Episode 001 – B’s conversion story
16 March 2021
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
T: All right, so there’s a whole series of moving from the 50s or 60s called I was a Teenage Werewolf or I was a Teenage Vampire and this kind of thing, so I thought this would be really cool to call it “I was a Teenage Fundamentalist”.
B: I like it. The shoe fits.
T: And it can go beyond fundamentalism, and it can go beyond our teenage years, but I think that’s a good place to start, because that’s where it started for us, right?
B: It did. 1989 for me. I was 17.
T: Ok yeah. For me it was 1984, maybe even 83 there was some smatterings of it, but I think it was 84, so yeah I was 13 turning 14. Quite young. So why don’t we start by saying what we’re not – what we’re not trying to do with this whole podcast, which is we’re not trying to make this a big negative fest, but at the same time we’re not afraid to be negative.
B: Well, I think negative in the frame of being reflective and the fact of where we are in our lives. You pull forward a fair bit of life experience to contextualise the stuff that’s happened, and we’re probably still – I mean, it’s life long learning, isn’t it. Your context changes throughout your life, so I guess we want to be true to what has happened and what our experience was and is to this day.
T: Yep, sure. And for context we are now in the second half of our lives which would be fair to say, don’t know if you’ve thought about that but I have.
B: Yes.
T: Certainly in the second half of life, so we’re looking back on these years with a lot more wisdom and maturity. We talked, didn’t we, before we hit record about do we want to say where we’re at now in terms of religious and spiritual belief, and I thought let’s hold that back.
B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, to be completely honest I’m not sure where I am. I think for me it’s something that’s constantly unpacking, and it’s constantly redefining in some sort of way – not in an effort to redefine, but being redefined by the reality of where I am in life.
T: Yeah, cool. So people that are listening to this, if you’re a Christian or religious somehow, don’t be turned off thinking this is going to be an atheist fest, but if you’re an atheist, don’t be switched off thinking this is going to be a big religious fest either. That being said, the topic is basically reflecting on our religions and our religious past, and all that kind of stuff. I think the other thing to point out too is you and I both have jobs, lives and families so we’ve decided we’re going to keep this anonymous, so I’m going to refer to you as “B”.
B: Yep. And I’m going to refer to you as “T”.
T: Thank you very much, that sounds good. Which may or may not be reflective of our real names. I also will point out that I live near an airport and probably what was heard just then was planes going over. We’re not going to do any massive edits to this either, so if dogs bark and phones ring, fuck it.
B: Yep, so be it.
T: And I think I just made it clear that we are going to swear.
B: Ah, yes. Yes, it is definitely part of my core, always has been.
T: All right, very good. I was thinking as I said to you before, 30 minute slots. So if it’s all right with you, I’d like to hear from you about how you came into the whole thing. Ultimately we ended up in what was then called the Assemblies of God in Australia, which is now I think called the Australian Christian Churches.
B: Is it!
T: Yeah, they changed their name. Which is, by the way, the precursor to Hillsong. So Hillsong wasn’t its own standalone organisation back then, but it is now and it was definitely part of the group we came into. But why don’t we start with you and you tell your story about how you came into it all, and I’ll try and keep my mouth shut.
B: No that’s fine – you can ask questions or say does this make sense. Just reflect back to me. For me I guess I grew up in a relatively spiritual family. Not to be reflective of organised religion of any type, but more a reality that there was something out there and this wasn’t an accidental formation of life. We used to explore that as a family by having family seances.
T: Did you really?
B: We did! It was a really strange thing.
T: I don’t think it’s that strange because we used to do it too, but not as a family. The kids used to do it, but certainly mum and dad weren’t involved, but in your house mum and dad were involved?
B: Well, mum was involved with dad sitting in the background going this is a load of bullshit. So generally he wasn’t overly supportive of it.
T: Family seances! With a Ouija board?
B: Yes with a Ouija board.
T: So come on kids, let’s speak to the dead!
B: Pretty much yeah. It’d usually be a box of Fruity Lexia and mum and sister and brothers were on board. But we never had a proper Ouija board, it was the cut-out paper letters, the yes and the no and the wine glass. We saw some freaky stuff happen during those – how real it is, whether it was our minds making it happen, I don’t know. But for me I grew up always exploring and being open. I certainly had mates that were in churches, the local Baptist church, that sort of thing, and I found myself around Christmas and Easter, mum saying maybe we should go to a service or something and I always thought not a hope in hell. I ended up a couple of times going along with mates, just go to what the hell’s this all about, and it was just a bizarre experience. I never related to it, the disconnection between my own spiritual search and this institution where you went to act out whatever you were thinking, I just never got it.
