The Voice of Children Suffering

There are a lot of untold stories of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Many of those stories are about the dark nights of the soul that fundamentalism imposed on the children of the moderate and liberal leaders who were being purged from the denomination. Growing up as the child of a minister is tough enough. Growing up as the child of a minister enduring decades of public vilification, lies, slander and ridicule by fellow ministers and lay leaders is an experience of a different order.

Nathan Brown, a poet, is one of those children. He was a teenager when pulpit pounding preachers and pompous lay people of professed piety pilloried his father, Dr. Lavonn Brown, then pastor of the First Baptist Church of Norman. In their eyes, only a demon from the pit of hell would believe that God could approve of the ordination of women. They minced no words in saying so, whether in public or in private.

Nathan doesn't mince words either. He does give a lot more thought in choosing his words and he exercises more creativity and imagination in expressing them. Nathan's doctoral dissertation was recently published in two volumes. Ashes over the Southwest is a collection of poetry about his experiences in Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. Suffer the Little Voices collects poetry expressing Nathan's spiritual pilgrimage. This poetry rises from the heart of a child of God deeply wounded by injustices perpetrated by God's people. In places, it yields some very profound insights.

With permission to post by the author, here's my favorite poem from Suffering the Little Voices:

Verb Play

When I'm forced to spend time around zealous minister types, I keep hearing the necessity of reaching out to the "unchurched." The obvious implication being: we need to "church" the "unchurched."

Now, this particular verbish usage of the word "unchurch" does not appear in my fairly large dictionary. What I do see is the transitive verb that means excommunicate. This definition is clearer to me. And it helps me organize my response:

Dear friends, our deepest need is not to "church" the "unchurched," but to "dechurch" the "enchurched" -- that is to say, the excessively "churched."

God Save Me from Your Followers

has ceased to be a humorous bumper sticker. It is now a genuine fear for many of the "unchurched" to which you refer.

And as we look for solutions, a good place to start would be to "depolitic" "enchurched" leaders. But, in the end, [and while we're in the practice of verbing up nouns] nothing -- and I reiterate -- nothing supercedes the desperate need for Christians to "reJesus" the church.

Nathan Brown nub@ou.edu

Here's a link to a podcast of Nathan Brown reading this poem.