Watts O. stood six foot four, had flaming red hair and wore round gold-rimmed glasses that John Lennon would have liked. He saw himself as a Renaissance man, raised on a farm in Minnesota and then educated at both Carleton and Oberlin Colleges. Later as he rode the rugged plains of China, he read aloud the Romantic poets to his trudging mule, shared the wisdom of Shakespeare with his probably baffled manservant, and waxed poetical about the purple hills in the distance.

By all accounts, he made friends easily with the Chinese and was wildly successful at spreading the Gospel. Under his watch the Congregational mission in Shansi Province grew many times over. He built a hospital, schools for the Chinese children, a library and roads that proved useful for decades. He enlisted Red Cross aid for Shansi and raised needed funds for famine relief from congregations back home. The Reverend Pye’s efforts were tireless, although his journals reveal an exhausted figure. At the age of forty-eight, he was thrown from a mule out on the trail, his chest stomped upon by the animal. Soon TB filled his weakened lungs and he died. He left his wife, Gertrude, and a five-year-old son, Lucian (my father), and a compound of missionaries in search of a leader. Most of all, he left behind those Chinese out on the plains and in the mountain hamlets who would no longer be visited by the surprising white giant of a man.

I like to imagine him out there on his beast of burden, vast grey country on all sides and a book of poetry open in his hand. It is a romantic image and, when I think only of it, I can almost forget why he was there. But then there is the fact of the small leather bound tally book. In cribbed penmanship he catalogued the Chinese names and numbers. On a “good day,” the totals reached the twenties or more; on a “bad day,” a mere one or two. He gave sermons to famine-starved citizens at windswept crossroads. He stayed up late into the night listening to potential congregants weep about their fallow fields. He ate paltry meals at their tables, and in return for his kind and attentive ear, they accepted his offer of salvation.

It was then that the miracle ostensibly occurred. And although he had offered relief to some hearts and minds, the fields remained withered and famine was widespread. The country he left behind in 1925 when he died was rife with turmoil caused by internal battles and external invasion. The presumption that Chinese souls needed saving and that an outsider’s religion could do so was soon held up as yet another example of colonial arrogance. The Communist Revolution began the process of eliminating Christian chapels in cities and distant enclaves as China headed in an altogether different direction.

During my childhood as the war raged in Vietnam and conflict tore apart campuses and cities, I did my best not to think about the missionary side of my family and certainly never boasted of the Reverend Pye’s successes. For me, he was a blatant example of American imperialism. I was ashamed to claim him.

That is, until our parents were moving out of the family home and several generations of possessions had to be dealt with. From a dark corner of the attic, I pulled boxes that held my grandfather’s journals and hunkered down to skim the faded onion skin pages. I unfolded the linen cloth and studied the intricate, carefully drawn map of a rural China from long ago. Out of my grandfather’s traveling Bible fell copious notes for sermons, and when I opened his tally book, the leather made an audible crackle.

And here is what I found that day: a writer. In his journals, the Reverend effectively described camel caravans climbing mountain trails, orchards laden with exotic fruit, foul-smelling village streets and the many voices and attitudes of the Chinese around him, as well as the remarkable beauty of a place unspoiled by industry. He also recorded in more clichéd language his Christian beliefs and assumptions, but it was in his descriptions of every day life that I found him not only genuinely appealing, but also not naïve about the complexities of his position there.

“If the Orient seems strange to us,” he writes, “we should remember that we are seen just as strange to the Orient. The Chinese think us dirty, lazy and superstitious in the west. Dirty, because although we bathe, they detect a very decided odor. Gertrude had a sewing woman last winter who had never been near foreigners before, and after three or four days gave up the job, as badly as she needed the money, and the reason was that she simply could not stand the foreigners’ odors. Mr. and Mrs. Gilles were asked one spring not to walk into a neighbor’s peach orchard where they had been accustomed to walk, for it was thought that the crop failure was due to the odor of their bodies. They think us dirty, too, for the way we use the handkerchief and replace it in our pockets. To a refined Chinese, the sight of a person blowing his nose in the handkerchief and then putting it back in his pocket is actually nauseating. The point in dispute is an excellent example of how the different races may regard the same matter differently and each consider themselves innocent and the other guilty of the same offense. We think the Chinese wanting in cleanliness because, though they do not expectorate into their handkerchief, they will dust their shoes with it and wipe out the tea cup before pouring your tea. Exactly the same distinctions are made to show that we are lazy and superstitious.”

Reverend Pye expresses his intent to be open-minded and unbigoted and seems amused when he senses the Chinese judging him based on his race. One late afternoon, he wrote in his journal as he sat outdoors at a rough-hewn table in a poor village: “A crowd of about thirty watchers is pressed about me as I write, discussing the typewriter, the mysteries of foreign letters, my filled tooth, and what it can ever be that makes me ‘white,’ instead of brown or yellow. They have come to the universal belief that since we drink milk or use it in our food that is the explanation. One man has with great satisfaction just informed the rest that anyone of them could very shortly become just as white as I am, were he to use milk for a few months. They think our color is only artificial. I have heard tell of the story of a Chinese school boy in class when asked the color of the Negro replied, ‘black.’ And the American Indian? Copper color, was the reply. And the Englishman? White was the reply. And what color is the Chinese? Man color, proudly answered the youth. And so it should be.”

In other journal entries, he used the ornate, poetic language of his time to capture the transporting qualities of the countryside: “We lay around, letting the old sound of the mourning doves and the sight of the hills sink in. They sound and look just as they did when we were youngsters back home. Man and his language change while nature and the birds remain. We do miss the dear home faces. But will rest and get new visions for the days to come. There are lots of visions you can’t see, but just feel them, and after all, feeling is perhaps only the soul’s way of seeing. Something that comes to us as light as melody and as color, thrilling us with the sentient harmony that we often hear ripple from the throat of the music-made bird: that same thing that came to us times without number in childhood, and that comes to us now on run-away days like this one, under blue skies and green woods, and despite all that has gone before, and all that may come afterward, and it makes you take off your hat to the joy of living.”