T: So which kind of denominations or groups did you visit as a kid, and what age were you around this time.
B: Catholic and Baptist. I had a mate who had to go to Mass every weekend just to keep his mum happy so I went along with him. I found it incredibly bizarre – you sat down, you stood up. Everything was very scripted, everyone knew what to say at particular times, except me. I sat there thinking God, I just don’t feel like part of this because I wasn’t part of the script that was there.
T: So words like Liturgy would not have been in vocabulary, even though you were experiencing it, right?
B: Yeah I had absolutely no idea. The Baptist experience was a little bit different, I went along to a Youth Group there with another friend from school and it was good. It was fun, everyone hung out, but when it got to the religious part of it I just disconnected. I didn’t get it. So for me I went through my teenage years with that loose spirituality, the searching, connecting. At the time I definitely didn’t think that was what I was doing, it was just happening. Fast forward – at that time I had one of my brothers who was a surfer, very much into the surf scene, and he was mad bong smoker. Bongs for breakky, bongs for lunch. He was on a bit of a bizarre path in life, and he became a Christian. He started calling my mum and dad and being evangelistic toward them.
T: What year would this have been?
B: Would have been about 1985, 86 I reckon.
T: Was he living in the same city and state as you?
B: No, he was living in another state. So he would be ringing mum and dad and preaching, to the point where my dad refused to talk to him on the phone anymore. You know, standing by his strong man true of this is bullshit of anything spiritual. That went on for a while, and probably when I was 15 or 16 another one of my brothers got connected into the same group. I can’t even remember what Christian group it was, but it was a Pentecostal fundamentalist group. He moved up to the same city and they were both trying to constantly preach and reach out, and they got everyone offside. No one wanted to talk to them. When I was about 17 I decided to go visit them, but I said I would only stay with them on the proviso of a few things, and that was they weren’t allowed to have any bibles in the house; they weren’t allowed to preach to me, not once. If they did, I would leave straight away because they were very, very gung-ho about it. To their credit both of them agreed. Whether there was bibles in the house, I’m sure there was but none was left out on particular pages for me to stumble across.
T: Hidden behind porno mags.
B: Imagine. I would have been fine.
T: Everything is in reverse when you’re a fundamentalist.
B: It was! So they did that and decided they could stick by the no preaching rule. They had a good bunch of friends who were incredibly supportive, I’d seen a huge change particularly in my bong loving brother, and for him I saw a happiness and acceptance that I’d never seen before. Regardless of them saying they weren’t going to preach to me, they didn’t have to because there was something I saw, something within me that went what is this? So I started asking questions, and I started saying what are we doing.
T: So you’re saying whether it was true or real or not, the change you were seeing was legitimate.
B: 100%. It was undeniable there was something going on. Whether it was their connection to community, their acceptance from others, something had worked.
T: Or even just faith. And I don’t mean faith as the object of their faith as in God, but just the fact that they had faith and reasons to change.
B: Yeah, absolutely. They had something in some belief. I wasn’t sure what it was, I was 17, didn’t really know myself that well. It’s a bit of a confusing time in life and for me I just thought stuff it, it was my last Sunday I was going to be there, I decided to go along to this church they were going to and see what it was all about. Again, it was that sense of acceptance, of community. It was a different feeling I’d never felt before, and it was definitely a feeling. It was strange. Anyway throughout the session I had this draw to find out what this was about and at the end of it they had this thing if anyone wants to know more about this come up the front, we’ll have some people talk to you, and I did that. I went up the front, and I had people chat to me about what it was about. I didn’t get it, I didn’t get what they were saying, I didn’t get what it would actually mean, and fast forward a couple of years of my life I didn’t know where it was going to take me and influence my thinking and doing. But at that time I made the decision to find out a bit more about it.
T: Okay, so you made this decision. Was it an emotional decision, was it an academic decision, was it a cognitive decision, a combination of those, what do you reckon?
