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March 29 - April 6, 2025
Starting in preschool, we had to adorn ourselves in “modest apparel” (ankle-length dresses and floral jumpers) and keep our hair neatly combed to maintain a godly, Christ-like appearance.
“sit like ladies” with our legs crossed, our hands folded in our laps, and our dresses smoothed over our knees so that we showed no skin. He warned us that one of the gravest sins any young girl could commit was to cause a brother in the church to stumble with impure thoughts.
There was also a strong emphasis on being “warriors for Christ.” Our children’s songs were wrought with militaristic lyrics, saying, “I’m in the Lord’s army, yes sir!”
The IFB church’s most effective tool for keeping children obedient was—and is—corporal punishment.
the instructions in the King James Bible. Only by adhering rigidly to the rules laid out in it could we rest assured that we would meet the Lord unashamed after we died or when we were caught up with Jesus in the Rapture at His Second Coming. As a result, I was continually filled with anxiety about my soul’s eternal destiny.
As a child, I was obsessed with the fear of being left behind when the Rapture came. So were all my friends. This obsession undoubtedly came from the countless sermons we heard from Pastor Keck. Every one of them was filled with hellfire and brimstone.
Left Behind, Mark of the Beast, and A Thief in the Night, and all with plots involving the imminent doom and destruction of the world. It strikes me as more than a little ironic now that we were warned so frequently about the evils of watching TV while the church was filling our heads with some of the most hideous ideas and images imaginable.
Lucky us. We were spared from the evil influence of Barney. Instead, we sat in frozen horror watching actors refuse the Mark of the Beast (the number 666 on their foreheads) and then get led by U.S. government officials to the guillotine.
Then again, maybe the Rapture would happen in the blink of an eye—that’s what the Bible said. But what if it happened before I had a chance to get married and have kids? Here was another fear to add to the list.
It wasn’t until years after leaving the IFB that I heard other survivors confess that they too had grown up in abject terror of the end times. I had chastised myself relentlessly, convinced I was only afraid because my faith was weak.
Another ingenious method the IFB uses to manipulate its members is to intertwine the theme of American pride with the theme of loyalty to the church. Patriotism was a prevalent topic in every IFB church I attended growing up. American flags and red, white, and, blue color schemes were everywhere.