Tag: Christianity

Beaches Bodies and Elisabeth Elliot

January 16th, 2023

by Stephanie Logan

Recently there has been reporting that famed purity culture guru, Elisabeth Elliot, was less than honest in her writings about her relationship with her first husband, the missionary martyr, Jim Elliot. The information is not entirely new but is disturbing, nonetheless.

In another life, Elisabeth Elliot was one of my heroes. I suppose many women in my generation who were raised in fundamentalist or evangelical churches might say something similar. Then, many of us within the homeschool movement raised our own children on her writings and ideals.

I listened to her radio program daily through college and in my early marriage. As a matter of fact, everywhere I went I scanned the dial for Christian stations and often locked in on the one that ran her program. Even after she retired, I found a station that played old episodes of Gateway to Joy, rather than listening to Nancy Leigh Demoss after she slid into Elisabeth’s seat.

Elisabeth was very firm in her views of just how much skin a woman should show when in public and she became the public voice for Christian modesty and female sexuality for generations. I remember well one of her broadcasts when she was describing a lunch meeting that she had at a beach, and how she was unable to concentrate or enjoy her meal because of all the scantily clad people proudly “schlepping” by her table. She talked with open disgust and self-righteous assumptions, as if she knew the minds and intentions of those who had passed by.

Reading the new reporting stirred my memory and so yesterday, I pulled out an old journal and looked up some entries that I wrote while on vacation in Aruba in 2021. My writing had centered on how Elisabeth Elliot had influenced me.

Spending a week at a resort in the Caribbean after more than a year of pandemic turmoil was fantastic! But there was something consuming my mind while there. I noticed a big change in my thinking since leaving the church.

During my lifetime, I was surrounded by people who thought like Elisabeth. And my body was a near constant topic of derision in my family. As a child I was mocked for my skinniness. As a young teen I was mocked for my physical development. Then as a young adult, I was mocked because I was a curvier build than my mother. My bra size was a far too frequent topic of conversation. Growing up, my body was a source of confusion and shame to me.

And so, I was comfortable in college I first heard Elisabeth and her admonishments to cover up that body and, then later, easily adopted the views of the Christian homeschool movement. In my thirties, I refused to even wear swimwear for a handful of years and then when I did choose to venture into the world of beaches and swimming pools again, I wore suits with substantial skirts and high necklines that were rather heavy in the water and took forever to dry. But I was fine with the annoyance and discomfort because I had become one of them through and through – obsessed more with how much skin was showing than with how I treated my neighbor.

But by 2021, after more than three years outside that system, my mind and whole body had relaxed, and I was able to enjoy the beach and water as I once had as a young child.

There is an ideal about resort life presented on TV, film, and in commercials in America, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect once I got to the real thing. But I didn’t see (at least enough to notice) that perfectly shaped woman with an even more perfect tan in her bikini and her perfectly tanned partner in his Tommy Bahamas. With Aruba’s significant European influence, the reality was quite different from our American Sandals Resorts image.

View from the bar on the beach, personal photo

Just outside the resort there was a great little open bar that served food at meals, and it became our spot. Almost every morning we took a leisurely walk to that bar and ordered a substantial breakfast and then watched the turquoise waters and the pelicans and Caribbean pigeons and the people walking by. I wondered at their variety: young, old, middle aged, Dutch, German, French, Carib, Canadian, American, and as I watched, I found myself able to view them without judgement.

As the equatorial sun toasted their skin, they walked, not schlepped: some with canes or strollers, others with toddlers on their hips or lovers on their arms. Resort guests with old joints slowing their movements or long limber limbs seemingly gliding along were headed to the beach, or breakfast, or just taking a morning stroll. Some were gorgeous specimens, and perhaps they knew it, but most of us were mediocre to downright unattractive and completely content with our lot.

On our last full day there we took a morning snorkeling cruise – something I recommend everyone try at least once. On board were a few Arubans and perhaps an equal number of Americans. Many were Dutch, German, and a couple from Brazil. It seemed all the Dutch women wore bikinis. It didn’t matter whether they were young or old, stout or trim, rolling or sculpted, shaved legs or hairy, and their partners sat beside them as if unfazed by it all.

Some sat demurely by themselves and others sprawling with a drink in their hand. A group of middle-aged women, bearing all the signs of their age and motherhood, perched on the netting at the bow discussing pandemic politics with their American counterparts.

