All That’s Realized
“You know, I’ve grown up Catholic, but I never knew the differences among Baptists, Pentecostals, and Apostolic,” I said to Nick as we took our daily walk—this time, on our way to a Korean fried chicken place.
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m reading this memoir called ‘All That’s Unseen’ right now, and she mentioned that Pentecostals were considered a cult.”
Nick explained that they were the revivalist kind, a type of Christian denomination that preached out loud, convulsed with the Holy Spirit, and performed all those healing prayers, just as Emilee Hackney described in her memoir.
“They speak in tongues, too, right?” I asked.
“Yup.”
I told Nick that when I was in SFC in my late teens to early twenties, we did this too. “We even had a tongues workshop. Shamala shamala shamala.”
He looked at me funny. “Really? That’s weird, since that’s very Pentecostal. What’s SFC anyway? Is that Catholic?” he asked.
“I guess so.” We’d meet twice a month on Sundays: once for a prayer assembly and once for small groups called households. It’s like church after church. I had been part of YFC before (the teens org), and we did all the worship, small-group, and camp activities. It was fun because I made friends there and sang in the band. My participation there was mostly social, to be honest.
Once I hit 18, I graduated to SFC.
It wasn’t much of a giant leap since folks from YFC went on the same route and I’d still see my friends, but this one felt more serious.
We talked about the Bible, read passages by Max Lucado and other American Christian minister-turned-authors, and sang Hillsong music. We held a tongues workshop where we learned to speak in tongues and were trained to become prayer warriors, tasked with praying nonstop backstage during events to keep evil forces from messing with the program or causing technical difficulties. There were days when we were asked to knock on people’s doors or seek out friends who weren’t part of the group to see if they’d be interested in joining a prayer assembly, a practice that has been dubbed evangelizing.
Nick’s question stuck with me. Back then, I considered SFC supplemental material for my faith, but it never occurred to me that it leaned more toward Christian practice and the Pentecostal/Evangelical kind, to be exact. To me, it’s all just one religion based on one text and one kind of God. I never knew about the different ways of worship and other silly rules that set denominations apart until I came to the US. Either way, I didn’t really care much after I reevaluated my faith in religion.
At SFC, we mostly talked about living the single life under God. Unlike the topics of being a good child to your parents and a model student to please God at YFC, many SFC topics focused on how to be a suitable woman for the man God was preparing for us. The meetings were segregated by gender, so I never knew what the men talked about.
Many couples come out of SFC because of proximity, shared belief, and other things in common. Once they get married, they’re off to CFC—the couples org.
When my sister met her then-boyfriend, now-husband, online, the group was excited and happy for her. God blessed her with a man online! Online dating was fairly new—and a tad taboo—back then. For some of the ladies at SFC (including me), it was another opportunity to meet men easily outside the group’s confines, especially for women with social anxiety. It was as if God built the servers and the algorithms Himself so He could lead us to the right person, who wasn’t in SFC after all. Soon, prayers included hopes of matching or meeting the right person online.
I never really got into SFC like I did YFC. I never attended the conferences because I couldn’t afford them, which is fine. I did notice, though, that those who attended conferences and had perfect meeting attendance were promoted to leadership roles. I wasn’t interested in that anyway. I just wanted to be with my group and talk about our lives—whether or not it could be spun to the Bible or the passages of the day.
I’ve always thought SFC was Catholic. It never occurred to me that it had roots in Christianity, but potato, potahto.
What I also realized is that these religion-based organizations always find ways to part you from your money. Conferences, fundraising (where you don’t see proof of impact), and financial stewardship through pass-the-hat activities during prayer assemblies (even after you’ve tithed at the actual church)—all to support the umbrella organization.
My sister left some time later, after she moved to a different city.
A segue: I remember my mother getting excited that my older sister joined a Bible study group at her job after she left SFC. One day, my sister announced she was going to give 10% of all her earnings as her tithe. My mom flipped. She tried to convince my sister that that was too much, but my sister said that’s what the Bible said. I was confused by my mom’s outrage, since she’s hyper-religious, and I had never read the Bible front to back to know the mathematical equation for proper tithing. Either way, it didn’t make sense to me.
I left SFC because I found out that one of the leaders talked shit about my sister and me. “She’s got all these tattoos, and they both show up wearing shorts all the time. Soon she’ll be a bad influence on Dannah,” this one girl said.
As someone who now has a lot of tattoos and would recommend shorts in a country that is consistently set at 100 degrees, fuck that bitch.
I always have been and felt Catholic-lite. I had my beliefs, and I’ve said my prayers. I wasn’t into going to Church on Sundays because I felt forced to, or because I always associated it with a heavy feeling—fear or retribution if I shirked that responsibility. It didn’t feel like I was taught to love going to church, but rather to fear so that I should go.
Nowadays, my modicum of belief is through loving thy neighbor. Treating people with kindness is the platform I operate on, and not because my religion, the Bible, or God told me so. It’s just being human.
I’m still friends with many people from SFC, and this is not a criticism of any of the organizations. I’ve seen how these places help people find their chosen families who share the same beliefs.
To me, people are allowed to practice their religion as much as they want, as long as their beliefs do not harm others.
This is simply the culmination of my realization that I was doing Pentecostal-type stuff as a young woman in denim shorts.
Mentioned organizations are shortened to their abbreviations.
