Any Ex-Fundies in the house...?

[formerlyfundie]

Hi there, I just wanted to know how many ex fundies make up this wonderful forum, and what the craziest thing was that you were told for ~breaking free.

I'll start. I wasn't raised fundy, was in church every Sunday as a kid, fell off in my teens, rededicated to it and didn't get into crazy fundy territory until after I was married and had our first child. (not because of my DH, he has always been pretty "whatever" about everything) Got a little cuckoo crazy, was regularly corresponding with Wendy Jeub via emails (for encouragement), did the whole skirt wearing, head covering, QF thing (had two babies in a years time, who(m) I love dearly but GEEZ they are a lot to handle sometimes!) you name the fundy thing, I've probably believed and practiced it at some point these last few years. I had a literal exhaustion breakdown and have come back out of it pretty normal, still having problems with ~modesty and not judging people (mostly women) based on what they are wearing but have come a long way, still got a way to go.

Craziest thing I have heard- I wore pants for the first time in 2 1/2 years and was told that because of doing this, my family would be "less blessed". When I asked what the hell that meant, the woman in question replied that I, (and ESPECIALLY my children) would not receive the "extra" blessing that comes with being a *~* TRUE Christian Mother *~* and that I was leading my family into sin. You would have thought that I was announcing I was becoming a stripper or something :roll: There were more lovely things said (like I was embracing worldly rebellion, that I was disappointing people, blah blah blah) but THAT was the craziest by far.

Sorry if there are any typos, grammatical errors, etc- I didn't go to KOLLEGE...but intend to in the future ;)

[Alcyone]

Well...I would probably have been considered fundy-lite. I didn't cover and was not dresses only, although I did go through a phase of wearing mostly dresses or frumpers :)...But I was eager to find the "perfect" and "godly" way to raise my children so I tried to submit to my husband, I home schooled my children, I was already what you would call quiverfull, and desperately tried to reconcile evangelical Christian doctrine with what my brain and my heart told me. I used MOTH (or tried to), went to the conferences where I heard Doug P. speak, ordered some of his VF stuff, heard the Pearls speak, even wrote to Debbie Pearl and she wrote back telling me what a horrible person I was, went to Above Rubies retreats, ....and on and on. So, yeah, I know a lot about many of the people and movements discussed here since they were selling and at one time, I was buying their "wares".

I can't write the craziest thing I heard because it still hurts too much. I broke off from Christianity altogether about two years ago (although it was a slow process) but I am still trying to figure out how to deal with it and trying to figure out who I am now. (Part of who I am now is an attachment parent who is learning to meditate and trying to love herself, all of which would have been frowned upon in the circles I formerly frequented.)

[liltwinstar]

I was raised fundie...although my family's religious journey was a little crazy. We first went to an AoG church. Then my parents started homeschooling and got all pissy with the leadership of the church because they felt the church wasn't supportive enough of the homeschooling movement. So, we left that church and started going to a hardcore Calvinist Reconstructionist church where we were for five years (or so). After that, we ended up in Eastern Orthodox church. I stopped going to church when I was 22.

Anyway, through all that we went through the whole range of fundie behavior - dresses-only, headcoverings, etc. My parents weren't QF, though - they had taken permanent steps to end their childbearing years, and they were apparently never "convicted" enough to get a reversal (thank goodness!!).

I heard some seriously crazy stuff over the years...one was that HIV doesn't actually cause AIDS, another was that God only pays attention to you for a certain amount of time and if you reject Him, you basically have no shot at repentance. There was a lot of teaching about jail and persecution - that we should have the Bible and the (Eastern Orthodox) prayerbook memorized so that if we went to jail, we'd still be able to pray. I was told that orgasms weren't necessary for women, only men, because that's where the babies come from. I asked why we wore headscarves and was told it was "because of the Mother of God" (no other answer). There was a huge fear of government and the medical establishment - for no reason that I could see.

