"Awomen!'' Jimmy Carter

By FRAN MOORE PARKER

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 14, 2001

My inherited geographical religion and I butted heads early, but unlike former President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalyn, I kept lukewarm faith. The Carters were stubborn Georgia-clay Christians. I was shifting Louisiana silt.

I'd raised Cain, given preachers hives and resigned in protest for years. But I'd slink back, get redunked or revived. For my brawling, whiskey-loving Irish forefathers had settled during the Great Potato Famine and built Shiloh Tabernacle. I sold watermelons for Lottie Moon missions and learned flirting in choir lofts.

Then the Southern Baptist Convention banned qualified women as pastors, forcing intelligent, tolerant and spiritually evolved souls like the Carters into painful, nostalgic breaks from their roots.

Around age 11, I recognized Protestant work ethics as excuses for dividing labor into male and female. The latter worked two extra days. On Saturdays, we changed linens, scrubbed toilets and ironed clothes for Sunday church. The men and boys drove trucks into town, bought livestock feed and huddled at Hay & Hardware chewing, jawing and scratching.

On Sundays, we females cooked pancakes and bacon, and nodded while males bellowed "Amen" during sermons. After church we fried chicken and yams and made banana pudding while they rested and read the sports section as God ordered them to on Sabbaths.

In frigid winters, ladies did go first in fanny warming at the gas space heaters in drafty rural chapels. Backing up to flames while chatting, we demurely lifted our skirts. Afterward, gentlemen warmed their hands until heat penetrated their pants.

Then one Father's Day, after the Rev. Claude Fowler ranted about wives honoring husbands and they had stripped their vocal cords yelling "Amen," I emerged from Holyoke Reformed Church itching like I'd rolled in nettles. I adored boys and Revlon products, but dissent rolled off my tongue.

"Brother Claude, since God loves us equally, why doesn't anybody ever say "Awomen' instead of "Amen?' "

Brother Claude's eyebrows shot up like flying crows, and he beckoned Mama into emergency conference. "This girl's sassy-mouthed, wilder than choke weeds, and ignorant of scripture."

Mama marched me to Bible lessons on Wednesday nights. I paid attention to the obvious. Men were the high mucky-mucks of every Holy Land cave town. Not one brilliant Eleanor Roosevelt edited a chapter.

Brethren this and brethren that while the sistren beat garments on rocks at rivers, hauled water on their heads and babies on their backs. I could have written a potboiler about Old Solomon's wine fountains, navel goblets and fourscore concubines.

Thankfully, Holyoke Reformed hired a smarter pastor, the Rev. Will Fred Barnes, a cool charismatic. I badgered him about why women never passed the offering plate or had much Bible say.

Finally, he sat me down. "Child, quit raising Martha-hell. Those brave scribes scratched on papyrus at midnight before being head-lopped by evil kings or swallowed by lions. God chose those with time on their hands -- men. Somebody had to populate the race, and pregnancy required patience, tenderness, a strong stomach -- women. You're a whiz-bang winner loved by our Lord."

"Awomen!" I whispered.

Overhearing, Miss Clara Mae Knowles, his secretary, slopped hot chocolate on her typing. My sacrilege spread like an oil slick.

Disillusioned, I spent my teens trying on religions like prom dresses -- the Presbyterians were too frilly, the Pentecostals too long and straight-laced, the Hare Krishnas too bright and gauzy.

I studied the Bible through adulthood and historical eras. Still, I couldn't locate many influential women like Rosalyn Carter advising spouses to return a Panama Canal, take up carpentry like Jesus and build houses for the needy. Oracles galore, but few Queen Nancys warning King Ronnies not to make war on Thursday because locust swarms were predicted.

After moving to Florida, I returned to backsliding Baptists, and incidents accumulated. December 1996, and the Clearwater Madonna appeared in the finance company window. Hallmark glitter lost appeal. Shoppers stopped maxing their credit cards. Amazingly, road rage driving seemed to slow. En route to a concert with Sunday School friends, at Drew and 19, we spoke of "the miracle."

My pastor's wife remarked, "A secretary working there says the glass was always tinted. That's for Catholics who worship Mary."

I mused, "Thousands of people of different denominations coming together at Christmas certainly seems miraculous. And Mary did birth the Christ child." I sensed my popularity plunge, wondered if I might be evicted from the Protestantmobile.

Still, I clung to my kin's religious bloodline like a tick. In Pinellas County, a renowned Australian evangelist spoke to our mainly college-educated congregation -- professors, engineers, nurses and computer techs, among them. He denounced all scientific possibility, space exploration, our different viewpoints. "Believers in evolution, humanity descending from apes, and life on other planets are doomed to hell. The Bible teaches God created man, Heaven and Earth, all that exists, nothing else."

Exchanging distressed glances, my companion and I eased from our seats and out an exit.

Balmy winds from Clearwater Bay calmed me. The moon Neil Armstrong had walked upon shone silver, the architectural splendor of the church threw spiral shadows. Flashbacks and sudden realization came. I had always railed against doctrine, tried changing them, when I simply didn't belong there. I was out of step with their thinking.

Contemporary life had not offered most women dependent roles set down two millenniums past in the Holy Land, or pampered Cinderella dreams with princes and servants protecting us from reality. At age 14, when my family had needed money, the Salvation Army hired me -- the only girl among a crew of boys stocking, packing and loading groceries. Sweaty and jubilant, I felt that God himself approved that first paycheck. He rooted for my college degree, my writing career and every triumph.

Fran Moore Parker is a writer living in Dunedin.

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