I'm reading Lake Wobegon Days, the 1985 best-seller by Garrison Keillor. This is the first fiction I've read in several years (usually it's technical manuals), and it was an excellent choice. This book is quietly hilarious in a way that makes you say, "Yep, he was there, all right."
In a chapter entitled, "Protestants", Keillor describes his upbringing in a household of strict fundamentalists. Some of the parallels are just rolling-on-the-floor funny, as depicted in his deadpan author's voice. I just had to share. The text below isn't all one section; dotted lines separate non-contiguous snippets. Enjoy!
COMF
In a town where everyone was either Lutheran or Catholic, we were neither one. We were Sanctified Brethren, a sect so tiny that nobody but us and God knew about it, so when kids asked what I was, I just said Protestant. It was too much to explain, like having six toes. You would rather keep your shoes on.
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Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," and the Brethren believed that was enough. We met in Uncle Al's and Aunt Flo's bare living room with plain folding chairs arranged facing in toward the middle. No clergyman in a black smock. No organ or piano, for that would make one person too prominent. No upholstery, it would lead to complacency. No picture of Jesus, he was in our hearts.
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My affections were not pure. They were tainted with a sneaking admiration of Catholics--Catholic Christmas, Easter, the Living Rosary, and the Blessing of the Animals, all magnificent. Everything we did was plain, but they were regal and gorgeous.
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Uncle Mel's wife, Rita, was a Lutheran. She only came occasionally and when she did she stood out like a brass band. She used lipstick and had plucked eyebrows and wore bright hats. Brethren women showed only a faint smudge of powder on their cheeks and their hats were small and either black or navy blue. Once Rita spoke up in the meeting--Al had stood up to read from the Lord's Word, and she said, "Pardon me, which chapter did you say?"--and we all shuddered as if she had dropped a plate on the floor: women did not speak in meeting. Another time, Sunday morning, she made as if to partake of the bread as it was passed, and Grandpa snatched it away from her. It had to be explained to Rita later that she could not join in the Lord's Supper with us because she was not in fellowship.
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We were "exclusive" Brethren, a branch that believed in keeping itself pure of false doctrine by avoiding association with the impure. We made sure that any who fellowshipped with us were straight on all the details of the Faith, as set forth by the first Brethren who left the Anglican Church in 1865 to worship on the basis of correct principles.
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The split with the Johnsons was triggered by Mr. Johnson's belief that what was abominable to God in the Old Testament must be abominable still, which he put forward at the Grace & Truth Bible Conference in Rapid City in 1932. Mr. Cox stood up and walked out, followed by others. The Abomination Doctrine not only went against the New Covenant of Grace principle, it opened up rich new areas of controversy in the vast annals of Jewish law. Should Brethren then refrain from pork, meat that God had labeled "unclean"? Were we to be thrown into the maze of commandments laid out in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, where we are told to smite our enemies with the sword and stone to death rebellious children?
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My mother never wore slacks, though she did dress my sister in winter leggings, which troubled Grandpa. "It's not the leggings so much as what they represent and what they could lead to," he told her. He thought that baby boys should not wear sleepers unless they were the kind with snaps up the legs. Mother pointed out that the infant Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes. "That doesn't mean he wore a dress," Grandpa said. "They probably wrapped his legs separately."
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Whenever a special Bible study meeting was scheduled for Sunday afternoon at 3:00, we couldn't drive home after morning meeting, have dinner, and get back to St. Cloud in time, so one Sunday our family traipsed over to a restaurant that a friend of Dad's had recommended. Phil's House of Good Food. The waitress pushed two tables together and we sat down and studied the menus.
The waitress came and stood by Dad. "Can I get you something from the bar?" she said. Dad blushed a deep red. The question seemed to imply that he looked like a drinker. "No," he whispered, as if she had offered to take off her clothes and dance on the table. Then another waitress brought a tray of glasses to a table of four couples next to us. "Martini," she said, setting the drinks down, "whiskey sour, whiskey sour, Manhattan, whiskey sour, gin and tonic, martini, whiskey sour."
"Ma'am? Something from the bar?" Mother looked at her in disbelief.
Suddenly the room changed for us. Our waitress looked hardened, rough, cheap--across the room, a woman laughed obscenely, "Haw, haw, haw"--the man with her lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke--a swear word drifted out from the kitchen like a whiff of urine--even the soft lighting seemed suggestive, diabolical. To be seen in such a place on The Lord's Day--what had we done?
My mother rose from her chair. "We can't stay. I'm sorry," Dad told the waitress. We all got up and put on our coats. Everyone in the restaurant had a good long look at us. A bald little man in a filthy white shirt emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands. "Folks? Something wrong?" he said. "We're in the wrong place," Mother told him. Mother always told the truth, or something close to it.
"This is humiliating," I said out on the sidewalk. "I feel like a leper or something. Why do we always have to make such a big production out of everything? Why can't we be like regular people?"
She put her hand on my shoulder. "Be not conformed to this world," she said. I knew the rest by heart: "...but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."
"Where we gonna eat?" Phyllis asked. "We'll find someplace reasonable," said Mother, and we walked six blocks across the river and found a lunch counter and ate sloppy joes for fifteen cents apiece. They did not agree with us, and we were aware of them all afternoon through prayer meeting and Young People's.
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The first time I saw a television set in a Brethren house, I was dumbfounded. None of the Wobegonian Brethren had one; we were told that watching television was the same as going to the movies--no, in other words. I wondered why the St. Cloud people were unaware of the danger. You start getting entangled in the things of the world, and one thing leads to another. First it's television, then it's worldly books, and the next thing you know, God's people are sitting around drinking whiskey sours in dim smoky bars with waitresses in skimpy black outfits and their bosoms displayed like grapefruit.
That was not my view, but my parents'. "Beer is the drunkard's kindergarten," said Dad. Small things led to bigger ones. One road leads up, the other down. A man cannot serve two masters. Dancing was out, even the Virginia reel: it led to carnal desires. Card-playing was out, which led to gambling, though we did have Rook and Flinch--why those and not pinochle? "Because. They're different." No novels, which tended to glamorize iniquity. "How do you know if you don't read them?" I asked, but they knew. "You only have to touch a stove once to know it's hot," Mother said. (Which novel had she read? She wasn't saying.) Rock 'n' roll, jazz, swing, dance music, nightclub singing: all worldly. "How bout Beethoven?" I asked, having heard something of his in school. "That depends," she said. "Was he a Christian?" I wasn't sure. I doubted he was.
On the long Sunday-night drive home, leaning forward from the back seat, I pressed them on inconsistencies like a little prosecutor: if dancing leads to carnal desire, how about holding hands? Is it wrong to put your arm around a girl? People gamble on football: is football wrong? Can you say "darn"? What if your teacher told you to read a novel? Or a short story? What if you were hitchhiking in a blizzard and were picked up by a guy who was listening to rock 'n' roll on the radio, should you get out of the car even though you would probably freeze to death?" "I guess the smart thing to do would be to dress warmly in the first place," offered Dad. "And wait until a Ford comes along." All Brethren drove Fords.
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