Written in response to the question: Can Leaving Your Faith Turn You Into A Conspiracy Theorist? posted at ExChristian.net.

Possibly the single most potent force that drove me to seek concrete evidence for everything (that Christians so hate) was the high levels of suspicion and superstition that my parents applied to everything in life--not only religious stuff. Coincidence was evidence of God's existence, according to my mother. The phase of the moon was responsible for the weather, according to my father. The government was out to get us (conspiracy theory), according to the church.

Wow, writing that last sentence puts me in touch with a deep terror. I see myself as a child back in the old kitchen in the sixties and hear my parents' discussing the world situation in frightened tones.

If I put it in historical context, I understand why they are frightened. They grew up during World War II. Their childhood memories barely go back to before WW2 started. And it lasted most of their childhood. Many and many a dinner conversation of my childhood centres on their childhood memories of The War. They blank out the terror; what I get is the glory of war. I get the impression that the world is not complete if one does not live through a war so I seek for a war to make my own childhood complete. Finally, I learn about the Vietnam War, but it doesn't quite match The War because there are no drills on the highway outside our school and no army planes fly low over the countryside. Nor are our young men drafted or forced to go to work camps.

However, the sixties were right in the thick of the Cold War and the terror of a Commie takeover was real. It was palpable. You could almost cut it with a knife. This is what my parents feared; it is what the church feared. It was also during this time that more Mennonite history was unearthed--how the European State Churches had persecuted our forebears before we came to North America. Living memory told horror stories of how the Mennonites had been hounded out of the USSR when the Red Army (Communists) took over only a few short decades earlier. Stalin may have been dead by the time I was born but just barely.

When I took a history course at the secular university, I learned that the "Red scare" was not just a Mennonite thing, it was very wide-spread. The prof talked about the fear of a "Red behind every tree, under every bed." He said it so that it rhymed but I forget how. In such an atmosphere, it was easy for Tim LaHaye to sell books like his Left Behind series. In sociology, they say fundamentalist religion thrives when people feel socially unstable. The other day I was reading church history about the Byzantine Church. It had been a fairly open-minded, liberal, and educated church from the apostles up to the Ottoman Empire. But under the Ottoman Empire, things changed because of religious oppression. The sultan, or whoever, appointed the Patriarch for the Church, and a new one kept being appointed every few years. Suddenly, religion became strict and fundamentalist. I guess it was the only thing people could depend on the remain the same. We all know what happens to organizations where top leadership keeps changing and is basically unstable. The organization as a whole suffers. That is what I saw.

Apply that to the 20th century West, esp. North America, or the US. Right after the war, during the fifties, the churches were full and expanding. But then the sixties came and people stopped going to church. As stated above, it was also the time of the Red Scare. Scholars have pointed out that certain kinds of churches emptied out. Other kinds of churches began to grow, and expand, and become more politically active. By about 1970, the Religious Right came onto the scene.

I could patch together a lot more stuff to make my argument even stronger but I haven't done sufficient research to know if it all hangs together historically and sociologically so I better leave it. It just seems as though the argument could be made that some of the conspiracy theory we see among fundamentalist religion today may be self-fulfilling prophecy as a result from the Red Scare. People think god is the only solid thing.

All these natural explanations for the things as they exist help reduce the fear and terror. So no, I think leaving religion liberated me from conspiracy theories. Christians accuse me of such fears but I don't know where they get their ideas. Maybe they are projecting their own fears onto me? Given that they think every atheist is out to get them, that would stand to reason....

Originally posted here in response to the question: How much wriggle room did you have at your church?



Emphasis added.

VC, I haven't read the rest of this thread yet but I want to comment on this post. This pattern agrees exactly with the Mennonite community. If I remember correctly, your working on a doctorate in sociology, so maybe I can explain in a way that it makes sense. The conservative Mennonite situation in Southern Ontario is seriously complex to outsiders but it is seriously important to insiders to keep every last group totally separate from every other group. Group identity is a huge issue. "We are better than [fill in the blank] because [fill in the blank]" is the attitude of all groups. No one has education beyond Grade 8 or 10. All are agriculture-based and live by a conservative-to-liberal system based on a material-theological system inherited from the German Peasants of the 1500s. So far as I know, the KJV is bedrock truth for English-speaking denominations and Martin Luther's German Bible for the others. I'm sure no one is more distantly related than 6th cousin and they all live in a geographical square of rural country about fifteen miles across each way. Everyone knows everyone else and few "strangers" or "outsiders" live in that area.