We ate and drank and bumped fists and my partner made acquaintance with many. I donned the ugly snorkeling gear and eagerly jumped into the sea and spent a couple of hours swimming and bumping into others in the water with nothing but joy and peace and the excitement of a child who was watching the urchins creep along the bottom or imagining the lives of the people from the shipwreck beneath me.

Personal photo

As we gathered on the deck for the trip back to the dock, I realized that just four years prior to that event, I would not have been able to enjoy it. I would have been self-conscious, self-loathing, and, therefore, others-loathing. I would have been so concerned about what others were thinking and seeing that I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on the real value – the people and the experience itself.

On the last morning, as we sat at breakfast, I watched a barrel-chested older gentleman in a speedo and his equally aged wife take a stroll on the beach. They appeared to be new arrivals and were vigorously discussing what they were seeing as they gestured toward the beautiful water. And I realized that my mind had totally shifted. I was able to view these two people as human beings enjoying what days they have on this planet. And I thought, why should the young not enjoy their youth and the pleasure of the warm sun and sparkling waters and ocean breezes? Why should the older ones not enjoy the same thing without the judgement of others? They have surely earned it.

What right did I ever have to think otherwise?

Former Evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.

Copyright © 2023 snicklefritzchronicles.com
Caleb’s Story: Healing

January 8th, 2023

by Stephanie Logan

(Part 5. New readers can click here to start at the beginning of the story.)

Caleb was gesturing and speaking with an urgency that made me immediately regret making him wait to tell me.

As I reached out to hug and reassure him, I wished that there was someone there to hug and reassure me. I knew there was no turning back from this and I no longer had the safety of pretending it was not so.

At some point in his frantic talking, I did something that experienced parents and therapists tell you not to do. I said, “I know, Caleb. I have always known.”

“You did?” He stared at me.

Of course, only Caleb could have known. What I had was maternal instinct, not knowing.

That night, as Caleb talked, I learned just what my parenting choices, my dedication to Dr. Nicolosi’s directives, evangelical dogma, and even my determination to keep my unhealthy marriage intact had done to my son.

A couple of years earlier, not long after my ex had left, Caleb sunk into a deep depression. It was something that I watched hopelessly because he was 18 going on 19 and man-sized and I had no control over his choices and behaviors. Our family was in turmoil. He was beginning to learn things about his father that I had protected him from for years, and he was watching it all eat away at me. The whole godly, Christian world he had been surrounded by up to this point was breaking apart.

As he told it, he was broken hearted over far more than the divorce. He was old enough to have memories of the past and some significant trauma from our many family upheavals. I had hoped that I had softened those things, maybe even hid them completely, but I was learning that isn’t how a family dynamic works.

And Caleb was hiding his sexuality, knowing it went against everything that he had been taught and everything that he knew I believed. Caleb was still attending church regularly and hearing our pastor’s frequent condemnations of the gay community. He knew that these people that he had known and loved and been taught to respect would never be willing to genuinely know and love and respect him. And Caleb had always been so dedicated to his friends in the faith, that he was the last member of our family to leave when the church finally pushed us from their midst.

I carried on as I watched him spiral. I tried to keep the lines of communication open, but I didn’t know what else I could do.

Then one day I got a panicked phone call from him. Caleb told me through tears that he had been having suicidal ideation and on his way to work had been contemplating driving off a long bridge that spanned a river now swollen with spring rain. That morning he had almost done it. He was afraid to get back in his car and drive home. I drove to his workplace, reassured him of my love, and told him our family would make it through the current difficulties. I had arranged for him to meet with our pastor to talk and so I followed his vehicle back to town as we talked on the phone and I parked in the church lot as he went inside to speak with the pastor.

It had not occurred to me that that kind of counseling would be bad for him. It was the only thing I knew to do at that time.

In conversation with a friend, I briefly mentioned the events of the week and they encouraged me to have Caleb chat with their husband who was trained and experienced in working with troubled youth.

Within a week, Caleb called me from work again. Again, I went to him, reassured him of my love, and followed him back to town as we talked over the phone. I intended to take him to speak with the pastor again, but he refused. Then, I called my friend and we drove to their house instead.

And so, Caleb began to get some sound advice and, even more, some genuine love and acceptance. It was just the support he needed. As he spent more time at their home over the months, he began to do much better, and when they moved later that year, he planned and took trips to visit them in their new town.

The night that Caleb came out to me, I learned that his suicidal ideation over those months was driven by his desire to protect me from more hurt. He thought that it would be easier for me to have a dead son than a gay son.

I wept.

