As a child, I wasn’t very perceptive or smart. I asked the same irritating questions in Sunday School like most kids, but I had the persistence of a mouth ulcer to get answers. At risk of legitimizing that homily about kids being natural BS detectors, my detector was worthy of NORAD. It got me into some trouble as a kid raised Assembly of God, who were like the Baptists, with better sound equipment and just as open minded. Some were as innocent as: “What color is God.” Too the inflammatory “Are Catholics Christians”
“No” my Sunday school teacher said without a pause.
“Why?”
“Because they Pray through Mary or saints. Christians pray through Jesus and only through Jesus can you be saved.”
“But wasn’t the Catholic Church the only church around for a long time?”
“Why yes, until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.”
“But when did the Catholic Church start.”
“About 200 AD, in Italy.”
“And anyone who became a Christian after that could only go to a Catholic church.”
“Why yes.”
“So anyone became a Christian between 200th to the 16th century went to hell.”
“Of course.”
“That’s not fair. Its like the Chinese or the Indians who didn’t hear about Jesus until a few hundred years ago.”
“Yes, they went to hell.” I imagined confused Indians with their tomahawk and feathered headdress with Chinamen in those Zildjian symbol hats sweltering in the heat, exclaiming: “What! All that time praying to my ancestors and they couldn’t give me the heads up about this place.”
“Don’t feel so bad,” says all the Popes, “Really.”
Our 2000 member church had fantastic and far reaching ministries, one of which was the ”Kids in Action” Children’s Church. In the gymnasium of the Christian school I attended, the KIA church offered Bible instruction candy coated with puppet shows, clowns, magic tricks, and Game Show style games. They would show us filmstrips or slide shows about the monkey who skipped out on church and got ate by a lion, or the boy who went fishing instead of church and got bit by a rattlesnake, rumored to be a true story. Rick Berlin, a Black Belt in Karate, was our charismatic children’s pastor and we all adored him. In a town where bussing sold like White Castle, Stan Bussey’s Bussing Ministry brought in kids from Birmingham’s unsaved tracts whose parents couldn’t or wouldn’t take them to church. Most of these un-churched waifs rarely had intent of getting saved. For them it was all about the entertainment and candy.
Randy Hall was one of these. All I knew of him was that he said his daddy drank beer and he arrived with new bruises on his arms and that he was the funniest kid I ever met. After Sunday school we were marched into sex segregated rows and filed into the Kids In Action children’s church. He was pretty quiet during Sunday school, but he really cut loose in Children’s church. He’d loosen up by pressing his palms to his mouth and make farting noises, or we would both pull our dress socks up to our claves and joke that they were panty hose. We’d sing a few traditional hymns like “B-I-B-L-E” which he would jumble the words like he was dyslexic or clap out of sych and throwing everyone off.
After the benediction, we would be instructed to hug each other in brotherly love, which got us pegged Pentecostal Queers by other less touchy-feely denominations. By that time some of the 5th and 6th graders read into the gay innuendo of the hugging, sort of like people picked up the on the gay innuendo of Starsky and Hutch. “Oh Baby,” and “Hi, honey.” When an unsuspecting kid approached for a hug, he would kiss them quickly on the mouth then retreat in titters. The victim would usually scream “Oh, gross” and rouse the Clown Patrol. To keep you quiet, the clown would sit next to you, which was embarrassing because the older kids would tease you about “your new Boyfriend.” They smelled like Vaseline and rayon and were a happy fire hazard. At one service, one clown stood too close to a klieg light and his suit went up like that Old West map in the Bonanza theme.
What he pulled that Sunday would get him barred from church; the next Sunday the heavenbound bus would floor-it past his house. To bless the offering, Rick Berlin chose a tiny blonde girl with a black vinyl purse. Rick came with the microphone and let her hold it. She began to pray, forgetting to take a breath sometimes and inhaling, then went on with her grocery list prayer. “Dear Lord, thank you for this offering and thank you the missionairies and thank you for church and” and she went on thanking God for trees and cheese and whatever and didn’t want to leave anything out so she wouldn’t appear ungrateful and come falling on her head.
“And…And…And.”
With a angel-deafening bluster, a fart roared through the gymnasium, climbing to a forte then ascending to a piccolo then down another register and made the girl break off her prayer. Half the church burst out laughing, and I was lying on the chairs risking an aneurysm from laughing so hard. The sustain was amazing. The clown patrol circled in. I knew it was Randy, because he was standing as stoic as a drivers license examiner. I came closer to aneurysm when I noticed this. The clown patrol was on the move and centering on us, I could feel their glare though the extra large sunglasses. My laughter was subsiding and I rolled over to face a rainbow wigged clown know as Squeaky, who I thought was Rodney Christians dad or Chad Music’s mom. “Straiten up,” he squeaked, which made me laugh harder. He forgot to take out the kazoo thing that made his voice squeaky - a rubber ducky on the attack.
Rick Berlin wrapped the prayer himself and before the first organ bar of “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” started he was on top of us. “That son was a very blasphemous thing to do in the lords house.” Yipes, and I forgot where I was. God, ruler and creator of the universe who also owned some of the most exclusive tracks of real estate whether it’s a tumbledown church in the sticks, the Vatican, or the congregation in the strip mall next to Dollar General. We were collared and separated I spent the rest of the service sitting on the front row with the kindergarten kids next to a fat clown named Spunky, basking in the worship of the tykes for knowing the kid who farted in church.
My parents seemed to know right away what had happened and I got a long lecture on how to act in church and if I didn’t cut out the shit I would go to church with them. Fortunately, I had only to put up with Grown up church once every a Sunday night, while Battlestar Galactica was on the TV and I prayed for a programmable VCR.
Randy wasn’t there next Sunday. The heavenbound bus passed him by, leaving him to spend Sunday in that equally mystical space where dad drank beer and Jesus was a stranger. In children’s church I sat alone and had a berth of at least three chairs between me. When the hugfest started and no one came near me, or even showed me a disdainful glance, I knew that I had few to none friends at that church. Houses seem pretty big when you are alone, and I found I was alone in the biggest house of all. The seating arrangement was like an abacus, with pegs bunched together and this odd, solitary peg that didn’t fit into the calculations. If it wasn’t for the infusion of busees I probably would’ve remained friendless.
It discouraged me for much of my life, since I had few real friendships until my early twenties. However, there was friend there who did care, and we had a lot more in common than I thought. We liked troublemakers, Windmill tilters, crazies, and the fringe-of-the-fringe. I often wondered if Jesus’s courage was borrowed from these troublemakers because he knew what awaited him. Perhaps that was my motivation too, for most of my life, I sought the courage not just to fart in church, but to sing in public, drop that manuscript in the mailbox, walk the 10 steps and talk to the girl. Most of all, I’m looking for the courage to life on pure faith.
