A recent news story in The Post about weekly Bible classes for public elementary school students in Staunton, Va., and the challenge some parents have brought against the practice, reminded me of my own experiences with religious education in public school. From 1946 through 1948, I went to an elementary school in rural Kentucky. One morning a week, school began an hour late so that students could attend Bible school at local churches.
Bible school was voluntary, although, according to the town newspaper, 99 percent of the students attended. My mother, the daughter of a Congregational minister, refused permission for me to go the first year. As our family had recently moved to Kentucky, I was a newcomer at the school and young for my class. I felt uncomfortable enough not to want to be singled out; not going to Bible school did just that. At the beginning of sixth grade, I begged my mother to allow me to attend. I thought I would seem less odd if I did what my classmates did. My mother relented, and I went to Bible school one morning a week.
Bible school was innocuous, as I remember it, but toward Easter we were asked who would like to join the Christian Church. Everyone raised his or her hand except me. I looked around, then raised my hand, too. The rest of Bible school consisted of preparing us for baptism. My reasons for wishing to be baptized were similar to my feelings about Bible school: I wanted to be accepted.
My mother was not happy. She pointed out that I had already been baptized a Congregationalist. But she did not say I couldn't join the Christian Church. She made me a white dress to wear for my immersion in a marble font behind the church podium. I allowed myself to become nervously excited about joining the church. But my grandfather, who had baptized me the first time, was furious when he learned what I intended to do. Visiting our house for Easter, he raged on and on about it. The next morning my mother took me to her bedroom, where my new dress hung behind the door, and said, "You cannot join the Christian Church." I nodded, having heard my grandfather's angry tirade. In truth, I was relieved. I had been worrying about drowning in the baptismal font even though at Bible school the minister instructed us on how to hold our breath. God, I decided, did not want me to join the Christian Church.
God was a major preoccupation in sixth grade. My teacher, a member of a Presbyterian church, urged all her students to attend church or Sunday school every weekend. When she called the roll on Monday morning, she asked each of us whether we had gone to church the day before. If we had not, she delivered a short, frightening lecture about the wrath of God. Since my family rarely attended church -- there were no Congregational churches in Kentucky so far as we knew -- I was distressed to find myself singled out once more, so I began to lie about what I had done during the weekend. I couldn't say that I had attended church in our small town; someone in the class was sure to know I wasn't telling the truth. So I invented trips to nearby towns.
My lies tore me apart. I was a truthful child and, while I had lots of imaginary experiences, I never lied about real ones. I also suspected that God would be angrier about my lies than about my failure to attend church. In my mind, God was the fierce Pantocrater -- "ruler of all" -- whose face I had seen in my mother's art books. He saw everything and knew everything. I never told my parents what was going on every Monday morning, but each weekend I begged them to take me to church. They were amiable but puzzled. Occasionally we went; most Sundays we did not. When begging failed, I tried throwing up in the car on the way to school on Mondays, but my mother didn't let me get away with that. I was reduced to praying that God would strike me dead before my teacher got to my name.
I don't want to imply that these experiences marred me for life, although they did mark the beginning of a healthy skepticism about organized religion. What concerns me is the coercion involved in these seemingly well-intentioned events in the context of public school, something I could not avoid. The object was to prod me into Bible Belt Christianity, regardless of my own or my family's beliefs. I am appalled to learn that Bible school still exists in parts of rural America. I fear for children growing up in this country's present climate of oppressive religiosity. They are as vulnerable as I once was.
Mary Clay Berry is a writer who lives in Alexandria.
