Rwenzori (South Africa)

We all like to talk about ourselves, I suppose, so here goes, and I hope I do not bore you too much.

Childhood

I was brought up in Anglican church schools. The religion was always part of the background noise – not taken too seriously, just part of school life like rugby and institutional food. I was baptized late – my mother had refused to allow me to be baptized as a child as far as I can make out, but she had passed away - my stepmother-to-be wanted to marry my atheist father in church, and we all had to be pure I suppose. At senior school we were all sent to confirmation classes, and were confirmed into the church, allowed to take communion, and all that. Pure routine at the school.

My father then died at the start of my matric year, and, at about that time, I became aware of more “active” forms of Christianity – Jesus is for real, like, and interested in you. Having lost both real parents I was a bit of a lost fart and started to lap all this religion up. To escape the dreaded stepmother I signed up for a religious camp at the end of the year. Great camp – lots of upmarket girls all interested in one’s teen ramblings. I was hooked.

University

Off to varsity, still 17 years old, to find some of the hot babes from the camp there too, we’re all praising the lord at the SCA meetings and the local Anglican church, life is good.

Then the fun starts. In about 3rd year some of the SCA discover a new church in town. Not staid old Anglican, this is a “pentecostal” church, whatever that is. Only one way to find out, so off I go. This place is different, really different. No lovely old hymns from The English Hymnal, no stained glass, no incense, no Book of Common Prayer – continuous “choruses”, noise, everyone burbling praise the lord, then shouting it, clapping wildly, fundamentalist sermons, faith healing, casting out demons and the bizarre “speaking in tongues”. A very definite hierarchy exists, depending on your “gifts”. No, not money – rather the type of bible you have, how many of the church’s annual gatherings you have attended, your ability to raise ptls ( praise the lords ) when you pray out loud, and whether you can speak in tongues. The pastor is top of the pile as he can also cast out demons and heal. Except, of course, it’s all crap.

Speaking in Tongues and Demons and Stuff

Now, this shit is weird. There is such a social pressure to be a better Christian, and so you gotta get this tongues gift, my man, or you are second rate. So the faithful claim to have been visited by the holy ghost, and get the gift. Which seems to be the gift of babbling incomprehensible gibberish out loudly throughout the services. Oooblyoooblyoooblyooobly. Louder! Louder!

If you want to get more points – you babble your way to the front of the church, lie down, and do simultaneous spastic movements on the ground, like you’re having some kind of fit for Jesus, man! Everyone else also babbling and ptl-ing. Oh hallelujah!

Hey, this is getting nuts. Then the congregation figures it’s time to cast out demons, and, said congregation having seen me having a quiet Anglicanically-acceptable puff beforehand, decides the Demon of Smoking must be cast out. Serious group pressure ensues – dozens of people entreating the lord, at the tops of their voices, to bring the demon to the front to be cast out, everyone else cranking up the volume of their oooblyoooblyooobly stuff. I hang on to my pew so tight the fingerprints are still in that wood today I figure. It ends at last.

Enough of that shit.

Re-evaluation

Time for some months of thought, far away from those ghastly clappers. I come to realize that my attraction to the faith was rooted in my own weaknesses, social needs, and insecurities, and that I was and remain quite capable of dealing with this random world, most of the time at least, without having to rely on an imaginary friend in the sky. A gazillion years of evolution have made me so.

Also, that the old testament is clearly a collection, an interesting one, of old myths, legends and laws, and the new testament a set of books, probably based on a historical figure who was one of many at the time claiming to be a messiah, based upon lies and misunderstandings.

In short, it was all bullshit really.

For Fokken Fatherland

In the SADF you had to have a religion. When “klaaring in” I asked to be an atheist and was told that fokken commies go to the fokken DB ( detention barracks ) and that I’d better not start “maaking kak droog” so early on in my military career. So down went “Anglican” on the forms, accompanied by comments about fokken soutpiele all being fokken commies and so on.

Those of you who went through it, or at least the fokken souties amongst you, would remember that much of the Nat propaganda about communism and total onslaught was treated with derision as patent twaddle. Sunday church parade arrives for us conscripts, and we look forward to a break from getting fucked around by corporal instructors, a return to a “normal” world at the local Anglican church. But what do we get? Some dumpy little old priest who sermonizes at us about the evil of communism and the dangers of the total onslaught. No grub either. What a sell-out to the Nat regime by the Anglican church.

Fuck them – from then on I was a Catholic. I learned nothing about Catholicism, as the kindly Catholics let you sleep in the church hall during church parade ( sleep being in seriously short supply during basics ). They even gave you cookies. I also retain a soft spot for the local Hervormde Kerk, who would leave their carpeted hall unlocked so that you could kip there during guard duty. Nice people those.

End

So no courage required really. Thank you for reading.