My grandfather’s words revealed him to be a more complicated and nuanced person than the single-minded zealot I had presumed him to be. Before I knew it, he was transposing himself into a fictional character in my mind, because fiction is the best way I know to explore the contradictions inherent in being human. Through odd twists of the imagination, the Reverend Watts O. Pye became The Reverend in River of Dust—a man who is both foolish and wise, witty and overly serious, all seeing and yet blind.

But because The Reverend in my novel is ultimately an invention, I have him experience a crisis of faith that my grandfather never had. The real Reverend Pye died believing in his own convictions. And yet, for me, it is his written words that suggest a more honest and startling miracle—one of a heart and mind revealed across both distance and time. His was never actually a simple story of a man, a mule and a map. And the miracle he promised remains dubious at best. But if one does exist for me, it is buried in the fascination of getting to know an ancestor so long dead and in coming to terms with the moral complexities of his mission.

***

Listen to Virginia read her essay:

***

Rumpus original art by Clare Nauman.

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The melody, already rapid-fire agitprop in the style of early-80s Billy Bragg, intensifies, and a drumbeat. “So bend your knees and bow your heads/ Save your babies, here’s your future.” And then Harris is screaming, “Yeah, here’s your future,” and the guitars get loud and the drums get loud and if heads aren’t already nodding, they probably are now.

For me, The Thermals’ “Here’s Your Future” has one of the most riveting openings to a punk rock record I’ve heard in the last ten years. It’s also lyrically clumsy, politically ham-fisted, and rarely approaches subtlety. And I rarely go a week without listening to some part of it.

***

The core of the group, Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster, had played together in groups before this one; listening to The Thermals beside, say, the duo recordings they released under the name Hutch & Kathy, it’s pretty clear that the same sensibility is at work. 2006’s The Body The Blood The Machine, the album that “Here’s Your Future” opens, honed a particular direction for them, towards more thematically focused works; the album as meditation on a particular topic. The two albums that they’ve made since then, 2009’s Now We Can See and 2010’s Personal Life have both taken on larger conceptual frameworks but done so more elegantly, without some of the ham-fistedness that shows up here. Here, The Thermals have set these ten songs in a near-future United States overtaken by a particularly conservative and bigoted strain of Christianity.

The collages that dot the album’s artwork — an aesthetic descendent of Dead Kennedys collaborator Winston Smith and the juxtaposition-prone John Yates — are not subtle as they evoke rote Christian imagery and Bush-era culture clashes. The cover features Jesus with his eyes covered by a black bar, and other art features the Ten Commandments overlapping the Capitol’s architecture, a heavily redacted document with “ATTENTION ESCAPISTS!” at the top, and a car’s rear-view mirror where surging flames are visible.

Over the course of The Body The Blood The Machine’s ten songs, some of them frenetic in their tempo and others content to proceed with a stately chug, the society described on the album is delineated; the narrator of several of these songs vacillates between wanting to run from this society and (in “A Return to the Fold”) embracing it. If you’re thinking Nineteen Eighty-Four here, you’re in the right ballpark. There’s more than a little fascism in the society described — from the references to a “new master race” in the opener to the mention of “Nazi halos” in “I Might Need You to Kill.” Listening to these songs, it isn’t clear if Harris and Foster are suggesting that this is the end point of modern conservatism or if they’ve opted to go for a worst of all possible worlds, one where a kind of Christian Identity-based state has arisen. In the end, it might not matter — The Body The Blood The Machine is a powerful album, but it isn’t a particularly nuanced one.

***

I’ve never been sure why this album has gripped me as much as it does. I have friends who experienced in their youth a give-and-take between fundamentalist Christianity and punk rock, and others who have told stories of faiths that aren’t too far removed from the borderline-fascist creed referenced here. This year, I’ve read Jeanette Winterson’s terrifying account of growing up in a repressive branch of Christianity in her memoir Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? I’ve read the political writers Will Saletan and Ross Douthat discuss the evolution of Christianity, and the ways in which it’s been adopted by the politically conservative.
This has not been my experience with Christianity. I grew up Episcopalian. There wasn’t much in the way of repression to be found there: no fear of damnation, no conflict between the books I read and the messages I heard in church on Sunday mornings. And while I can remember driving home from church with a Bad Religion tape playing on my car’s stereo, I never found much transgressive about my listening habits and the faith I’d been raised in, even as I got more and more into punk rock. About the only part of this album that really resonates with any vestige of my younger self is Harris’s line in “A Pillar of Salt” about “our filthy bodies,” though that (for me) had little to do with any concept of sin and desire.

***

For all that I find some of the imagery and wordplay here heavy-handed, though, there’s no rule that punk rock needs to be subtle. For every Against Me! playing textual and narrative games with their lyrics to a smart poltical end, there’s a Team Dresch, who well understand that the best political critiques are often the loudest. (“Hate The Christian Right” is an utterly brutal attack on a specific series of conservative politics; it’s loud and savage in its sentiments, and it’s impossible to forget.) The Body The Blood The Machine isn’t exactly subtle, but it’s not like it needs to be.

Even so, that doesn’t explain why this album hits so close to home for me — there are plenty of punk records that hit on a visceral level, but haven’t wormed themselves into my head the way this one has. My own mild philosophical differences with Episcopalianism seem insufficient grounds for my gut-level appreciation of such a gut-level attack on Christianity.

And yet, for all that I would probably point a newcomer to The Thermals to Now We Can See or Personal Life, it’s The Body The Blood The Machine that I return to again and again, looking for that same thrill and that same rush. I don’t think that this is an example of the tired old “punk rock became my religion” trope, but I also worry that it isn’t far from it, that my attraction to this album suggests that its fears of the allure of an all-controlling religious devotion are more resonant than I might like to admit. Alternately, as Harris sings with equal parts elation and terror: here’s your future.

