Why I Stopped Going To Church: Sunday School and Farting In Church

After my mother got saved, we started going to church. That is, my mother and I started going to church. My grandmother had always gone to church. Her church. The Methodist church on Hoopes Rd.

My grandfather didn’t go to church. He was a lifelong practitioner of the Do As I Say, Not As I Do school of parenting. After I stopped going to church, sometime in my 20s, I got all kinds of hell from him; even though he didn’t go to church. And it was about that time that he did, in fact, start going to church. I like to think he got tired of his own hypocrisy. But maybe he started going for other reasons. Like, maybe he was lonely.

He stopped driving about this time, because of his eyesight. So maybe he figured he could motivate me to drive him to church. And that way his Sunday morning loneliness would go away; AND he would get that other thing he wanted, which was for me to go to church.

At any rate, in 1968, shortly after getting saved, my mother decided that we (meaning, she and I) would start going to Bethel Baptist Church. Looking back, I can’t fathom why my mother would go anywhere near a Baptist church, given that her father — with whom she maintained a contentious relationship (to put it mildly) all my life — was Baptist. Why didn’t we simply go to her mother’s Methodist church; which was much closer to home? I still don’t know.

Best thing about Bethel Baptist Church for me was Sunday School. The lady who ran the class for six-year-olds was a good storyteller. I still remember the picture books about Noah’s arc, David and Goliath, and Onan spilling his seed on the ground. (That last one was just to make sure you’re still with me.)

The 2nd-best thing about Bethel Baptist was farting in church and playing hangman on the bulletin during the sermon. “Just wait’ll I get you home!” my mother would whisper. But she never meant it, because she was always laughing while she said it.