Just beneath my skin is a religious zealot, full of fierce denunciation, austerity and ecstasy. Twenty years ago, I tried to kill him with intellectual ambition and respectable religion–and then finally with atheism. The attempt failed and, over the past few years, he and I have begun talking again. But that’s a story for another time. Today’s story is about the birth and early years of my inner zealot.
As I said in my last post, my teen years at Hilltop were busy. In addition to all the usual teenage activities, we were always traveling to revivals or special services or youth camps or campmeetings. We even flew to some of the more distant youth camps; for most of us, it was our first experience on an airplane.
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It’s not surprising, then, given my personality, that these repeated high doses of potent religion made me into one of the most committed Christians in my youth group. At some point, I began reading Leonard Ravenhill and A.W. Tozer, who both became heroes of mine. I was, often enough, a typical teenager (all the usual awkward, hormonal silliness) but throughout those years there was always within me a passion for genuine encounters with God.
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I framed this longing for religious experience in terms I learned from Leonard Ravenhill: revival. Many of our churches, I believed, were moribund; we needed more passionate worship and life-changing experiences. In addition to the booklet above, I wrote many articles for our church newsletter on these themes. I recorded interviews with a few of the elders in our church to get their stories of the “good old days”–because I was certain that in those days our churches had more frequent and consequential contact with God.
(This documentary footage of Holiness worship is the best I’ve found. There are more modern recordings but they don’t have the same manic energy. This one is perfect. The exhortations and gestures of the singer. The piano player–both his playing style and the way he’s backing up the lead singer. The simplicity and relentlessness of the song. (It was a favorite in our churches.) The dancing and speaking in tongues and shaking fits. The crowning glory is the final shot of the child sleeping through the chaos; I remember being that child, drifting in and out of sleep as the Holy Ghost walked among the pews, touching this person and that.)
While my local church never quite lived up to my impossible expectations, youth camps and campmeetings were the highlights of my year. A week of three or more services daily with great preachers in attendance and rollicking good music–it was heaven on earth. One time we heard a sermon on Hell, illustrated with a piece of hamburger dropped into pot of boiling water and closed with an audio recording of the camp choir acting out the fate of the damned, screaming and howling as they remembered all of their opportunities to repent. Another time we heard a message in tongues and its interpretation that called out the hidden sin of one of the preachers on the stage. Another time we saw the exorcism of a gay teenager who was told he was demon possessed; those of us who had not been baptized in the Holy Ghost were ordered to go to the back of the church, out of exit trajectory of the demon.
I could tell you a lot of stories, good and bad. I’ll end this part of the story with one of my experiences. One year at our local youth camp, my friend Andy sought for the baptism of the Holy Ghost in every service, to no avail. Finally the night came: Brother Mike B preached on “The Key to the Corn Crib” (about Joseph and his brothers, if I recall correctly). Andy prayed and prayed, sweating through his silk shirt, until finally he began to speak in tongues. The group helping him pray erupted. I became what we called “drunk on the Spirit.” Needless to say, I had never tasted alcohol to that point; needless to say, I’ve tasted plenty since then. My experience was exactly like being very drunk. I stumbled when I tried to walk. My speech was slurred. Everything seemed to be in a haze. I was slow to understand when people talked to me. At no point was I faking it. I was sufficiently delirious that it didn’t occur to me. I don’t recall exactly how long it lasted but it was on the order of a half-hour or more. Finally the experience began to fade. Reluctant for it to end, I began to try to make it last by faking and it immediately ceased. Stone cold sober.
Was that experience real? Of course it was! Is such an experience unique to Pentecostalism or even Christianity? No. Stuff like that happens all the time. Like every account of the strange or miraculous, it doesn’t prove anything about the truth claims of the religion in which it occurs. Personally, I hold that and some other strange religious experiences loosely in my hand. I am thankful for the experiences but I don’t place too much emphasis on them. They are fingers pointing to the mystery at the heart of things.