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“Get up! It’s time to go!” came my father’s voice, followed by the pounding of footsteps.

I snapped upright in my bed, thinking that it was actually happening—that Jesus had been spotted somewhere over Colorado Springs like the Goodyear Blimp and that there was no time to lose getting into something more respectable than an oversized nightshirt with Snoopy’s Woodstock on the front.

When I finally realized that it was the car that was my destination rather than the upper stratosphere, I took a few deep breaths and turned my attention to my closet. Fifteen minutes later, my younger sister and I strapped ourselves into the backseat and we were on the road. In tense silence, Dad navigated the streets through the legions of fish-studded vehicles, all schooling toward their designated places of worship. We might have even made it on time, had we not suddenly been sandwiched into a holding pattern in the right lane between a large church van on the left and a brown Subaru in front of us which bore the bumper sticker, “Do you follow Jesus this closely?”

I glanced up at my parents sitting quietly in the front seat. My father was a tall man with sparkling green eyes and a lung capacity that allowed him the volume to address large groups on the subject of Jesus Christ. He had an easy smile and was prone to bouts of blind optimism, for which I dearly loved him. Like he did every day of the week except for Saturday, he was dressed in suit and tie. His silver hair was in a side part and held in place by five pumps of V05. My mother sat next to him, her short brown waves swept neatly over her ears. She was dressed smartly in a rust colored dress with nude stockings and black flats. Both Christian academics, they were not nearly as impressed by the imminence of the End of the World as I was. The year was 1988 and they had seen End Times prophecies from within the Evangelical church before. Each time, they explained, people got all riled up over nothing and they were not going to join in the panic.

“It could happen today,” Dad admitted, “but really there is no way to know in advance. The Bible says, “No one knows the day or the hour.”[1] It could happen any day.”

I thought about the picture I had seen of Gorbachev’s birthmark looking suspiciously like “666.” Maybe there was no way to know which exact minute it would happen, but I had read some pretty convincing arguments that we were looking down the barrel of it. I thought back to that birthmark and shuddered.

“Just try not to get your hopes up, dear,” my mother added.

We pulled into the church parking lot and my parents marched off to their class where Dad taught Sunday school to a group of adults.

This could be the last time we do this, I thought and headed inside toward my own Sunday school class. As I walked, I was aware of my feet. Would I be taken after this step? How about this one? Would I make it all the way across the church before I was whisked suddenly away into the clouds? Would my boyfriend be there, too? Would my English teacher understand when I was not there to turn in my as-of-yet unwritten essay on Chaucer the next day? I smiled deliciously to myself as I mulled this last one over.

By the time I walked into the service an hour later, I was getting antsy. It was 11 A.M. and still no end of the world. My boyfriend, Scott—the only person with the misfortune to be called by their real name in this memoir—waved at me from a pew and I made my way over to him. I was so overcome by the Holy Spirit that I flushed pink.

I looked around the church with Scott at my side as if I were seeing it for the first time—the brown carpeted aisles, the beige padded pews, which were comfortable, but not too comfortable, the stained glass at the front depicting the life of Jesus at different stages of life on earth. My eyes fell on the kneeling altar that wrapped its way invitingly around the entire front of the church. Scott and I had prayed there a couple of times together. I looked over at him and giggled nervously. I determined I ought to say something to him.

“Want a mint?” I produced a tin from my purse.

“Thank you,” he answered, pinching one between his fingers, which brushed mine on the way back out. Scott was tall and intelligent with gorgeous green eyes and blond hair. I swallowed hard and prayed a quick prayer aimed against any lust demons who might be hanging out in the Lord’s house. Angels and demons were real, and if Armageddon was kicking off that day, then I could be certain of one thing: there was going to be a final fight for our souls and it wasn’t going to be a clean one. One sin—just one wayward thought, even—would make me unclean. And what if it was that exact moment that Jesus came back and I had not had a chance to ask for forgiveness yet? Would I be doomed? Would I miss out on heaven for all eternity?

Just then, the deep, reedy sound of the organ filled the room, causing me to jump like I had been busted for peeking at swimsuit models on the magazines in the checkout line. Pastor Brown burst onto the platform with the enthusiasm of a wrecking ball and everyone stood to sing the first hymn, “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder.”

Next to me, Scott shifted microscopically closer and brushed my arm with his shirtsleeve. A shock of alarm bolted through me and I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. I needed a trained team of angels and I needed them stat.

“‘When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder’—it may not be long, friends, it may not be long,” said Pastor Brown somewhat cryptically. Not wanting to seem reactionary, the church leadership was not discussing the Rapture prophecy openly from the pulpit. But we all knew what he was talking about.

More amens.

I didn’t have to look around me to be able to sense the mood in the congregation. It was one of excitement. In response to nearly every statement, somebody called out an “Amen!” or “Hallelujah.” I tried channeling my own excitement about sitting next to Scott toward the front of the church. Surely Pastor Brown would say something to send the demons sailing. I knew no demon could withstand the name of Jesus Christ. Surely it was just a matter of time.

“When our beloved Savior walked this earth amongst us two thousand years ago, he made us a promise. He said ‘I will return!’”

The congregation shouted various approved phrases of holiness such as “tell it” and “that’s right” and someone began clapping. Next to me, Scott fidgeted closer to me so that our shoulders were touching. I suddenly found that I couldn’t move.

I reminded myself that I should not be allowing myself to be so distracted in the midst of what was going on—that I was going to need to focus if I wasn’t going to miss out on the roll call. I stared hard at Pastor Brown, noticing how the perspiration had already begun dripping from his forehead. He pulled out a white handkerchief from his pocket and began mopping his brow.

“The groom is coming to claim his precious bride,” he continued, “but the question is, will the bride be ready? Will the bride be pure?”

Scott inched a little closer. My cheeks were radiating heat at this point and I was conscious of beginning to perspire, myself.

