This is part 2 of the Stories of Theism series. In this chapter, I mostly talk about my experiences in Kindergarten through 6th Grade at a Christian School. I didn't realize how much material I had until I started writing, hence such a long post. This has become quite the cathartic project.

Here is the link for Part 1 of this series

Chapter 2: The Veil

Population: 741. Or at least that’s what the sign says as you cross the railroad tracks and pull into my hometown. This is Main Street. As you pass the Co-op and a gas station, you drive by the one block of Main Street that actually makes it Main Street: a small public library, the post office, the newspaper building, a photography studio, a hardware store, the antique shop, and a slightly overpriced grocery store. We have already passed 4 bars. There’s not much to do here, so drinking beer, gossiping, and watching sports on the television is one of the few ways people spend their time. We are coming up to a police station on the left, across from the funeral home. Crime is basically nonexistent here, and only on rare occasions is the city cop actually in the station, perhaps watching the same game playing at the bars down the street. We turn left by an old, slightly dilapidated Victorian-style house, its once proud corner turret looking down at us. I’m not even sure what this street is called. The town isn’t big enough to warrant the memorization of street names. Everything is just “across from this”, “behind that”, and “You know, over where the so-and-so’s are adding on.”

A block later we arrive at a church. It’s not a small church, nor is it a modest, yet still quite impressive church. It is a massive, grandiose, in-your-face type of church with a towering steeple that says, “Hey you 5 miles away, look at me!” Some claim that the steeple is the tallest in the entire state, which may possibly be the case. When I was in high school I found out that my great (great, great…) grandfather helped build this church. It seems to have been one of the initial sparks that drew people to this area. I’m sure the townspeople back in the day were proud of this church. I do think it is an objectively impressive building, especially for such a rural area: huge stained glass windows, heavily lacquered wood pews, strong columns that rise up to vaulted ceilings, ornate lecterns, an impressive organ and choir loft in the back, and the high altar towering at the front, all of these packaged in an outer shell of bold red brick. The current townspeople here are very proud of their church. When I was in high school, the church spent an inordinate amount of money on a restoration project. This included new murals painted by professional artists, a new roof, new flooring, an improved basement, and new paint on walls, ceilings, and anything else that needed painting. The church even started a second collection to raise money for this project. The idea of second and special collections must have been a good one, because the church has kept that financial strategy going to this day.

In case you haven’t guessed it by now, Catholicism is the flavor of Christianity in this town. You know, the one and only true religion, founded by Jesus himself, hijacked by evildoers like Martin Luther, comprised of a congregation who arrive each Sunday to cannibalize Jesus, and led by the infallible Pope who has god on his Facebook Messenger app. A rocky, dirty parking lot separates the church, sanctuary, rectory, convent, and parish offices from a few other buildings making up the K-12 school system. The student body mostly includes offspring of previous alumni who didn’t want to give up the comforts of a small-town lifestyle. Parents push sports in an attempt to relive their glory days of trophies, touchdowns, game-winning shots, and local fame. Certain surnames are associated with athletic prowess or wealth and are remarkably important in people’s perceptions and expectations of others. “Everyone knows everyone,” or so the expression goes. People keep tabs on others so that they are always prepared for the next gossip session. This includes keeping track of who is absent from weekend Mass. If Mary, Marlene, or the Mitchells aren’t sitting in their usual pews at their usual times, you can count on someone taking note.

Welcome to My School

This school system is where I spent all 13 years of my K-12 education. I have only a few memories from Kindergarten, which was taught by one of the last remaining nuns in the convent. Two clear memories I have of Kindergarten are of unwillingly playing a singing game called London Bridges and of my dad bringing a puppy school without giving Sister prior notice. Sometime after starting 1st grade, I have my earliest memories of religion. Prayer recitation became a daily occurrence, namely at the beginning of the school day and before and after lunch. I remember a thick, white religion textbook that included lots of drawing, coloring, and fill-in-the-blanks. As a class, we walked to the church (in a single-file line of course) three times a week to attend Mass. Services were often accompanied by tiredness and nausea and sometimes involved a student fainting or getting sick. I remember absolutely nothing about the sermons and Liturgy. I simply remember that this church thing is what normal people did, and normal did it become, to the point where I would one day be surprised to find out that there were actually people who didn’t go to church.

