STOP: If you haven’t read “Sentenced to Church, Part I,” do that now.
My Puerto Rican mother-in-law was the first to offer up her church for inspection. I’m sure she thought it was the perfect way to rehabilitate me, the White Devil. It is not that I’m not religious in my own way, I just don’t attend church services. I am suspicious of organized religion and mostly see it as a way for people to have an excuse to be intolerant of others’ beliefs. Like there is only one right path to spirituality, and it is theirs. (Remember in Part I that I said this series was guaranteed to offend someone.)
According to Biblical lore, Jesus sat on a stump and talked to people. If that’s true, why should I go to a place where humans have torn into nature to build a massive structure where they ask for more money to build more structures? (This is, after all, the Bible Belt, where the size of the church equals standing in the community.)
Anyway, I decide to attend a Friday night church service with my Spanish-speaking mother-in-law. The congregation is building a new church, so they were borrowing a sanctuary from a different church in the meantime and had to wait for key assistance each time. So, at 8 p.m., when the service was supposed to begin, everyone was still loitering outside. My mother-in-law saw her opportunity and seized it, introducing me to her fellow parishioners en masse. I tried to think happy thoughts. Happy thoughts.
Once inside, the first thing I noticed was the band. It was a six-piece ensemble with a singer and his two back-ups. One of the members of the congregation brought her own tambourine. Others formed a sort of mosh pit in front of the first row of pews. After 30-45 minutes of vocal warm-up, including inspiring songs such as “Señor Jesus, muévame!” (which means, essentially, “Mister Jesus, move me!”), the pastor took the spotlight, but there was still plenty of audience participation. One man yelled “Hable papa!” (“Speak, Father!,” a phrase kind of like “You go, Girl” for the iglesia set) every two minutes.
I thought I was the only one of my kind, but then I noticed two very white old people in the front row. I thought they must have been confused and were looking for the services for other church, but then the man got up and approached the pastor. Apparently, this guy was a visiting pastor and – holy crap! – his Spanish was good! So good, in fact, that he was able to deliver an hour-long sermon, during which many members of the congregation “caught the spirit” and flung themselves crying into the aisles. My mother-in-law kept stealing glances at me to see if the spirit was making an appearance yet in my heathen soul. Or maybe she was just making sure I was awake.
The evening culminated in a group therapy session at the front, with the guest pastor laying his hands on the heads and faces of the assembled in a healing sort of way. Meanwhile, my prayers were answered when he stayed at the front and didn’t roam throughout the sanctuary finding people to save.
On the way home, any good will I built up with my mother-in-law for attending her church was lost when I refused to take her preferred route. Let’s just say I didn’t want to take the long way home after two hours of spirit possession on a Friday night.
Up next: Causing family problems
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Observe and report 