Once I decided to leave, I was lucky enough that I could just fade away...so I didn't have anyone hounding me about my lack of faith. Phew!

[titus2_4u]

Ex-fundie-lite, but we had a stint at a serious fundie church when I was a kid.

The church was adamantly KJV-only. The craziest thing I ever heard was this: "The NIV was written by two witches and a warlock!"

[formerlyfundie]

(Part of who I am now is an attachment parent who is learning to meditate and trying to love herself, all of which would have been frowned upon in the circles I formerly frequented.)

I hear you there.

The church was adamantly KJV-only. The craziest thing I ever heard was this: "The NIV was written by two witches and a warlock!"

I heard the NIV (and well basically all translations that WEREN'T KJV) are meant for less intelligent people and are too cultured. Or that they are part of the feminist agenda because gender lines are less distinct or something like that. Didn't make sense then, doesn't make sense now...

[chaotic life]

I was raised Fundy-lite, I think would be the best description. Mom wanted to be full blown Fundie but Dad was a preacher and a feminist and totally NOT interested. His resistence prevented her from totally jumping the shark, but she groomed me for full-blown fundie.

I got married and was Mennonite, full-blown Quiverful. Left the Mennonites because there was no church where we lived. Ended up in a Methodist church with a lot of other quiverfuls/fundies.

Yeah, started leaving 3.5 years ago now. Fully left 2 years ago, when I went back to finish my college degree (which I'll have in December).

The worst was not what was said to us but what was done to us. When we left fully, our children's minister called in a false report to CPS on us...two weeks after our youngest child was born.

Haven't darkened the door of a church since then. Not ready to say I'm not Christian, but not ready to go back to church either. Dh is now fully egnostic. He says he's a secular diest, so he still believes in a higher power but not religion at all-possibly.

[Kaylee]

I'm still somewhat fundie, but I left behind a lot of the more extreme beliefs and practices. In Independent Fundamentalist Baptist terms, I'm still IFB, but no longer an X-er (IFBX is a term for the more extreme IFB churches and their followers, sort of like fundy/fundy-lite, except it's fundy/fundy-extreme).

The worst that I got upon leaving was somebody who told my husband maybe we'd be back when the cancer came back (I had leukemia at the time and was undergoing treatment) and someone who knew I'd been in an abusive "girl's home" as a teen and said I must not have stayed long enough or been "disciplined" enough because I was obviously still rebellious. The irony is that I left mostly at my husband's request, and the comment to him was one of the last straws for him leaving the church and religion as a whole behind. That church ended up splitting within a year, and some of the ones who got nasty with us were also behind a lot of the drama and gossip that caused the split. The church is totally different now than it was 5 years ago, and I'm a member there again, but the ones who had said those things left after ousting the old pastor but not having enough pull to get one of their relatives voted in.

[Deleted08]

I'm an ex-fundie. I'm still conservative but am defintely not a fundie lol!

[ophelia]

hey guys,

one question to you ex-fundies: does the whole quiverful-thing show up in all the different denominations? I already read about QF mennonites, calvinist, baptists and now also methodist.

[Deleted08]

Yep, it's kind of everywhere these days. Baptists were the group I ran with. I am too liberal to be a fundie so I blend in nicely with the Quakers lol!

[liltwinstar]

Yup, the QF concept shows up everywhere...I know there are some QF Catholics, there were QF Eastern Orthodox (although becuase the church tells married people to abstain for more than 50% of the year, you didn't see super gigantic families..I think the biggest family I knew of had 7 or 8 kids). The concept has pretty much infiltrated everywhere.

[ophelia]

Wow interesting. The question is WHYY????

And when did that start?

[CanticleoftheTurning]

I guess my family might be fundie-lite, or perhaps my dad was just crazy and abusive and a firm homeschooler and that gave the family a fundie-quality.

