I remember like it was yesterday, even though it was now more than 20 years ago. I was 14 years old. I had come home from school and made the decision to call the ambulance. My mother had been sick for years, and I knew she was dying. That day she seemed worse than usual, and I decided I would call for help. The ambulance came and took her away to the hospital. I, together with the wonderful man who worked the farm with us (and whom I regarded much as a father) followed in the car. I saw my mother in the hospital that night, she was lucid for the first time in months and told me to go to school the next day and to contact our attorney as soon as she passed over. When I returned home from school the following day I got a call from the hospital, my mother had died and they needed us to come and fill out paper work. We went immediately, and on our way home I contacted the lawyer as I had been instructed. I was beside myself, I may even have been in shock, although I wouldn't have recognized it at the time.


Waiting at home, when we got back, was my English teacher. She was a good enough woman, and a fundamentalist (Pentecostal) Christian. She wanted to help. I was in no condition to refuse any help. So she made us something to eat and talked about my mother with me for a while. Over the following weeks she took me to prayer group with her, and then to her church. I converted to the Assemblies of God in sight of three months of my mother's death - and remained in that Church for about 6 (six) years. My teacher guided my steps as she could. It was only after I graduated from high school and started college that I pulled free and began to think for myself again a bit.


Having been raised Spiritualist it bothered me that fundamentalism rejected my family's religion, and I knew (although people were careful not to say it to me) that all of the other church goers believed that my mother was in hell because of her beliefs. That essential conflict stayed alive in me and helped me to ask questions and eventually escape, after I was no longer directly influenced by my teacher. I was very fortunate. Still desiring some sort of spirituality after some time I started attending the Episcopal Church, and was quite spiritually content.


It was years before I could look back however and say that what happened was wrong. If the teacher wanted to help me, then she should have come and helped me. What she did (and it is still difficult to write this) was come to help me as a route of manipulating me into her faith. She cared nothing about my mother, and was far more interested in me as a statistic in her Church than she was about the 14 year old who was suffering right then.


Nor do I believe that this is unusual behavior. The fundamentalist who is there when you most need a friend often has other goals than the ones that you would think there are -- and intends to fulfill them with you -- whether you are interested or not. You, like most of us can be coerced in a weak moment, into almost anything.


It is perhaps noteworthy that as a result of getting me to convert, she got the gentleman whom I mentioned, my second father if you would, to also convert (though he was a lifelong Methodist). He remained in the Assemblies, as a deacon, until he passed over -- despite the fact that he did not agree with whole layers of their belief system.


Please, be careful.