Losing faith and Tammy Faye

The LA Times had a fantastic story on Saturday by a reporter who converted to Christianity and begged for the religion beat so he could cover religion like it should be covered. After a few years of the Catholic sexual abuse scandal, televangelists and assorted other nastiness, he lost his faith and put in for a new journalistic assignment. After I read it, I felt like e-mailing him and begging him to let me buy him a beer because he, at least, seems to understand that it’s not okay to just wave all the abuses of power away with some lame explanation about how nobody’s perfect.

I wish I could be shocked, but there is no dark and nasty callous thing I would not believe of the institutions of my religion. I wish that was not true, but my distrust of religious institutions is just as visceral as my belief in God. I am powerless to abandon either one. It amuses me when well-meaning people give me books that they are sure will help me make my peace with the institutions of Christianity. I think they expect me to return clutching the book and say, “It all makes sense now. Based on chapter three, I shall change the molecular structure of my soul immediately. Excuse me while I run out and hug a preacher.”

The late great Mark Heard, whose music is one of the things that convinced me that it might be just barely possible to believe with some integrity, had a song called “We know too much.” And I do. I know too much, which is difficult, but willful blindness is hardly more appealing. I sometimes envy those who unabashedly believe that Jesus is the answer and churches always help people. Constant suspicion is exhausting, and today is one of those days I feel bereft of something tangible to believe in.

At the end of the piece, the reporter wrote this:

“My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago – probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up.

Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don’t. It’s not a choice. It can’t be willed into existence. And there’s no faking it if you’re honest about the state of your soul.

Sitting in a park across the street from the courthouse, I called my wife on my cellphone. I told her I was putting in for a new beat at the paper.”

This goes against everything I was ever taught, but I agree with him. I do not experience faith as a choice. It’s more like a situation I find myself in. The truth is that I could decrease my levels of cognitive dissonance by about 85% if I could just stop believing in God. Faith seems highly unpredictable. In the LA Times story, the one clergy sexual abuse survivor who didn’t lose his faith was sitting in jail, on account of not being able to control his anger and his drinking. The other survivors dreamed of burning down the church where the abuse happened. As for me, even on the days that I believe in Jesus, I’m not sure what kind of salvation I believe in.

I look at the same stuff the LA Times reporter saw and I think, “Who invented this and thought it was a good idea?”, and I cannot let them off the hook for all the damage they have done. I know too much to believe that Christianity will ever lose all its dark corners and barbed wire and power trips behind closed doors. There will always be casualties – lots of them - and many of them will be told it’s their fault that they are wounded. Some of them will believe it, and some of them will, like the men in the article, will want to burn the whole thing down. God knows I’ve spent half my life fantasizing flame throwers.

And then I get blindsided by Tammy Faye of all people. As a general rule, televangelists make me want to take an axe to the TV, so I don’t watch Christian television. I did watch a documentary about her a few years ago. I remember the Praise The Lord Club scandal in the 80’s, though, and certainly Tammy Faye’s excessive makeup made an impression on everyone. She died this weekend of lung cancer so there were stories all over the internet about her, and she gave an interview on Larry King shortly before she died.

She demonstrated some of the absolute worst parts of Christianity the religion, as she and her husband asked vulnerable people for money in the name of God and used it to live in obscene luxury. I don’t think she was the brains behind the operation or committed legal fraud, but she had to notice that she was living in a really big house with lots of very expensive cars and that they kept asking people for money.

I can’t let Tammy Faye off the hook for PTL because too many people tripped over her gold-plated fixtures and air-conditioned dog house on their path to God. I hate the emotional manipulation of vulnerable people and the easy promises that some Big Daddy in the Sky will solve all of our problems if we just ask him nicely. I despise the sentimentality and plastic smiles, and I don’t know if she ever really got what they were doing to people.

She’s someone I would have loved to write off, except for this: She had an AIDS patient on PTL in 1982 and talked about how Christians should be loving people with AIDS . It wasn’t a one time thing either. She never wavered in her embrace of the gay community, and that was not exactly the party line. I grew up in the world of the religious right, and I remember hearing people say that AIDS was God’s judgment on the homosexuals and that anyone with AIDS should be quarantined. They’re still talking about the homosexual agenda. The ones who didn’t talk about that didn’t say anything at all. Even outside the church, few people outside the gay community gave a shit about AIDS in the 80’s, and where I’m from, kids still played a game called Smear the Queer.

I heard and saw her in a room full of faded celebrities and drag queens and those who know full force how cruel religion can be. She stood up there with her ridiculous eyelashes and preached forgiveness and unconditional love. Maybe she needed much forgiveness, but she also had much to forgive and spoke as someone who knows how hard forgiveness can be. I listened to her, and I cried and I cried and I cried because I was all ripped up this weekend and I could use some love and letting go and there is not enough of that in this world. She hit that spot in me that desperately hopes that the kind of unconditional love she was talking about really does exist – and that’s not an easy spot to find. She was not an intellectual, and I’m pretty sure she had unresolved issues from her childhood, but damn – she oozed love and acceptance, and she died hard and slow and talked peace and Jesus on morphine while weighing 65 pounds.

