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Onward Christian Soldier - Or Else

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By SANDRA WEBBER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 31, 2008

Newsmagazine "60 Minutes" ran a story the other night on a 23-year-old Army gunner on his second tour in Iraq who says he was ostracized, denied promotions and discriminated against because he refused to participate in a prayer circle with fellow soldiers. The name calling and physical threats got so bad he was assigned a bodyguard.

The arguments for separation of church and state are many. The fact that when those two squirrel up together things don't turn out so good is backed by some pretty strong history. Like the Roman Empire.

The soldier's story reminded me of my own sometimes scary experience as a snot-nosed kid growing up surrounded by dog-kicking, baby-pinching, hymn-singing, Sunday-I'm sober-and-with-enough-Old-Spice-you-won't-be-able-to-smell-the-Budweiser-oozing-from-my-pores Southern Baptists.

I was dragged mostly to Sunday school but went willingly to vacation Bible school because we made crafts and had lunch.

For many of my formative years, I sang the verses of "Just As I Am" at the end of sermons when the preacher would give everyone a chance to "confess your sins and be saved." Or even be "born again." We'd sing verse after verse after verse until somebody just gave up and walked down to the altar. Behind the altar was the pulpit and behind that was a thick glassed window and a water tank where the baptisms took place. My brother got dunked there. I never did.

What did that mean, being saved? I mean, I understood if I was about to jump off a really high bridge over the Gulf of Mexico and somebody pulled me back. But saved from my sins? I was 8. Yes, I had sassed my mama. I'm sure I'd done some pretty mean things to my brother, but sins? And being born yet again?

A few of the most holy folks from the Baptist church would visit late afternoons if we'd missed a few Sundays in a row to lay on a little guilt. I'd be in my bedroom reading or staring off into space. I'll never forget once when a classmate sat down on my bed and talked and quoted from the Bible and tried her best to have me "confess" my sins of the past eight or nine years. I stood my ground but didn't sleep much that night.

Thunderstorms would often boil up on Sundays after church, and as we drove home, I'd be worrying that maybe I should have "confessed" my sins, just in case a tornado swirled down and catapulted a pine tree into the Impala.

When I was around 25, I found a church where, at the end of the message, I actually felt better than when I got there. And nothing I heard there made me sin any more or less the next week. In a nutshell, the message was that I was likely not going straight to hell. Besides, for anyone who's been there, you know it's a circuitous path.

Television preachers playing on the fears of the elderly and downtrodden, promising that through faith and monthly contributions conveniently withdrawn from their bank accounts that their situations will improve, is another kind of fear-mongering that crawls my skin.

And now there's this: Soldiers, still teenagers some of them, fighting in a war they neither understand nor have much of any say in are being ostracized, and worse. And it's because they choose not to join with others to pray a Christian prayer. Do you really think it's only happened to this one guy who had the guts to speak up about it?

I can imagine nothing scarier than being in a foreign desert not knowing when or where the next bullet is coming from. Soldiers need solidarity to survive. But that doesn't mean individual differences shouldn't be honored and respected. Without question or ridicule.

Across the board.

I pray. And not just when I'm driving on U.S. 19. And I hope one day I will be reunited with a few of my relatives I liked. Or if not that then I'd like my soul, my aura, whatever, recycled and have it come out better next time. If you pray or believe these things or not doesn't make you any better or worse or more entitled to the rights and protections of the Constitution of the United States of America than anyone else.

Sandra Webber is a freelance writer living in Clearwater.

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