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My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood

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I picked this book up on a whim because its title caught my eye. I'm not a reader of memoirs, but since I also came from a fundamentalist/evangelical background similar in many ways to the author's, I figured it might be of interest. I was right. Rosen has done a superb job in this book and its writing style and charm, coupled with my occasional outbursts of laughter led me to finish it in one afternoon and evening.

For those of us who come from this background, it is easy to see reflections of our own life experiences in her memoir. Rosen perfectly captures the mixture of seriousness and comic amusement that accompanies the experience of growing up in fundamentalism. Being of the same age range as Rosen, I can not only relate to the curious lifestyle of fundamentalism (it is definitely a lifestyle) but I remember watching the exact same End Times movies and hearing the exact same historical events she describes used to appropriate apocalyptic prophecy. Its historical context made the book an especially poignant and thoughtful experience for me. And her descriptions of the interactions among the competing views of fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and charismatic Pentecostalism are an accurate depiction of how these worlds intersect in so many ways.

Rosen is most brilliant when she subtly conveys the innocent intentions of those who firmly believe that they are doing God's work, while at the same time indoctrinating the minds of young people and stifling independent thought. This environment is a strange mixture of compassion, kindness, love, yet at the same time, dogma, intolerance of dissent, and radical closed-mindedness. It is an environment where individuals, especially young people, can connect in groups of like-minded others, establish deep friendships, and experience real joy, while at the same time the intellectual straitjacket grows tighter and tighter. It is very much a world of dichotomy where all are welcome as equals and saints of God (fundamentalists hold that all believers are saints) and "heresy" is carefully guarded against and rooted out. It is not an environment that welcomes critical thought. Rosen brilliantly portrays this and the perspective of a young child gives this book a sense of charm, deep nostalgia, and subtle comedy. I found myself bursting into barely-controlled laughter at many points.

For some of us (how many is unknown, conversion stories to evangelicalism are more popular than are the reverse) there comes a point when a stark choice becomes clear and unavoidable: one must choose the life of the faith or the life of the mind. Choosing the latter entails a sad divorce, because within fundamentalism, one simply cannot pursue both lives with vigor. Like Rosen, I chose the life of the mind, and am no longer a believing Christian, let alone a fundamentalist. But it is not an easy choice. As Rosen so movingly tells us, the life of fundamentalism is one of a comforting straitjacket. It is a life of dichotomy and contradiction where love and certainty is valued above intellectual honesty. The deep emotional need for certainty can never be met in the life of the mind, and that need, coupled with the deep acceptance one can experience in these environments is what is so powerful about these movements.

It has been difficult for me to view my fundamentalist past with the nostalgia that Rosen has come to, valuing and appreciating the positive without concealing the negative, as I'm sure it is for many people from these backgrounds. Perhaps Rosen's charming memoir can help us do so.

The Rapture. The Anti-Christ. Satanic subliminals in rock music. Creation in six days. Fear of sex. Self-loathing. Bad polyesther uniforms. Welcome to Keswick Christian, St. Petersburg, Florida's fundamentalist Christian school. Welcome to your fundamentalist Christian education.

In an era where a majority of Americans believe in creationism, the "born-again" President of our country sends "coded" messages to "believers" through speeches on stages in the shape of a cross, "faith-based" non-profits are taking over for governmental services, and "men of god" are making political speeches from their tax-exempt pulpits, Christene Rosen's "My Fundamentalist Education" should be required reading for all those "Blue Staters" trying to understand the mindset of fundamentalist Christians. Her well-written and entertaining memoir strikes home, laying bare what is taught and thought behind the doors of exclusionary fundamentalist churches and schools, and provides insights into the people who read the "Left Behind" series, whose cars have fish symbols and bumper stickers stating "In case of rapture, this car will be empty", whose favorite book is the Bible - which is (of course) literally true, and who believe in the creationist theory of Intelligent Design, in spite of the lack of evidence for it and the preponderance of evidence supporting Darwin's "dangerous idea" of evolution.

Rosen's book is an accurate and compelling recount of her time at Keswick Christian while living in the retirement town of St. Petersburg, Florida (its unofficial motto "The old people live in Miami, their parents live here"). How do I know? My three sisters and I went to Keswick at roughly the same time she did (I spent my 5th to 8th grades there - from 1975-1979, my little sister went there until from kindergarten to 8th grade) - however, unlike Rosen's experiences, which she remembers somewhat fondly, mine aren't so benign. As a new kid with few social skills, the "Christianity" of the students there did not seem so evident in their initial bullying of an outsider. The Bible (King James Version, of course), was the major textbook and while the constant memorizing of verses was pedagogically useful, and the school provided a solid education in reading (especially in Olde English) and writing, science was quite lacking, as can be expected from those believing in a 6-day creation. However, what can be considered most disturbing about such an education and the beliefs that derive from it (as I experienced it) is the belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, in spite of multiple internal contradictions, and the willingness of those in power to use its verses, often out of context, to control social behavior, such as how one dressed and acted. In my experience there, religion became a bludgeon, with the ever-present threat of the rapture and being "left-behind" scaring children into unquestioning obedience, the potential for pregnancy through boys and girls holding hands (yes, my elder sisters' classes were told this by the school's chaplain) confusing us, and the King James Version of the Bible providing an unassailable rationale for a variety of "un-Christlike" behaviors. Probably most disturbing for me in the end was that the insularity of the school and its beliefs led to spiritual breakdowns when the reality of everyday life confronted the teachings of fundamentalist beliefs.

What one may take away from reading "My Fundamentalist Education", and what I took away from my very own fundamentalist education, is that while the teachings of the Bible and Jesus can provide a moral background and spiritual enlightenment, the insularity of fundamentalist Christianity, now becoming more pervasive in our country, is a way of hiding from the often difficult and complex reality of life, and provides an easy way of blaming complex societal problems on easy bogeyman, thus evading responsibility without dealing with the problems themselves. After all, if you are a "believer" the rapture will take you before the problems need to be solved.

The school that the author attends in this book reminds me of many parts of my childhood. I didn't go to a Christian school, but in our small town there were many clubs and Sunday Schools and Vacation Bible Schools and Good News Clubs and Pioneer Clubs and so on! My parents loved to get free child care and have us out of the house for a bit, so even if they didn't believe what was being taught to us, they had us attend many of these religious clubs and events. The mostly kind, mostly truly caring people at Christine's school remind me of most of the people I encountered at these clubs---true believers, who did their best to practice what they preached. In this day and age of such separation between blue states and red, believers and not, we often get distorted views of deeply religious people. Although my own beliefs waver often and are not at all fundamentalist, I, like the author, am glad to have had the experience of reading the King James Bible and meeting religious people. This book is very well written, humorous without being flip, and most of all kind. I really enjoyed reading it.

When I read the St. Petersburg Times article announcing this book, I knew I had to read it. When I picked it up at my local library, I gritted my teeth, expecting to be eviscerated by a bitter cynic. Instead, what I found was a thoughtfully written piece about growing up and the influences that shape our world view. I graduated from Keswick while Christine was attending elementary school, but the biggest grin was her reference to the guys by the pickup truck with the Ayatollah sign. All those guys were my friends from my graduating class (we were seniors that year) - and I can tell you that all of them grew up - like Christine - as free thinking, contributing members of society. I guess that having a firm foundation in the bible isn't a bad place to begin your education.

The only puzzling but necessary part of the book were the name changes of the teachers and students. I was able to identify most of the people she referenced by her descriptions, including the principal and head master, but it did make for some puzzling reading at first.

My experience at Keswick was "mixed" as well, with some pretty horrific experiences, like being banned from the library and the bus my last two years at school, but also positive, like meeting my future wife and having a very weird and memorable time at school. Having boundaries is an important part of growing up - and Keswick certainly created those! What fun is it to misbehave if you don't get in trouble?

Christine puts the "FUN" back into FUNdamental education. So, as a fellow Keswickian married to another Keswickian - thank you.

This is a fun book to read, and sure does hit the nail on the head. It tells it like it is-- what goes on in funadmentalist churches, and Pentecostal churhes. I've been to both, and the author's descriptions of her reactions and feelings matched my own so closely I felt like saying "Yes ! That happened to me too!" She has written a book that most anyone who loves their church can relate to. And those of us who have cringed at the far-out actions of people who get carried away with their emotions can smile at. She tells the good and the silly, and does it in an entertaining way.

With remarkable detail and alacrity, Rosen recalls her childhood experiences at St. Petersburg's Keswick Christian School. Her Mother was and is a Pentecostal believer, divorced from her Father and remarried, so every other weekend Rosen and her sisters bounced from their Father and new Mom's home to "BioMom's" with accompanying differences in religious views and practices.

The author at times borders on biting the hand that fed her, making fun of her Mother, questioning various aspects of her experience, and in the end rejecting Christian faith. According to her, Rosen is not religious today in any particular way, a choice that is reinforced by her marriage to a non-religious Jew. So she believes she has outgrown what she was taught, and she believes she stands above and outside of it. Yet she acknowledges that she learned, she was loved, she was offered security, spiritually and otherwise, in a faith community, and she recognizes today that her BioMom was not as wacky as she once considered her.

Having grown up in a very conservative religious, even fundamentalist home, I recognized some of the author's experience, including both the stressful and funny parts. I didn't identify with her angst, so I wonder how much of her feelings and eventual spiritual decision-making are rooted in what some call a "broken home," i.e. parents who divorced when kids had no say in it, and how much of her present worldview is actually grounded in her youthful religious exposure. It's hard to say.

