A little more information...

I told you it would take a long time to say what I need to say... Anyway, here's a bit more personal information.

I was born into a somewhat more than nominally Catholic family, although my mother comes from a more Pentecostal/signs & wonders background. I was a precocious kid and read a lot of science books which made me despair of finding God or heaven, since they all taught that we were the products of blind evolution. I grew up as a black member of a black family during the tail end of the more severe part of the civil rights struggle. I became a Christian while in junior high school.

My parents, unfortunately, split up during that time, and, being fatherless and somewhat directionless, I drifted away from the faith during high school. In fact, I drifted through high school and into the Army, where I came face to face with the fact that I could die at any time. Believe me, that will get a man thinking about the serious questions of life! As a result of that experience I turned back to Christ at the end of my enlistment and said goodbye to the Army.

Facing adulthood after the childhood I had lived through left a number of dents, dings and broken places in my soul, and I looked for a place of healing. I was going to a Lutheran church at the time and it wasn't a bad place, but I longed for something more. I always thought that the church was supposed to be a place of healing (after all, so many churches advertise themselves as such).

In my searching I found a church group which met on college campuses and seemed to be full of life and joy. They were headed by a dynamic leader who really seemed to have his act together. But what I didn't know was that they were actually an abusive group. During the two decades I met with them, I saw many of the abuses and aberrations they practiced, but I was taught to swallow it and accept it all as "God's will". Finally, about three and a half years ago I and a number of others left the group.

We who left read many books on recovering from spiritual abuse and on the need to find a "healthy church." In future posts, I will describe what it's been like looking for such a church, and how my experiences have caused me to look at the contemporary evangelical subculture in the United States.

By the way, I am still a Christian. I can recite the Apostle's Creed without crossing my fingers behind my back. But it's been a rather wild ride.