In 2nd grade we were introduced to the Sacraments of Reconciliation and First Communion. The Catholic Church recognizes age seven to be the approximate “Age of Reason”. Sometimes I wonder if this is when many of my classmates’ abilities to reason hit their maximum, at least towards their religious beliefs. Preparation for our First Reconciliation was accompanied by much anxiety, but it wasn’t just the idea of going into a little confessional to tell a priest all the bad things you have done. The real difficult was figuring out what to say and coming up with a passable list of sins to confess. In order to pull off a successful performance at the day of the event, our class spent a few weeks making lists of generic sins that we could all use. Some examples include “I lied to mom”, “I didn’t finish my vegetables”, “I fought with my brother”, or “I didn’t clean my room”. I remember adopting certain sins to my list which were suggested during class but which I wasn’t even guilty of. There was also some memorization of lines to say and learning a new prayer called the Act of Contrition, which the Church did away with a few years later. I guess god messaged the Pope and told him he was getting tired of hearing the same old thing every time.

After a successful First Reconciliation, which mostly involved merely “going through the motions”, it was time for First Communion. Aside from the mundane classroom preparation, it turned out to be a much more extravagant event: fancy clothes, the special lights turned to full-bright in the church, extended family coming to town, a party, a cake, and even presents, albeit far too many gifts in the forms of prayer books, rosaries, and bibles which currently collect dust alongside the rest of my childhood belongings. Perhaps the most important thing about First Communion was that our class would no longer have to remain in the pews at Mass each week, wondering what it must be like to walk up and eat the round little piece of unleavened bread and perhaps drink the wine. (Oh, I’m sorry. I mean the literal body and blood of Jesus.) As I walked forward with my family to receive the Eucharist for the first time, I remember the excitement and satisfaction of finally becoming one of the “older kids” who would get to do this during Mass. Being a seven-year-old, I wasn’t really concerned with what the Church actually taught about Communion. As I walked forward to receive the Eucharist, I simply felt like I had succeeded in climbing another rung of the social ladder. The moment came when I received and consumed the host. Quite underwhelmed, I thought to myself, “Wow, Jesus really tastes like cardboard.”

I remember having that perception of climbing a social ladder a lot. I’m sure every student feels this, but I believe my experience was amplified by the religious structure. Parents often taught their kids to admire the “big boys” and “big girls” who played sports, did well in school, dressed conservatively, and—of course—volunteered at the church. These church jobs included titles such as Server (one of the priest’s helpers during Mass), Reader (one who reads the Liturgy), Sacristan (who sets up and takes down before and after mass), and Eucharistic Minister (one who helps serve the hosts during Communion). The last of these was the most exclusive and you could always count on the most popular (and fervently religious) students in each class to grow up and take the job. These students often happened to be athletes as well, as were almost all students with any popularity. Looking back, it is quite easy to simplify how this system was set up to encourage young people to become like the older people.

1. A group of seven-year-olds are being fed an ideology through their parents, teachers, priests, books, pictures, games, songs, other students, and other adults.
2. Anyone and everything they have ever known tells them that this particular doctrine describes precisely how the entire universe functions.
3. Religious traditions, ceremonies, and rites of passage are woven into daily life and within the social ladder they see in front of them.
4. They see older students as role models. These role models are active in this religious fabric. Most of them are also athletes and thus local celebrities in the sports-centric environment that their parents established.
5. Many of these seven-year-olds thereby learn that l = s + r, where l is life, s is sports, and r is religion. (Substituting o and e for the equals and plus signs also produces an interesting result).

