Each summer, our youth group joined other churches from our Super-Christian North Texas district for a week of camp that took place at a Pentecostally-sanctioned camp ground. It was a week of field-day games, non-coed swimming, sexually-repressed flirting with other sexually-repressed teenagers and no less than two hellfire and brimstone services each day. None of …
One of the perks of being in a church youth group is having a standing group of people to spend time with in a setting that won’t make your parents worry about the status of your salvation. My youth group friends and I spent our summers playing putt-putt, Frisbee golf, diving off the platform at …
I used to know people’s phone numbers. I think I may still know my mother’s cell number, possibly my father’s, but I don’t know any of my friends’ numbers and if I found myself stranded somewhere without a phone, I wouldn’t be able to call my brother or sister because I’ve never known their …
Karen Walker once said on Will & Grace, “You are never closer to God than when you are on television.” Nowhere is this more evident than now, when cable stations have multiplied faster than rabbits and regular people with small town Christian ideals have become the sought-after subjects and stars of reality TV. They’re interior …
In the late 90s, the Bible Belt was an almost mythological place to live if you were of the Evangelical persuasion. The economy was flush, your religious liberties weren’t really in jeopardy and you rested easy within your enclosed, profanity-free, abortionless corner of society. Oh the world may be falling apart everywhere else, but in …
Ryan Brinson 