I was homeschooled from kindergarten through high school graduation in American evangelical homeschooling communities. This was in the heyday of the 1990s and 2000s, when evangelicalism thrived in physical Christian bookstores, through Contemporary Christian Music rock stars like DC Talk and Newsboys, and by massive government grants for purity culture programs. These commercial institutions, cultural influences, and government partnerships created insular worlds where everything—from commerce to culture to government—reinforced evangelical beliefs and practices.
Evangelicals are experts at organizing. Paul Weyrich, one of the most important architects of the Christian Right, once declared that, “Organization is our bag. We preach and teach nothing but organization.” And he is right. Evangelicals employ a large and diverse number of tools, apparatuses, and rituals to keep children—seen as future generations of foot soldiers and enforcers of evangelicalism—in line and believing the “right” beliefs.
In my evangelical circles, “giving your testimony” was one such important ritual. The ritual involved telling others how you became a Christian—or how you “accepted Jesus into your heart,” as we would say. The ritual drew lines in the sand, making clear what thoughts and behaviors were sinful and thus who could be a member of the in-group and who should be treated as a suspect outsider.
The ritual also bestowed social clout, so the more elaborate the testimony, the better. The testimonies that really wowed and impressed evangelicals were the ones where people who had hit rock bottom in their lives—suicidal, drug-addicted, voting Democrat—found Jesus and turned their lives around.
If you had a good testimony, you could be an evangelical rock star—no matter how horrifying your former life and behavior were. In fact, many evangelical leaders were known for parading around the worst, most abusive people simply because the converts said the “right” words. Evangelical parenting teacher and eugenicist Paul Popenoe disciple James Dobson’s interview with the allegedly “born-again” serial killer and rapist Ted Bundy is a good example of this. It also foreshadows Dobson’s endorsement of Donald Trump.
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I never had a good testimony.
This is my testimony: when I was around five, my older brother accepted Jesus into his heart. I was taught that, if I didn’t do likewise, I would be separated from my older brother for eternity in hellfire.
Terrified at the thought, I immediately asked Jesus into my heart.
…that is it.
That is my testimony.
I remember sharing that once at some point during my adolescence in front of a group and I quickly realized I had a… um… well, the sort of testimony one does not share.
Sure, we all accepted Jesus into our hearts as evangelical children because we were afraid of eternal hellfire. But we were not supposed to talk about that. We were supposed to talk about how broken and evil we once were and how much we deserved that hellfire.
We were supposed to talk about how Jesus changed and transformed us.
But I believed because I did not want to be separated from someone I loved. That complicates the whole narrative and raises questions about the ethics and trauma of evangelizing children. My testimony was uncomfortable because it directly, albeit unintentionally, exposed evangelism’s foundation of fear.
As I told Baptist News Global author Rick Pidcock a couple years ago, “Scaring, or even threatening, children with eternal hellfire is commonplace in evangelicalism. Even though such fear can create a lifetime of religious and other trauma, evangelicals insist it is appropriate to terrify children for the sake of their salvation. But testimonies from exvangelicals who cannot enter churches today without panic attacks expose this lie as antichrist. Terrifying children is worthy of millstones, not praise. Terror is a terrible foundation for faith.”