B: I didn’t feel like I was in control of it in some way. I felt drawn to it, and there was no logic to it because every part of it I was hearing my dad’s voice in the background going this is bullshit. For me it was a complete turnaround – that Catholic and Baptist experience I had had a look at, they didn’t make sense to me. They didn’t connect, but this did. There was something about it that connected, and it didn’t make sense. It still didn’t make sense but there was something in me that went you’ve got to find out a bit more about this, you’ve gotta see where it leads. Why your brothers have connected with it when you wouldn’t have thought they would either? So it was something to explore more, and that’s it. It led me to exploring more. How about you T?
T: Before we get into me, you can’t remember who this group was aligned with?
B: I think they were called Christian City Churches or something like that. I think they were from Sydney, although this wasn’t the city it was in. But it was in Sydney, I think it was connected to Phil Pringle. That’s all I remember. After I returned to where I lived from that holiday, I didn’t actually have anything to do with that denomination or movement again.
T: But your brothers did.
B: My brothers did. They stayed there. They’re aligned with that, one of them continued to be aligned with that for many years, twenty plus, maybe even thirty years. But I came back and I still kept exploring on and off for the next couple of years, but it was with different movements and denominations and I’d hear word of mouth. Because it was pre-internet, you couldn’t just search where can I go. I actually got a letter from that church where I was on holiday saying hey, you’ve gone back to your city where you live, here’s a few places you might want to try. One of them was connected to them and I went to it, didn’t connect to it in the way that I did and found out through some other people there some other church groups to explore so that’s where I went.
T: Okay cool. So moving forward and everything, you eventually did find a place that you made sort of semi-regular. What age were you when that happened?
B: I reckon I was 19.
T: So about two years you sort of sussed it out, came and went.
B: Yeah, be about two years. Probably over that next year I connected with one place a bit more, and again it was that fundamentalist group. From memory they were fairly independent, they weren’t connected with anyone else. Again, it was a good bunch of people. They were fairly gracious in the fact I was a bit rough round the edges, I was fairly uncommitted to the space, I was still acting like any teenager would. I was out and about, I didn’t really connect in with their larger groups. They had home groups where you would all catch up at someone’s home to talk about your Christianity or journey or whatever.
T: Bible studies.
B: Bible studies – I didn’t connect in with any of those. Youth group, which I did connect with reasonably strongly, but again it was the social aspect of it. I felt fairly safe in that environment and they were fairly committed to not preaching to me. I almost felt like I had to get through the Sunday service there just to get that bit over and done with, so you could get to the social stuff.
T: So by this stage would you have – thinking back to the language of the day – would you have committed your life to Christ, prayed the sinner’s prayer, have been baptised, all this kind of stuff.
B: Yeah absolutely. That’s one thing I forgot, when I was on holidays and went up the front, that was one thing they did. They said would you give your life to Jesus – I had no idea what that meant, but I went yeah I’ll give it a crack.
T: (laughs) I’ll give him my crack. Not the whole lot!
B: Just the crack. Just to start!
T: Just the tip!
B: And the low jeans. And I did, I gave it a crack. It really moved quite fast, that was on that weekend and I was going home the end of the next weekend and they said oh next weekend we’re doing baptisms in the river down the road.
T: Oh hurrah!
B: Yeah and I went I have no idea what that means and they said oh you’ve gotta do it, it’s part of the package.
T: (18:53) It’s like a shower
B: It was part of the package. So the next week, here I am down at this local river and there was a bunch of people there, probably 15 at least. I had no idea what this baptism was, I expected someone to flick a bit of water on my forehead and Bob’s your uncle.
T: Bob’s your godfather.
B: Bob’s your godfather! But I got dunked completely under the water.
T: Did they dress you in white robes or were you allowed to wear shorts and t-shirt.
B: No, it was board shorts and t-shirt, and probably a tank top back then, I was 17.
T: And it was the 80s.
B: Yep, and it would have been a tank top that said something like Jimmy Barnes.
T: Or Phuket. I had a friend of mine in high school that had a Phuket shirt and we all loved it because it really said fuck it. This was back before the days when you’d been there 4 or 5 times yourself.
B: Yeah, so they did that baptism thing and I had no idea what it meant. I had no idea why you’d do it, it wasn’t really explained to me. Perhaps it was, but I don’t remember anything from it. There was nothing that stuck, I didn’t feel any different when I did it, but I did it because it was part of the packet. So I’d done all that, I’d ticked the boxes they said I’d needed to tick to be part of what they were, but I didn’t really know what they were.
