Parts of fundiedom you miss?

[thebestusername]

I miss having an answer already figured out for me. Whenever I would have problems in life I always had some sin in my life or some command of christ I was ignoring or a principle of design or something that I was doing wrong. I realized later that it was mostly bull and they were all unreachable standards but it was very comforting to know that I just had to fix one thing and everything would be fine. It's much more complicated and stressful having to think for myself. I think that may be why many people go fundie in the first place.

[jerkit]

17 hours ago, GenerationCedarchip said:

Yes. There was a lot of this in my old church as well.  It made for a very closeknit circle, and I did love that.  

 

@Gimme a Free RV - I didn't come from any of the Amish/Mennonite/Brethren churches.  My family was in a reformed Presbyterian church. There's lots of variance in practice, even among the conservative Presby denominations, but my church's members tended to run fundie-lite to fundie, with a gloss of Vision Forum legalism thrown in. 

Didn't happen to be Bible Presbyterian?

[Burpies]

I even miss the cheesy square dances. I haven't been able to find a secular version of that!!

Have you ever looked into contra dances in your area? They are very much like square dances and a lot of fun!

[O Latin]

3 hours ago, Gimme a Free RV said:

Still affiliated (somewhat) with the SBC but not deeply involved, I can tell you what I don't miss:  "prayer request" time.  It would go something like this:

<snip>

This made me crack up because I sing in a church choir where we have "prayer request time" at the end of every rehearsal and there are quite a few members (including the director) who tell similarly long-winded stories. But it also reminds me of another story that isn't terribly relevant, but it's funny. 

The choir has a "sign-out board," which is a white board divided up into about six or eight squares, each labeled with the date of a rehearsal or Sunday. The idea is that if you know you're going to miss a particular rehearsal or Sunday morning, you write your name in the corresponding square. And mostly people just write their names, but for awhile there was a trend of people who were missing rehearsal to go on a particularly exciting trip adding a little note about it ("Jane Smith is going to Hawaii, yay!). Well, this one woman (who was the WORST offender for long stories during prayer request time) once took up pretty much the entire square writing something along the lines of "Jane Smith is going to Nevada for her father's 80th birthday, which is a very special occasion because all of his children haven't been together for 20 years and she will miss you all, but she knows that this is where she is supposed to be." She has since moved away and I can't say I was sad to see her go. 

[Gimme a Free RV]

12 minutes ago, O Latin said:

This made me crack up because I sing in a church choir where we have "prayer request time" at the end of every rehearsal and there are quite a few members (including the director) who tell similarly long-winded stories. But it also reminds me of another story that isn't terribly relevant, but it's funny. 

The choir has a "sign-out board," which is a white board divided up into about six or eight squares, each labeled with the date of a rehearsal or Sunday. The idea is that if you know you're going to miss a particular rehearsal or Sunday morning, you write your name in the corresponding square. And mostly people just write their names, but for awhile there was a trend of people who were missing rehearsal to go on a particularly exciting trip adding a little note about it ("Jane Smith is going to Hawaii, yay!). Well, this one woman (who was the WORST offender for long stories during prayer request time) once took up pretty much the entire square writing something along the lines of "Jane Smith is going to Nevada for her father's 80th birthday, which is a very special occasion because all of his children haven't been together for 20 years and she will miss you all, but she knows that this is where she is supposed to be." She has since moved away and I can't say I was sad to see her go. 

The last choir I sang in had a woman like this.  She was pitifully starved for attention.  You could tell that at the end of each rehearsal, when prayer requests were being taken, she was giddy and fidgety, excited about sharing her latest in a long series of medical maladies.  I remember we were once asked to pray for her colonoscopy.

[clueliss]

As others have said, I miss the sense of community.  Although I'll be honest, I miss the church I went to before I moved 5.5 years ago more than the one I went to after the move.    Likely because I had forged deeper bonds and was more involved there.    I don't miss teaching (sunday school and the like) but do miss the kids themselves.  

[polecat]

re: prayer requests ... 

I have a confession. When I was a teen, I'd get incredible enjoyment out of people's unspoken prayer requests (is this a universal thing or mostly IFB? I dunno). I'd let my imagination run WILD about what their unspokens could be. Granted, most of the time, we knew full well that when Mrs. Petrie had a "special unspoken for my dear daughter Maisie," it was probably that Maisie would come back to church ... but it was much more fun to imagine other more dastardly things. 

[clueliss]

I remember the demise of the printed church prayer list because the senior pastor decided that it had become a source of gossip in the church.  

[Gimme a Free RV]

1 hour ago, polecat said:

re: prayer requests ... 