I would love to tell you that his coming out and my growing understanding of the harm I had caused him made me change overnight, but it didn’t happen that quickly.

Though by this point my mind had already shifted, I was still driven by anxiety. I jumped almost immediately into protective mama bear mode. I wanted to keep the church from hurting him more than it had. I wanted to keep my family from hurting him and I wanted to keep his father’s family from hurting him. I wanted to protect him from the whole community I had chosen to raise him in. I wanted my son to stay at least semi closeted, and I laid in bed many nights worrying about what might happen to him if he didn’t.

I knew well the myths the church would continue to teach that would make many within their ranks imagine my loving son to be a predator – maybe even a pedophile – and it made me sick. I quickly came to understand just how horrid that kind of baseless propaganda is and how dangerous the “studies” done, in the kind of biased manner ministries and church organizations use, really are.

It took months and several very serious conversations for Caleb to talk me down from this protective stance. And then an online friend helped me to find a support group for moms of LGBTQ+ kids and I began to feel that sense of community and hope that I really needed.

The author with Caleb

Since studying and writing have consistently been the way I learn and work through my problems, I began a new learning journey. I started reading history and culture books, watching documentaries, and listening to podcasts. I found more online friends and support. And it all helped me out of that bubble of fear. I also began to find healthier ways to deal with my anxiety than those provided by a lifetime of fundamentalist and evangelical teaching.

The changes didn’t come quickly but eventually my fears leveled out to what might be normally expected for any mother when she thinks about her children.

And I watched my son begin to become so many of those things I had always hoped he would be – not because of the church and the faith system we left, but despite it.

Click here to read part six.

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Former Evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.

Copyright © 2023 snicklefritzchronicles.com
Caleb’s Story: Eyes Opening

December 30th, 2022

by Stephanie Logan

(Part 4. New readers can click here to start at the beginning of the story.)

During Caleb’s high school years, I kept busy with homeschooling, Caleb’s vocal training, and my kids’ local theater involvement on top of my church volunteer work. But my mind was still churning because a bumper crop of national church and homeschool scandals grew up – some with seeds nearly as old as me that had been lying dormant for decades. And then the year Caleb graduated, the church began to rally around Donald Trump with the same sorry excuses I had seen them use throughout my life.

During that time, I began to do two things. First, I questioned my undying loyalty to the Republican Party. I began to investigate other options that I might be able to support wholeheartedly. Second, I started to research just how the church had come to be the way it was. I began to ask myself why I had undying loyalty to the church.

This kind of behavior on my part really bothered my husband. I will never forget his reaction one day when he brought the mail in and came to realize that I had paid twenty-five dollars for a subscription (in my name only) to a non-GOP political publication. His behavior was so unnerving that I chose not to mention that I had also cancelled several of my subscriptions to conservative homeschool publications after learning of abuses within their organizations.

I started tuning out my constant diet of conservative and Christian talk radio and teachings on CD and tuned in public broadcasts and some BBC. I also found some blogs online that were sharing the same concerns that I had about the church. I started realizing the problem with the church wasn’t just in my mind. It was universal and far worse than I had imagined.

The more I distanced myself from my near constant diet of bias confirming information, the more willing I became to tell the truth and to say aloud “No” and “I’m not comfortable with that” and “This is wrong”.

Those are all things that *good* Christian women don’t say – especially not to their husbands and church leaders.

These changes in me provided my husband with the perfect excuse to finally leave me. He went to our preacher before he left and told him (and other godly Christians we knew) that I was a strong woman, and said that he just couldn’t live with a strong woman. He knew this was the perfect cover and he was right. Initially, our preacher believed him completely. My husband told our children – because they knew better and were too old to fool – that we were splitting because we just couldn’t communicate any more. He told his other women that our split was mutual, and the divorce agreement was ready to sign. He told men within his circle of friends that I was a bitter and jealous woman out to ruin him. Some people he never told. The kids and I had to break the news that he was gone.

I spent two years cleaning up the social and legal mess and working even harder to understand the way I had gotten into that position. Counseling and a whole lot of reading and journaling put me on track to understand behavioral disorders like narcissism and characteristics of abusive relationships and my propensity to be sucked into them. And I began to see the striking similarities between my family relationships, my marriage, and the unhealthy behaviors of the church.

While I was having my eyes opened, my kids were too. They watched their father leave them much as he had left me. He didn’t make any attempt to seek shared custody or visitation or even mediation and only showed up to one hearing in family court. They watched as he treated the children of his other women better than he had treated them during their childhoods. This made them begin to ask questions and to understand injustice in a way they hadn’t previously.

