Go To Church Or The Devil Will Get You
PART ONE: Once Saved, Always Saved
“Hell don’t have no future
Hell don’t have no doubt
Hell is just a place that
We can’t seem to live without”1
For the first time in my life the weight of lurking monsters, the dark shadowy shapeshifting nightmares of being dragged and tortured in hell, are gone. I am 58.
PART ONE:
Saturday mornings in the 1970’s were meant for cartoons. Cereal boxes filled with a dentist’s dreams and kid-targeted prizes, possibly a plastic dinosaur or super ball and the comfort of Scooby-Doo, Fat Albert and Jabber Jaw emanating from the blue light of a pre-cable world of television. Many a morning I sat on our triangle shaped, deep orange velvet covered foot stool getting my sugary nutrition and soaking in the light of cartoons.
On a mid-Fall Saturday morning in 1977, I was about my regular ritual, probably watching Super Friends or Fat Albert. Our modest 3-2 ranch, with unfinished basement, at 2645 Key in Salina, KS was bustling with activity, older brothers going to and fro with their more serious doings, Mom managing the household by ‘God knows what’ system, and Dad curiously out of the picture (Knowing now what he knew was about to come, I don’t blame him. I would have ran to the hills given the chance). I was able to tune out the noise with laser focus. My sanctuary was giving me the energy to move forward with whatever lied next on the path of a typical Kansas Saturday; probably kicking field goals using the neighbor’s swing set as goal posts or hopping on my bike and heading to the store to buy some packs of the new football cards, then trading them with friends. I do know that we did not have a flag football game that day. My team, The Green Machine, named after our future junior and high-school main color was not in action. Whatever was to come, the time was mine to be a kid, to have friends, to do all the things that helped a kid grow up within the crazy mixed up world. I was good at this, enjoying life, in spite of the fact that time was moving too fast and bigger things were creeping in. I was in sixth grade, a place where the expectation of growing up was becoming a reality. Growing up itself was not necessarily a threat, but there was definitely something threatening my present life and it was not killer bees, U.F.Os, Bigfoot or girls. It had been tracking me for several years, and I didn’t know how much longer I could avoid this ominous cloud raining its ‘salvation’ down on me.
The doorbell rang. I noticed my brother Brian head to answer the ring, Mom following close behind. In walked a familiar face, Reverend J.D. Cooper, Pastor of Bel-Air Southern Baptist Church, OUR family’s Church. I did not really think about it as odd until my mom said, “We are going to leave the two of you to talk,” and kaboom, they disappeared like a ghost into the swamp on Scooby Doo. I was sitting, alone, with my Saturday now turned upside down staring straight into the face of Pastor Cooper. I was petrified.
As children, we do what we are told, we follow what we are taught. When there is resistance to that teaching, rebellion or straight out ‘I don’t buy it’, and the ‘teachers’ don’t get the wanted result, the ‘big guns’ are brought out. Pastor Cooper was the powerful bazooka and I was the target.
Several years prior to the 1977 Saturday morning scene, just one street a bit eastward from our residence on Key, in a little area named Bonnie Ridge life was percolating for the Winchell family in a bit older 3-2 with a half finished basement. A huge swath of early childhood memories took place in Bonnie Ridge. My best friend since kindergarten, Kenny, was two doors down, and I would often find solace in his home where the Thompson’s dog Bingo had a nice house in the back where we would shoot baskets, and they actually had a real pinball machine in their basement. I learned my first cuss word from my next door neighbor Joel, even though he was a year younger than me. It was the ‘f’ word. ‘Hey, Scott, you know what this means?’ Joel said as he managed to stick his middle-finger up toward me. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Fucker.’
I ran away from home in Bonnie Ridge, loading my kindergarten school bag with a sleeve of saltines, and making it all the way to the corner on my tricycle before our family car drove by, Brian popped his head out of the back window and said, ‘Do you want to go to Dairy Queen with us?’ My escape was over. I watched my brother Jeff’s friend, Greg Warren, blow a firecracker up in his hand. My brothers brought home buckets of crawdads caught in the river. One really big crawdad was aptly named, ‘King Kong’. My earliest memories of music are from that house. Blasting Grand Funk Railroad from our console stereo before I headed out to school as a ‘latch key’ kid during third grade, the grade I got popped into the principles office and roughed up by that penguin looking bastard for the first time. By that juncture I had perfected the art of cussing and straight up told Theresa Mayes to ‘give me your Godd**mn eraser!’ That expletive laced tirade gave me a one-way ticket to the office. I remember my mom’s gasp when Dad brought me home from a visit to Fred the barber. Fred was a bit glassy eyed that day and didn’t quite get a straight cut, I ended up with a nice butch which corrected the original booze induced cut that sat at about a 25 degree angle across my forehead.
Life was good. Our green ranch style house in the middle of Anytown U.S.A. was also our residence when my entire household REALLY got saved. Everyone but me.
