Fear, anxiety, and Christian community
If you grew up in conservative Christianity, as I did, you might be able to identify psychological trauma that religion caused. I’ve been writing a book on religious wounds and healing, and it’s been interesting to mine my past, even when I’m upturning tragedy. I often gravitate toward things that happened during my youth. I remember the fear tactics that were used. Southern Baptists are known for their fire and damnation sermons. I can recall many oratory masterpieces—detailed descriptions of weeping and gnashing teeth, followed by calls to the altar.
Now, as a preacher, who has pastored youth, is a parent to a teen, and has spoken at Youth camps, I’m rather horrified by the memories. I see them as a chance for the speaker to manipulate young minds so that the preacher would seem more successful. Perhaps they were hoping to spark a revival, like Jonathan Edwards reminding us that we’re “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
As teens, we were instructed by Campus Crusade for Christ to ask, “If you died tonight, where would you spend eternity?” We hoped that our friends would become afraid of hell and repeat the sinner’s prayer after us. (For what it's worth, using "crusade" as a metaphor for evangelism freaked me out, even in my most fundamentalist years.)