He went on to extend the metaphor into how we must not let the groom catch us sleeping and that we must make every effort to prepare for his appearance. This necessarily meant, of course, cleansing ourselves from all that is sinful. In my particular case, it meant scooting a couple of inches to the right.

Finally, he began a sinner’s prayer for redemption, which we all prayed in case it hadn’t taken the last time we prayed it. If Jesus was coming back, then we had all better make sure that we were on the guest list. I closed my eyes, focusing all of my attention on the spiritual battle I imagined was raging around me.

“Jesus, we hear you calling to us. We know how much you love us and how much you sacrificed for us,” said Pastor Brown.

Faces swathed in shimmering light appear at the top of the ceiling. Arrows are poised in the direction of our pew, where I am willing Scott’s hand past the hem of my skirt against all that is pure and holy. Instead, he reaches his opposite hand behind his back toward me. I reach my own hand behind my back on the other side and meet his in the middle. My chest convulses with teen delight.

“We accept your gift and thank you for your love. We surrender ourselves to your ultimate purpose.”

A tension is rising and a silence rings out through Heaven—for about seven seconds.

“We thank you, oh Lord, for your promise to return for us one day.”

Inexplicably, I uncross my legs. Oh, God, I pray—put an end to this torture!!!

“We look forward to that, Dear Lord, and we know that you have conquered death once through your Son. In Your Son Jesus’ precious name, Amen.”

Screams recede into the bright sunlight. I reach for a Kleenex.

We were then invited to an altar call. Pastor Brown never knew an empty altar. It didn’t matter how short the sermon, he could always coax a couple of sinners down and away from the gnashing of teeth. But he has never—and I mean never—had the success he had on that Sunday.

It started with the familiar tune “Just As I Am” coming through the organ in the background of the pastoral prayer. It was a couple of kids from the Youth Group. With people as moved as they were by the thought of Christ’s imminent return, it didn’t take long for a few more of their friends to join in. I knew I should join them. My own sanctification process had suffered a severe setback that day. But I am ashamed to say that I was not among them. I was still glued to Scott’s shoulder.

Longingly, I watched from my paralysis as several more individuals stood from their seats from various places within the sanctuary. Clusters began to form. Friends, families—it didn’t matter. All the while Pastor Brown was in the background, begging Christ to come for us sooner rather than later. People were wailing; a few children were crying; I felt like I was dying. What had gone wrong?  Had I not prayed for help?

It didn’t make sense. I was pretty much the perfect Christian. Well, OK. Not the perfect Christian. But I tried really hard. I read my Bible daily. I went to services of one kind or another at least four times a week. I had even quit the Christian school that year so that I could be a better witness for Christ amongst heathen high school kids. Why was I being forsaken in my time of need? Here I was on the last day of the world with all of eternity before me and all I could think about was…sex?

Scott chose that instant to reach over and take my hand. Completely in the wide, inappropriate open.

And it was in that moment—that exact moment—that something inside of me began to rebel.

As I sat petrified into a flushing statue of adolescent desire, a thought occurred to me. I don’t want to go yet.

I was instantly consumed in guilt. What would God think of me for not being ready? I was supposed to be ready. I had been preparing for this day my entire life.

This world wasn’t real. “Real” life was in Heaven. And sometimes this world fought hard to pull me in and make me believe it was real, but I had made sure that I made all of the appropriate substitutions to get me through the cravings. I listened to Christian contemporary music instead of rock n’ roll, I went to Christian activities instead of hanging out with the worldly kids, I said “darn” instead of “damn”….

Maybe I could wait it out until the middle, after all. The Tribulation couldn’t be that bad, could it? We could dig a secret shelter in my backyard—like a bomb shelter. We would stock it with everything we could possibly need, like food and batteries and toilet paper. And lip balm. Maybe I could open up an underground business—among other Christians who were also in hiding, like we were. I could sell two kinds: plain and cherry. That would be enough.

I wasn’t supposed to not want to go yet, but there it was. Like it or not I had thought it in all of its juicy sinfulness. Jesus may have been on his way ready to take us, but I wasn’t ready. I wanted to grow up. Go to college. Have sex. Get married. Have sex…. I was supposed to have my whole life ahead of me. And maybe it was with Scott, and maybe it wasn’t—I didn’t know. The point was, I was only fifteen—and I wanted to find out.

I looked at my watch. It was noon. The last day of the world was only half over.

***

[1] Matthew 24:36

***

“The End of The World” is a chapter excerpt from Devangelical: Why I Left to Save My Soul by Erika Rae. It has been exclusively reprinted by The Rumpus with permission, and was originally published by Emergency Press, © December 2012.

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Erika and I first discussed the entrenched cultural identity we share as former Evangelicals over the phone last summer, when she interviewed me regarding my book Holy Ghost Girl. We spoke again last week via phone and email about her new memoir, Devangelical, and about what it means to grow up in the thrall of an apocalyptic worldview.

There are differences in our stories. My “sort of” stepdad was a tent preacher who waged such war against education, that to attend college was tantamount to being a traitor. Scandal and betrayal forced me to break with the church when I was seventeen. Erika’s parents were academics who prized intellectual curiosity and encouraged their daughters to pursue higher education. There was more normal life, less drama. Leaving unfolded as a process for Erika. She began to question church teachings during her early twenties while working on an M.A. in Literature and Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong. Ten years passed, and she realized she was no longer Evangelical.

Erika began to write Devangelical in part as a response to talks with angry ex-Evangelicals, friends who recalled their church days with bitterness. As she reflected on her experience, she discovered a twisted humor, the kind that results when well-intentioned people with deeply held beliefs try to circumvent their humanity. They were bound to veer off course.

It was not lost on us that our most recent conversation took place in the days leading up to Christmas or The End of The World, whichever came first.

***

The Rumpus: So, Erika, what’s up with the little dress and the thigh-highs on the cover of Devangelical? Are you trying to make a statement that you’ve left the church to become a little slut?