She never changed her makeup, she married two men who got sent to jail, preached forgiveness on The Surreal Life and talked about heaven on Larry King right before her death. What do you do with someone like that?

Maybe it’s not my job to figure out how all the pieces fit together, which is good, because I think that’s a lost cause anyway. Fuck – I don’t know why we can’t get it right anymore than you do, and I don’t think we’re going to. I would write the whole thing off. I really would, except that every so often, I get absolutely slayed by the likes of Tammy Faye, so maybe there’s hope after all, even if it does come from all the wrong people.

So I will hold on to my contradictions and let Tammy Faye rest in peace with hers and wish the LA Times reporter peace on his journey. That’s all I’ve got by way of explanation.

Comments

[Phyllis]

great post, christy. you hit it right where it is. thanks.

[Eileen R. Borris]

I think you wrote a very touching article on Tammy Faye and clearly understand the difficulties of forgiveness.

Eileen R. Borris
author of Finding Forgiveness

[titration]

Thank you for writing this. You would think BOTH/AND living holding things that look like contradictions would tear one apart, and I keep finding it doesn't. Since my life keeps feeling like a both and thing. Great post. It impacted me.

[william lobdell]

thanks for the fair treatment. though it feels a little weird to be mentioned in the same post as tammy faye bakker.

[william lobdell]

thanks for the fair treatment. though it feels a little weird to be mentioned in the same post as tammy faye bakker.

[Amelia]

I hadn't the faintest idea of who Tammy Faye Bakker was. Looked her up on the internet, and I found out that yours was the only comment that could be described as, well, Christian! She sounds like a lunatic, to be fair, but it was amazing how many vitriolic articles there were about her. This post was one of your best. As you say, What do you do with a person like that? No idea, thank goodness I don't have the heaven/hell monopoly decision making power!

[Julie]

I could barely stand to look at a photo of Tammy Faye in her last days. She looked so ragged and diminished and must have suffered so much! Thank you for showing some love and compassion for her.

[Heather]

I, too, watched the documentary movie and was struck by the compassion and radical love Tammy Faye showed towards people AIDS. A vivid picture of humanity-- messed up, with glimmers of redemption shining out from beneath the layers of makeup.

[Christy]

Phyllis -
Thanks. And I love pretty much everything you're writing these days, even though I don't always comment.

Eileen -
Glad you liked it.

Titration -
Somehow just sitting with contradictions seems to work better sweating to resolve them, doesn't it?

William -
Didn't expect you to read this, but I genuinely did like your piece and I meant the part about wanting to buy you a beer. I felt a little weird myself writing about Tammy Faye, but I find that life is surprising that way.

Amelia -
I don't think TBN made it to the UK, for which you should be grateful. Someone like Jerry Falwell - well, he was just a nasty piece of work, but Tammy Faye I see more as a woman with a lot of damage who, despite being a bit of a freak (or maybe because of that) managed to connect with a bit of Love and show that to others.

Julie -
Yep, she died the hard way. I wouldn't wish lung cancer on anyone, and I don't want to dance on anyone's grave.

Heather -
Wasn't that a fascinating documentary? Gave me a much more sympathetic picture of her.

[gartenfische]

There is so much here--the failings of the church, the unlikelihood, yet reality of God, the odd places where true Christian love turns up (Tammy Faye!).

Oh, it's a strange world, all right.

Glad I found you. . . .

[Christy]

Gartenfische -

Glad you found me too. I clicked on your blog, and we seem to have a fair amount in common, although I think we've had very different journeys to ge there.

[Shelia]

I'm a bit behind on my blog reading, but I have to say this is one of the best ones I've read! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, insights, etc. I watched the Tammy Faye interview on Larry King and was wanting to change the channel, but I got STUCK with this weird fascination thing. Who knows what that was about, but I clearly remember her from the 80s and all of the scandal, etc. I hear you about the faith thing, too. I would be far less conflicted in my life if I didn't believe. My niece wrote on her Facebook page: Love Jesus, Hate Church! She's only 18 and she gets it. I didn't get it until I was in my 20s! Glad I found your blog. Keep writing.

[jimineykbc]

Hey, I was wondering if anyone here has a habit of coming up with cool business ideas out of nowhere, but never got around to attempting them.
Here are mine:
consumer generated power
household recycling plants
innovative ringtones (like http://www.news.com/5208-1033_3-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=31380&messageID=312987>fart ringtones for young people)
retail approach to recycling
carbon offsets by sms

share yours if you don't mind revealing your genius. :)