Gimme that old time religion



I’d been visiting my Broadbent cousins and somewhat randomly attended a revival meeting at the Egyptian Theater in Coos Bay.  I was around age ten and thus far my religious experience was low-key services in community churches in Sitkum, Broadbent, and Powers, Protestant all.  A Catholic church in Powers intrigued me with mysteries of holy water, rosaries, and making the sign of the cross.  I could only speculate on an actual Mass with priests swinging incense burners down the aisles while chanting Latin.

This revival was something entirely different.  The dimmed theatre jam-packed with raucous believers marching to the drum of a spell-binding minister spouting brimstone, hell-fire and damnation to those (to be pitied) non-believers.  It was a spectacle. 

A film on the evil pitfalls of heroin addiction played at one point, a truly frightening look at a life of addiction.  I vowed then and there to never use heroin – and I never did.  Maybe I should have watched a film on winos.

There was a call to accept Jesus Christ into one’s soul, just walk on down and receive eternal salvation.  People rose around me and walked down the aisle.  I felt myself rise and take the first step on a long, long path toward the glowing alter.  I didn’t want to do this, I was loathe to, and I certainly didn’t walk pride fully down that aisle to accept the gift of eternal salvation from our Lord and Savior.  Nope, I skulked down that aisle, hugging to one side, as invisible as I could make myself, in abject shame and humiliation, my only goal was gaining immortality and saving my skinny ass from hell. 

It was torture. 

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