Fields of Grace Page 6

  The prayers kept coming, and I kept waiting. My hands turned clammy and shaky. If it didn’t happen soon, if I didn’t start blathering in an alien tongue, the people praying would become irritated with me. Maybe it was just my perception, but I thought I could feel them beginning to lose patience.

  The Bible says the more you pray without ceasing, the more God will speak to you. No one prayed harder than I did. I had always been taught that prayer fixed everything. If you’re feeling anxious, pray. If you’re in pain, pray. If you lose your car keys, pray. Nothing is too big, or too small, to take to God. I prayed to be able to speak in tongues. “If I don’t do this right, God, they’re going to think I’m a Christian fake. Please. Help me out here. I need to do this right.” I knew how it was supposed to go, speaking in tongues. It was supposed to go the way it did for a family I knew, who went to their pastor to tell him about their experience. The parents were terrible with money and going bankrupt, and they went to the pastor to pray over their misfortune. While there, they received a tingly feeling (evangelicals often cite the tingly feeling) and began rambling in a foreign, angelic tongue. Even though the language was unintelligible, they said, they still understood it was the Lord telling them to move to San Francisco. It didn’t matter that it was irrational to uproot their kids and move to a place they knew nothing about, with no money, and no job prospects, and no place to live. It didn’t have to be rational. It was God’s will. He spoke. They heard. Here, all I wanted was proof that the Holy Spirit was alive in me, and it wasn’t happening.

  As I was praying for the words to come, I looked up and saw all of these twisted faces looking down at me, praying for the Holy Ghost to speak through me. It was frightening. One woman was particularly vocal. “Start believing you have received!” she cried. “Try! Try! You’re not trying hard enough! You have to try harder!” The others followed suit and began chanting louder as well. Everyone was touching me. I had heard so many people in the past describe the process as beautiful, but for me it was just frenzy and cause for more confusion.

  I remembered a devotional written by Pastor Kenneth Copeland. “Heavenly Father, I am a believer. I am Your child and You are my Father. Jesus is my Lord. I believe with all my heart that Your Word is true. Your Word says if I will ask, I will receive the Holy Spirit. So in the Name of Jesus Christ, my Lord, I am asking You to fill me to overflowing with Your precious Holy Spirit. Jesus, baptize me in the Holy Spirit. Because of Your Word, I believe that I now receive and I thank You for it. I believe the Holy Spirit is within me and, by faith, I accept it. Now, Holy Spirit, rise up within me as I praise God. I fully expect to speak with other tongues, as You give me the utterance.”

  Still nothing.

  I was getting colder and sweatier by the minute, and I didn’t like the sensation of people’s hands all over me. I felt so torn as I sat there, waiting and praying. I wanted my experience to be real, for my faith, as well as for all of them to see that their good work had paid off, but I just wasn’t feeling it. The Bible says, “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from Heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” I was calling out to God to bring clarity to a moment that was unclear, but the only sounds I heard were the voices of my spiritual leader and my peers, and they all sounded as frantic as I felt.

  That same summer, before I went to Colorado Springs, I asked Papa to baptize me. I had been baptized when I was four or five, but I really felt as if I needed spiritual cleansing before I went off to Ted’s church. Whenever Papa baptized a kid at his events, they seemed to emerge from the water brand new. That’s what I was looking for. I wanted to be cleansed of my sins, reborn in the spiritual sense. We went to a nearby lake and waded in. Papa held me as I lay back in the water, submerging myself. When I re-emerged, he had me scream, “The Devil Will Never Have Me!” I had gotten some peace from that. But now, as I tried and still couldn’t conjure up the Holy Spirit, I wondered if the baptism hadn’t served its purpose to cleanse me of my sins.

  Why couldn’t I be like everyone else I knew and just have faith without asking questions? I always had to find out for myself, and I didn’t like most of the answers I was getting. What I seemed to be discovering was that I would never get the tingly feeling everyone talked about, nor was I going to start speaking in tongues. Not unless I faked it.

  It seemed as if a long time passed, and I could tell that my collaborators were getting tired of encouraging me. It’s now or never, I told myself. If I don’t play this right, they’ll think I’m not saved. I took a deep breath and prayed for the best. Okay, I have to do it, I said.

  Closing my eyes again, I tried to block out the voices of the others, and I started chanting. I felt silly at first, but I was surprised at how easy it was. The words sounded like some unique tribal dialect. Ashunda! Badabadoshobadabada! As soon as I started, the tension that had taken over the room earlier suddenly subsided. Ashunda! Bada. Ashashunda. Babadoshabunda. The hands came off, and the voices of the others turned joyful. As I got louder and stronger, they sounded calmer and quieter.

  There’s a saying that the more you speak that special, holy language, the more God will speak to you and the devil will know your name, which is a good thing because it means your credentials as an apostle of Jesus are undeniable. I babbled for a few minutes longer until I felt as if I had been convincing enough and those who worked so hard to get me to this point were satisfied (and, I admit, I had hoped all through the process that the Holy Spirit would eventually take over). Finally snapping out of my trance, I made sure I awakened with a huge smile.

