An essay I wrote about a fundamentalist church I visited for my Sociology of Religion class, fall 2010. Out of respect for the church and its congregation (who were extraordinarily welcoming and wonderful), I have deleted all specific references to them. The essay was supposed to relate our experience to Nancy Ammerman’s ethnography Bible Believers, which you should really read if you have any interest in this topic.
Easily accessible and highly visible, [name of church] on [street name] operates in a quaint and unassuming building. After observing the worship service on September 19, I felt that those same two words--quaint and unassuming--also perfectly characterized [the pastor], his congregation, and their mode of worship. Instead of the charismatic forcefulness of fundamentalist preaching and worship described by many sociologists, I found a more reflective and emotionally centered sort of fundamentalism. However, there was no identity crisis facing this church; the boundaries were as clearly defined and stringently maintained as ever, and though the emerging influence of modernity and social change has clearly shaped the religious identity of fundamentalism in the Ozarks, the church’s worldview exhibited a profound indebtedness to traditional fundamentalist thought as portrayed in Ammerman’s Bible Believers.
The internal architecture and aesthetic of the building provided clues to the congregation’s core values. The lobby was minimally furnished with only a table, plastic plants, and a stack of bulletins--the walls were bare, and the carpet was noticeably worn down and discolored in spots. It would be tempting to call this unpretentious arrangement accidental, as if the church was so focused on their message that the image they presented did not concern them, but I could not help but feel that the modesty of the lobby was in fact a calculated statement about priority. The decorators wanted to send a clear message to any who might visit their church that this was above all a house of worship. The worship area, all set under a steep arched ceiling, was similarly modest. The pastor’s lectern was front and center, directly facing but elevated above the pews, and few superfluities were provided to distract the worshipper from it. As in Ammerman’s Southside congregation, the church belonged to the pastor, and in his audience, he had a group of captivated listeners (123).
According to the church bulletin, 36 people attended the previous week’s Sunday afternoon service. After finding a seat, I swept my eyes over the church and came up with a similar number. Compared to Southside, with nearly 250 adult attendants (27), this congregation provided a more intimate, close-knit atmosphere. This communal atmosphere was reinforced by the seeming antipathy for any kind of official, permanently held position by any church member. People came forward and stepped down as necessary to fulfill whatever roles were required--from playing musical instruments and singing to carrying the offering plate, and so on. According to Ammerman, in Southside and other archetypal fundamentalist churches, the pastor assumed a monarchic role and assigned positions to people based upon accountability and social standing (123). The temporality of the official roles (except for, of course, the pastor himself) implies that some fundamentalist congregations are moving away from internal hierarchies to a more collective approach.
The social background of this congregation had predictable similarities to and shocking differences from the church Ammerman studied. Like Ammerman’s congregation, the church I visited was racially homogenous, and the economical cars in the parking lot, all kept in excellent condition, suggested that the majority of the worshippers fit squarely into the middle class (27). Also like Ammerman’s congregation, women outnumbered men, in this case two to one (26). However, whereas Southside tended to be a relatively young congregation--according to Ammerman’s table, only 13% of the entire congregation was over 55 years old (27)--most of the members of [the church] were hovering around retirement age. Since the majority of attendants were elderly, only one family fit Ammerman’s “young family pattern” (111) of “households with two Christian parents and one or more children” (135). Correlatively, [the pastor] seemed to shy away from family topics such as gender roles and obedience during his sermon, whereas in Southside the nuclear family is an integral facet of not only rhetoric but also identity (134-135).
NEXT UP: On drawing boundaries, fundamentalist music, and the state of fundamentalism in the Ozarks.
