The Lost Sheep

A bittersweet exodus from fundamentalism.

Betty Smartt Carter | posted 9/01/2005

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Sweeney no longer felt at ease in the old fundamentalist paradigm, but it didn't occur to him to leave his faith altogether. At first he only wanted a simpler, quieter way of being a Christian. He considered becoming a Trappist monk (to the horror of his mother) but couldn't "make the leap." After transferring from Moody Bible Institute to Wheaton, he discovered a more tolerant conservatism (evangelicalism, really) and a handful of mentors who encouraged his questions. Eventually, though, his questions overtook his confidence in basic Christian doctrines. As an adult he drifted outside the boundaries of orthodox Christianity, retaining the shape and color of his childhood faith, but just a remnant of its theological content.

To his credit, Sweeney examines his story and its meaning with unusual humility. He doesn't claim superiority to the people he came from, only an inability to accept all that they taught him. He intends his memoir to be in no small part an exploration of the good in fundamentalism: its appreciation of the power of words and learning, its surprising mysticism and zeal for God, its ideals for human relationships and recognition of the human need to start over—to be born again and again. His tone is thankful and affirming, meant to shore up bridges rather than burn them down.

For all Sweeney's optimism and kindness, though, there's a sad subtext in this memoir: the tragedy of a family divided by faith. Like so many others, he was born to parents who lived within a particular theological framework, asked to accept that framework for his own life, and then pressed into it by the weight of family tradition. He resisted in a generous rather than vindictive way, following his own beliefs and yet doing his best to live peaceably with the past.

Still, I know what his decision must mean to his family, having seen the same drama played out in my own and others over time. It's the tragedy Sweeney worried about for Catholic Filipinos: the pain of separation. Fundamentalists love their children as much as anyone else, and the threat of being torn apart (in this life and the next) can make that love an especially terrifying thing.

"These slow separations of changing faith were agonizing," Sweeney says. "I would imagine a slide toward separation and divorce, after years of loving marriage, would seem somewhat similar."

Ironically, it was Sweeney's family that had taught him to seek truth for himself. "If you look clearly and honestly at yourself in the presence of God," his preacher grandfathers had told him, "you have all the spiritual direction you need." Following their advice, he found himself wandering far from home. But the backward pull remains. In occasional moments of doubt, or nostalgia for the habits of childhood, he wonders if he made the wrong choice. Not a writer to ask for the reader's sympathy, Sweeney still gets mine when he speaks wistfully of his parents:

I wished to be of the same light as that of my mother and father. I wanted to be another link in the constant and continuous chain of faith. … The light of their faith shone brightly and glowed beautifully. I was never more proud than when I was spiritually what they wanted me to be. In the end, though, it was impossible to bridge the gap between their light and my own.

It's a mystery why some cling to childhood faith and others stray. Fearing separation, we'd probably all like to direct our children's hearts, but faith in God doesn't allow room for fear or condemnation, or especially the bullying of those we love. It only allows trust in God's goodness, which is the very thing we've always preached to our children. And if we struggle to accept that, then we may have to face up to a humbling truth: it wasn't God we wanted them to love in the first place—it was really just us.

Betty Smartt Carter is a novelist living in Alabama.

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