One particular day, in Bonnie Ridge, I was standing in the background, in our kitchen, as a somewhat chaotic scene erupted: My parents were pouring all their liquor down the drain. Every single bottle. The sink riddled with the colorful remnants of the libations. Red, green, a harsher medicine like smell, different from the cans of Coors Dad would sit around at times just long enough for me too snag a sip. Decades later I would learn from two of my brothers how even at their young age that scene impacted them, and not for the positive. Today we call it trauma. Then, it was just part of the game, the process of what needed to happen in order to fit in and secure your eternal hotel room. The liquor dumping was one in a line of cause and effect actions which propelled the need for a ‘better’ church than the Methodist one we had been attending. The pouring out of the liquor bottles were representative of my parents decision to join a local Southern Baptist church and make public professions of faith to Jesus Christ. And, they were taking every single one of us Winchell’s with them.
Bel-Air Southern Baptist Church was a modest steeple enabled building which sat on a corner of East Cloud in the north west area of Salina, KS next to a railroad track with a convenience store on the other side of those tracks. The church (now long defunct with the final remaining congregants combined into another newer church in the town), was small in comparison to the major arena churches that began to sprout up once Reagan’s and Falwell’s messages of ‘morality’ finally reaped their harvest during the 80’s and well into our 21st Century, and it seemed important and full of activity most of the time. There was Sunday school before Sunday service. Sunday evening service started at 6 or 7 p.m. and was preceded by Training Union (now, that’s some bs I may or may not write about later). Wednesday night’s were for adult Bible study, Royal Ambassadors for us boys, and I can’t remember what the girls did. There were choir practices too. I would come to know every corner of that building whether I wanted to or not. Pastor J.D. Cooper wasn’t always the pastor at Bel-Air. When we arrived, it was Gran F. Steinbaugh. Paul Mott led the choir and his wife played either the piano or organ while Mrs. Ellis, who was often my Sunday school teacher, played whichever keyboard Mrs. Mott was not. There was the Burns family, the Ushers, the Wedges, and countless other nuclear families strapped to the pews, ready to stand at call when the words, ‘Stand and take your hymnals turning to page 1, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’. Bel-Air was becoming the center of our family life.
It was only one or two visits in, our family taking its place in a pew on the right side of the congregation, in the first 1/3 of rows. I had no clue what Reverend Steinbaugh was talking about from the pulpit, but sometimes his metaphors would get my attention before disappearing into the ether of a seven year old’s mind where G.I. Joe (original hands, not kung-fu grip) and Chief Cherokee were in battle for my attention. And, they won every time. But, there was a power emanating from that pulpit, an energy that converted itself in my bones to what I now can only describe as fear. It didn’t make me happy, nor did the songs from the choir, the gaggle of ushers marching down the middle aisle during the offertory, and certainly not the stuff that happened after the sermon was over: The invitation.
An invitation is the part of a religious service where people are invited to walk forward and make a public profession, confession, or joining in front of everyone. Used since early American church experiences and tent revivals, and popularized in the 50’s by Billy Graham at his monstrous crusades, the invitation has been a mainstay apparatus of harvesting souls throughout our grand gospel history. In the Southern Baptist Church, at that time in the 1970’s, there were three types of public pronouncements invitations were used for: 1) A public profession of faith in Jesus Christ (i.e. getting saved) 2) Joining the church, or 3) Re-committing your life to Jesus Christ (i.e. you feel bad and want to make sure your original decision sticks, even though the Baptist doctrine says one can’t lose your faith- ‘once saved, always saved’ or ‘eternal security’ for you who don’t like slogans).
On this particular Sunday, when the invitation began, with no warning, no awareness at all, Everyone in my family began to exit the pew and go forward. I had no clue and just followed. One by one, I saw Dad, Mom, Jeff, Doug, Brian whispering something back and forth to that pastor. He got to me, and I have no idea what he said, but quickly it was clear that I was to be brushed aside and moved on. Whatever had just happened to the rest of my family did NOT happen to me. Quickly, after the feverish scene, I would understand that my entire family not only joined the church, but one by one accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior, committing their lives to Him, getting total forgiveness of their sins and inheriting eternal life. In subsequent days I learned that if I wanted that boon, I would have to make my own decision and take that trip down the aisle at another time, by myself.
After my parents had a specific change of heart in terms of their spiritual and social lives, Bel-Air seemed like the right choice for them. With our oldest brother, Greg, off to Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, OK, the next two siblings heading to their teenage days, the world in flux with Vietnam, nuclear threats and all sorts of monsters, setting a family’s feet into solid spiritual ground might be of utmost importance. Right?