When the church announced that they were disciplining my husband and removing him from membership, the pastor chose to speak neutrally to “protect” the family. This shocked my kids. They could not believe that it was being left to the imaginations of the congregation and that what their father had chosen to do was not spoken aloud. They were furious when we got home from the service that week. I was not happy, but I wasn’t surprised either and I explained how the church had chosen to “protect” us in the past.

Between their father’s gross hypocrisy and the increasingly gross behavior of the church, both toward our family and in society in general, my kids’ eyes were being opened.

Then, the events that I detailed in Why I Finally Left the Church occurred and became the impetus for our individual departures.

While I continued to study and communicate with others who had similar life experiences, each of my children adjusted and rebuilt in their own ways.

Caleb performing with some of his favorite people. Photo credit: Blakely Swanson of Images by Swanson Photography

This is when Caleb began to spread his wings and involve himself in new social circles and live honestly. His new friend network supported him wholeheartedly. This made him brave, and he eventually came out to his friend group and then to his sisters who supported him and kept his secret even though we all lived in the same home.

I noticed the changes in him. I noticed a joy for life that he hadn’t had since he was a small boy. But though I was becoming more settled in my thoughts, it still wasn’t easy. I still struggled against the decades of familial and church indoctrination. So, when he came to my room one night and told me that he had something important to tell me, I asked him if we could wait to have the conversation. My anxiety was high at the time, and I knew I wasn’t in a good place to deal with his news. I had to figure out how I would navigate it. I had to figure out how to deal with my fears.

He was the bigger person that night.

He was disappointed but he waited.

Perhaps a month later he came to me again and this time said that what he had to say couldn’t wait. And what I had known to be true since he was a toddler was finally said aloud.

“Mom, I’m gay.”

Click here for part five.

Former Evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.

Copyright © 2022 snicklefritzchronicles.com
Caleb’s Story: The Light Faded From His Eyes

November 9th, 2022
by Stephanie Logan

(Part 2. New readers can click here to start at the beginning of the story.)

Since I was a serious kid, I held tightly to the church and, as someone riddled with anxieties, held tightly to the assurances the church gave me. It is funny to me now that I recognize just how many of those anxieties were produced by the teachings of the church who then, like a snake oil salesman, offered a cure that only they could provide.

As a teen, I was already studying doctrine and my only social outlet outside of school was the church. So, by the time I graduated high school I had internalized all the myths the church tells about the LGBTQ+ community. Though, at that time the discussion was only about “the gays”. Gay men were said to be mentally unstable, had absent fathers and overbearing mothers, were potential pedophiles always hunting young boys to take advantage of, and they were cursed by God himself with the judgement of HIV. An acquaintance from my Christian college days even wrote his seminary thesis *proving* from scripture that HIV was God’s end-times judgement on gay men (that passes for academics in our country).

According to the church, gays, and by extension all members of the LGBTQ+ community, were the other: a group of people who needed to get saved and become straight but should never be trusted, socialized with, or loved in any genuine sense of the word. God was going to judge us because of them.

But, perhaps because of my dad, I had significant cognitive dissonance. The ideas promoted by the church never sat right with me. Often my empathy won out over the indoctrination, but I could never let such weak, ungodly thoughts linger. The type of faith system I was raised in – the kind with constant talk of judgement and altar calls to “get right” with God – had taught me to police myself. Every time my mind strayed in its judgement, I would head to the kneeling altar to repent. It seems so strange to me now that not judging others and choosing to love my neighbor at one time made me feel guilty.

My years in one of our denominational colleges only solidified my childhood training and surrounded me with external reinforcements. During that time, I became a regular listener to our college radio station and I seldom missed an episode of Focus on the Family and listened to quite a few other broadcasts. As a child of divorce with a gay dad, I figured that I needed all the godly wisdom I could receive to get the Christian family thing right. I didn’t want my children to live a childhood like I had. So, I started taking personal steps to make myself the kind of godly woman who would be a good wife and mother. I left no stone unturned. I even got a minor in Family Ministries.

While in college and until I was in my thirties, I was fully convinced of the Christian Right’s so called pro-family cultural belief system. And I lived it. And just to be sure I was covering all the bases, I chose to be ecumenical in my reading and studied from the writings of the Catholic church, Mennonites, various Baptists, and reformed faiths along with my own denomination’s authors. I prayed over my children in the womb and lovingly sang hymns and worship songs to them when they nursed. They were each “dedicated to the Lord” in infancy as was our church custom. And because my husband and I were involved in professional ministry, we were in church regularly for much of their younger years. When we started homeschooling, the exposure to conservative Christian teaching only increased. I left no stone unturned in my attempts to please God, the church, and my husband. Rearing my children right and living a godly life were my only goals.

