Whitney's Story

This was submitted by a thoughtful, expressive young reader. I'm so impressed with this latest generation and their ability to see past all the arbitrary divisions defended by their elders, to celebrate in one another those universal human values that transcend culture. If you'd like to share your story, send me an email at extoots@gmail.org. Thanks! --Free

I left the FALC when I was sixteen, almost three years ago. This is my story.

As a child, Sunday evenings made me nervous. The mornings were pleasant enough—Mom baked desserts while my siblings and I finished our homework at the table, counting down the minutes before a pie was pulled from the oven. If it was warm outside, dad pumped our bicycle tires with air and sent us down the driveway with a wave. 


An hour and a half before church started, we started getting ready. That’s when my stomach started feeling queasy. What would I wear? Who would I sit by? What if my only friend wasn’t going?

Often, we arrived at church an hour early to visit with the elderly folks. I usually spent that time camping out in the bathroom, biting my nails in anticipation.

Because I attended a school with no classmates from church, I had no friends at church. I was ignored by the girls at Sunday School. It didn’t help that my parents forbade us to wear necklaces, bracelets, or rings, the only jewelry allowed in church. We also weren’t allowed to curl or straighten our hair. Trust me, this did not help with my middle school desire to be popular.

If I was considered peculiar by my Sunday School counterparts, I was an alien to my schoolmates. At least I could relate somewhat with those from church; at school, I was the only one in my grade who’d never seen "Lion King," let alone never watched TV. For this reason, I went out of my way to make friends with the foreign exchange students who seemed as lonely as I. This would be one of the best things that ever happened to me. I met Inka, an excitable and trustworthy girl from Finland who taught me my first swear word—and it was in Finnish! Another friend, Sofia, warmly shared her culture over bowls of Ecuadorian potato soup. 


I believe it was because of these friends that I am now out of the church, and for that I am grateful. At first, I was shocked at what they told me—movies and nail polish seemed like off-limit conversation topics, but later I welcomed their information with quiet satisfaction, ticking off the movies I’d seen at their homes, say, or knowing what a condom was, or learning how to make the sign of the cross over my head and chest. We talked about world poverty and fate, of divorces and religion.

Two years after my last foreign exchange friend returned to her motherland, I began paying attention to the sermons in church. I mean, seriously paying attention. It was a sort of revelation that may only come once—you know, when you’re looking around, thinking, “does everyone actually believe all this?” The minister, as usual, talked about how we were the one true faith, but this time I couldn’t stop thinking about my friends—one a nearly devout Catholic who was thousands of miles away in Ecuador, who literally didn’t know the name of my church. Granted, I’d heard those lines hundreds of times, but somehow the “world,” as it was talked about, seemed a dear friend, and the stakes appeared much higher for my “worldly” friends. Something wasn’t right. 


I’ll spare the details of my leaving—it was a brutal affair, and I’m not quite ready to talk about it. I will instead remark that I’ve repaired the relationships with most of my family members. Life isn’t such a chore as it once was. The church was my whole life, and I walked away from it. There’s still a scar, and I suppose there always will be, but hey—I’m okay with that. I had a great childhood and wonderful parents, truly. I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything. It’s beautiful, haunting, and I’m drawn to it. Makes for a great writing topic, too.

I feel I’m a much more spiritually inclined person than I ever was in the church. I no longer have the propensity to shy away from a stranger who’s overtly Jewish or Muslim. At the moment I’m into authors and theologians like Sarah Bessey and Rachel Held Evans, who argue that the Bible isn’t too big that we needn’t talk about the parts which trouble us.

I once broke fast with Muslim friends who never once looked at me the way I used to look at them. 


--Whitney

They Will Know You by Your Love

It's always interesting to hear what outsiders think of Laestadians, especially when they know next to nothing about them.

One day when I was in 6th grade in the little country school where my siblings and I were the only OALCers, I was surrounded in the school cafeteria by a group of angry girls. They accused me of saying that our classmate Michelle (a pretty but vapid girl whom I disliked) was going to hell because she was . . . Catholic.

I cried; I denied it. I had never said such a thing, and that much was true. Perhaps I felt bad, knowing that our religion taught that Catholics had "dead faith." But of more concern to my 12-year old soul was how did my classmates know? As far as I knew, nobody in town knew anything about our church.

Perhaps they knew enough. It was in all we didn't say, and all we didn't do, in the years we lived there. One's character is legible in one's actions.

I found an old thread on a mothering.com board about the OALC in Battle Ground. A member had inquired about affordable places to live. (If you aren't familiar with Mothering, it is sold in health food stores, and features articles on midwives, breastfeeding, nutrition, and healthy family living in general.) Here is a sampling from the thread:

From "AmyMay":

There is a large apostolic lutheran element out here, lots of women with lots of children (5-6 is not uncommon), wearing dresses (don't get me wrong, they look pretty chic to me, but frighteningly similar to each other), long hair, no makeup...again, nothing wrong with that, but it is a little disturbing to me, and I wonder what they are taught and told to look a certain way to "fit in" and be obedient to church rules and expectations....

In school, the apostolic children group together and can be very mean to outsiders coming into the area. It's taken my kids almost a year to feel like they are finally fitting in and making friends. There was lots of teasing because my son had long hair, and none of us go to church. Anything different and unusual to the local kids was up for discussion and teasing about. It was pretty hard on my sensitive, liberal-minded kids.

From "FlyingSpaghettiMama":

BUNHEADS! Dude, so few people know about the sublime religion that is Old Apostolic Lutheran. I hate to generalize, except when I do, and boy, they tend to be an intolerant, inbred (no really, they have to marry inside the church, and all the church members came over about 100 years ago, and all the names are very reused - check it out) grouches who hate pants-wearin' women and other liberals of all stripes. They really, really hate gay people. And like to run them down with their MONSTER TRUCKS. They terrify me, honestly, and they appear to enjoy terrifying others as well.

I would try to get your son outta there by high school age or have him transfer to a Vancouver school. Trust me. It only gets worse and more violent. It's rough going out there.

But Battle Ground (and environs) is very beautiful, for sure. Except for the AL problem . . .

. . . they're originally from Finland. It's too bad, you'd think a community that left in search of religious tolerance would be a lot more tolerant themselves. Like the mennonites!

From "kxsiven":

Mostly from Norway side though. The movement has at least 8 different branches here and none of them is that scary what you are writing about the 'American version'(fundamentalism is pretty much unknown here anyway). If I have understood right, small group got in disagreenment with the main group 100 years ago and they left. Today the movement is very very tiny and probably will have a natural death in coming years.

There is obvious stereotyping here. I suspect some accusations of "meanness" may be due (just as it was for me in 6th grade) to what is NOT being experienced. No invitations to playdates, birthdays and barbeques, no donations, no volunteering, etc. But OALCers being human, their doctrine may provide cover for some less-than-Christian behavior. I remember reasoning that it was okay, even preferable, to avoid Michelle. Only later did I realize how jealous I was (she was blonde! a cheerleader! popular!). My "beliefs" made it easier to dislike her than examine my own prejudice.

Isn't that how all prejudice works?

(The photo was taken by our 7-year old at the farmers market last Thursday. She fell in love with and used her allowance to buy the hand-made doll in the blue sweater, at right. She named her Madeline. The skin colors of the dolls was a complete non-issue, and I found myself surprised at my surprise that she didn't choose the one that looked most like her. Kids like her are going to change the world.)