I was in second grade when this acclimation to a new church environment was taking place for our family. Thrust into a weekly routine that had new friends and faces attached to it, I just went along. None of my real day to day friends went to Bel-Air. At the time, I didn’t feel that was odd, they just didn’t go. But, as we got more involved in the church world, there was definitely a vibe that there was something wrong with people who didn’t go to our church, like, they didn’t have the full deal and were missing information. Occasionally there would be a cross-over situation like with John Ellis, who was in my same class at school and came and went in my regular neighborhood friend groups. He played sports with us, traded baseball cards and came to birthday parties, but other than that, I was odd-boy out. What happened at Bel-Air was not happening at my school or within my grade school social circles, with my friends. It was different from basketball, football and baseball practice. I didn’t go to school on Monday and talk about church. My older brothers seemed a bit more connected to the church scene and more involved with things like choir and youth group. I didn’t like those things. While I certainly participated, I couldn’t stand children’s choir. I did not want to go to any church camp, and I hated revivals and special services.
There are really only a few happy memories that stick out about my experiences at Bel-Air. During sixth grade there was a Halloween party (well before all this ‘Harvest’ party with no demons or witches allowed) when Amy Nelson brought Glenda Freeburg. Now that was something. Glenda showed up head to toe in Wonder Bread bags dressed as a clown. In the early days, I also enjoyed that convenience store on the other side of the tracks. As far as I know, every man, woman and child in that church, saved or not, got a box of pre-printed and numbered offering envelopes. These were for weekly offerings, and for the young, a lesson in how to give. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but countless Sundays during the break between Sunday school and the main church service, I took my envelope, which was supposed to be turned in during Sunday school ripped it open and took my 25 cents to the store and bought a couple packs of football cards. To this day, I have never felt one ounce of guilt for it.
I was content with just moving on through life, and while that fateful day when I was left in the dust to my own devices with my soul’s eternal destiny seemed to fade a bit, I began to soak in the meanings of what was being taught in the sermons and classes. I could not escape the fact that I was not saved, was an unforgiven sinner, and if I didn’t fix it I would go to hell. To top that prize of a lottery draw, at any moment Jesus could snatch a bunch of people up and I would be left behind, without anyone. Russian missiles actually seemed like a possible good alternative.
The stories taught in the battery of classes and sermons at Bel-Air were glamorized versions of floods, animals, Kings rotting with worms, dudes burning in furnaces, and of course the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Lurking in the undertow, however, was this darker story, that seemed more like a monster show on late night television than something saintly from the wonderful Bible.
Second and third grade turned into fourth and fifth. Little Timmy Suttle, Ben Wedge, Tim Smith. Weeks churned through seasons and seasons through periods. I kept on moving on, and as I did, watched people much younger than myself make glorious public proclamations of faith, thus securing their eternal ticket. I was behind. The taps on my hand, my mother’s ‘suggestion’ as Paul Mott led another verse of ‘Just As I Am’ during invitation after invitation. I wouldn’t go. It got to the point where I would lay in bed and just think about burning in hell. I wasn’t saved, didn’t want to be saved, and knew that it was going to be the end of me. While some were imagining possibly becoming an astronaut, or just following in their dad’s footsteps, I was trying to imagine how I would get away from the Anti-Christ. I remember after they showed the film ‘Thief In The Night’ at Bel-Air, asking Pastor Cooper what would happen to me if I accidentally took the mark of the beast, but then cut my hand off. Would I still have the mark of the beast? One evening Mom and I were in the house and she noticed something in the sky outside the back screen door, flying toward us in glorious form. It was in the shape of a cross. She stared, and immediately pondered the possibility of if ‘this was it.’ I got scared for a second thinking, ‘Shit, I’m done.’ It wasn’t an omen or Jesus returning. It was more like a Piper Cub heading for its landing at the airport just east of us.
Again: As children, we do what we are told, we follow what we are taught. When there is resistance to that teaching, rebellion or straight out ‘I don’t buy it’, and the ‘teachers’ don’t get the wanted result, the ‘big guns’ are brought out. Pastor Cooper was the powerful bazooka and I was the target.
I don’t remember the exact words J.D. Cooper said to me on that fateful Saturday morning. Now, with decades of experience with every type of denomination, gospel and church possible, I can say with certainty that he laid out the whole plan of the typical salvation story to me. It was enough. That next morning, scared out of my wits, I finally put one foot in front of the other and made that walk. This time, Pastor Cooper clearly asked me if I wanted to accept Jesus. ‘Yes.’ As the organ played after the final prayer, Mom came from the choir loft crying with a big hug. Her final boy was now saved. The last of the Winchell’s had secured eternal salvation. That was October, 1977, just short of my 12th birthday. Sixth grade.
Monday morning, fresh with the air of excitement that my bad days were behind me, I entered the first classroom on the north side of the hall in Coronado Grade School, which sits nearly center between our early home in Bonnie Ridge and what was our current home at the time on Key. I would see with different eyes, and everyone would know. Kenny, Danny, John Ellis, even Wayne, Bryan, Mike, Todd and Jimmy. They would all know. Mr. Gillespie was clamoring around his desk, pre-class, beginning an attempt to wrangle a rather unruly lot. The bell rang and class began.
Not one Goddamn thing changed.
“Hell”, Sleater-Kinney, Written By: Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker.