Naperville, IllinoisWhen I finally managed to drop out of the Nazarene church, my parents told me, "You don't have to be a Nazarene, but you can't be a heathen! Find another church to go to!"
So I tried Presbyterian and Lutheran churches, and, during my senior year at Augustana College, the Baptist Student Fellowship.
My parents were not pleased.
Nazarenes thought that Baptists were the most evil of the "so-called Christians." At least the Lutherans were open about worshipping idols, and the Presbyterians about tearing apart the Bible, but the Baptists were almost identical to Nazarenes.
The only differences that I could see:
1. Baptism. The Nazarene Manual mentioned baptism, but in all my years as a Nazarene, I had never seen it done. Baptists required it for everybody.
2. "Once saved, always saved." Nazarenes believed that after you got saved, you could backslide -- commit more sins -- and have to be saved all over again. For Baptists, once was enough -- after you were saved, you would go to heaven no matter what you did.
When I was a kid, the older boys at church whispered that due to "once saved, always saved," Baptists had no morals: hey would "put out" for anybody. So if you wanted a "sure thing" on a date, ask a Baptist girl.
What about Baptist boys? I joined the Baptist Student Union to see if they were also "easy," willing to "put out" for anybody.
Willing to get a BJ from a dude.At first glance, they seemed nearly as strict as the Nazarenes, exhorting each other to "stay pure" and "resist their urges." Like the Nazarenes, they taught that God hated homa-sekshuls, plus premarital sex and masturbation, any sexual act that wasn't intended to make a baby.
The main project of the Baptist Student Union year was putting on a musical about a guy who makes obnoxious come-ons to every girl in sight, until one of them invites him to church, where he gets saved and vows to "stay pure" until his wedding night. I only remember one song:
The Devil is alive and well on the Planet Earth.
The Devil is alive and well, and he can make you feel like hell....
Feel like hell was code for
Having erotic desires or giving in to them. But church elders disapproved of the bad language, so we changed the line to "send your soul to hell."
Beginning just after Christmas, we performed for youth groups at various Baptist churches in the area. Not only in Rock Island, but in Kewanee, Galesburg, Princeton, cities up to an hour's drive away.
Then one Sunday in the spring, we were booked by a church in Naperville, about three hours away -- too far to get home after the evening youth group. So we car-pooled on Sunday afternoon, and after our performance, church members gave us dinner and put us up for the night.
The four boys in the cast stayed with an elderly couple whose sons had grown up and moved away.
More Baptists after the break
