education

College Week: Chapel

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If you have a Pavlovian response of standing to your feet every time you hear the opening notes of the Doxology, chances are you went to Fundy U.

Since mandatory attendance to regular weekly church services don’t provide nearly enough time for indoctr…er…edification, Fundy U also provides its students with the opportunity to hear daily sermons from whatever preachers the president happens to be friends with this week. Many students also know this daily occurance by another name: “naptime.”

Since chapel services are not usually broadcast to the public like other services and have few visitors in attendance, it’s a perfect opportunity for the fundy preacher du jour to unleash a holy torrent of full bore crazy upon his listeners. Horrific tales of death and dismemberment? Check. Stories about the masturbation habits of the speaker’s teenage son? Yes. (Oh, how I wish that one weren’t true!) Insinuations that most of his listeners are probably Satan-worshiping whores who only came to a fundamentalist college to corrupt his offspring who are the only three good children left on the planet? Yea, Verily.

But amongst the endless alliterated instructions on Finding God’s Mysteriously Lost Will For Your Life (without which you’re totally screwed) and warnings about Amnon’s friend Jonadab lies a much subtler purpose in chapel services — they are the most direct conduit for the administration to use a kind of spiritual coercion on the behavior of their students. A single uncontested voice speaking with conviction is the perfect medium for authoritarian re-education.

When a pastor delivers a message from behind the sacred desk at least some percentage of the student body will take him seriously and go carry out his bidding. All that remains for the administration to determine is what action they want from the student body today. Whether it’s a carefully constructed message on why God would never, ever want you to leave Fundy U, a drive for votes in a local election, or a plea for students to turn in their roommates to the deans office for real or imagined wrongs, by a skillful use of the chapel speaker the leadership can be sure that they will get a decent return on their time investment each week.

Those who manage to sleep in Jesus instead of listening are the lucky ones.

education

College Week: Watchful Watchers Who Watch

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If you’re a person who does not enjoy having your every move scrutinized, analyzed, and documented a fundamentalist college campus is not the place for you.

Not only does Fundy U have an army of deans, deans assistants, residence managers, and dorm monitors, they also see to it that each room has its very own prayer leader or assistant leader. The most important five minutes of your entire college year is the moment when you first meet your room leader and find out how “cool” they are — in other words how likely they are to report you to the powers that be for any small infraction.

Educational buildings on campus are assigned floor monitors and chaperons as well to make sure that boys and girls aren’t dilly dallying around the stairwells or passing notes in the computer labs. Chaps will also patrol the outside walkways looking for girls who aren’t sitting modestly enough or guys with their shirts untucked. Secular colleges may have cameras to catch potential thieves and rapists, Fundy U uses them to catch any misguided fundy Lothario who seeks to steal a smooch by the snack machines.

Off-campus movements are monitored as well. There’s the sign-in and sign-out mechanisms, the list of approved locations you can visit, and the ever present army of college employees who are just walking around the mall aimlessly on a Saturday morning for no apparent reason other than spotting students out of dress code or talking to the opposite sex in (gasp) Sears.

If you still look around nervously after you walk out of the “Entrance” door at the supermarket and half-wonder if someone is going to jump out of the bushes and give you a demerit slip, you probably went to a fundamentalist college.

education

Fundy College Week

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We’re going back to school this week with a series of posts dedicated to the oddities of fundamentalist institutions of “higher” “learning.”

As most of you know, I graduated from PCC so those of you who went to the other colleges will have to let me know how well my perspective lines up with your experience. We’ll begin shortly…

Sermons

Illustration: Evil on The Mission Display

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Once upon a time a missionary returned from service on the mission field and brought with him many strange and curious artifacts with which to shock and awe the people in his supporting churches. But as it happened among the colorful maps and other knickknacks which the missionary purchased at a local tourist shop for $6.99 there was also an evil statue which had been cursed (blessed?) by a local witch doctor. And that evil remained.

So it came to pass that when the missionary set up this statue upon his missionary display it caused many strange things to begin happening in the church building. Lights began to flicker, toilets would flush spontaneously, and the huge portrait of the senior pastor which hung in the vestibule would randomly be found upside down.

Thankfully there was a wise associate pastor in this church who recognized these as the sure signs of demon activity. Upon inquiring of the missionary about his artifacts, they removed the offending statue and set it ablaze in the parking lot whereupon were observed billows of green smoke, fiendish screams, and the neighbors calling the fire department.

So heed this lesson well and bring not back to these shores items blessed by the heathen. For St. Paul may have told us that an idol is nothing but they can still makes for a great story.

A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.