Cult of Christianity: How A Youth Group Blurred the Lines Between Christ & Cult

A Step Into to Light

How do I begin to talk about my experience within a zealous Christian youth group? How do you quantify that with mere words when it is so emotionally charged even fifteen years later? How do you describe the longing to be a part of it all and the disgust that it still exists within the Christian community?

My first memory of this Pentecostal Youth Group in the heart of Rural America is the day I joined. It was near the beginning of the school year, maybe eight grade. I know that I was thirteen and very self conscious. I didn't have many friends. We'd moved the past year. Only over one town, but I was fat and socially anxious. I preferred books to people. And I suppose that's partly what saved me in time. My mother had started attending a new church after the old First Baptist Church had let her down when she and my dad divorced. It was the Church of God in the same town, and was just as old and just as well established as the other. But this church had a larger congregation and more activities. I think that may have been what drew my mother and kept her occupied.

I remember walking into the large auditorium. It was formerly the sanctuary. They'd made a large addition sometime in the last few years and still called the room we were all in the Old Sanctuary, just like that. With capitol letters. The room was lit with only sunlight that day, soft and welcoming. There was an aisle between two sets of chairs set off to one side. Three or four across and just as deep back. It looked very much like a tiny wedding. And that was because it was supposed to. There was a white trellis archway set up at the front to serve as an alter.

Everyone was milling around. People who would come to be Youth Leaders in the following years. The Youth Pastor's son and daughter stood talking to two beautiful girls who were obviously favorites. Two other girls closer to my height, weight, and who I came to know later my age, were friendly enough and didn't seem to mind when I sat near them. I didn't talk much to anyone that first year. Just sat and watched. At the First Baptist Church I had still been considered one of the kids at thirteen. Youth Group was for the high school kids and I still attended Children's Church. Here I was one of the teens. It felt like a plastic glove pulled over wet fingers. It didn't fit or feel like it should but I had to try and slide into the role all the same.

I can't remember what was said that day, but I do remember the promise rings. On my first day in a Youth Group of any kind I made a fidelity pledge. I promised that I would save myself for God and my future husband. I was thirteen. I hadn't yet started to think about sex and already I was supposed to say no to it? Abstinence even in the face of no knowledge about what I was abstaining from.

But I stood, said what they asked of me, took my little sheet of paper and signed it before putting a cheap band of plastic around my chubby finger. We had some kind of sweet snack to follow. Probably cake considering the activity. And we socialized a little before filing into the New Sanctuary for Sunday Evening service.

I remember showing the certificate to my mom who told me her customary "That's great." My mother's answer to everything that you tell her that isn't strictly bad news. She never wants you to think she isn't excited for whatever it is. So she gives you what she hopes will make you happy to hear. I've come to believe it is how she coped with her own anxiety. If everything is great and she doesn't have to analyze what she's been given then the world can continue to revolve and she doesn't have to worry. But that meant she never once talked to me about what any of this meant. I just kept moving forward with no greater knowledge.