Velociworld

ON GOD AND MAN AND THE SOUTH

I was raised an Episcopalian. This was the result of a nice compromise between my Mother, raised a Southern Baptist in rural Georgia, and my Father, raised a Methodist in Atlanta and Savannah. Actually, this was a decision by my Mother, who became a politician's wife, and felt she needed a more upscale form of Protestantism to sustain the family virtues. That is not meant as a slam on my Mother or the Baptist Church, just an opinion. My Mother truly loved the Episcopal Church, and was smart enough to eschew Christ Church, the Episcopal Church of the bluebloods in Savannah, and join St. John's, a far more beautiful church, but not Uppity. Uppity was a sin to my Mother. St. John's WAS beautiful, though. It's parish house, the Green-Meldrim House, was Sherman's headquarters in Savannah at the end of the March To The Sea. The chimes in St. John's tower were melted down for cannonballs. My Father had the street between the Church and parish house closed off when he was a senator, and bricked over into a nice contemplative gardens area, to make my Mom happy. It kept him out of the doghouse, too.

So my Mother found her True Church in the Anglican Communion. My Father went along because he didn't give a shit one way of the other. He was a C&E'er (Christmas and Easter), and only did that to please his wife. My Father had Issues with Christianity, to be honest. He'd wax eloquent on Saturday night about how the holy communion was symbolic cannibalism, then beat our little asses the next morning when we balked at going to church. I believe his message was "It's Bullshit, but it will make you a better person, and you might go to Hell if it's real. So you'd better believe, you little smartass. Listen to your Mother."

Which rather sums up my position. It's superstition, but not necessarily a bad concept. If you force your society to live by immutable laws against commonly recognized sins crimes, then vagaries in public opinion won't lead you astray in those times of plenty when worshipping a golden calf or buggering children seem innocuous enough. I also tend to like the theory of Rene Descartes (or was it Blaise Pascal? I can't remember. They were both Frenchmen, however, which means they both wore satin codpieces, so they are of a sort) who posited one must Believe, because if it was true, you were okay, and if it was Not True, no harm done anyway, eh? See, he rationalized it, and I like that.

I've wandered from the topic at hand, not unusual for me. I wanted to speak of Primitive Southern Cracker Religion, because once we moved to the farm it was a tough nut to drive an hour into St. John's every Sunday. So my Mother would take us to a smattering of local churches. I suspect she secretly still pined for the Old Time religion, just as she kept a jar of pickled pig's feet in the back of the refrigerator, hidden behind the martini olives.

Our two options were the Tusculum Primitive Baptist Church, and the Egypt Church of God. They were both very small, and populated by madmen and women, but they didn't bite. Foamed on occasion, but I never saw them bite. They also lacked air-conditioning, whcih meant you fanned yourselves with cardboard fans from the local funeral director.

Tusculum was actually the more upscale of the two, in that they actually held communion, albeit with Welch's Grape Juice instead of wine (dry county). I've always found it amusing that these people took the Bible so literally they would scream at you if you thought the earth was older than 5,672 years, but didn't take the Bible literally when it came to wine. The Tusculum crowd was alright, just not what I was raised with. They'd shudder when you told them you were baptised as an infant and confirmed in an Episcopal church. That was akin to being a fucking Papist, only without the world hegemony.

The Egypt crowd was tough. Baptism and communion meant nothing to them. You had to be SAVED, saved in the eyes of the crowd and God, and Fully Immersed. I spent the night with a friend of mine once. His father had a regular job, but was known as a Blue Light, which meant Smokey was recognized as a man of the Word, and could preach, prosyletize, or speak in tongues at these churches as the mood grabbed him. When I was 11 I spent the night with his son, and Smokey told me Episcopal baptism and communion were heresy, and bullshit, and made me let him Save me before I could go to bed that night. I told my Mother about it the next day when she picked me up and she just laughed. I didn't think it was funny for shit.

A little speaking in tongues from these folk, but no snake handling or strychnine drinking. We were flatlanders. They save that stuff for the mountains. To this day, though, I ponder those fundamentalists. They were strict and bigoted and tight-assed as hell, but they never taught us in Sunday School to blow ourselves up to kill Muslims or Jews. Nope. They even let us sing "Jesus Loves The Little Children". You know the song. The one with different colored chirrens in it. They were good people, just working through the belief set they inherited. The South is strange, and Southern religion is stranger indeed.

Fortunately, I've always been able to multi-task, and could keep my Mom happy on the religion front while developing my own religion around one Hugh Hefner.

One final thought. My Mother passed away four years ago, and I've only recently had the stomach to go through her writings, for she did write. I found a short story she'd written, an autobiographical piece she'd shared with me as a kid, and I'd forgotten, about her black playmate as a child. It seems she'd always considered him a good playmate for a nigger, but couldn't believe his wild tales of his importance in his community for such a small child, until she snuck into the balcony of his church one Sunday, and realized he was the crucifer of his church. So for all my knowledge of the white Southern Cracker religious experience, I understand the Black Southern Church is an entity which I am totally ill-equipped to describe.