A Blow to My Innocence [This post is still under heavy construction.]

     Today in short hours following the graphic murder of a truly contemptible human being, whose person I would usually prefer not to allot the slightest bit of copy space, I learned a depressing piece of information. 

     Omigod! This hate-mongering Christian Nationalist considered himself a member of the Calvary Chapel Association! A fact I stumbled across skimming over his bio.

    CCA was the direct outgrowth of Pastor Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, the one and only teen church of early seventies fame so prominent and influential in evangelical Christian culture and music! I

    Calvary Chapel, with its message of loving acceptance, almost single-handedly begat the Jesus Movement or hippie Jesus Freaks. Even Time Magazine did a cover feature on the social phenomenal.

    The church also pioneered the nascent genre of Contemporary Christian Music, giving us Love Song and Maranatha Music. In 1971, these were like the melophonic and spiritual pinnacles of my young born-again days. Indeed, for the truly saved, they were part and parcel of the Jesus experience, love being the defining factor.

    It was deciding factor, three years prior to the movement's peak popularity, that made me come to  Christianity of my own accord. I did so precisely because the love, life and person of JC for me, epitomized so much of the anti-establishment, give-peace-a-chance, love-is-all-you-need, pacifistic, caring, world point-of-view I strove to emulate. 

    He was the quintessential hippie I dug back then.

 

 

   Whatever happened to the central premise that was Calvary Chapel's original emphasis, and Maranatha Music's literal theme if you like?! So I assumed. What became of their core notion; their working "tenet"? Somewhere along the way, the ministry lost its heart. 

     That I was dismayed by the tidbit I accidentally learned, was understandable to say the least, but that I was altogether surprised - the truth be told, I wasn't.

    More likely than not, I am a victim of my own projections, my desire to want to believe the best of people, beliefs, motives, and institutions. All too soon forgetting they, just like myself, are all too human. 

    What occurred? The 80's I believe. As evangelical Christianity grew with the influx of the young, it began feeling its political oats, especially that mainline, conservative part of the church that wasn't of the incoming youth set. We Jesus People were just the frivolous trimmings, the side show they tolerated, all the while envying our numbers. Pliable minds and fertile ground were we to inculcate and till - their way.

   Many of us, like myself, disenchanted with the conservative direction of the church, dropped out. I fell away, because at heart, I also believed in pursuing hard after truth. Truth with a small "t". Even as a born-again, I valued the right; the need to question - everything, including The Truth. Too much of far left progressive and pacifist was I, smack dab in a den of right-wingers and Republicans, to ever capitulate! So their political ideology was never going to sway me, and those like me, to their ulterior, uncompassionate, world view. 

   Love drew me to the church, lack of it led me to leave. I wish my skepticism had played a role in my departure, but that 'muscle' was only just beginning to develop in me at the end of my tenure as a Christian.

    Eventually, I became an atheist, a "eupraxsophist" to be specific, with the philosophy of "practicing good" towards others as well as towards myself. Love and pacifism still motivate me. Art, fer sure, as well. Science too.

    What has all this digression to do with my topic?  Well, despite the cynic in me, the years of watching the depths of inhumanity we humans can reach, I still want to believe the better of things. Perhaps, to the point of coloring over the past. I want to believe we were capable of innocence and can still achieve it, if only briefly.

   I know better.

   That the church I once admired from afar, that touched my youthhood can produce or allow such a vicious, vile, vehemently spiteful, callous and cruel hatemonger - antithetical to all its earlier professed values - to associate themselves with it. Well, my innocence still has the capacity to be stunned and shattered..

     Nothing is sacred.

 

T

 

 

Time Magazine June 21, 1971. Cover art by Stanislaw Zagorski 

 

From Time Magazine's feature story. Pastor Chuck Smith carries a young paralytic to a mass baptism in the Pacific at Corona del Mar, California. Photo by Julian Wasser. 

An early poster from the Jesus Movement, whose text Time Magazine quotes at the start of their exposé.

'The Christ' (1962) The Richard Hook painting popularized by the Jesus Movement.

T

 

 

 

T

 But I am not surprised.

 All sound and fury, signifying nothing.

 Helpless rag doll.

 

Cut down

By their fruits

Live by the sword Die by the sword

Reap what they sow

"Hoist with his own petard" William Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' Act 3, Scene 4 (The speech, to which the relevant phrase was a part, was deleted in a number of Shakespeare's early and later manuscripts, leading some authorities to believe this was an actual cut intended by the Bard. Other experts disagree.)

 

Despised empathy

Collateral damage 

 

Betty Bowers remark 

How You Die Does Not Redeem How You Lived

 

Unfriended a "family" member who said they were going to 'unfriend" anyone  expressing little pity My parting comment "Empathy for a man who despised it? I'll save you the trouble and goodbye."

 T

 

    Not to be flippant or facetious, but I am reminded of an old Gahan Wilson cartoon from Playboy. 

 

     Nope. Not even my supposed innocency.

T