  From everything I’d seen and read I knew that people who speak in tongues have a sense of euphoria once it’s over. I’d read it and witnessed it enough to know that needed to be my last act.

  “Lord God!” I shouted. “I thank You for filling me to overflowing with Your Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit has spoken through me! Hallelujah!” The others echoed my words. They were dancing and jumping up and down. Hallelujah! Praise Jesus! In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

  The moment was supposed to have been the high point of my Christian life. The pinnacle. What trumped channeling God? Instead, in my failure, once again, to be acknowledged by Him, I’d been duplicitous and conniving by pretending to speak the words of the Holy Spirit. I knew what that meant.

  The Book of Mark says, “Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit has never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.”

  I had committed the unpardonable sin.

  8

  San Francisco

  Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

  —BLAISE PASCAL, PENSÉES

  With Jesus still ignoring me, I made my own party for the next couple of years. I continued in secret to read books about different faiths and religious philosophies, and I began experimenting with sinful things like cigarettes, wine, and even a little bit of weed. My appearance had changed dramatically from the little girl with butterfly clips in my hair and sparkles on my arms. I called my new style hippie chic. Mom hated the look and was always quietly grousing about it: Amy Winehouse was just coming on the music scene, and I had adopted her retro look, with a big, black beehive and thick black eyeliner drawn to resemble a cat. I packed on jewelry, twenty bracelets on one arm, ten on the other, with layers of beads around my neck. Mom was always telling me my makeup was too heavy or my skirt was too short.

  My vision of the world had changed as much as my look had, but I was able to hide part of me from most of the people in my world. Unbeknownst to my parents, I had decided that I didn’t see any harm in some of the distractions of earth,
in secular music, or spicy movies, or books that provoked thought and questions. I didn’t want to judge everyone and everything based on a charismatic evangelical reading of the Bible. Although I loved reading it for the beauty of the words and the stories, I had serious doubts about the literal interpretation of it. My parents didn’t know this Hannah, not at all, and I did my best to hide her by playing the role of the obedient evangelical daughter they wanted me to be.

  My curiosity didn’t mean I had completely lost faith in God or my religious values, because when a boy from school said he liked me, you know, that kind of like, I told him it wasn’t me he was attracted to, but the God in me. So much for a budding teenage romance.

  I also continued to keep close ties with Teen Mania. I still helped out on the Teen Mania campus, and I loved going on mission trips to different countries and learning about different cultures. I still accompanied Papa on his annual, multicity “Acquire the Fire” and “BattleCry” tours of the U.S. and Canada. The mission of Teen Mania is “to provoke a young generation to passionately pursue Jesus Christ and to take his life-giving message to the ends of the Earth.” Papa’s traveling show, which one writer accurately described as “a mix of pep rally, rock concert, and church service,” was the heart of the ministry. Papa packed stadiums with thousands of people wherever he went. It was all very upbeat and positive, and even though I didn’t always love the message—in fact, sometimes I shuddered at the things he preached—I loved the electric atmosphere and the Christian rock bands, especially the Newsboys and Skillet. I felt really cool being able to hang out with them backstage. What sixteen-year-old wouldn’t love being at the center of all that excitement?

  BattleCry 2006 in San Francisco promised to be even more electrifying than most of Papa’s revivals. More than twenty-five thousand evangelical teenagers descended on the city for the weekend, twice the number that attended the events in other cities on the tour that year. I was stoked. Papa decided at the last minute that he would hold a pre-event rally on that Friday on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall. The purpose was the usual: to affirm Jesus and take a stand against what he called “the virtue terrorists” who were destroying the youth culture in America. As a footnote in a letter to his followers announcing the rally, he noted that “these are the very City Hall steps where several months ago gay marriages were celebrated for the entire world to see.”

  Now it’s not as if Papa had ever hidden his disapproval of homosexuality. He was and is a vocal critic of gay marriage. But this was San Francisco, the city of tolerance, and the epicenter for gay pride. Looking back, it seems to me that footnote was an invitation for trouble. Papa says he was in no way courting controversy, and that he had no intention of even touching on gay marriage—that the goal was to appeal to young people to come to Christ—but I think he should have seen the handwriting on the wall.

  Mom, Charity, Cameron, and I got to the rally just as it was getting underway. As we walked across the mall toward City Hall, I saw Papa standing at the top of the steps, a microphone in one hand, his Bible in the other. I was proud of my father, even if I was beginning to loathe some of his extreme Christian ideals, and I knew that his heart was right. He wasn’t traveling the world, churning out scripture, for his own self-gratification. He truly believed he was called by God to be a leader in the movement to rescue a generation and change the direction of an increasingly morally corrupt—and Godless—society. For him, this was a battle between good and evil—a “reverse rebellion” ordered by the Lord himself.

