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Posted: October 8th, 2007 at 1:06am By: Rev. Kristi Denham
August 1969. I'm 20 years old, recovering from a major car accident, sleeping sitting up, doing a lot of reading. When I dare to hobble outside with my full leg cast and arm cast and sling, I look like a walking accident and tend to nearly cause one as people drive by.
A boy I have known since high school has come to visit. My mother likes him because he is tall, good looking and popular. I know him as someone who has only one thing on his mind. I am surprised to see him at my door, but I am clearly unassailable now so I invite him in.
He tells me he is here to apologize to me for treating me with disrespect when we were younger. He shares that he is now a born-again Christian and active in Campus Crusade for Christ at U.C. Davis. His timing is perfect.
It is only a matter of weeks before I am settled into the dorm at Davis myself. I lose no time in joining Campus Crusade and becoming involved in sharing "The Four Spiritual Laws" and learning more about the organization.
My ability to memorize scripture and speak articulately in public and in small groups gives me an edge on many others in this fairly large hierarchical campus ministry. I am invited regularly to share my testimony in our public meetings.
Many in the organization have led pretty sheltered lives before coming to CCC. I am the ex-hippie with stories of sex, drugs and other dramas from which God has saved me.
I am invited to co-lead an "Action Group" which is designed to educate new disciples in the faith.
A husband and wife team oversee the organization and its nearly 500 members. The men and women meet separately. The women are under the wife's leadership, the men under her husband.
In addition to sharing the Four Spiritual Laws, we have a questionnaire designed to help open the conversation. We tell other students that their answers will be entered onto a database we are developing to document religious interests and beliefs in our country. This is a lie. There is no database.
The belief that non-believers will go to hell justifies almost anything. I begin to sense there is a shadow side to this organization.
At one of our weekly "Testimony" gatherings, a young woman stands up and asks our leader how God could allow her parents and her aunt to all be killed in a car accident just the week before.
He starts telling her and all of us that God's joy should overcome all sorrow, that her family should not be mourned, that she has nothing to be sad about.
Suddenly my heart and mind wake up. I know he is wrong. I find the young woman in the crowd and tell her he is crazy. It is the beginning of a gradual and difficult shift in consciousness for me. God's love has to be more subtle and more compassionate, and less sleazy, than Campus Crusade for Christ.
But it would be two agonizing years before I would finally walk away from them — and only because they threw me out as a Jezebel and a "Daughter of Satan" because of a rumor and another lie.
(To be continued.)
— — —
Rev. Kristi Denham is pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont, California (United Church of Christ). Her email address is {email RevKristi@aol.com}RevKristi@aol.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Kristi Denham.
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August 1969. I'm 20 years old, recovering from a major car accident, sleeping sitting up, doing a lot of reading. When I dare to hobble outside with my full leg cast and arm cast and sling, I look like a walking accident and tend to nearly cause one as people drive by.
A boy I have known since high school has come to visit. My mother likes him because he is tall, good looking and popular. I know him as someone who has only one thing on his mind. I am surprised to see him at my door, but I am clearly unassailable now so I invite him in.
He tells me he is here to apologize to me for treating me with disrespect when we were younger. He shares that he is now a born-again Christian and active in Campus Crusade for Christ at U.C. Davis. His timing is perfect.
It is only a matter of weeks before I am settled into the dorm at Davis myself. I lose no time in joining Campus Crusade and becoming involved in sharing "The Four Spiritual Laws" and learning more about the organization.
My ability to memorize scripture and speak articulately in public and in small groups gives me an edge on many others in this fairly large hierarchical campus ministry. I am invited regularly to share my testimony in our public meetings.
Many in the organization have led pretty sheltered lives before coming to CCC. I am the ex-hippie with stories of sex, drugs and other dramas from which God has saved me.
I am invited to co-lead an "Action Group" which is designed to educate new disciples in the faith.
A husband and wife team oversee the organization and its nearly 500 members. The men and women meet separately. The women are under the wife's leadership, the men under her husband.
In addition to sharing the Four Spiritual Laws, we have a questionnaire designed to help open the conversation. We tell other students that their answers will be entered onto a database we are developing to document religious interests and beliefs in our country. This is a lie. There is no database.
The belief that non-believers will go to hell justifies almost anything. I begin to sense there is a shadow side to this organization.
At one of our weekly "Testimony" gatherings, a young woman stands up and asks our leader how God could allow her parents and her aunt to all be killed in a car accident just the week before.
He starts telling her and all of us that God's joy should overcome all sorrow, that her family should not be mourned, that she has nothing to be sad about.
Suddenly my heart and mind wake up. I know he is wrong. I find the young woman in the crowd and tell her he is crazy. It is the beginning of a gradual and difficult shift in consciousness for me. God's love has to be more subtle and more compassionate, and less sleazy, than Campus Crusade for Christ.
But it would be two agonizing years before I would finally walk away from them — and only because they threw me out as a Jezebel and a "Daughter of Satan" because of a rumor and another lie.
(To be continued.)
— — —
Rev. Kristi Denham is pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont, California (United Church of Christ). Her email address is {email RevKristi@aol.com}RevKristi@aol.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Kristi Denham.
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