I'll list the denominations or groups from ultra conservative to liberal:

Horse and buggy 1 too small to organize, eventually moved to another area to organize and are now thriving; drew membership from the other two horse and buggy groups, and also from the States.
Horse and buggy 2 (HB2) very large stand-alone group, rumor has it that shot-gun weddings are frequent; very poor relations with other groups.
Horse and buggy 3 Old Order Mennonite (OOM; my group) largest conservative Mennonite group in the province by the count of one sociologist though not all live inside this fifteen mile square
Black Car 1 share schools and meeting houses (meet on separate Sundays) with OOM, but use cars and fancier dress and large farm implements
Black Car 2 split from Black Car 1. Not sure why. possibly allow music on tapes or CD.
Black Car 3 Black Car 3&4 are into evangelical teachings but retain different levels of the plain garb and lifestyle. Allow radio
Black Car 4 fancier cars (not totally black) is about all I know but I don't know too much about them; they all look the same to me. Allow radio. Marriage for life and no premarrital sex from this group up.
Modern Mennonite live and dress like mainstream society; no dress code. TV, cut hair and no prayer veil for women, also pants on women and female preachers. Vary all the way across the spectrum from conservative to progressive re contemporary issues. Divorce and remarriage are seen as inevitable, though unfortunate, issues of life. I did not know any divorced individuals in the modern Mennonite community of that geographical area. Advanced university degrees are allowed.
Evangelical (don't call themselves Mennonite but are of the same biological stock) Very few in the rural area and greatly feared because of their subtle evangelizing tricks. High-school and university education. I don't know much about them.

VC, in your descriptions of the two "southern" Christian groups of the US, I think the OOM compare with the Californians and the HB2 group with the Southerners. The OOM mix rather freely with the other more liberal Mennonite groups in the area socially and for education and work. Very seldom do they attend church in one of the other denominations, but doing so is not forbidden. They attend funerals quite freely at other denominations, except for the HB2 group; they don't feel welcome there. The other two horse and buggy groups don't; in their churches it is strictly forbidden to attend a funeral even for immediate family members.

Identity issues for the OOM are with the Black Car 1 group. Relationships are very open and free, yet it is considered a sin for the OOM to get driver's license or to marry one of that group. People will be automatically excommunicated if they do either. Many other items are not so clear-cut. Clothing patterns, home decor, and baby names, for example. The lines are blurred. But that is small stuff.

Take it to the theological level. Head-coverings for unmarried women was an issue when I was young. Age of baptism was another. A neighbour girl from Black Car 3 came to school with a head-covering when she was in Grade 8. None of us other Mennonite kids had ever seen such a thing. She got mocked out of the house, so to speak. She was older than I was. As I got older and read the Bible, I saw where it said women should have their hair covered. The OOM taught that this applied only to married women. This made no sense to me. Allegory was applied to most other things that were harder to figure out than this passage in Corinthians about the prayer veil. I was sure Paul meant for all females to wear a prayer veil when they prayed. And he said to pray without ceasing. I knew the Amish girls wore the head-covering. Why didn't our church teach it? I was age 12 to 14.

When I got baptized at age 17, I thought I should now do so. Mom wouldn't let me. She said all the churches that let young unmarried women wear the head-covering went more liberal. She mentioned some of the groups I listed above. So I had to choose between two clear commandments in the Bible: Wear a head-covering and Obey your parents. The book didn't cozy up to me and send me on guilt trips the way Mom did so I listened to her, though somewhat uneasily. We did profess to serve the same God all the other churches did.

The Black Car 3 girl had gotten baptized at age 13 or 14, which is why she came to school with a head-covering. I wanted to get baptized at age 17, which was contraversially early for our church. My secret plan was to become a teacher the following year and I had heard my parents say that a girl should be baptized before she became a teacher. So I planned my life accordingly. (Nobody hired me, in the end even though I was qualified, but that's another story.)

So here's the pattern: Evangelicalism=prayer veil and early baptism.
Black Car 3 was into evangelicalism. Black Car 1 was slowly drifting in that direction. There was no Black Car 2 in our immediate neighbourhood. Our group would be next if nobody dug in their heels.

My mother remembered the days when the Modern Mennonite women wore the prayer veil. My study of Mennonite history shows that around 1960 the Modern Mennonites decided to let go of the dress code. I was about four years old at the time. My mother would remember the trend very well. She had a sister and family in that church. That church was into evangelicalism, missionary work, and I think back then they were baptizing children (as in eight-year-olds; not infants). Well, my mother very definitely did not want to contribute to this liberal trend so she did not let me wear a head-covering either at age 14 or at age 17 when I got baptized. We wore one for church but that's all.

Another "iffy" issue was the conscience against dancing that some of us young people were developing. That, too, was a "new trend" coming in from the Black Car 1 and 3 that was new for our parents. The same goes for some of the new hymnbooks we wanted to use for our gatherings. Mom managed to make us feel guilty for everything we did. I managed to find spiritual defenses/arguments because it was impossible to live up to all her protests. Not to mention that the protests against the "no dancing" idea made absolutely no sense; I think the Bible says God killed a batch of people for dancing. Of course, David got to dance naked--just one more of his doings that one had to pretend wasn't meant the way it sounded.

When I joined the Modern Mennonites, people of my generation talked about not being allowed to dance when they had been young, and how wrong it was to have been deprived of that fun. They talked about having had to wear the head-covering and thick black stockings and how oppressive that had been. They now attended worship service with beautiful long hair and bare legs. As for the hymnbooks--what was new for us had been from their parents' generation. None of this mattered to me.