  I could feel the excitement in the air as I approached City Hall. No one can stir a crowd of religious kids the way Papa can. He paces and stomps and waves his arms and sometimes shouts in a screechy voice that sounds like James Brown singing “I Feel Good.” His flagrant passion for sharing the Gospel, for bringing people to Christ, is contagious. I have seen thousands of kids roused to their feet, and dropped to their knees, by his words. I pushed my way through the crowd. Hundreds of young people wearing red, white, and black “BattleCry” paraphernalia waited for Papa to sound the BattleCry so they could begin “setting the captives free.” (Translation: showing the nonbelievers Jesus.)

  It was only as I got closer to Papa that I noticed the metal barricades dividing the street, with police officers on either side. On one side of the barricade, our group, which included teens, their parents, and youth pastors, pastors and staffers waved red BattleCry flags and held up placards reading, “WE HAVE A VOICE.” On the other side, pockets of boisterous counterdemonstrators held angry signs and shouted obscenities. One group carried a wooden cage with a small, deranged-looking figure inside that was supposed to resemble Papa. A sign on the cage read “Ron Luce is a Faggot.” I was at once curious and fearful. This was not going to be the usual Ron Luce joyful lobby for Christ.

  My father stood in the rain at the top of the City Hall steps, stoic but determined, surrounded by his loyal army of young recruits. “Are you ready to go to battle for your generation?” he shouted, his voice echoing loudly around the plaza. His followers roared, “Yes!” and waved their red flags. Papa said, “You guys are caught in the middle of a battle, and it’s time that people who love God, the decent people of the land, stand up and raise their voice and say, ‘You know what? We’re not going to let these people steal a generation without making some noise.’ ”

  “BattleCry!” the teenagers roared.

  “BattleCry!”

  The other side countered by pumping their fists and shouting ugly epithets. I could see in Papa’s face that he was taken aback by their hostility. One man leading the protestors, who I later learned was a California state assemblyman, was especially hostile and said of us, “They’re loud, they’re obnoxious, they’re disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco.” But it was their side calling names. They were calling Papa a “fascist” and a “faggot” and screaming at him to “Stop teaching hate!” and “Go back to Texas!” None of it sounded very tolerant to me, so I decided to cross the barricades and find out for myself why they hated us so much.

  I slowly made my way, as subtly as I could, to the other side of the street, toward a group of men, some dressed in drag, some wearing priestlike robes, who called themselves “The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.” The group is well known for using religious imagery to bring attention to sexual intolerance, something I didn’t know at the time. Ron Luce in a cage was typical of their propaganda, and I might have thought it funny if it wasn’t aimed at my dad. At the same time, I could understand that they wanted to make a point.

  Papa was an outspoken critic of the “social constructs” that violated the laws of the scriptures. But his condemnation of homosexuality (“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.” Leviticus 18:22) was fierce and felt more personal for me than many of his other judgments. I had gay friends by then, although most of them were deep in the closet. Their hearts were pure, and I couldn’t fathom a loving God punishing such good people. Not only that, I’d witnessed the torture my evangelical peers suffered when they had homosexual thoughts or leanings. So many of them had chosen inauthentic lives because they feared that if they followed their hearts they risked the wrath of God, no less than that of their parents and the church. That seemed like a terrible injustice to me. But the protestors were so angry it was hard to feel any kind of camaraderie with them.

  I tried, nevertheless. I was wearing my favorite brown jacket with a rainbow peace sign on the back, which I thought said what I stood for, but they were too busy shouting through bullhorns to notice: “Christian fascists GO AWAY. Racists. Sexists. Antigay,” they chanted. As terrified as I was, I decided to introduce myself to a few of the most malicious-acting protestors. “Hi, I’m Hannah,” I said, purposely not mentioning my last name. I certainly didn’t want them to know I was the daughter of the man they thought should be in a cage, but I really wanted to hear what they had to say. “What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s all this about?”

>   They were friendly enough at first, answering my questions with vindictive claims through polite smiles. It reminded me of a lot of hard-line Christians who impale people who have committed what they consider some affront to Jesus, yet smile beatifically while they’re doing it. “Which side are you on?” one of the protestors asked. I hesitated, legitimately unsure of my answer. “Um,” I said finally. “I’m not on any side. I’m just curious.” Why do there always have to be sides? I asked myself.

  I stood there for a few moments, continuing to ask questions, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw members of Papa’s staff, wearing their BattleCry jackets and buttons, looking my way. I tried hiding my face, so they didn’t recognize me, but it didn’t do any good. They saw my frantic expression and headed for me, calling my name. “Hannah? Hannah!” This can’t be good, I thought. The protestors immediately turned on me. I tried explaining that I was sympathetic to their cause, and that I was only at the rally by default. I hadn’t misrepresented myself, I said. Not intentionally anyway. The protestors scoffed at me and mocked everything I said. Meanwhile, the BattleCry people stood there looking at me as if I were a traitor. As if I had betrayed them and Papa the way Peter had betrayed Jesus when he denied knowing him.