So, when my son was around age four and I began to realize that he was not like other boys his age, I became very concerned. I had noticed things before that point, but by age four he was socializing much more, and the differences became more apparent. That happened to coincide with the release of Dr. James Dobson’s book Bringing Up Boys. I was busy with three children under age five, so I borrowed the audio copy from our church library so that I could listen as I worked around the house.

The day that I listened to chapter nine, The Origins of Homosexuality, my whole godly family dream fell to pieces. The child Dr. Dobson described – the one struggling with “pre-homosexuality” – was my son. It was glaringly obvious to the mother who had spent nearly every moment with him since he grew in her womb. And I panicked. I panicked because Dr. Dobson regularly described how our country was bound for hell and needed to repent and the gay community was so often at the top of his list for being a destructive force. The fears and anxieties built, it seemed, at the speed of light. There were more than a few nights that I didn’t sleep.

What kind of person would my son be?

What about my family? What would they do?

What about the church? What would they think?

We were to serve the church overseas. What would this mean?

What had I done wrong?

Family photo of the author holding Caleb

I shared my concerns with my husband who had a rather flippant response. He wasn’t home much, and he didn’t see what I did. He was also having an affair at the time, so his focus wasn’t on our home even when he was there. But Dr. Dobson had written about a doctor somewhere who was certain about the origins of homosexuality and knew the cure. My husband agreed that I could call the Focus on the Family hotline and find out more information. I think he agreed just so that I would calm down, but I was hopeful, nonetheless.

The next day I called and spoke with a phone counselor who shared the doctor’s phone number with me. And this is how I ended up on my first phone appointment with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, a notorious reparative therapy practitioner and author of the booklet, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Reparative therapy is a subset of conversion therapy that is now illegal in many places (as it should be).

Dr. Nicolosi had a calming voice and he seemed kind. I think that is common among those in his profession. As I sat on my bed, heart racing in my chest, I described my son’s daily habits and common behaviors. I also described his interactions with me and my husband. Dr. Nicolosi then told me his theory of how children developed homosexual “tendencies” and how his methods of guiding behavior would remove any such tendencies. He assured me that we were early to catch it and would therefore have no problem fixing it. When I told him that we were moving overseas, he said that he could give us guidance to use in day-to-day life. He asked me to make another appointment during which my husband would also be on the phone, so that he could discuss the necessary steps with both of us. I did and later that week the three of us had a long phone conference.

Dr. Nicolosi’s prescribed advice could be summarized as follows:
1. Center the father in your son’s life. Mother should be less affectionate and more distant and direct son to his father as often as possible.
2. Father should accept generous affection from your son and return that affection generously.
3. Any effeminate behavior or play with girl centered toys should be ignored. The air in the room should be neither condemnation nor praise – just indifference.
4. Specifically masculine centered play, dress, behavior, and social events should be praised and take priority in your son’s life.
And so, it began. For the next 13 years I was as obedient to Dr. Nicolosi’s prescription as possible. And, as any good Christian parents would, we attended services nearly every time the doors of the church were open, listened to Christian radio, and surrounded our family with every Christian thing possible which meant that our children had a near constant diet of anti-gay teaching. And, as my son grew, I watched him with constant anxiety as he never shook those tendencies and the light faded from his eyes.

Click here for part three.

Former evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.

Copyright © 2022 snicklefritzchronicles.com
Pro-life Apostate

August 7th, 2022

by Stephanie Logan

Pexels

Though I was once ardently anti-abortion, my views have shifted. As I dared to step outside of evangelical dogma, I allowed myself to study things I would have never studied while still under the gaze of authoritarian preachers. When a person does that, they quickly learn that their preachers and teachers are not always completely honest. And I learned that abortion is one of those issues that evangelical leaders have not been completely honest about. I also lived long enough within the movement to observe that their drive to shut down all abortion has much less to do with their faith and ethic than it does with their considerable obsession with political power. The history of that has been detailed by researchers.