They couldn't begin to sing as good as my people had done even though they had piano and other instrumental accompaniment. We had no instruments. Their endeavors at identifying with me fell so far short I wished they'd answer my questions and listen to my problems, rather than assume they knew it all. And when they told me certain types of education were frowned upon--they might as well have talked to a dead and rotted tree stump. They had no actual rule against advanced degrees and that was what mattered.

In the end, I quit going to church long before I finished my MA and I'm not going further. That should make them all happy. Except that I kicked out god.

Oops!

Anyway, I wanted to say that your thesis about the Southerners and Californians makes a great deal of sense when I compare it with the Mennonites in Southern Ontario. The groups that have to fight for identity seem to have stricter rules for their young people than the groups that feel secure because they lack competition. I cannot verify whether the HB2 group is more promiscuous than the OOM. However, they seem not to be part of the trend for items like head-coverings. All the groups have changed over the past forty years. I would say the HB2 group followed a different pattern of change from the other groups.

For example, they have cell phones and internet access for their businesses, but forbid rubber tires on their buggies and tractors for field work. All the other groups except HB1 have rubber tires on their buggy wheels (only one) and tractors for field work.

There is no option in the poll for such clear-cut rules that are the back-bone of how my life has always been structured, and how society has always been organized in my mind. It's taken every minute of all the years since the mid-90s to get where I am today--from feeling conscience-driven to wear a head-covering to feeling confident walking the city streets bareheaded and comfortable among university students or the homeless. I can't imagine ever getting rid of the traditional dress because it is who I am. Thanks for starting this thread; there's not many opportunities where it feels appropriate to talk about these things in detail yet they are important to my transition.

VC mentions Mennonites he saw as a kid in North California and wonders what kind they would have been.

My response:

About the Mennonites you saw in California, which to us in Ontario equals West Coast. There are many branches of the Mennonite Church globally. What you saw sounds like one of the Plain People groups but I have no idea which one.

Ready for a history lesson? Here goes. Reformation Europe about 1525 is the classical date for the first baptism of the Anabaptist movement. About 1539 the Dutch RC priest Menno Simons joined the Anabaptist Movement, which eventually became known as the Mennonites. About 1693, due to a disagreement, the Mennonites and Amish split while still in Europe under persecution by the powerful State Churches. I mention the perscution because the OOMs were always saying if we (present generation) lived in persecution times we would be more cooperative and not so worldly-minded.

In their search for refuge from persecution, in the 1700s, the Mennonites living in the Switzerland/Germany/Austria area crossed the Atlantic to Pennsylvania (upon the invitation of Quaker William Penn), and those living in the Netherlands traveled east to Prussia and the Ukraine upon invitation of those governments. This is using very rough geographical areas because the Mennonites lived all over the place wherever they could find shelter. They had proved to be excellent farmers capable of coaxing bad land back into fertility. Today, Mennonites are broadly divided into two main sub-cultures: Swiss Mennonite and Russian Mennonite. "And ne'er the twain shall meet."

The Mennonites I described in my other post were all Swiss Mennonites. I forgot to mention the Russian Mennonites because, so far as I can determine, on the conservative level they operate by a totally different material-theological cultural system. The Mennonites on the West Coast are highly likely to be Russian Mennonite, though I could be wrong. There are ex-Mennonite members here on exC from the West (rightly or wrongly, as an Ontarian I consider anything west of this province to be "West") who would be more knowledgeable on this than I am.

In the really liberal churches, here in Ontario, the Russian and Swiss Mennonites have tried mergers of congregations, and on the private level there have been successful marriages. In the very conservative groups of both cultures (horse and buggy level*), effort has been put forth from all sides for cooperation regarding education, housing, and employment. There have been successes but mostly it has been riven with conflict and confusion; language barriers abound. The conservative Russian Mennonites who live in Ontario mostly come from Mexico, or are second generation Mexican Mennonites. The German they speak in Mexico differs significantly from our German so that we OOM cannot understand them. They claim to understand us. I don't have any first-hand knowledge of how things are on the intermediate or "black car" level, i.e. how the two cultures relate.

I am of the impression that there are large thriving communities of "intermediate" Russian Mennonites in the American and Canadian West, in Brazil, and possibly in other South American countries. What you describe having seen in California could have been such a group. It could have been Hutterite, Holdeman, or some other splinter. Your father would be more likely to know the name of the group than I am, if he dated one of the girls. Since he said they were Mennonite they probably were. This may give you a larger context within which to place them. Frank E. Epp's Mennonites in Canada is on my reading list. Most of what I know was "catch as catch can."

*Various Mexican Mennonite families rented (in succession) the other part of the house my sister and I lived in. They said that in Mexico they used horse and wagon transportation; one lady who went to school in Ontario (and spoke good English) and moved back and forth between the two countries all her life, showed me a photograph. We learned from various sources that they consider it to be inhumanely cold in Ontario to use horse and wagon transportation so they are allowed, while here, to use motor vehicles. What they parked in front of our house looked like stuff they pulled from the dump and fixed up. Those men are expert machanics and expert drivers. No matter how much snow was in the laneway, or how drunk they were, they could and would get through. They would motor off to Mexico like other people hop on a plane.