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"Personal testimonies" are as evangelical as apple pies are American. But each one, when told well, is refreshing in its uniqueness and acts as a vivid reminder that God tailors his work to the person. The Spirit cannot be reduced to a formula.

In the April 26, 1999, issue of CT, we brought you Glenn Tinder's story of hearing God on a battleship in World War II. In this narrative, Alice Evans leads us up a winding philosophical road that ultimately reconnects her with the body of Christ. Expect more such accounts under the heading of Testimony in future issues.

The woman was shouting. I imagined she was shouting about abortion. And yet I didn't know for sure that she was even shouting. She might have been singing. But seeing her face triggered my long-held prejudices toward "religious" people.

The face appeared in an ad for Linda Kintz's visit to a nearby bookstore in my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, to talk about her book Between Jesus and the Market: The Emotions That Matter in Right-Wing America. In the ad Kintz, an English professor at the University of Oregon, asks, "Why are so many women involved in what others consider an anti-woman force?"

It was August 1997, and I saw Kintz as an ally and wanted to agree with her. A long-time feminist, I was a political and social liberal. During nearly three decades as an eclectic spiritual seeker, I had rarely touched ground in a Sunday-morning Christian service. My journey had led me down the brilliant path of modern psychology, through the mind-bending experiences of hallucinogens, and into the written work of Western masters of altered perception: Aldous Huxley, Ram Dass, John Lilly, Carlos Castaneda. I had studied in depth the works of C. J. Jung; learned from Tibetan Buddhists, the I Ching, the Tarot, and New Age shamans; taken side roads and detours; turned over rocks; looked behind trees; and crawled through hidden passageways beneath the earth looking for God. I meditated and I occasionally prayed, and I held fervent dialogues with God in my journal. But oddly, amidst all my seeking, I avoided the Bible.

I had not experienced Jesus as a living force since childhood. My parents had broken from a conservative, rural church when I was 12, and although the ethical teachings of Christianity were deeply rooted in my being, as far as I was concerned, the Christian church had nothing to offer me. I was now in my midforties, and Jesus was knocking on my door. And behind him, trailing along as a living entity, stood the church.

I had recently attended a conservative Christian church for the first time in years. I had been shocked to discover myself enjoying the celebratory style of worship I'd encountered at Eugene Faith Center and being stirred by the pastor's eloquent message.

My attendance at this charismatic-Pentecostal, evangelical church was as unlikely as it was surprising. A few months earlier I had been involved in a conflict with a man, and in an attempt to resolve it in a friendly fashion, we met to chat. When the conversation turned to spirituality, Jesus emerged.

The man was an evangelical Christian, and while for a multitude of reasons I respected him, as soon as he mentioned the name Jesus an alarm sounded in my brain: He's one of those! Yeah, one of those, as is my youngest brother. As was my beloved grandmother. As I had been, as a child and young teenager. One of those. A conservative Christian.

He wasn't trying to convert me. He was simply speaking his truth. But later, in trying to understand why any dialogue at all had opened between us, I began to think about Jesus.

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August 9 1999, Vol. 43, No. 9