This book is slow moving at times and at others is clearly a book written by a woman for women, but it is also a case study in how someone processes her faith-based upbringing from the vantage point of faithless adulthood.

It's an odd book, and I mean that positively in the sense that it is a rare take on a religious-to-irreligious experience. Those of us who remain religious, especially those of us who are Christian, need to read more stories like this and interact more with people with this experience. It would be all the better for our understanding and perhaps theirs too.

I recommend the book for those with a good understanding of their religious faith.

This book gives a very descriptive and I suppose realistic picture of what it is to grow up with a fundamentalist education. I was raised in the Catholic religion so I can't say for sure whether this is an honest portrayal, but I would guess that it is. I certainly empathize with Rosen because I don't think that it's right to scare a child into accepting Jesus and staying on the straight and narrow. Showing scary movies about the end times to impressionable young children is over-the-top and to the point of being emotionally abusive.

I tend to get it quickly, though. A few descriptive paragraphs about fundamentalist education would be enough to show me that this is not the most ideal way for young children to be taught to have religious faith. There was a bit too much detail for me, but of course in this way Rosen showed just how she was immersed in her religion much the way she was immersed in the water when she was baptized. She wanted to show us that no half-measures were taken here. The fundamentalists literally took over her life.

The sad part is that it appears that she has lost her faith although she won't come out and say whether she still believes in God and Jesus. She tells us that she hasn't discarded her Bible and still reads it on occasion. She states that she thinks that it would be a shame to skip reading the Bible--that it has "beauty and power." She emphasizes that she learned a great deal from the fundamentalists about music, language, and helping others. Perhaps she doesn't say whether she still believes because she doesn't want to influence others. She is too connected to the roots of Christianity to tell people that there's nothing to it. This, to me, is a good thing. I just wish that she could come out and say that she still believes--that she hasn't "thrown out the baby with the bathwater" as so many disillusioned people do.

Aside from her disenchantment with the fundamentalists, she adds a few points she heard from a young Catholic friend but never does any research to see whether the information is true. Catholics don't worship the Virgin Mary as her young friend supposedly told her. It is true that indulgences were popular many years ago, but I haven't heard about any in years nor would I put any stock in them if I did.

I hope that if Rosen has abandoned her faith completely that she will eventually come to believe again. One doesn't have to choose the "life of the mind" over a life of faith in God. It's not an either-or proposition. Many Christians believe in evolution (in fact, it's considered fine for Catholics to believe in evolution). Many Christians are scientists and mathematicians and great thinkers and writers.

I attended Keswick, from kindergarten through graduation. Yes, 13 achingly long years. And to think that my mother and siblings and I went without so many of life's necessities (i.e., pest control) just so my mother could afford the tuition. From the horrible movies of the "tribulation" (Distant Thunder and Image of the Beast), to the scanner at Publix being a tool of the devil (think 666, mark of the beast), to thinking the rapture had occurred when hearing an ambulance siren, to the boycott of 7-11. I do not recollect my years at Keswick with the same fondness or gratefulness as the author, but it was somewhat comforting to read this book and realize that others, at the time we shared these experiences, felt the same as I (even if we do differ now on our feelings in retrospect).

Here in Kansas and recently in Dover, Pennsylvania, the big conversation in the public square revolves around science standards and the teaching of Intelligent Design as science in public schools. Christine Rosen's childhood memoir provides an alternative way to frame a conversation about the role of faith, scientific thought and psychological development in shaping our moral life together. By facing squarely the question "How enduring is childhood faith?" Ms. Rosen faces squarely but with humor and compassion the real fear that we all must face when staring into the abyss. Fundamentalist Christians have given voice to what we all must feel when standing on the precipice of this abyss while humanity seems to surge forward driven by an impersonal moral code based not on biblical inerrancy but on random natural selection, adaptation and genetic survival. This memoir of a divine girlhood should be required reading for the secular mind and the person of faith seeking more civil, humane and compassionate discourse in the public square.

It's kind of a wonder to me that Dr. Rosen can look back on her fundamentalist education with as much fondness as she does. This kind of an education must have been very difficult for a young child to handle. It also must have left her woefully unprepared for her later studies to get her Ph.D. in a real university.

Yet it appears that she was able to use her religious education as a starting point. As she rejected the fundamentalist teaching in areas like moral certainty she was able to broaden her outlook to better understand all people. The illogical beliefs in the Bible enabled her to explore unorthodox ideas in all fields.

I can only hope that the children being raised in other fundamentalist schools such as the Muslim schools where the only book is the Qur'ran will likewise produce people who question the idea that suicide bombing is the best way to live their short life.