Shirt spotted at a fundy camp meeting and passed along by an alert reader…

Today’s challenge is to write a personal ad for looking for a spouse in fundyland. You can either describe yourself as you were back in the day, the perfect mate you thought you wanted, or the traits of someone you actually knew. “SWM seeks dress-wearing pianist for ministry possibilities. Must possess own piano …” (I [...]

And when it shall come to pass that thy loins shall have born fruit and that the size of thy household shall greatly increase that then shalt thou heed the words of the commandments concerning how thy children shall behave when there’s anybody watching. And of the church and the restaurant and of the grocery [...]

Sometime between birth and Bible college, almost every fundamentalist youngster is dragged up before the church congregation and prayed over before they are eaten. Seriously though, the actual practice is that they are prayed over to “dedicate them to the Lord” and as a sign to the congregation that the community of the church has [...]

Below are the links to a survey engineered by Gothard to let you know how good a job you and your teen are doing at staving off the forces of darkness. I started filling in the answers but got bored after page 4. You all can take a crack at filling in the rest. (page [...]

It may be the time of year when the world falls in love but if you’re a young fundamentalist the course of love never runs smoothly. If you happen to have the fortune to be in a fundy camp where “dating” is not considered to be a dirty word, it still doesn’t mean that your [...]

Darrell, I just wanted to drop you a line and say that I have met a very nice young man. His name is Titus. He is an older brother of a friend of my brother, Uriah. We are the same age and he is in graduate school at The Conservative College. He is getting a [...]

In fundamentalism, ministry is a family business. The preacher’s wife plays the piano. The preacher’s younger son leads the singing while the elder runs the youth group. The preacher’s daughter manages the nursery. Each one ensures that the leader has a tight leash on every department in the organization. Some day when dad is finally [...]

Whenever someone apostatizes and leaves the old paths, fundamentalists will inevitably assign someone the blame. There will be an informal postmortem, inquest, and a whispered placing of the blame on someone’s shoulders for having led this soul astray. More often than not the culpability is rested on the shoulders of the fundamentalist parents. It is [...]

Nothing can chill the blood in the veins of an ex-fundamentalist than the words “Hey, honey, your fundy relations are coming for dinner.” The time spent with your fundamentalist relatives can be the some of the most painfully awkward hours of your life. The steps to the intricate dance of fundy social interaction are complex [...]