Erika Rae: Yes. No! But it was meant as a statement, certainly. A large part of the Evangelical ethos that I experienced was focused on an attempt to refocus sexuality onto spirituality. One of the average Evangelical’s favorite topics has to do with sex: how far to go before marriage, when to say no, and how other people are sinful and going straight to hell for it. I would argue that many of the prominent political issues from this last election—abortion, gay marriage, government-provided birth control—are all offshoots of this.

Rumpus: I find it interesting that modern Evangelicals discuss “how far to go.” The religious milieu I came from, the Holiness tent revival movement, said don’t do it, period. Cut off your hands, tongue, and any other offending member…but don’t do it. What was never mentioned was that everyone was doing it, especially the preachers. Your church was more modern in its approach. As you put it in the book, you were trying to be “hot for God, not for each other,” and even go so far as to suggest that one of the church youth group’s main functions was to provide an alternative to sex. How did that work out for you?

Rae: Our denomination had branched off the Holiness movement, too, but was definitely a bit more integrated into modern culture than what I remember reading about your group in your book, Holy Ghost Girl. (It still blows me away how you managed to actually leave that!) One guest preacher we had at our university actually made cards up for us, color-coded for each base level (and a few in between) like a Homeland Security warning system. Hand-holding was next to green on one end of the spectrum, and intercourse was next to red on the other. “Heavy petting” was somewhere in the yellow-orange level and oral sex was right next to intercourse, of course, and was a bright blood orange. There were then dotted lines between the major color changes to show you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, which color progressions were like a middle finger in God’s face. Those cards were very helpful, of course. I am just sure college students were pulling them out while parked in the backs of their old beaters overlooking the city and checking them for reference.

The church I grew up in attempted to prolong these desires until marriage by refocusing our attention onto a radical relationship with Jesus, our “groom.” Other churches encourage teenage girls to pledge their purity to God and to their daddies. But while people may be able to resist inserting plug into socket, there are plenty of loopholes. Pretty steaming hot loopholes, as a matter of fact. Of course, I was in high school before the philosophical advances of a certain Lewinsky scandal, so we were able to smugly assert that we were not having sex, but still. Nature finds a way. I am always surprised by other Evangelical friends who—now grown up—will admit to having real sex, though. There was a lot more going on in my youth group than I had any idea about.

Rumpus: You and I were both raised essentially under the Evangelical umbrella. Can you elaborate on what that means for people who may not be familiar?

Rae: First, “Evangelical” (in the protestant sense): technically, it includes belief that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary as the only son of God, died on the cross, and then was resurrected to save those who believe in him from a place called Hell. People then have the responsibility to spread the word to keep others from going to Hell, too. Culturally, it bridges the gap between orthodox Christianity and its more fundamental versions, in that it strives to attract people to the Church through a plethora of “relatable” programs and activities designed to keep people from being tempted by “the world.” Examples may or may not include: Christian Movie Night, Christian Roller Skating Night, Christian Rock Concerts, Christian Gun Clubs, Christian Yoga, Christian Book Clubs, Christian Halloween (Fall Fest), Christian Dating Mixers, and Christian Cruises.

Rumpus: And so “Devangelical” means…

Rae: For me, “Devangelical” is simply how I describe myself when I suddenly realized that I was outside the Evangelical culture, looking in. If someone had told me twenty years ago that I would be here, I never would have believed it. I didn’t plan it. It happened over time for me. But once I recognized what had happened, I was interested in retracing the why and trying to find my way back to a place where I could feel honest about my search. That took introspection, forgiveness, and a whole lot of laughter.

Rumpus: I was struck in reading your story how nothing actually horrible happens. There is no scandal to point to, no moment where people are being overtly wronged…and yet you walk the reader through several events that eventually caused you to diverge from the culture of the Evangelical church. Why did you write the book, and is it your intention to defame or discredit the Evangelical church?

Rae: Certainly my motivation is not to defame the Evangelical church. I wouldn’t bring up the questions I do in my book at all if I didn’t care. Over six million people left the Evangelical church during the last five years, according to the last Pew Research Survey. If anything, I would think that the Evangelical church might be interested in joining in the conversation. And, if not, I know a lot of us who left it behind are. Personally, I’d love to see genuine change within the church; not a huge bail.

Rumpus: So let’s talk about sex some more…and guilt. Data from Evangelical sources show that they hook up at about the same the rate as those outside the church, but with considerably more angst. Tongue only slightly in cheek here. Could it be the guilt makes it more fun, and that Evangelicals are enjoying sex more than those of us who don’t feel guilty?

Rae: Totally. No, I don’t know about that. I suppose there could be an element of truth there, but my assumption is that people who are already believing they are doing something wrong sexually, tend to err on the side of unhealthy behaviors. Ted Haggard is a good example of this. As are certain Catholic priests we all know about. As was I, when I was sneaking in handjobs and then claiming I was pure as the driven snow based on a technicality, and then putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on everyone else by claiming purity was easy if they would just put God first. I mean, seriously? But I do think that there is something else to your question, in that people can tend to learn to get a rush only from “illegal” behavior. I think a lot of Evangelicals shoot themselves in the foot with this in that once they get married and sex is legal, it quickly becomes boring because there is no rush from doing something that is forbidden anymore. Hence, they go underground again.

Rumpus: There’s nothing like puberty to turn a parent from a liberal into a puritan. How do you deal with the issue of sexuality with your kids?

Rae: Well, my three kids are still young, but my oldest is fast approaching puberty. I plan to purchase a boxcar full of firecrackers and rig them up outside of her window. All that is to say that I hope I can be rational. Check back with me in a few years.

Rumpus: Despite the fact that this book is about Evangelical culture, it seems to appeal to a wider audience than just the Evangelical crowd. Can you explain this?

