yet, and I was hale, hardy, and the picture of budding healthy manhood.
I should have knocked him flat on his fat ass for what he said about her that last Sunday. I'd give anything to have that one moment back.
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So, a lot of what I know about feminism, and "women's work," and "women's proper place" in important institutions, and groupthink, and a whole host of other issues that have bearing on this primary season and - potentially into the General - I learned from my mom.
And from a church that - for the first 16 years of my life - nurtured The Smith Family, then froze us out. From them, I learned to judge any organization by the rapidity with which they stone or tombstone a heretic.
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Yes, friends, someday - soon, perhaps - I am gonna go back to the "new" church, reclaim my rightful place in The Family's Pew, and I am gonna testify.
With a couple of helping hands, I might just take The Family Pew with me, too, when I leave.
- Dave
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