Godless by Dan Barker Read Free Book Online

Charismatic upbringing than my wife’s calmer Quaker heritage. I’m glad I worked at that church for a year and a half. It gave me a direct experience of that animated slice of Christian life. There was a lot of speaking in tongues, faith healing, fiery hanky-waving sermons by sweaty evangelists, women on their backs on the floor with arms raised in tearful prayer, hand-clapping gospel choirs and “Jesus movement” music. I even saw a few exorcisms, or “casting out of spirits” as we called it. I took the youth choir on tour around California and Mexico. I preached from the main pulpit at least once a month and led bible study and worked with the youth minister on evangelical outreach.
     
    Directing the adult choir was more of a ministry than an art, since there was only a handful of truly good singers. I had to compensate for the quality of talent with an increase in rhythm and volume—we were worshipping after all, not performing at Carnegie Hall. One evening, as I was rehearsing the adult choir, I stumbled into one of those horribly embarrassing moments I wish I could forget. (So why am I telling it here?) In an amateur church choir you are apt to have members who are not very confident, sometimes waiting to join in after they hear everyone else start to sing, in order not to make a mistake. But as a director, I wanted the first note to be as strong as the rest of the line, with a solid, loud entrance. We were rehearsing “Happiness Is the Lord” but the first note was sounding weak and tentative because some of the men were not coming in with everyone else. Exasperated, I turned and said, “The first word of the song is ‘happiness,’ but I don’t hear the first syllable. You tenors are coming in with ‘piness’,” I emphasized loudly, not realizing what word I had just pronounced. Two older ladies gasped and others turned their red faces away, trying not to look shocked or laugh. When it dawned on me what had just happened, seeing the glaring looks from the men in the back row, I turned around and faced the sanctuary, making things worse. Today I would chuckle with everyone else at such a hilarious moment, but this was church, God’s work, a holy endeavor that was not to be sullied by profanity. My wife later told me that some of the women were having a good laugh behind my back, and I eventually took it in stride, although I did consider it odd for church members to be making fun of a “man of god.” (At least I did not call two bears from the forest to tear them to pieces. See II Kings 2:23-24.)
     
    The people at Glengrove Assembly were sincere and sweet, but I quickly found them to be a bit noisy for my tastes. My wife must have been even more uncomfortable, coming from a non-Pentecostal background.
     
    So I got another “call from God,” this time to the Standard Christian Center in the central California town of Standard, a former logging town near Sonora in the Gold Rush mother lode foothills north of Yosemite. (It’s interesting how God always seemed to “call” me exactly where I wanted to go.) That congregation was much more in line with the Charismatic Movement that I had experienced at Anaheim Christian Center where I was first called to the ministry. And what’s more, it was a renegade full-gospel split from the Christian Church (in the Disciples of Christ tradition that also spawned the Church of Christ), the same denomination that my dad grew up in and which founded Pacific Bible College where Dad had studied to be a minister. (Looking back on all the “coincidences” with my dad, I wonder how much free will I really have.) The motto of the Disciples tradition was, “Where the bible speaks, we speak; where the bible is silent, we are silent.” Of course, it is impossible to reconcile that principle with the Charismatic Movement, but we tried.
     
    When I submitted my letter of resignation to Glengrove Assembly, the pastoral staff and deacons were not convinced that I had