UPC & The afterlife (as in finally seeing the light)

Sometimes after reading some of the blogs I visit regularly, I get inspired to branch out from their topic and write about my own experiences or opinions.  This opinion is coming straight out of my experiences being raised in a UPC/Apostolic church and consequently going to their school.

The summer before I turned 5 a new family moved across the street from us and had a daughter who was my age and a son who was my brother’s age. Soon the daughter and I would be inching down as close to the edge of the lawn on opposing sides of the street to yell out typical 4 year old questions like “What’s your name” , “How old are you” & “Will your mommy let you come over and play with me”. After sometime of constant pressure from both of use, our moms gave in and met each other. And thus began the most blissfully perfect time of my childhood.

After our parents become friends I started attending Sunday school with my friend. Soon after my Mom began attending the church, and hear that they were starting up a new school. They touted it as “The School of Tomorrow” with a good solid Christian education and a work-at-your-own-pace learning system. Now ideally I guess it was so people who were fast learners wouldn’t become bored and those who were slow wouldn’t feel left behind and could still attend school the next year with their same friends. All in all though, the system is a failure.

At the tender age of 5 I was enrolled in the first year of this school. I was one out of 10 students of varying ages and only 1 of 2 in kindergarten. We wore homemade navy blue Swiss dotted skirts, white long sleeve blouses and a hideous red ribbon tied in a bow through the collar (kinda like a patriotic throwback tot he 70s).

I started to notice that I didn’t see my non-Apostolic friends as much. Because somehow in the eyes of the pastor, you had to protect your kids from the influences of the secular world. Which I guess meant the 5 year old boy down the street was going to get me pregnant and start smoking crack with me? We soon were not allowed to go to the movies (Because we all know how much porn & abomination kids movies contain, right?), watch TV (I don’t know about you all, but Scooby-Doo always made me want to worship Satan) or have a Christmas tree (all those demons……well you get the point).

I always felt alienated from other people I saw in the stores & neighborhood. They were different from me, and I stood out like a sore thumb. I had long frizzy hair that I was forbidden to cut, I couldn’t use make-up to at least hide my horrendous acne when I had pictures taken and my clothes were something out of a Laura Ingalls Wilder nightmare. Who wears heavy skirts down to your ankles and long sleeves in the Florida summer? I did. And so did all my Apostolic friends.

Whenever our school went on field trips to a public place (i.e. Science Center, Disney World) we were mocked and laughed at. It was beyond humiliating. At our school I do believe we had more teachers that hadn’t graduated high school than those who had. Most of them should never had been around kids. Including one male who seemed to be a little too flirtatious with the teen girls. Another one who I know for a fact never received a diploma, was the biggest racist, discriminating idiot ever, and she put my sister through hell on earth just because she didn’t fall into the delicate little princess category like all the other girls. Anyone who finds something wrong with a little girl who’d rather play sports than giggle with Barbie Dolls is the Anti-Christ themselves!

The overbearing sexist themes in everything we were taught were pretty disgusting too. The girls-only Home Ec. class would bake up some drudgery so that way they could feed it to the boys who got to go hang out at the beach and surf! In our PACEs (As the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum is known) were filled  with sexist and racist themes from grade 1 to 12.  Basically all females were steered toward the ideal careers of Homemaker, Librarian, Seamstress or Secretary (Pretty much only if you hadn’t managed to snag yourself one of the oh-so-desirable men we were supposed to serve).

Just so you know, I am not in any way exaggerating, I’m actually giving a tame version here.

We were also taught as females that we should *OBEY* our husbands, and taught disgusting 1920-ism like if the men are in a discussion we should just listen along unless on of them pretty much dumbs it down for us and asks us to join in.

*Note: When I got married, I had the Female who married us omit the obey part from both our vows, as I see this as a demeaning term to use in a relationship (Love, Honor & Respect cover the necessary bases).

In the middle 90s as an older teen, I started questioning some of these beliefs about my religion, first quietly only to myself then more vocally. Which kinda bit me in the ass, because I soon was labelled a rebellious one & bad influence for basically having a mind and opinion all my own. I still to this day firmly believe that any religion or lifestyle that ostracizes anyone who questions it, or voices opinions or concerns has something wrong with it. To my that falls into cult-like behavior. I eventually attended my first semester at public school and had an eye opening experience. I saw what other kids were like, I made friends who came from all different backgrounds and religions, I got my first real boyfriend. And I decided that I would never let myself to be blind like that again. I would be more aware of warning signs when participating in a certain group.

Unfortunately being raised the way I was has greatly affected my adult life, and not in a good way. Every time I hear gospel music, I’m taken back to those cold Thursday morning sitting in “Chapel” listening to my pastor scare the mess out of us kids with his terrorizing stories about Masons, Druids, Demons lurking in the shadows & how little babies would burn in Hell if their Mom or Dad wasn’t saved. And then he would put pressure on all of us to receive the “Holy Ghost” where we were supposed to pray and start crying and then start talking in “tongues”. I felt comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the only one faking it so the adults would just leave me be and stop laying the guilt trip on me.

*I just saw this Video and this guy totally reminds me of the insanity & contradiction that came over my pastors pulpit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxcyqeRc-4

If your a Christian then are you not supposed to love thy neighbor as thyself or something like that, instead of judging and mocking people?

Tags: Accelerated Christian Education, ACE, Apostolic, Church, Cult, free, guilt, Holy Ghost, PACE, Pentecostal, Racist, School, Sexist, Tongues, UPC