I have never forgotten, and I probably never will, sitting in an ice cream parlor with my pastor and a friend of her's from another pentecostal church. He prayed over what flavor of ice cream to have, and when he gave the blessing, he mentioned each of the 38 (thirty-eight) flavors that the parlor offered.It wasn't until after I had left the movement that I realized how passingly odd that was -- how -- maladapted and how -- well, spineless. He could not even, would not even, select the flavor of ice cream he was going to have because "god" might have another idea.


Control is the key for fundamentalism. Everything is about control. Not just control of the big things either, control of everything. Furthermore, control functions (to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the individuals involved) as a cascading system that runs from the least member of the Church, through the pastor, all the way to God Almighty. God "sees each sparrow that falls," "He counts the hairs of your head" -- of course he might care about your ice cream choices.


While it is not entirely clear to me where it comes from, the desire to surrender control over the self and force everyone else to do the same probably comes from a combination of the desire to be taken care of that most humans have to a greater or lesser degree, and the terribly dysfunction that many fundamentalists had dominating their lives before their "conversions."


"God is still on the throne." "I'm just trusting Jesus." "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." All of these common fundamentalist slogans are part and parcel of the desire of many fundamentalists to just yield control over everything, and let an outside force which they can only experience emotionally tell them what to do and how to do it. The willingness to do what they are told, and even to stop thinking on command and simply accept the words of a book easily proven to be fictional by an objective standard, are indicitive of the depth of this abdication of life's basic responsibilities.


Except that not everyone in the fundamentalist's sphere is willing to abdicate -- and that's when giving up control over the self is mixed in harsh measure with trying to control the other.


The harshest and most destructive of conversions are made within the families of fundamentalists. There are many cases where it is not clear to me, nor I think to most thinking people, that these conversions are real, rather than a viscous form of mind control. Children are beaten, often severely, imprisoned in their rooms, or sent to special detention centers. Books are burned by parents or by disapproving mates. Violence occurs, particularly with the young -- often considerable violence, in place of reason. Home Schooling is used to segregate children and to prevent them from learning to think for themselves. When home schooling is not used, Christian academies that use severe physical punishments for even minor infractions; that teach Creationism and thought conformity; take the place of private or public schools that teach critical thinking and self-respect.


In many cases the treatment of children is never reviewed in the home or in the "private" religious school -- rather, freedom of religion is allowed to trump children's rights and those most vulnerable -- our children -- are stripped of their rights and made into chattel property, whether or not such a position for them is enshrined in state law.


Control of one's children becomes a sort of offering to a God who, even as the believer claims Him as caring and benevolent, appears to the unbiased observer to be monstrous, or even evil. Forced conformity on the part of children to a fundamentalist community leads to self and other hatred in many cases and prevents normally functioning relationships to develop for some.


The fundamentalists who have given up their place as rulers of their own lives attempt, by bribery or by force to make certain that their children follow in their footsteps -- and as unhappy as they may be, they try to be certain that their children will be no happier.