I am currently working on a book of my personal and spiritual journey.
I plan to publish a short excerpt from my writing every Thursday.
Today is an excerpt about growing in the culture of Christendom where there was little distinction between church and community.
From Chapter One
I grew up in Christian culture. My life was permeated by the world of church, Christian beliefs, Christian lifestyles and Christian values. All of my friends belonged to either the same church I did or to other Protestant churches that mirrored my life and my values. Even at school where religion took a back seat to religious practices I still never encountered (or maybe was not aware) of people whose lifestyle, values and beliefs ran counter to what I considered normal—that is, the culture of Christianity.
Photo by iStryfry@istryfry
This probably started even before my parents’ decision to sever their ties to the denomination known as the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA). My parents enrolled me in Cub Scouts in second grade. But already I was being introduced to this thing we call Christendom. This particular Cub Scout program was sponsored by the local Mormon church. All of our weekly meetings were in the home of the den mother, a lovely Mormon woman, and the mother of three boys, one of whom became a second-tier friend all the way through high school graduation. Big events were held in the fellowship hall of the Mormon Church such as the Pinewood Derby and awards’ ceremonies.
Our family was so assimilated into this culture that when the Mormon Church decided to do some re-landscaping to make room for a parking lot, my dad dug out about thirty lilac bushes from the church property and lined two sides of our backyard with those bushes. In later years, it became a real source of pride for our family as these bushes grew to eight feet tall and perfumed our entire block with their pungent aromatic smells.
We weren’t Mormon and yet I was introduced to scouting through the Mormon Church. The Mormon church building was as familiar to me as the local hamburger joint a mile from our house. And, if ever you needed an image of what it is like to “live in Christendom” those lilac bushes that surrounded much of our backyard served as a reminder that there basically was no boundary between our lives on Sheridan Ave. and the life of the church. Christianity permeated everything we did all the way down to those aromatic lilac bushes that bordered our property.