Rae: Currently, about 35% of our nation self-identifies as Evangelical (compare that with ~26% Catholic). Considering the influence this group has on the political climate—as evidenced by the recent election—I think a lot of people both in and outside this country are trying to simply understand the Evangelical mindset. And they should. It is a huge part of American culture. Not wanting to understand the Evangelical culture in our current political climate is a bit like not wanting to understand, say, the Mexican-American community in the middle of the immigration debates. But also, I believe that a lot of the issues I deal with in the book are a bit more universal to other religion—or religious culture—defectors. I have heard recovering Catholics, Jews, or even former members of the L.D.S. Church who say they can relate.

Rumpus: We both grew up waiting on the world to come to an end, and you make the point in Devangelical that Evangelical culture welcomes the end of the world. How do you think this paradigm express itself in today’s political climate?

Rae: The debate over global warming is a good example. This is because the general church has been approaching the issue from the angle that only God will destroy the earth, and not humans. This isn’t too different from the distrust of recycling back in the 1980s. Again, only God could destroy the earth, so we had better focus our time on saving souls rather than the Redwoods. Plus, it didn’t help that people who were into “saving the earth” were “a bunch of pagans who worshipped the earth as mother.” Luckily, a growing number within the church has realized that they can still take care of the “creation” without slapping the “creator” in the face.

It is also critical to understand that most Evangelicals (like other Christian branches) may be citizens in the world, but they do not consider themselves citizens “of” the world. For many, this essentially means that they do not feel this is their true home. Heaven is their true home. Therefore, they don’t really belong here, and they long for the day when they will be taken away to a place where they will be cherished and understood by a loving God. When they disagree with “the world” on certain issues, it really doesn’t matter since their citizenship is in Heaven. It is more important that their perception of God’s laws be enforced via legislation. It seems to me that this does not always open the door for peace or tolerance, which again, is not the goal. This may help to explain the current state of polarization our country finds itself in.

Rumpus: When I left the Evangelicals, I found that the end-of-the-world mentality continued to shape my behavior for a long time, you know as in the old “eat, drink and be merry (with mind altering chemicals if at all possible), for tomorrow we die” perspective. How did the apocalyptic view influence your struggle to define yourself apart from the Evangelical church?

Rae: Yeah, I can see that. For me, it was a little different in that I realized that I had been living my life as if I might be taken at any moment, not daring to cross any ambiguous lines with my big, hairy toes. I think I wanted to get over the fear of doing something wrong all the time—I distinctly remember thinking that I was so afraid of this, that I was forgetting to actually experience life. So, I sort of made a mental list of all the things I was afraid of, and began to experiment. Not for the thrill of “doing something wrong,” but more because I wanted to observe and explore for myself if it really was wrong. I wanted to get over my fears. I’m working on a new memoir that addresses a lot of this.

Rumpus: One of the biggest struggles for me in writing Holy Ghost Girl was the issue of betrayal. I lay awake lots of nights thinking, what kind of person holds their family up to public scrutiny and shame? (The answer? A writer! Not at all comforting.) Did you have similar struggles and how did you overcome them?

Rae: Definitely, I had similar struggles—and particularly in worrying over how I might offend friends and family by disagreeing with some of their conclusions. In my case, though, I attempted to not go too far into any of their personal lives. I wanted it to be an examination of my behavior, not theirs. That is actually one of the things I was incredibly impressed with when I read Holy Ghost Girl. You were able to really dig deep into your characters, while still treating their vulnerabilities with love. I’m a bit jealous of that ability.

Rumpus: Tom Perrotta told me that while writing The Leftovers, he began to think that the deepest divide in the U.S. wasn’t between conservatives and liberals, but between the churched and the unchurched. “The two sides don’t even speak the same language,” he said. I know from experience that the unchurched often think of believers as simpletons, yet you were surrounded by educated, and even more important for those of us who are writers, well-read people. How is it that rational people can hold what many consider irrational beliefs?

Rae: Right. So my parents were Christian academics, both with doctorates. My father was a Christian college president, and my mother was a language professor and is still a professional musician. Growing up, they passed their love of education on to my sisters and me. We traveled extensively. They taught me foreign languages. I learned to play several instruments. They encouraged complex argument and a breadth of exposure to different ideas and literature.

I understand the sentiment that people who do not believe in what is unseen have when they look at people of faith. It’s not logical or rational since it is not observable, the argument goes. I get it. A person of faith, however, would argue that it is just as big of a leap of faith to assume there is nothing beyond what we can see, and especially when referring to the entity people call “God.” As Voltaire put it, “Doubt is uncomfortable, but certainty is absurd.” That goes both ways, as far as I’m concerned. Faith, at its roots, is the strained hope that there is something more. It’s a choice about how one looks at the world, and in particular, about an afterlife, which of course cannot be proven either way on this side of the fence. For me, the problem simply lies in the point where the hope of the unproveable becomes fact. From there, it returns to the absurd.

Not everyone in the faith world sees it that way, of course. A premise is built about God and everything else in one’s life is built on that premise. In other words, faith is more commonly viewed as a form of certainty. Certainly that can be accomplished by both the educated and the uneducated, alike, though—and on both sides of the fence. We’ve seen evidence of this throughout the human story. I think there is truth to Perrotta’s statement, though. It is life being experienced by two entirely different paradigms.

Rumpus: But surely you agree that Evangelicals go further than mainline denominations and Christians in asserting the presence of the unseen, and just what that means and demands in return.

Rae: Yes, I would agree with that. We were completely obsessed by angels and demons, for example. As far as we were concerned, demons were waiting in every corner to influence us—and even to occasionally jump inside of us to possess us. Angels, too, were everywhere, but they would not necessarily help us unless we asked for the help. We believed we had to get specific, too. For example, “Please help me pass my exam at 8:25 today, and to also help me not to be late because of that one stoplight at the corner of 9th and Maple.”

Rumpus: I was surprised to find that the act of writing softened my view of my religious upbringing. In bringing those times and those people to life on the page, I began to see them through the lens of their belief instead of my doubt. Did you find writing your book changed how you felt about your childhood and/or your religion?