The Warmth and the Happiness

I suppose this is around the time that we had become aware of our own mortality or, more importantly, our parents’ mortality. I believe the idea of death is one of the finest selling-points of religion, especially for young people. I remember the feeling of warmth that spread through the classroom whenever the idea of heaven was shared. “Yes, kids. You will die, but it’s not really dying. It’s just this thing that happens before you get to live forever.” I think that’s how most kids grow up feeling about their religion: something that is warm and comfy, like other aspects of their childhood. During our youthful days in this small town, we were surrounded by parents who deeply cared for their children and who wanted to give them as happy a childhood as possible. Of course, god also wanted us to be happy, or at least the vague version of god we were taught. He was this invisible, all-powerful, perfect guy that cared for each of us. He helped Jesus feed hundreds of people with just a few fish and loaves of bread, and he can resurrect people from the dead and heal the sick. He helped Moses escape from the cruel Egyptians, and he created this world just for us to live in. Most importantly, however, he wanted all of us little seven-year-olds to be with him in Heaven one day, so long as we were good.

In my mostly carefree childhood, religion seemed to attach itself to as many happy things as it could. Grandeur and awe were two effective mechanisms by which this bond could be formed. Christmas was one of the happiest times of the year, with the presents, a month-long break from school, time spent seeing family and friends, and plenty of time to play with toys. This holiest of holidays is preceded by Advent, a month or so on the Church calendar that acts as a prelude to Christmas. During this time, new decorations started popping up in the church, special candles were lit each week, and a general sense of excitement grew until it reached a crescendo with Christmas Mass. My family’s tradition was to attend Midnight Mass, a service at 12 A.M. with hundreds of lights shining brightly in the church, a full choir with organ and tubular bells, and a very tired but very excited congregation—two qualities which make one a prime candidate for accepting a church’s teachings. Looking back, it seems like the happiness I felt during the Christmas season was due to elements that were entirely humanist—friends, family, gifts, collective excitement—with the veil of religion draped over to claim the credit. I find this to be a powerful mechanism by which religion embeds itself in societies. There is a hate group in Kansas called the Westboro Baptist Church. They picket funerals with terrible signs that tell grievers that their deceased loved ones are in hell. As they travel around the United States, spreading their message of hate, how much time is actually spent picketing? I suspect it amounts to a very small fraction of their time. I imagine most of their trips are like joyful family vacations, especially for the young ones who have no understanding of what their family is doing. Perhaps they also learn to associate their religion with happiness gained through secular means. What a wickedly clever way for something pernicious to fester.

I want to conclude this chapter with an extremely important feature that I have thus far failed to mention: I do not remember any sort of serious inspection of the doctrine itself. In grade school, I recall absolutely zero class periods spent reading or studying the Bible. Aside from the readings at Mass and a few class periods in high school, we received basically no first-hand exposure to the holiest, most sacred document in the history of Christianity. For an education at a Christian school, I find this to be a marvelous and telling reality. The priest would sometimes visit our class and (try to) answer some basic questions that students might have about some of the more confusing aspects of the Catholic Church, for example how the Holy Trinity can be three separate entities but at the same time a singular being. The main religious text I remember was one that appeared in 6th grade, in the form of a faded mint-green, double-sided, card stock quality paper with 20 or so prayers listed on it. It included everything from the Sign of the Cross and special prayers to Mary and Saint Michael to the Apostles Creed. All of these prayers had to be memorized, and the teacher was extraordinarily strict. Points were deducted for even the smallest mistakes. I even had to perform the Sign of the Cross twice, because I crossed right to left when I was supposed to cross left to right.

It wasn’t until a fateful day some years later that I would open the Bible and start reading it for myself. Until that time, religion remained a normal, comforting tool by which my classmates and I would live our lives and attach our happiness to. The exact teachings of the doctrine were irrelevant, and god remained a vague but comforting invisible friend, who, like Santa Claus, was always watching.

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The next chapter will be about my experience at Jesus Camp. Expect a week and a half to two weeks for that one. Its a doozy.