Through my 40 years in the evangelical movement, I have known those who are genuinely pro-life. They put their money where their mouth is. I have known good, honest, incredibly caring individuals who have adopted and been foster parents. But these people are very rare. Far more frequent in the church are those who might save their pocket change to support anti-abortion ministries or get on their soapbox and post to Facebook, but look down their noses at young single moms and complain (it would seem incessantly at times) about their tax dollars being used for SNAP, TNAF, WIC, Medicaid, “Obamacare”, public housing, and public education. In fact, I don’t know if I have been part of a church where condemnation of government social care wasn’t commonplace and often straight from the pulpit.

With the publicity of the recent SCOTUS ruling, public conversations about abortion and just what it entails have been more frequent and some may be questioning just what they helped put into play by behaving as single-issue voters. I know that I have been full of regret for my part after spending the first two decades of my adult life voting only for the GOP and only for candidates who vowed to do everything in their power to end abortion.

The recent publicity has also brought to the surface memories of women who have had abortions, miscarriage, and traumatic pregnancies of all varieties. The medical term for miscarriage is “spontaneous abortion” and it is believed that between ten and fifteen percent of known pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. The percentage would be higher if it included those that occur among women who do not realize they are pregnant until later in term. Spontaneous abortion is traumatizing enough without the new stress that necessary medical procedures to treat it may not be available to all women or may require extraordinary and expensive travel to receive.

I have been reliving my own miscarriage during this time. Then, I didn’t realize that everything surrounding that event had the potential to be controlled by someone with no knowledge of me or my family or my health. It is unthinkable to me that anyone other than myself, my husband, or my doctor might have been able to direct the services I received while going through something that was heartbreaking, excruciatingly painful, and even life threatening. But my daughters will be in that position. Someone else may get to write the rules about how much their lives do or don’t matter and what is the exact point when a doctor will be allowed to treat them. If they’re allowed at all.

During my first pregnancy, somewhere between ten and twelve weeks, I began passing small blood clots and I knew in my whole being that I was miscarrying. I was young, married just about a year, and so excited to be having a baby. The pregnancy had been unplanned but that didn’t matter. Children were a blessing and only a blessing and I was excited.

That evening my husband came home from work and took me to the ER where they examined me and declared that I couldn’t be passing clots because my cervix was intact. That they couldn’t detect a heartbeat didn’t seem to concern them. They sent me home with suggestions that maybe I was exaggerating my symptoms. But early the next morning the cramps and bleeding began in earnest, and we returned to the ER where I was diagnosed with spontaneous abortion. After the nurse counseled me about having a heavy period and following up with my ob-gyn, we were sent home.

What happened as the day progressed was full labor that was comparable to the deliveries of my three children. Having no concept of what was happening to me, being unmedicated, and alone except for my husband, I went through excruciating pain (passing out at one point) and early on Sunday morning passed a fully formed fetus in the amniotic sack. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

It was approximately the size of the plastic fetus models anti-abortion protestors hand out. We put it in a sandwich baggie and placed it in the fridge. I had been advised to follow up with my doctor on Monday and to take any tissue with me. I now know that was because they would be checking to see if I was at risk for infection. My husband then called several friends to let them know that we wouldn’t be at church to teach our youth class and why.

The friends stopped by to visit on their way home. I was in and out of sleep on the sofa and so weak from the previous day’s ordeal that I couldn’t sit up let alone make myself presentable for guests. I was greeted with downcast faces and meek apologies and then the guests paraded past me to the kitchen where they looked at the fetus in the sandwich baggie like it was a museum exhibit. That is where the care and concern ended.

For the next couple of weeks, I received a few sympathetic comments but what I heard repeatedly from all the women I knew in the church was that miscarriage was their god’s way of taking care of those babies who shouldn’t be on earth because of their problems.

Did they realize that they were promoting their god as the great abortionist in the sky? I don’t think so. Instead, I think they viewed their comments as sound and compassionate explanations for why spontaneous abortion takes place. After all, it is so common that many women observe a twelve-week rule during which they tell no one they are pregnant because they may not be in short order. And because they believe life begins at conception, evangelical Christians need an explanation for why their loving god would allow such a thing to happen.

When I explained to commenters that I didn’t pass tissue but rather delivered a fetus, they attempted to comfort me with explanations that my body didn’t know what to do with a baby. However good their intentions, they were saying the problem was me and that always ran through my mind during my proceeding pregnancies.

Evangelicals usually believe that the Bible clearly speaks on abortion. And likewise, that it speaks of life beginning at conception. But, Christian friends, the Bible does not say what you think it does.