Anyhow, shortly after I got engaged I was talking about our wedding plans to my mom and how I firmly believed in equality and wanted to walk down the aisle WITH DH to the altar, instead of being "given away" like some sort of chattel. Next thing I knew was I got an email from my dad blasting me for being a "radical liberal feminist" in cahoots with a "radical liberal feminist priest" and that all the women who didn't want to be given away at their weddings all simply hated their father, and he KNEW so because he searched the internet for it. Nothing I could do to prove otherwise, though I tried.

Everyone who knew me at the time knew I was actually a conservative/moderate and the parish we were getting married in was a conservative parish. So that was the craziest thing. It hurt like heck then, though. I'm sure my parents thought I was really liberal and radical for marrying a Protestant.

[GenerationCedarchip]

Well, I grew up in the Calvinist brand of fundie, so I can recite revisionist/reconstructionist history with the best of them. However, I think the weirdest thing I heard was at my wedding when the minister gave his sermon and told my now-husband not to let me be too independent because freethinking women will lead their husbands straight to Satan and it was his duty to see that I stayed saved.

Scripturally and theologically unsound for so many reasons it makes me crazy...

[Aislynn]

Grew up swinging from fundie to fundie-lite. We were the Lutheran brand of fundie and I knew fundie evangelicals from all denominations in our town of 4,000 people. We had a homeschool group and the girls pretty much always wore dresses and we took piano and violin lessons together and everyone had a zillion kids and competed for homeschool mom of the year. My family became Pearl devotees after all their friends passed them copies of To Train Up a Child when I was 14. I got three copies of Created to be His Helpmeet and a subscription to Far Above Rubies (which I still get five years later!) for my wedding. Nearly everyone home birthed. We all went to Gothard conferences together and us girls planned our future "courtships." We didn't play with barbies, I'm definitely familiar with the idea of "toe cleavage" and always thought cabbage patch dolls were eeeebil. Yup, hook line and sinker fundie.

There have been too many crazy and hurtful things said (like my mom "oh honey, you just THINK that's the way it was when you were a child!) but the one that sticks out the most was my mother sobbing and telling me "You're killing my grandchildren!!!" when I told her we were going to use birth control. The next day my younger brother pretended to want driving lessons and "kidnapped" me to convince me that I had to "let God control my family size."

Yup. My family was totally brainwashed.

[punkiepie]

I was raised fundie-lite that leaned more towards the "fundie" than it did to the "lite." The worst thing i ever heard was probably not all that bad in comparison to some of ya'lls stories, but I was only 13 and it traumatized me. Sunday fell on a Valentine's Day that year and so I wore a red dress. It was practically a frumper, came down almost to my ankles, and it was the exact opposite of anything remotely immodest. As I was walking into the sanctuary with all my of friends, one of the deacons called my name and told me to comer over him- he then pulled me aside and asked me if I thought Jesus would like me wearing the color of harlots in His house on the Lord's day. Everyone in the lobby (and there were a lot of people) turned and stared at us and I was opening my mouth trying to speak- no real words came out, just a few stammering attempts to create some kind of answer. Then he told me that all women who wear red were harlots and since I was wearing red, I must be a harlot. (he said that word so many times and each repetition was like a slap in my face) and I was not to wear anything that had red as the predominant color to church ever again. And finally, he said that if I wanted to be allowed into the sanctuary I had to put on my winter coat and wear it for the the entire service- lest I become a stumbling block to the other young boys and men there that day and cause them to have carnal thoughts while in the Lord's House.

I was 13. It was a gawky year for me, but I had finally started to outgrow the awkward stage, I got contacts, grew out my bangs, and was starting to look prettier than I had in years. I was still a long way from even remotely resembling a seductress, harlot, temptress, but apparently men at my old church could only keep their lusty thoughts in check when surrounded by fugly or prepubescent females. I cried and cried and felt so guilty. See, the dress was really not pretty at all, but the color red looked good on me and somehow I felt pretty that day. On the way to church I even thought how my church crush might notice me. I thought the deacon was right- I was a harlot. I didn't question the deacon, I just accepted what happened and believed that God was angry at me for being prideful and trying to use my outward appearance to appeal to the boy I liked. The whole incident was so shattering to my self esteem and it took me years before I would ever red again.