T: So there was no initiation course – nowadays you’ve got all these courses and stuff that people do to come into Christian churches. I see the signs when I drive around, the big course is still Alpha where they do all these training courses and get your understanding – none of that happened?
B: No. I’ve seen those posters too – Bear Grylls is always the one advertising Alpha.
T: Oh really? Is he a Christian?
B: Well, they use his quotes about the Alpha course.
T: Because let’s face it, Christians love celebrities.
B: They do. Especially one that drinks his own pee.
T: Yeah right.
B: Nothing wrong with that!
T: Locusts and honey, drink your own pee, fair enough. Well cool, that’s an interesting journey. Where do you think then you got to the point where you committed, ok I’m regular now, this is what I am, you started wearing that label and maybe even started telling your friends. How did that happen?
B: This is the weird thing – I was never comfortable in telling my friends about what I was part of. It was something I always tried to keep hidden. I saw all these people I was with within these groups being really proud and wearing the badge of I am a Christian, I am a follower of Jesus. I was never comfortable, I felt incredibly awkward about it. I think there was so much baggage with it, and I didn’t want that branding of that’s what you are, this is the mould you have to fit because it wasn’t me. I was still exploring, I was still trying to make sense of it and I wasn’t as proud in flying that flag. So for me that never happened; however, when I fully threw myself into the whole experience I was probably 19. That was when I came across the Assemblies of God and it was a large church.
T: Let’s call it Great Big AOG.
B: Great Big AOG.
T: That can be the name we use for this church.
B: Sounds good.
T: So we don’t get sued as we start to share stories that maybe identify people that they don’t want to get told, let’s just call it Great Big AOG.
B: It was huge, but it was incredibly welcoming. It was a well oiled machine, there is no doubt about that. I felt at home there, I felt accepted there. Probably for the first few months we were the new and shiny because I actually started going there with another mate.
T: Had he come from your previous churches?
B: No, he hadn’t. We’d been mates since we were about 10 years old, and he’d recently gone through a similar thing completely separate to me and completely without my knowledge of giving his life over to Jesus, and he rang me one day and said I’d just done this. I thought what the hell, but he was a lot more into it than I was. I still loved the social aspect of it, so we thought we’d check this place out. We checked it out together, we were definitely the new and shinies, we were accepted, people were enjoying us being there, I think people saw us as coming from the outside.
T: Fresh blood.
B: Fresh blood, and an opportunity for them to be able to – if I look back, I think they were trying to connect with something they weren’t part of as well, because it was a very insular institution. I can look back at it through my eyes now and there was definitely a lot of cultish type behaviour. You were captured within a net, and if you went outside of that defined area, you were seen to be often labelled as worldly which pointed the finger at you to be someone who wasn’t part of them. For me as someone who wanted to connect with something and someone so deeply, to be named as something you weren’t part of, it made you steer away from that and come back into the fold.
T: It’s funny you know, because when you talk about coming along for the first time, I remember the first few times I went along to that group I was also I guess fresh meat, fresh blood, and it was actually a lot of the girls that came up and started talking to me at first, because I think a lot of them were looking for husbands and this kind of thing.
B: Yeah absolutely, I think that was something that most certainly happened in that space.
T: I sensed that as well, like you said they were very insular so they were always looking for – it’s almost like jail – what’s it like on the outside? Funny enough though, those kids – because we were kids then – were also going to school and stuff.
B: Yep.
T: But I guess they were looking for a sort of bridge between their religious life which they were possibly and often truly very committed to, but also wanting to be “normal”.
B: And I think they thought they were normal. Their situation was so normalised they thought they were relating, but I feel awkward thinking back about just that. They thought what they were involved in was normal and it was part of what everyone should be doing, but the reality is it was so removed from reality and it was not reflective of the greater world that we lived in.
T: And our society.
B: And they wore that as a badge because they saw that point of difference in well, that’s what sets us apart and that’s what makes us authentic because we are part of a greater movement which is more authentic because it has Jesus at the centre of it.
T: Well it’s God’s people isn’t it.
B: That’s correct.
T: God’s chosen. All right, well that’s really good. I think that’s a good wrap to our first session. How about we stop there and next time we get together maybe I’ll tell my story and we’ll leave it there for today.
B: That would be good.
T: Hope you enjoyed your first session of I was a Teenage Fundamentalist.