Is a heartbeat at six weeks gestation a heart beating and circulating blood through a viable living being, or is it stem cells that have differentiated into cardiac cells and begun to form a heart doing exactly what your cardiac cells would do if we scraped them from your beating heart and put them in a petri dish? Is the woman who carries a fetus with significant physical defects, that will keep it from surviving outside the womb, a murderer for choosing induction abortion at 36 weeks rather than carrying to term and waiting for natural contractions? Either way the delivery results in death. The exact same death. Is the woman burdened with miscarriage really to spend those hellish days of heartache and pain also fearing that she may develop infection and have to wait for her body to reach a sufficient stage of danger so that she can have the necessary medical care? Is the child who has been raped really to carry the fetus to term because your god wills it? Is the woman with an ectopic pregnancy really to chance death or irreversible internal scarring and sterility as my one time mentor did? Should the mother of four, who is diagnosed with cancer at 8 weeks gestation, really sacrifice herself to give birth and then die rather than abort and receive treatment for the disease? Are these things not heartless cruelty by every definition of the words? Are these actions just?

The evangelical church most often tells believers that abortion is about free sex and irresponsible people doing whatever they want and then “killing the babies” to avoid the consequences of their *sin*. They repeat that it is just the hatefulness of angry feminists who want freedom from men like their sister Eve. They discuss medical and biological things but most often with bias and too frequently without the clarity of truth. They claim it is all about god and ignore the history of the GOP and their political maneuverings. In other words, the church doesn’t tell the truth.

As someone who has walked both paths, I cannot tell you the mental torment I have suffered as I weighed just what the truth is. It has not been easy and is not something everyone has the time and desire for. So perhaps our best choice is to trust. To trust the pregnant person and their doctor as we would hope to be trusted with our own bodies and our own families. To take our feelings and opinions out of their decisions. Isn’t that the loving choice?

Does loving my neighbor as myself in this way make me apostate?

Former evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.

Copyright © 2022 snicklefritzchronicles.com

#exvangelical
In Name Only

July 24th, 2022

by Stephanie Logan

Pexels

In my past, I often looked down on those who were nominal in their faith. Nominal means in name only and fundamentalists and evangelicals tend to refer to most Roman Catholics, mainline protestants, and many of their own as nominal. It is a spiritual insult to call a Christian nominal and often whispered as a prayer concern shared about someone who needs *saved*.

As a natural result of my rearing, I thought little of Roman Catholics who only attended mass on holidays, weddings, and funerals; mainline protestants who obviously didn’t understand the *real* message of salvation and didn’t desire holiness; and evangelicals who weren’t in the church every time the doors opened. They obviously weren’t serious in the faith if they even had any. Don’t you know that all those nominal Christians vote Democrat and evangelicals and fundamentalists *know* that people who vote Democrat aren’t real Christians.

What I didn’t realize then, I see clearly now. Perhaps nominal Christians know a thing or two about priorities and balancing their lives and faith. And those referred to as nominal are usually less invested. It is easier for them to miss the dirty underbelly of the church and just enjoy the traditional comforts. They are often less aware of what the Bible teaches – settling themselves on passages of scripture that are universally familiar and don’t cause too many questions. Had I been raised to be nominal, I would likely still be in the church.

But I was raised in a system that prioritized holiness with guilt laden altar calls that took place at both Sunday services. It was riddled with constant talk of death, judgement, and the end of the world. One of our four foundational doctrines was Jesus as the coming king who would save us all from the judgement of earth through the rapture. I can’t tell you how many times I got saved as my anxious child mind could never be certain if my sinful soul was genuine the last time I got saved. I didn’t want to be left behind. And just to be extra sure, I got baptized twice: once as an infant in my grandparent’s Presbyterian church and once again when I was a teen and was told that believer’s baptism by immersion was the way *real* Christians did it.

In my teen years, I was already doing daily devotional Bible study and was *called* to the ministry. Instead of going to a state university to study communications like my high school instructors encouraged, I spent more than twice the amount to attend a denominational college where I earned a degree that has been a hindrance to professional growth. While there, I not only studied for ministry, but I also began the habit of reading the Bible through annually and listening only to Christian radio – two things that greatly influenced the next two decades of my life.

That Bible reading continued for close to 25 years. I have read the Bible cover to cover over twenty times. During three of those years, I was also studying the Bible through verse by verse from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21. I took a notebook full of notes and created my own cross references using a Strong’s Concordance, a Vine’s Expository Dictionary, and a Halley’s Bible Handbook. I have read the King James Version, New American Standard Bible, New King James Version, New International Version, and the English Standard Version.