I have a confession. When I was a teen, I'd get incredible enjoyment out of people's unspoken prayer requests (is this a universal thing or mostly IFB? I dunno). I'd let my imagination run WILD about what their unspokens could be. Granted, most of the time, we knew full well that when Mrs. Petrie had a "special unspoken for my dear daughter Maisie," it was probably that Maisie would come back to church ... but it was much more fun to imagine other more dastardly things. 

I know what you mean!  I almost think it's better to say, "Please pray for my ...."  rather than to admit you have an unspoken request, because at that very moment, minds are racing, trying to imagine what could be so awful that you didn't dare say it aloud.

Yes, prayer lists, prayer requests, and "sharing" are ripe material for the gossipers in the church.

[FormerlyFundyLite]

5 hours ago, thebestusername said:

I miss having an answer already figured out for me. Whenever I would have problems in life I always had some sin in my life or some command of christ I was ignoring or a principle of design or something that I was doing wrong. I realized later that it was mostly bull and they were all unreachable standards but it was very comforting to know that I just had to fix one thing and everything would be fine. It's much more complicated and stressful having to think for myself. I think that may be why many people go fundie in the first place.

I was surprised at all the people who miss the community, perhaps because I constantly felt like I had to earn everybody's friendship by being godly enough. I completely agree with this, though. I liked not having to spend a lot of energy really thinking things through. Realizing this is pretty amusing to me, because I also sometimes miss the more academic side of fundie-dom (have to have that doctrine right and Piper-esque Calvinism involves lots of big theology words!)

[Walking Cat Bed]

On 12/8/2015 at 4:38 PM, GenerationCedarchip said:

Yes. There was a lot of this in my old church as well.  It made for a very closeknit circle, and I did love that.  

 

@Gimme a Free RV - I didn't come from any of the Amish/Mennonite/Brethren churches.  My family was in a reformed Presbyterian church. There's lots of variance in practice, even among the conservative Presby denominations, but my church's members tended to run fundie-lite to fundie, with a gloss of Vision Forum legalism thrown in. 

Did y'all do an annual event in Bluefield W/VA?

[Geechee Girl]

I also miss the pageantry of Black church Easter Sunday. One must show up and show out! Don't dare come without a hat, and your outfit on point.

[foreign fundie]

3 hours ago, Gimme a Free RV said:

I know what you mean!  I almost think it's better to say, "Please pray for my ...."  rather than to admit you have an unspoken request, because at that very moment, minds are racing, trying to imagine what could be so awful that you didn't dare say it aloud.

There was a middle aged man in our group who would talk about this 'issue' or 'thing' he had been struggling with. He would go into great lengths to detail all the spiritual hardship this caused him. Then he would share bible verses the Lord had shown Him, which had encouraged him and helped him through this issue. Next meeting he would have a similar story to share. 

It must have been porn. I am sure everybody else in the meeting thought this too although the word was never uttered. Hubby and would go to this meeting expecting to hear the latest developments in his fight against lust. But what if it was something else, say, difficulty with having daily quiet time? Then everybody thinks he has a huge lust problem and he hasn't. That would suck. 

[nomoxian]

9 hours ago, Burpies said:

Have you ever looked into contra dances in your area? They are very much like square dances and a lot of fun!

I just looked it up, and it does seem to be fairly popular in Germany! 

[GodsKnickers]

5 hours ago, clueliss said:

I remember the demise of the printed church prayer list because the senior pastor decided that it had become a source of gossip in the church.  

Cue up the phone prayer chain for the gossip replacement. And prayer request time, hahahahahaha. Yeah, that was grief/hardship vampire time. Oh how holy you were, saying how you were practically wearing haircloth and getting calluses on your knees from all your intercession on the poor poor borderline sinners behalf. WTFE.

I do miss the singing. I love singing and continued going to church for a fair bit, after losing my religion/faith, strictly for the singing. Lot of nostalgia for the old hymns especially, since it was a fun time with both sets of grandparents, having a sing song when we were visiting, often initiated by me, even as a wee tyke. About the only other time I missed church was during our last 2 moves. What would take the church moving crew an hour, ends up taking about 10-12x that long, on our own.

We were part of the beginning of a major split/mass exodus at our old church, not long before we left forever. Our kid was assaulted by someone in the church (not sexually), and after discussing it with the pastor and his wife, it went very sideways. Our pastor's wife was the biggest gossip in the entire church and because we indicated we were thinking of speaking to the police, they decided to go straight to this guy and tell him. During that time, we found out he'd been accused of harassment and intimidation at his last job, and it was all dealt with by their industry's internal review and regulatory body. IOW, it was kept from the public. We were anonymously sent the link to the PDF detailing his infractions and the punishment meted out. Had this been in the public, he likely would have faced much more serious charges from the police. Then we found out that he'd had all kinds of issues in former jobs and had been "fired" from all of them - and by fired, I mean he was simply moved to another town/city and continued on in his profession.

We demanded that given all the information, that he be removed from working with children in any capacity. Instead, we got shunned at church and they tried to visit us separately to "deal" with us. By that point, we just told them to fuck off and left. Prior to leaving though, we sent a copy of our complaint, and the same information to the district, because they needed to deal with it before it left them in a position where they'd lose their insurance if they left him in his position and he went any further. Dh's aunt attended the church and even she and her family gave us the cold shoulder, without even checking with us about anything. The split/mass exodus had already started prior to this, and even more people left after the info came out. Of course it was spun that it was the devil attacking the godly people and there was much praying for a 'hedge of protection' around the poor man and his family. The kids and wife, I felt awfully sorry for. He regularly beat on his kids and generally treated them shitty, and it came out a few months after all this, that he'd cheated on the wife multiple times. He was a real winner, but she 'stood by her man.'

They moved away a few months later, because guess what? He got in trouble at work again, and had to be moved. Barely a year later, they moved out of province altogether, which I suspect had to do with more issues. He moved into a new industry with no internal regulatory/review body. One day, he's going to do something to the wrong person and it will end very badly for him.

A few years ago, the head pastor walked into the church and caught one of the elders boinking a married woman in the storage area in behind the stage/altar. A whole PILE of stuff came out about all the upper echelon of the holy people and people left in droves. That's about when we'd start having people walk up to us in the street when we'd go back to visit a few friends, and they'd apologize. We weren't terribly gracious to a few of them. I don't miss ANY of that shit.

 

[foreign fundie]

"I don't miss ANY of that shit."

I bet you don't. Glad you chose for your kid. And glad the shit hit the fan. These things better get out in the open than stay hidden. And I say that as a believer who would much rather believe these things don't happen in churches.

[livinginthelight]

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I had commented about prayer requests too often being an excuse for gossip but realized I hadn't gone all the way through the thread and others said it before me, and better than me.

[Leftitinmysnood]

Nope, I don't miss any of it. I was marginalized because we were only fundie lite instead of deep fundie family and kind of outspoken. There were girls my age, but their conversations were mostly about goat breeds and how many loads of laundry it took to keep a family of 9 in clean clothes. One mother was forever coming up with new rules for the children while at church. No games, no mixed gender conversing, no crafting on Sundays, no talking to her kids about books or movies, or hair dos, or cars or sending out postcard-collecting chain letters (not the bad-things-will-happen-if-you-don't-mail-this kind). When I started college, I wasn't allowed to talk to her kids anymore. I lived my high school years vicariously through books and spent a lot of my time sewing 1940s and 50s replica clothes long before retro came back.

[foreign fundie]

38 minutes ago, livinginthelight said:

---deleted comment---

I had commented about prayer requests too often being an excuse for gossip but realized I hadn't gone all the way through the thread and others said it before me, and better than me.

 

I try not to be sexist about my own sex, however, women's meetings are the worst. Exceptions allowed, men are much better at staying on course than many woman. 

I was invited to a women's prayer group, starting at 10 AM. We shared prayerpoints. There may have been seven of us there and it lasted three whole hours. After that, we were hungry so we prayed briefly. It went a bit like this: ' Dear Lord, you have heard everything we have said so we don't have to repeat it. Please grant our requests. Amen'

Honestly, that meeting had nothing to do with prayer, but only with sympathizing with each other and listening to all the detailed, very detailed descriptions of difficult conversations with their husbands or worries about children's developments. Not useless in itself, but as a working mom I felt I had better ways to spend my time. And when an older women's leader encouraged me to keep going as these meetings would be so key for my spiritual nourishment...well, I did receive nourishment, but it wasn't all that spiritual. 

I still avoid all 'women only' prayer meetings. But I miss the lunches of leftovers and fingerfoods. I love informal food gatherings and trying out what other women cook.  

 

 

 

[Gimme a Free RV]

13 minutes ago, foreign fundie said:

I try not to be sexist about my own sex, however, women's meetings are the worst. Exceptions allowed, men are much better at staying on course than many woman. 

I was invited to a women's prayer group, starting at 10 AM. We shared prayerpoints.

Honestly, that meeting had nothing to do with prayer, but only with sympathizing with each other and listening to all the detailed, very detailed descriptions of difficult conversations with their husbands or worries about children's developments. 

