Holy Roller, Batman!

So I had this idea for an article. It would be a kind of “my life as a holy roller” piece. I would talk about how I grew up in an overtly Pentecostal atmosphere and basically present an apologetic for all the “weird” Christians out there. I’m not sure that’s what I ended up with.

I was born into Philadelphia Church in Metairie, Louisiana – a suburb of New Orleans. It was heavily into the Faith Movement, so much so that I was born at home with no doctors present because the church believed that seeing a doctor was equivalent to not trusting God. My mom and I almost died in the process. It was only because somebody wised up and called an ambulance that we made it through. Anyway…where was I? Oh yeah…Uber Faith Church. We were hardcore in every aspect of the church-going experience. We prayed hard. We danced hard. We cried and sang and spoke in tongues. We were the quintessential holy rollers. You didn’t get baptized in our church; you got BAPTIZED! If you didn’t come up from the water babbling incoherently, we figured it must not have worked the first time and we dunked you again. Ok, so maybe I’m painting an extreme picture of what this church was, but you get my drift.

Fast forward to 1985. My dad had left us for another woman and another kid. My mom’s new husband wasn’t scoring too high of an approval rating with some of the church members. Add to that friction some screwy financial stuff with the pastor of the church – a church at which my mom was the secretary – and we ended up leaving and searching for a new home. My mom and I landed at Victory Assembly, yet another “weird” church. Victory was known as the “off the wall” church. This was partially because of their reputation for expressive worship, loud music and the occasional booty-shakin’ baptism service and partially because they were the first church in the area to use a projector to put the worship song lyrics up on the wall for the congregation to see. They were the black sheep of the Assembly of God denomination. My mom and I loved it. My step-dad hated it. Not yet willing to give up our weirdness, my mom and I went to Victory while my step-dad remained a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist.

We stayed at that church for the next 6 years or so until my mom made the decision that we should, for the sake of family unity, quit going to Victory and join my step-dad at First Baptist of Kenner. This was culture shock. I went from a church that preached “Full-Gospel,” tongue-talkin’, water-walkin’ type messages to a church that didn’t even believe that healing and the gifts of the Spirit were meant for today. Part of what happened in the following years was that I developed a sense of superiority over my step-dad and his remedial form of Christianity. I felt that singing hymns from a hymnal was a sign that you didn’t really mean what you were singing. Baptist preachers with Southern accents just reminded me of used car salesmen, and the man who left my mom and I in ’83 was a used car salesman. I hated this style of Christianity.

For the next 10 years we bounced around from one church to another and none of them measured up on my scales of spiritual perfection. Somehow, as a kid I got the idea in my head that Victory was right and all other churches were wrong. This opinion wasn’t based on theological differences but mostly on things like music styles and whether or not the congregation raised their hands or danced during worship. At an early age, I became an elitist little bastard. Even in ’98, when I became the youth worship leader at a small church in Metairie, I felt this deep-seeded superiority over the people and even my pastors. I knew something they didn’t know and I was better than them for it. They’d never experienced “true” worship like I had. They wouldn’t know “revival” if it took a dump in their station wagon.

In June of 2000, I ended up back at Victory Fellowship – the name had changed since they had cut their affiliation with the AoG denomination. Believe it or not, the church was even “weirder” than before. In ’94, they had experienced a revival of sorts that was still going on. I’m sure, if you have any ties to church or any access to a grapevine, you’ve heard of the “laughter” movement. This is when people are in a church service, the Spirit “moves,” and, instead of crying or singing or something “normal,” people begin to laugh. I was a bit skeptical at first, but, being predisposed to church oddities, it wasn’t long before I was laughing it up like a 45 year-old white guy at a Sinbad show. Accompanying the laughter was the whole “drunk in the Spirit” thing. This is when people feel “intoxicated” by the Presence of God and the church looks like the Moon Tower party in Dazed and Confused before the night is over.

Now, I could give you scriptural back-up for these phenomena, and I could try to convince you that it was all real and that you’re the weird one for not doing it, but that’s not what I’m here for. All I know is, for a brief moment, I felt at home. I felt like this is how it was supposed to be. No stuffy guy in a robe drinking all the wine after service. No Southern-accented preacher sneaking a smoke break while the choir sang their special. It felt free. It felt right.

But now I’m not so sure.

After leading worship at Victory for about 2 years, I left and started going to a very conservative church in an upper-middle class, predominantly white area about 30 minutes away from New Orleans. This church was very refreshing in some areas – their focus on families and the seemingly sincere care that people had for one another. The only thing it had missing was the “weirdness” I had become so accustomed to. It wasn’t long before the same mindset I had about my step-dad’s churches crept in and tinted my view of this church. What once looked sincere came off as total crap. Their worship services and sermons tasted bland on my highly refined palette. There was no pleasing me. It may be fine for 99% of the people out there to go through their Christian lives satisfied with mundane church-going, but not me. I craved the “weird.” Anything else felt phony. I felt like the church-kid version of Holden Caulfield. Everywhere I looked I saw phonies, and it killed me.

Then, about an hour and a half ago, I surfed across one of the Christian channels on TV. They were broadcasting a youth revival meeting that reminded me of some of the services I had played worship for at Victory. It also reminded me of the assembly scene in Saved! You know the one where the “cool” youth pastor comes out and gets all the kids hyped up about J.C. The more I watched the more pissed off I got. They weren’t saying anything that I hadn’t heard or said before, but it sounded so different, so hyped, so phony. I started thinking about the services I was in that I loved so dearly. I started wondering whether or not they were real or if I was just another one of the sheeple caught up in the hype. Tonight kind of feels like the culmination of a battle I’ve been fighting in my own head for a few years now. What is real? Was the emotion I felt at Victory Fellowship real? Was the mundane routine of the Baptists or Lutherans real? Was I on a search for something unattainable? Is my personal faith the only truly real thing out there? Can I trust anyone or anything outside of myself and my God?

I’ve seen a lot of different things try and pass themselves off as the “right” thing. I’ve seen churches downing other churches because their methods are different. Even worse, I’ve been the one doing the downing. I think I’ve come to a conclusion of sorts. Nobody is 100% right. You may have different ways than I do of acting on and experiencing your faith, and I’m starting to think that it’s ok that way. Hell, I have different ways of doing things than the me of 5 years ago. It’s quite possible that a Catholic man’s faith is just as valid as mine even if I don’t like his incense and he doesn’t like me using Saltine crackers for communion. It’s quite possible that the laughing Pentecostal cares just as deeply for the people in his community as the twang-talking Baptist. It’s quite possible that God weeps every time another denomination springs out of a dispute over the correct Greek translation of John 11:35. It’s quite possible that the process of finding a truly fulfilling spiritual life involves me getting off my high horse and finding some equality with the “lesser” Christians that I’ve despised for so long. It’s quite possible that Jesus meant what He said when He told us that all we need to do is love Him and love others. I’m not saying I’ve got it all figured out now, but maybe I’m one step closer.

by Jacob Taylor

[If you’d like to comment on this article or debate Jacob Taylor’s claim that the top 3 TV shows of all time are Seinfeld, The Family Guy and The Simpsons, in that order, he can be reached at jacob@circlesixmagazine.com]