[finleeport]

I was born and christened in the Greek Orthodox Church, but it was my step-grandmother who raised me the most since she lived with my family.

She was a Jehovah Witness, in her own way, but she had sisters (my great step-aunts if you could call them that) and they were very Calvinistic, they visited us twice a year, well not my family but their sister. When I was 7 years old, my mother tried to rear me into my Orthodox faith but it was my stepgrandma and aunts who counter-reared me into their circle. They forced down on me King James Bible quotes and talk badly about Jews, Muslims, Christmas, Gays etc. Even when my Mom was in the hospital (she had serious stomach pains) they would force me and my sisters to work and clean the house often with short breaks. Once they saw how strange I was behaving (I have Aspergers) they thought a demon was inside and tried to perform prayers over me with their hands on my hand, and if I fought or bit their hand (I bit a lot then) they would hit my head with a bible and smack my rear.

Scary part is, I did believed in every word they said, sometimes, and I thought Jews and Gays were going to Hell and literally burn in flames. Another scary part was my Grandma's brother would come over and make things worse; my step-great uncle was a self-proclaimed atheist, or something like that, but he wasn't very educated. He supported the Communist side during Greece's Civil War but he really knew nothing of what it meant, he was just a simple country boy. He loved going to bars, smoked a lot, swearing a lot at dogs or small animals, he once tried to sneak me into a bar when I was 8, but thank goodness my older brother came in time. When my grandma caught me with her brother, she would assume I was learning ugly things from him and she would make sit still and not make a move, not even for a scratch, if i did she would slap me hard. I was to sit and be still, hungry and think of my shame before God. I never told these things to my mother, I was so afraid and so were my brothers and sisters.

When I turned 9, I began to explore things, slightly though, but what really made my eyes open was watching a BBC series of The Chronicles of Narnia, I know it sounds cheesy but let me have my say; When I first watched the series, I was entranced, I loved and adored the talking animals and mythical creatures. It was Narnia that made me obsessed with mythology and folklore. My Step-grandma would try to make me stop reading about myths because she they were 'satanic and heresy' but I would ignore her and she would be even more angry. But she couldn't do anything because she had problems with her legs and couldn't walk anymore. My great-uncle would say what I was reading was stupid and worthless, he wanted me to learn about girls, fist-fighting, 'manliness' and hunting (which I hate). My grandma would threaten me with hellfire and beatings if I continue to ignore her and read books, but for the first time, when she grabbed me by the arm, holding real tight, and spitting out biblical curses, I bit her hand really hard there were bite marks on, she screamed in pain but I was not sorry. Still not. By the time I was 12, she left the house and died a year later. I still had her teachings in my memory and I would say I stopped being fundie or fundie-lite when I was in High School.

I went back to my faith and too the Greek Monastery I go too every Sunday, but with a few beliefs of my own. I thank the Virgin Mary almost every day. But I will say I don't stay in the chapel too long, I can't stand sitting there all the time, so I would go to the bookstore and read. I'm happy that I'm in the Greek Orthodox faith, it accepts mystery and paradox, but I do admire some of the theology of C.S. Lewis though.

And my Monastery is hardly patriarchal, I mean the priests give the mass and all, but the Monastery is actually the Nun's place. Kind of like a Convent. Most of the women there don't always wear headscarves. And I would gladly say that none of them are QF; my parents have 7 kids but my mom is in charge a lot, and one of my mom's friends is a mother of 2 and a lawyer.