Rae: Absolutely. We were only trying, after all—even in the midst of our zealousness. It helped to be able to look back on all of that with some grace and laughter. The writing of this book was good therapy for me.

Rumpus: The formative nature of Evangelical teachings take me by surprise again and again. Do you find these beliefs reasserting themselves from time to time?

Rae: Definitely. I think when you are raised with one paradigm from birth, it never fully leaves you. That’s true of any religion, creed or culture. But I want to explore my understanding of the world and try to look past the cultural shaping. And still, no matter how deliberately I do this, I find that I slip back into those old thought patterns. It seems that it is my “default setting”. I often go back there automatically when I’m not actively thinking it through. It’s almost like the difference between involuntary breathing and voluntary breathing. If I stop paying attention to my thoughts and search, I revert to the old judgments, the old fears, the old guilt.

Rumpus: Do you think the Evangelical sensibility has anything of value to offer the broader world?

Rae: The community of the church is lovely in a lot of ways, in that people have a place of  refuge where they can belong. The teachings of Jesus are wise and certainly apply to a practical way to live in the broader world. Take care of each other. Don’t judge. Distrust showy religious people. Don’t be a dick. It’s pretty simple, really. Of course, I would argue that the culture and the teachings seem to be at odds a bit these days…

Rumpus: Sometimes I feel like a human conduit between the worlds of faith and doubt. Do you ever feel that way? Where do you stand now in terms of belief and disbelief?

Rae: It’s such a tight rope walk, isn’t it? Certainly I’m more Mulder than Scully in that I want to believe, but I’m also a victim of a postmodern mind. I deconstruct everything. I reinterpret everything. Everything, Donna. It’s not fair, really. Certainty is so much simpler. And so, I push on in my search, trying to understand. Trying to just let it go. I think one of the relevant pair of verses in the Bible to my struggle is when that man said, “Lord I believe. Help my unbelief.” That’s my dichotomy, too. Yeah, I realize I’m not really answering your question. So, where do I stand? I’m trying.

Rumpus: Your book is funny and irreverent without actually making fun of things like wrestling for Jesus. How important and how difficult was it for you as a writer to walk that line, and do you think you ever crossed it?

Rae: You did this well in Holy Ghost Girl when you described the tent meetings and the healings that took place. You described what you saw, without ever giving the reader the feeling like you were judging them. It was important to me that I attempt this, as well. It is not my job to say whether the exorcism I performed on my Goth friend at church camp was real. At the time, it was real enough. But there are other things that I probably poke fun at a bit more, although maybe not overtly. But seriously, Donna, how do you describe muscle men, who bend rebar in their teeth in the name of Jesus, without a little humor?

Rumpus: Evangelicals often (not always) think of themselves as being set apart from the mainstream. In what way did this outsider identity influence you to become a writer?

Rae: Probably in more ways than I ever realized before you asked this question. I learned a lot about being a writer from my Evangelical roots. Like my path to Heaven, if I was going to do it right, all I had to do was a) believe; b) persist on my path in the face of naysayers; and c) expect poverty.

Rumpus: Talk a little about your decision to publish with an indie press and how that experience has gone for you.

Rae: I started out, of course, naïvely gung-ho to get noticed by one of the big publishing houses. I was taken up by them twice, and dropped twice. It was very disheartening, of course. By the time I found Emergency Press, though, I had learned enough to know that a smaller press would mean better editing, better attention, and trust—actual trust! I am incredibly impressed by Bryan Tomasovich over there. In all honesty, he is the best thing that happened to this book.

Rumpus: So, your first published work. There is pressure after you write and publish a memoir to write another, and in some cases another and another and another. Are you afraid of being trapped in the role of memoirist? Got a plan for avoiding it?

Rae: Well, like I said above, I am working on another memoir (oops!). I’m also working on a novel, though. And, well, there is the small matter of the several fiction manuscripts I have already written, but which have not yet been published, and which span several different genres. I don’t know. We’ll see how this goes, I suppose. Whatever the case, the writing demon won’t leave me. Memoir or fiction, I’m in for the long haul.

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It’s hot and sunny and we’re in the country near Amherst, Virginia on Karen’s front porch. She offers me iced tea, which I, for some reason, decline. As she heads to fetch her own, I navigate three German Shorthaired Pointers and sit down on a wooden rocker. The dogs are curious about my backpack but soon lose interest, circle around, and drop to their bellies, almost in unison. Karen returns and sits opposite me in her own rocker.

 ***

The Rumpus: Which is your favorite dog?

Karen Prior: [Pointing at the dog directly in front of her] This one. Because she loves me the most. They’re all great, really. But this one, she never leaves my side.

Rumpus: You have room for lots of animals out here in the country.

Prior: Sometimes more, sometimes less. I had to put down my twenty-five year old horse last fall. Now I have just one and board two more.

Rumpus: Can you draw a comparison between horse care and being a professor?

Karen Prior: There’s a lot of mucking out of stalls. You’ve got to put up with a lot of crap and then clean it out before you get to the stuff you really enjoy, the riding and the teaching.

Rumpus: Politics.

Karen Prior: You know.

Rumpus: How did you end up teaching at Liberty University?

Prior: The truth is, most academics aren’t privileged enough to choose. It’s not like I could just pick a school and teach there. I had a Ph.D. in English. Ph.D.’s in English don’t have many options. That being said, my husband and I sat down and decided what areas of the country we wanted to live in, and Virginia is so beautiful it’s always been on our list. And then there was Liberty, looking for an English professor and its beliefs and mission match mine. It all went very quickly after that.

Rumpus: And the hiring body at Liberty didn’t mind your record of arrests or the FBI file?

Prior: No way! I was advocating for pro-life causes each time I was arrested. Trespassing, disorderly conduct, stuff like that. I put my arrests right down on my application, and they were a real career boost. I mean, at Liberty they were. Not at most schools.

Rumpus: So why did the FBI have a file on you?

