Evangelical religious beliefs
In the early 1970’s one of us [KW] revied a sports scholarship that enabled him to come to the US from South Africa. The Vietnam war was winding down.
This was a huge opportunity and privilege for me and my goal was to be the best I could be with this opportunity. I landed up at a Nazarene University in San Diego overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Little could have been more perfect. Except for the hypocrisy I experienced at this school from the Nazarene leadership. Besides being forced out of the school for “not being religious enough”, I was horrified how they treated Vietnam vets who came to the school after the war from Nazarene families. These were individuals with deep trauma, likely PTSD, and needed all the help, support and empathy that could be mustered. They received the opposite from the school. Instead, they were spied on, disciplined for bad behavior and at least two of them that I knew personally were eventually ejected from the school. My own family was a “not very religious” Catholic family and my only early experience from Catholicism was punitive to the point of family arguments for not being Catholic enough and ultimately family fragmentation.
This personal narrative suggests that KW might be somewhat biased when reflecting on this the role of evangelical religious beliefs, The second author [WB] offers his own narrative that reveals something about his own bias:
Download Article 1K ClubI grew up in a family where my father was a Christian Scientist. This is a religion that was born in the United States by a woman (Mary Baker Eddy). It is based on the premise that there is no physical reality but only a spiritual realm in which we all dwell. It is a realm in which there is no disease or death, and no inhumanity—for God is all knowing, all powerful and all good. In my household there was no illness and only good thoughts about other human beings (in alignment with God’s presence). It should be noted that in some ways this religion is aligned with recent Quantum perspectives regarding the nature of reality; furthermore, many valuable initiatives are associated with this church — such as the Christian Science Monitor (a highly respected newspaper published by the church). It is a religion that is filled with Love and affirmative perspectives – much needed today. Yet, I had to confront a “reality” early in my life that Mary Baker Eddy might have been ”wrong” regarding her vision of a single spiritual reality. It was indeed painful to confront my loving father with my own disbelief in the tenants of a church in which he was a “true believer” (and often served as a leader of his local church). He spent every evening reading “lessons” that had also been prescribed by Eddy many years ago. I was not allowed to attend any classes in Biology or related fields and received vaccines only after my Mother (who was not a Christian Sciences) strongly insisted on this preventative treatment.