[Rachel333]

I was fundie lite, I guess. I was homeschooled, though my parents chose that for educational reasons. My parents still are anti-gay (though I can tell my mom is loosening up on that just a little bit) and don't believe in evolution. When I was younger my parents were really into the idea of a father-led courtship (though not to the extremes we see here) and waiting to kiss until marriage. I was completely uninterested in boys at the time, so I was fine with that. Modesty was important; pants were fine, but no short shorts or low necklines or bikinis. There are only 4 kids in my family. My parents loved to quote the quiver-full verse before that became a thing, but they believed God trusted them to decide when their quiver was full. Harry Potter and really anything involving magic was pure evil. Thankfully they've calmed way down on that sort of thing. I'm not sure if they're even fundie lite anymore.

I think I was kind of born a skeptic. My mom says that even as a toddler I would question things she told me about religion and such, something that frustrated her. I did truly believe when I was really young, but I started really struggling with that around 11, and at that age I was pretty much the only one I knew feeling that way, so that was hard. I was also always really interested in other religions, and couldn't stand it when people would be rude or condescending to/about people who had different beliefs.

I am very thankful that my parents recognized it as a good thing that I really thought about what I believed and cared about other people, even though I know they disagree with me on a lot of stuff. They were also always supportive of me doing non-traditionally feminine things and having a career and such, though they were kind of awful to me when I went through a period at about 7 when I didn't want to be feminine at all.

Growing up homeschooled, a lot of the people I knew were some serious fundies. My parents really disagreed with a lot of that (for example, they went to a Gothard seminar back in the 80's and realized right away how ridiculous he was), but I don't think they realized how much I was affected by that mindset. I was afraid that I was doing something wrong by wanting a career and wearing pants, and I went through a period where I really tried hard to embrace the fundie lifestyle. I didn't go all-out with the modesty stuff since my family would have found it really weird for me to suddenly start wearing skirts all the time, so instead I just felt really guilty for wearing pants.

I eventually got over most of that. It was a huge relief to go to a public high school where it wasn't even questioned if a girl liked math or wanted to be a doctor. I'm sure I was still kind of an awkward home-schooled kid, but no one was ever mean to me and I really liked school. I also credit a Christian camp that some might deem fundie-lite as helping me get over a lot of my insecurities with modesty and such.

I'm not sure where I am now. If I really try to embrace Christianity I still have this nagging feeling that God doesn't exist, but if I decide to not be religious I realize that I do still believe (in a very non-fundie way). Other than a wedding, I haven't been to church in probably three months, but I've kind of been craving it lately. I love the ritualism of the Catholic church, but I hate their stance on women and I'm not sure the Episcopal Church is right for me either. I'm okay doing church buffet style for a while, but I want to settle down religiously eventually.

[Dena]

I was a messianic fundie for a while.

Worst thing while in the group- You are cursed by G-d because you don't have kids. They really really pushed having kids and a large family. Oh and dear group, once I got out I was blessed and no longer cursed, hmmm something to think about.

When I left- It was bad because it was the kind of group that when you left no one was allowed to have anything to do with you. So we left all of our friends which felt like family.That part was hard. Though when we did run into someone they would cry about us going to hell, and that was hard too. :roll:

[let-them-eat-cake]

*raises hand*

Fundie-lite. (And was into the whole messianic thing for a while).

I'm still getting out of it. My mother (it's a long story but she has fundie ideas that she pushes on me but doesn't follow herself) told me yesterday that if I cut my hair, I'll be considered a lesbian freak and will never be able to get a job. :shock: :roll: :shock:

(yet she has in the past cut her hair super short and has expressed the desire to do that again....but different "rules" [i'm 20, btw] apply to me I guess...they always have.)

So.....I went into my room, grabbed common household scissors and chopped off about two inches. I plan on cutting more. I've had my hair in a ponytail so she hasn't noticed all that much. It looks like crap but it feels awesome.

[Alcyone]

punkiepie, I am so sorry that you endured that horrible incident and at such a young age. It is as bad as if he had come up and slapped you. :cry: