Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith

by Sarah Bessey

I stand in the front row of the church—a few dozen of us in a community center—clapping along to the repetitive and simple praise choruses about the exodus of Israel and the blood of Jesus with repeated proclamations of hosanna. The horse and the rider are thrown into the sea! Three tambourines in a small room make quite a racket. The ladies wave banners, the children dance. I am overly earnest even for a kid. I throw my skinny child arms into the sky and sing loudly: As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after you. Later: I am standing in a gigantic stadium, thousands of people around me. The music is loud, the performance dazzling. Church shouldn’t be boring! we declare. We sing songs of the victorious, the conquering. I feel like crying, feel like jumping, like running. I feel alive, every cell thrumming with passion. Look at us, so young and beautiful and blind, testifying to love in three-part harmony. We are self-declared world changers. The devil better watch out. Later: The liturgy of the charismatic evangelicals is empty to me. Dead religion perhaps. Every prayer begins with Father, we just . . . And I find myself admitting, Father, I just can’t hear you here anymore. Maybe I never did. Later: The preacher stands up on the stage in his designer suit and declares “Money cometh!” to a congregation of poor students. The seeds of skepticism and disillusion I carefully keep hidden grow long tendrils around my faith. I am sick to death of prosperity teac...