They never tell you in Sunday School how frightening it can be to be a wolf amidst the sheep. Especially when we’re talking more than 10,000 sheep. But that was, essentially, the position I was in last night when I decided to head over to the Coliseum for the Southern Baptists Convention.
I’m a lifelong Catholic with a live-in girlfriend, our social circle composed largely of hardcore secular humanists, atheists, Jews, Buddhists and the odd pagan. This is a convention for dedicated members of the largest protestant Christian denomination on Earth. I could not be more out of my element. I had this strange paranoid fantasy that, as I walked onto the floor of the convention, the crowd would part like the Red Sea, repelled by a heathen stench coming off me like the sickly yellow vapor that follows a cartoon skunk. They were going to make me as soon as I came through the doors - seizing me by both arms and dunking me repeatedly in a kiddie pool set up somewhere in the wings for just such an occasion.
I needn’t have worried.
These folks were occasionally strange and unintentionally humorous – but the only real danger was cavities as I was treated to saccharine sweet, two-fisted handshake and full body hug hospitality by complete strangers. It was unnerving at first – then funny, then eerily surreal. I haven’t been so enthusiastically, physically greeted by that many male strangers anywhere outside of a gay bar.
Which is an analogy at which members of the SBC would, almost certainly, fail to giggle. The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina recently took steps toward disowning member churches that welcome gays and lesbians or are affiliated with groups who do.
Which you’d think would put them on the right side of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church – the group that has, most recently, been protesting outside the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, arguing they died defending a country that tolerates homosexuality. But you’d be wrong.
Though Phelps was on his way to another military funeral out west, members of his family (who make up almost the entirety of the Westboro church’s membership) were there to protest the convention, carrying signs with messages like “Your Preacher is a Whore.” Their beef with the SBC? They think Billy Graham is a “false prophet” ( Deuteronomy 13:1-5) and consider the SBC’s 20 ft. statue of Graham a “graven image” (Exodus 20:4). The group didn’t make much of a splash – waving signs at cars, barking at counter-protestors nearly a full block, a lane of flowing traffic and several cops away. After about an hour they took off – but they were back today to give it another go.
I took a voyeuristic glance at the Westboro people and chatted about them with the cameraman for a local TV news station. Turns out we’d both covered their pickets before, in other states. Greensboro Police officers took pictures of the group (and both of us) and the cameraman asked me:
“Can the police do that? Is that legal?”
“Legal?” I asked. “Sure. Why not?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That just seems a little…”
“The ACLU agrees,” I said. “We’ll see how it plays out.”
The real action was inside – where, high above the convention floor, I peered down at the Southern Baptists en masse.
The photo above isn’t a great one and hardly representative. Of all the booths I noticed that this “Wellness Center” was the least hopping – but you get the idea. There were thousands of people there, even late in the day.
But, as I looked down onto the sea of Baptists, something occurred to me. Everyone was…white.
Well, not everyone. In two hours on the floor I did bump into three black people:
These two were playing piano, trying to sell Hammond organs without resorting to the sure-fire method of simply putting on The Rascals’ 1967 album “Groovin’.”
And this guy was the narrator of a short play in which, in a manner dangerously bordering on Minstrel-show, he told the stories of good white Baptist missionaries throughout history.
This put me off a little – and I asked our religion reporter, Nancy McLaughlin, about it. She told me there have been very few black Southern Baptists since the group’s divisive Civil War inception, but that the group is doing more to increase its black membership. The evidence of this particular push was not exactly all around – though there was plenty to suggest they’re looking to Baptize as many as humanly possible. The national goal this year is 1 million baptisms and, I was told, North Carolina is leading the way
I even picked up a pamphlet that had prominent Baptists talking about large, outdoor Baptisms as simply the most fun you can have with your clothes on (I’m paraphrasing).
I have to admit - it sounds like a lot more fun than anything I ever did in Catholic school.
But it isn’t just a national push. I also talked to Jim Barnett, a Texan from the International Mission Board, an arm of the SBC that splits the world into 11 regions into which they send missionaries. Each year one region is highlighted – and this year it’s West Africa’s turn. This may explain why Jim was wearing what looked like a dashiki.
He showed me this story scarf, with pictures that spell out Bible stories:
(My photo didn’t come out well. This one’s a stock photo of the same scarf. But I’ll show it to you in person sometime - I’ve got one now.)
As Jim explained it the scarf begins the Christian story with the fall of Lucifer, who would become Satan and rule in Hell, and ends with the ascension of Christ into Heaven.
This struck me as odd for a number of reasons – not least because the Christian Bible makes no direct references to Lucifer as a fallen angel who becomes Satan. Most of the Christian tradition regarding Lucifer, Satan and the War in Heaven we get from the Gnostics, non-canonical Judeo-Christian folktales, Babylonian mythology and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. I wouldn’t know this had I not written a gigantic term paper for a Milton class in college – and I wouldn’t expect the average West African convert to know it either. Particularly if they’re learning the story from a scarf rather than a Bible. But Jim was laying it on me like it was gospel and there’s just nothing to back this up, even in the accepted framework of Christianity itself.
I wanted to ask Jim about this, but it was a little hard to get a word in edgewise.
“The blanket is a great way to tell the Christian story to people from different cultures who don’t speak English and don’t have any written language,” Jim told me.
