Can a person become an Unfundamentalist from a Fundamentalist world? Of course! But I didn’t get here overnight, and it still surprises me that I am here at all. But I’m grateful, and wish that more would make the journey.
I grew up in a Christian home, and I didn’t even know until looking back later that we were Fundamentalist. “Conservative” meant “good,” “Liberal” meant some sort of evil. I knew growing up that my dad’s family was Catholic and we were Lutheran, and at some point I found out that my dad’s family didn’t attend my parents’ wedding because they weren’t allowed to by their church.
The topic of sex and marriage in our home was a shameful one. I was taught that sex in general was sinful, but that it was supposed to be all good as long as a person was married—meaning, of course, that the two people of opposite genders were married to each other! My parents got married at ages 19 and 20, so staying a virgin until marriage was a whole different ball game than now, when people marry in their 30s or beyond. But marriage for them wasn’t exactly great either. My mom often talked about how difficult being married was, how it would be wrong to divorce, and how she soldiered on anyway.
When I was young, in the ’70s and early ’80s, living together before marriage started to become more common, but we were taught that it was terribly sinful. And divorce? Out of the question for Christians. It was only after my first divorce, after I lived with my second husband… [Read more…] about From Ignorance to Acceptance: When You Realize You Had It All Wrong