I have worked to arrange church programs, sat on committees, assisted preachers, taught Sunday School and children’s church, and have even been offered the pulpit on occasion, though only under the authority and in the presence of a male preacher and never to actually preach (of course).

My choices about the church and faith have not come from lack of knowledge or effort or faith. As a matter of fact, I was so all in that one of the last things my last pastor said to me was, “You know too much to stay away, Steph”. But as others who have walked a similar path have said, I have seen behind the curtain and once you see behind the curtain you can’t unsee.

Rather than knowing too much to stay away, I know far too much to return because there was nothing nominal about me.

Former evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.

Copyright © 2022 snicklefritzchronicles.com
Lunch with Two Men

July 17th, 2022

by Stephanie Logan

Pexels

The day I went to lunch with two men – neither my significant other and one of them married – felt to me like a day that warranted a gold medal. That may sound a bit hyperbolic to some but hear me out.

As a former evangelical, I spent most of my life in very conservative churches. From childhood, I was taught what pretty much every American evangelical or fundamentalist woman is taught: my body was dirty, and I should hide it from men and boys; if a man looked and liked what he saw, it was my fault; if a girl got pregnant, then she was slutty; if a man cheated on his wife, then the wife must not have been satisfying him or a Jezebel lured him. I was also taught that to be alone in a room with a man who was not your spouse or a relative would be an impossible temptation – a cause for expulsion on my college campus; inappropriate advances made by men were my fault; I could not be friends with men; and work lunches between the sexes would become affairs. If you think this sounds a bit like what you hear oppressed Muslim women are told, you’d be right. If you think this sounds like victim blaming, you’d be right again.

Because I have always been very conscientious and a tad anxious and I was raised in that environment, by the time I was a full-grown woman I was continuously worried that I was a potential adulteress. For years I wore a minimum of neck to knee clothing and never a swimsuit. It didn’t matter that I am a homebody who has no interest in luring men in general. It didn’t matter that, practically speaking, I did not see any of this behavior play out in my life as I related to my own friends. It didn’t matter that I stayed faithful to a serial cheater even at my loneliest points in our marriage. I still viewed myself this way. The church taught me to, and I believed the church.

Now, I hear the “but…but…but”. Yes, affairs can develop in many of these scenarios. Let me be clear, I know cheating happens but when it happens, it happens first in the mind when both people make a conscious choice to do it. It isn’t a magical, irresistible force that happens when a man and a woman stand in the same room together – no matter what Billy Graham thought.

Now, back to that day.

Imagine my nervousness when the group of trainees I had been meeting with were going out to lunch together and it dwindled down to just three – me and two men. To say I was anxious is a very big understatement and I almost made an excuse about needing to run an errand so I could leave. But I had been working on not responding to the intrusive messages that my brain sends to me. And I knew I was going to have to adjust to life in a secular, professional environment. So, I messaged my significant other and told him that I was going to go out to lunch with two men. I did it because I try to be honest with him and because I knew he would totally understand just how big of a step this was for me.

The three of us agreed to walk to the deli across the street and after ordering, we sat down with the two of them on one side of the table and me on the other. And thus began a meal that I just might remember for the rest of my life, not because the food or conversation were particularly great, but for the battle that went on in my mind.

Here’s a small sample.

Brain: Oh, he mentioned his plans with his wife this weekend. He’s married. You might make him *stumble*.

Me: Ridiculous. I’m doing nothing to make him stumble. If he has an issue, it will be his own to deal with.

Brain: Did you button up the top button on your blouse?

Me: I’m dressed professionally.

Brain: But you could have an *affair*! Shame!

Me: Ridiculous. I love my partner.

Brain: But what about…

Me: Go away, thoughts! I’m in control here.

I slayed a giant that day and somehow, as that battle went on in my mind, I kept up with the conversation. We were professional; shared about our families and interests; explained our job history and responsibilities to each other; and built a little bit of healthy workplace camaraderie.

And wonder of wonders, there have been no suggestive glances from either of them even as we have continued to work together. I have not sought them out to lead them astray. All our clothing has always remained on when we’re in a room together. There have been only completely professional coworkers behaving completely professionally. Which is, I am learning, normal in the workplace though contrary to the images offered by my leaders over the years. We have never shared another meal, though I am sure that I could again with the exact same results.

I am a different woman today – at least usually. Occasionally, those nagging little devils of evangelical dogma rear their ugly heads. But I know how to handle them and myself now.

Former evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.

Copyright © 2022 snicklefritzchronicles.com

#purityculture #exvangelical