Don’t have any written language? But Jim went on…
“They won’t get as full and deep a Biblical understanding of the stories, but they’ll get the idea. There are things in their culture they can compare the stories to so they can understand them, even if they’ve never heard the name of Christ.”
Jim sounded like quite the jungle adventurer – so when I was finally able to break in I asked about his travels in missionary work.
“I was in Poland,” he told me.
“Poland?” I asked. “Big problem with translation and the lack of written language there?”
“Well, no,” he said. “But you do run into a lot of the same cultural problems.”
“Cultural problems? What do you mean?”
“Well, if you ask the average person in Poland what religion they are, they think they’re Catholic,” Jim said.
“Right,” I said.
“But they’re just cultural Christians,” Jim said. “They’re not what I’d call real Bible-believing, saved people. It’s the same thing in Africa. Most people in Africa will say that they’re Muslims. Or they worship nature, worship their ancestors, all sorts of things.”
“Oh,” I said.
As politely as I could I asked Jim what he would say to people who question whether peoples’ lives are improved by introducing Christianity to areas with other, already established religious traditions.
“Well, it won’t stop them from starving,” Jim said. “But it will help their eternal life. After this life they won’t live an eternity without God - in Hell. They’ll live an eternity with God.”
As Jim sent me away with a story blanket I was put in mind of that great Mark Twain quote about Christian missionaries who were, in his time, attempting to convert native Hawaiians:
“How sad it is to think of the multitudes who have gone to their graves in this beautiful island and never knew there was a Hell.”
There’s some argument within the SBC itself over whether those not pre-ordained can be saved at all - either by words or Bible story blankets. Jim seemed firmly and aggressively in the camp of those who believe everyone can - and should - be converted not only to Christianity but to Baptism.
While Jim was concerned with keeping those who don’t speak English out of Hell there were those missionaries who did think they could keep people from starving. And, from famine relief to the crisis in Darfur, they had their own booths. In fact, everyone had their own booth, as far as the eye could see:
There was Baptist radio
Baptist tech solutions
An entire corridor of Baptist Colleges
And, far and away my favorite, Baptist merchandise.
We’re talking books, CDs, videos and clothing - anything the Baaptist heart might desire. As I began browsing a blue light went off behind me and, in his best “no money down, everybody rides” voice a man with a microphone began shouting:
“We have a blue light special! That’s right! A blue light special! For the next three minutes ‘Pathways to Purpose for Women’ and ‘Praying for Purpose for Women’ are just $7.99! $7.99! These book usually retail for $18.99 but for the next few minutes they’re just $7.99!”
Some of my favorite religious tomes from the many tables (and I’m not making any of these up):
Two of many books appealing to a sense of persecution:
One from the fiction section:
(The dust jacket copy reads: “An encounter with God that will soak you with joy.”)
The only secular books around seemed to be by right wing authors, and they were inexplicably mixed in with the religious books:
A few from the relationship section:
A Baptist Manga-style comic penned by Stephen Baldwin:
This one may be my favorite:
(The dust jacket says the book “exposes a cultural prejudice that blames men for being men” and “an unbiblical portrayal of Jesus as passive and weak.” There’s a preface by Dr. Laura.)
No, no…this one is definitely my favorite:
But even the books were dwarfed by the clothing and trinkets.
As a Catholic kid you’re always a little self-conscious about how many ridiculous tokens, keepsakes and little fetish items everyone in your family seems to have. Not just crucifix necklaces or little figures of St. Christopher on the dashboard but little devotionals in the living room, messages from the Pope on CD and gruesome miniature statues of Jesus and various saints that make “The Passion” look like a children’s movie.
“I’ll bet protestant kids don’t have to deal with all this stuff,” you tell yourself.
But you’re wrong. And you learn that at this sort of convention, where they’re peddling things like this::
This was my favorite Christian necktie - a mixed-hue silk number on which they’ve printed the Ten Commandments. I call it the “Thou Shalt Knot”:
I like to imagine the guy wearing this thinks: “Hey…you know who I should be worshiping? Dagon! I should really be….”
But then he looks down at his tie. BAM! First Commandment right there. Saves the day.
I approached this bowl thinking it was full of…something else:
It was hand sanitizer.
The great thing about any sort of convention - comic books, Star Trek, baseball cards, Baptists - is the single-minded, obsessive culture that makes everything, for at least a few days, about that one thing. Your education, entertainment, relationships, fashion…it’s all about that common obsession. There’s nothing else in the world. When the convention is on the order of the universe and how we worship which god rather than who was a better Captain, Kirk or Picard, there’s a sense of something weightier in the air…but in the end there are more similarities than differences.
The following exchange, which could have happened at a comic book convention, more or less summed up the day for me:
There’s a group of literally hundreds of little kids in matching t-shirts standing around, waiting for something. I hear one of them say to the other:
“Who do you think wins in a fight - Samson or David?”
The other little kid thinks for a moment, then says:
“Does David have his sling?”
“Of course he has his sling.”
“Then David wins. He killed Goliath with it and he’s much bigger than Samson.”
“But Samson is righteous. Goliath wasn’t righteous.”
An adult, overhearing the same conversation, comes over to the boys. I feel sure he’s going to scold them for reducing these two biblical figures to brawling superheroes. I’m a little embarrassed for them, even before he speaks. But then he says, with an air of real seriousness:
“That is a very good point! I like the way you’re thinking!”
I could not be more out of my element.