Prior: Hate mail. Death threats. It was for my personal safety.

Rumpus: Can you share anything more specific?

Prior: When I was doing media interviews for pro-life protests, someone left a wire coat hanger in my mailbox.

Rumpus: Wow. How’s that for discourse.

Prior: It communicated very well.

Rumpus: Why Pro-Life? That’s not very academic of you.

Prior: For many people, abortion is a personal or religious or political issue, but for me it’s a rational issue. I simply believe that human fetuses are unborn children. That’s it. The logic of that position carries itself out. When I started really getting involved in the pro-life movement, heavily involved, I had to go to my mother and tell her that I’ve never had an abortion because she was probably thinking I did because my commitment to the cause seems so inexplicable. For many people there is that kind of personal or emotional motivation. It’s not like that for me. Pro-Life is a position I arrive at intellectually.

Rumpus: What is one stereotype about Christian education?

Prior: That the purpose of it is to shelter students from the outside world, when in fact its purpose is to equip students to engage and critique culture from a biblical point of view. There should be no sheltering in a quality, Christian education.

Rumpus: Then how would you respond to someone who says Liberty University shelters students by restricting them with curfews and rules banning rated “R” movies on campus.

Prior: For the most part, the rules are designed towards, but perhaps not always successfully communicated as rules for community living.  Even though I disagree with a rule against rated “R” movies for an individual, I can understand, taking into account the many different backgrounds our conservative minded students come from, how it would be easier for a university to create one rule toward upholding biblical standards of living for an entire community of developing young people. The rules are certainly different than I expect individual Christians would make for themselves. The system isn’t perfect, but there is a good idea behind it.

Rumpus: Liberty University is large and loud in the political realm. Bachmann, McCain, Perry – swinging by to speak at Liberty University has become a pre-requisite for Republican presidential candidates. Mitt Romney was the commencement speaker. Liberty has also grown in size, from around six thousand residential students in 2002 to twelve thousand students in 2010.  Public commentators and comedians and the like have a lot to say about Liberty.  What’s one negative stereotype about Liberty University?

Prior: Let’s see. There are so many! One stereotype is that our professors don’t have the same academic backgrounds and qualifications as professors at other universities.

Rumpus: True or false?

Prior: It has to be false. We’re from the same state colleges and institutions everyone else is from. There simply aren’t a lot of evangelical schools that offer Ph.D. programs in many disciplines. So we come from and publish in the same sort of academic environments as everyone else. [Karen has her Ph.D. from State University of New York at Buffalo.]

Rumpus: Here’s my pageant question. So what does it mean to be an academic and a Christian in 2012?

Prior: I think the fragmentation that we have seen at the end of modernity—or in post-modernity as some would have it — means that Christianity is just one more of many niches in both academia and the world. In a sense, I think Christians in academia have an equal footing in being just one more niche, but on the other hand, because Christians believe in a meta narrative, in a unifying story, we also have the opportunity to integrate our story as Christians with other stories being told. That’s exciting.

Rumpus: Your memoir, Booked: How Literature Saved My Soul, is being published by T.S. Poetry Press this fall. Why should people care about it?

Prior: That’s a valid question because my life is a pretty boring life, despite the FBI file and all that. But really, the connections I draw between my ordinary life and the great books that shaped me, is where I hope to meet my reader. Books are the great common ground, regardless of religious or political beliefs. Most of us live ordinary lives, yet want to draw out meaning and make connections. My book shows some of those connections and how all of the stories we interact with affect our lives. It’s not just a memoir. It’s a memoir about how other people’s stories shaped my life.

Rumpus: Did you have any moments of self-discovery as you wrote?  Did you discover that you were a worse person than you remember? Or better?

Prior: My editor said I sometimes came off like a jerk! And he’s probably right because at one point I was trying to figure out how I was going to tell stories about people who caused me pain. In doing that, I had to think through what I thought about those painful moments and how I feel about them now. In early drafts, I sounded bitter, more bitter than I felt.

Rumpus: Did you find a way to work around that?

Prior: It’s a matter of voices. I had to think through those situations in order to figure out how I feel now. After that, I could frame the narrative in a way that reflected both my opinions during the moment of pain and also now, as an older woman thinking back. In that respect, writing my own memoir further shaped my life.

Rumpus: I bet it was all of that Christian rock that led to your painful days.

Prior: No! No, I never listened to Christian Rock.

Rumpus: That’s too bad. Christian rock is the stuff of great memoir.

Prior: Well, I do remember one time when I was a teenager and a locally famous evangelical preacher came to my church and preached about the evils of rock. He preached against all rock, even Christian versions. And his argument had nothing to do with the lyrics. He was just really anti-drums. It was the beat. It was too sensual or something like that. It was ridiculous.

Rumpus: Drums lead to sex, right?

Prior: Exactly. Drums lead to sex. So after his message, sometime later, my youth pastor got all motivated and took all of us youth group kids to his attic…

Rumpus: Creepy.

Prior: It sounds creepy, but it wasn’t even a real attic, just a cubby hole built into the side of an upstairs bedroom. He brought us up there to show us where he used to keep all of his rock albums, which he’d burned in a fit of righteousness. You know, I’m sure he had a more sophisticated argument, but all I remember was that he then related rock to drums and then to rhythm and then to sex. And somehow he tied Africa into all of it.

Rumpus: Geez.

Prior: It was about that time that I left the youth group to smoke more pot.

Rumpus: Good! I wanted to get around to this topic, because of your current employer. So here’s the question:  how does your history of pot smoking influence your teaching pedagogy at Liberty University?

Prior: Well, to my great surprise, I ended up pursuing a profession in which having all of my brain cells working at maximum capacity would have been nice. So there’s that. But you know, really, my past affects my teaching now in the same way most choices affect anyone’s life. I was trying to enjoy myself then and have a good time. I’m trying to do the same thing now only I’ve found a better and more fulfilling way.

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“Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love one’s enemies is an absolute necessity for survival.”

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