I still avoid all 'women only' prayer meetings. But I miss the lunches of leftovers and fingerfoods. I love informal food gatherings and trying out what other women cook.  

 

 

 

I was sort of coerced into attending the women's weekly Bible study at a church I used to attend.  The teaching was good.   Prayer request time was painful.   We had ladies who would go on and on and on.  Then, there was a lady who was one of these that had no social graces and just said whatever popped in her head at the moment.  I.e., one woman would ask us to pray for her mother who was ill.  This lady would pipe up and ask intrusive, personal questions:  "Is it cancer?  What doctor is she seeing? What kind of medicine is she taking? How old is she? Will she have to go to a nursing home?"

Even more irritating, the meeting facilitator didn't know how to shut people up who were monetizing the time so they could use it as their own personal therapy or gossip session.

[foreign fundie]

Yes therapy. I realise sometimes women need an outlet. Especially when they feel isolated with their kids at home and a self/work absorbed husband and the weekly prayermeetings are the only place they can vent. I do understand. But often it is just the  silly whining of spoiled princesses. And honestly, apart from being annoying, that is also very contagious. If I attend these meetings too often I will end up doing it too and then eating too much because I feel sorry for myself.

I remember this lovely elderly lady, who had just lost her husband of many decades and was left sitting alone in front of the window attached to  a bottle of oxygen. When I came in she told me how she loved sitting so close to the window so she could pray for all the people walking past. I wondered how many people were blessed through her attitude. Visiting her was much more encouraging than attending the prayer meeting. I hope I will one day be like her. 

[purple_summer]

17 hours ago, Geechee Girl said:

I also miss the pageantry of Black church Easter Sunday. One must show up and show out! Don't dare come without a hat, and your outfit on point.

I still drag myself to church on Palm/Easter Sunday (and Christmas) for this exact reason. Haha

[GenerationCedarchip]

20 hours ago, Walking Cat Bed said:

Did y'all do an annual event in Bluefield W/VA?

No - no events in Bluefield.  Not Bible Presby either. I came from the PCA/OPC/RPC end of the Presby family. Bible Presby is conservative compared to the PCUSA, but still much more moderate than the PCA/OPC/RPC/NAPARC crowd.   

[Walking Cat Bed]

3 hours ago, GenerationCedarchip said:

No - no events in Bluefield.  Not Bible Presby either. I came from the PCA/OPC/RPC end of the Presby family. Bible Presby is conservative compared to the PCUSA, but still much more moderate than the PCA/OPC/RPC/NAPARC crowd.   

Ah, gotcha. I "hosted" the Bluefield event for three years. (More like an RA than anything.)

[zimona]

On 9.12.2015 at 2:10 AM, Marshmallow World said:

There are time when I miss the closed-mindedness. Let me explain: I was taught to accept everything I was told, and ignore or disregard things that contradict it (like science and sociology). I've changed a lot, but I have to admit that life was a lot easier when everything was black and white. I would never go back to that worldview, but it was nice to think that this is wrong and that is right. It was especially comforting when someone passed away - they were in heaven. Which is good.

Heh, I shouldn't try to be philosophical after work

 

On 9.12.2015 at 4:02 PM, thebestusername said:

I miss having an answer already figured out for me. Whenever I would have problems in life I always had some sin in my life or some command of christ I was ignoring or a principle of design or something that I was doing wrong. I realized later that it was mostly bull and they were all unreachable standards but it was very comforting to know that I just had to fix one thing and everything would be fine. It's much more complicated and stressful having to think for myself. I think that may be why many people go fundie in the first place.

Both of this ^^ touches the aspect/s that I miss most. The sense of certainty, of being "right", or at least of knowing what is "right". Not having to think for myself, not having to make difficult decisions, because all major decisions are already mapped out for me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy and relieved that I left, and I still marvel at the fact, that I managed to do so, that I mustered up enough strength and courage to deviate from the "truth", despite all those threats what would happen to those who know the truth and reject it. Even today, more that 20 years on, I stil consider this my biggest achievement in life.

And I'm glad that I let. And generally I'm happy and content with the life that I built for myself. Just the fact that I managed to build a life for myself is a small miracle. But I still struggle with the emotional impact of having grown up in this very narrow and fundamentalist world. At times I struggle immensely with validating my own needs, my emotions - because "they are not important" - which is definitely an echo from the past, but a very persistent one and one that affects me very much in every-day-life... And it's in those moments that I tend to miss the closedmindedness and the ready-made-answers most, even though rationally I know that this narrow thinking eventually made me leave. I wanted answers, real answers, and my own answers.... Which is probably some weird form of warped nostalgia.