Say a Little Prayer

     Let me tell you about a woman who I believe you'd be happy to have as a neighbor--kind, thoughtful, hardworking, always willing to lend a hand. She and her husband were eagerly awaiting the birth of a much wanted baby...

     ...until they received tragic news. Due to a genetic defect the fetus would never experience consciousness and would die by eighteen months. 

     Now this woman's fundamentalist church was the center of her life. She always was glad to do whatever she could to help other members and contribute to the church's practice and mission. When the minister learned of her plight he told her that the pregnancy was God's will. Abortion would, therefore, be a sin and result in her being kicked out of the church and shunned by the entire congregation. Not to mention burning in Hell for all eternity.  

     I hadn't thought about this woman and her plight for years...until I read Jenna Voris's Say a Little Prayer. 

     "I've been sent to Principal Rider's office exactly twice in my life--once last year, when he'd personally handed me a trophy for winning the state geography bowl, and again today, for slapping Amanda Clarke across the face. 

     I don't think there's a prize for this one, unfortunately."

     Riley, Voris's protagonist, Amanda, and their respective parents have been summoned to the principal's office to discuss the incident. In order to avoid a suspension she agrees to attend the Pleasant Hills Baptist Church youth camp during the upcoming spring break and write an essay about what she learns. 

     This seemingly benign placement is highly problematic. Until really recently Riley was a member of Pleasant Hills. A year earlier when she'd discovered that she was bisexual the church's insistence that all gays end up in Hell made her begin to feel unwelcome. However she didn't drop out until her older sister was publicly shamed and officially kicked out.

     Riley has seen the absolute power Pastor Young has over his congregation. She suspects that his strict enforcement of an elaborate set of rules has more to do with maintaining his absolute power than with ensuring their salvation. She's going into the camp motivated not to learn a lesson, but to take him down. 

     "If I could find a way to commit each of these supposedly 'deadly' sins, spin them into something positive and useful, it would completely negate his entire sermon. This week's theme would cease to exist, and everyone sitting in this chapel would realize what I've known for a year now--nothing Pastor Young says is true. He's not our salvation, he's not the light holding the darkness at bay, and he's definitely not the definitive voice of moral purity." 

     Voris drew on intimate personal experience in writing Say a Little Prayer. 

     "It took me a long time to unlearn the hateful things I was taught growing up. Now I know that saying the Lord's Prayer won't 'cure' anyone's gay thoughts. I know that some churches are safe and welcoming and kind, but that wasn't my experience, and it's not Riley's either. Because of that, Say a Little Prayer includes elements of religious trauma and homophobia, but it also includes hope. My wish is for everyone who picks up the book to carry a little of that hope back into the world with them."

On a purrrsonal note, while Riley grew up in a fundamentalist church, I was raised in a church at the opposite end of the Protestant spectrum. St. Peter's was country club Episcopal. I remember realizing that, although the mission society was always raising money to help the "unfortunate" people they had so much Christian love for, if any of the targets of their benevolence ever showed up in person they'd run home screaming and scrub themselves with lye soap. At 11 I refused to be confirmed which was a big deal because my mother was director of religious education and my father was church organist. And the mission society was just the tip of the iceberg. Although the Sunday school teachers paid lip service to Jesus loving all the children--red and yellow, black and white; all are precious in his sight--they expressed very prejudiced (and sometimes quite crude) opinions about people of color upstairs in coffee ☕️ hour. But the biggest sticking point for preteen me was the insistence that the only path to salvation was through Jesus. I knew some really wonderful Jews and Muslims. And I couldn't believe that an all knowing all loving God would designate so many people for eternal damnation. 

For much of my life I've alternated between searching for a church where I could be me and feeling that that was mission impossible. In fact my most recent attempt was to avoid having a fundamentalist minister turn my funeral into an infomercial for salvation. But I lucked out. Church of Universal Fellowship not only accepts, but embraces my nonbinary, questioning, social activist self. 

During the pandemic I really was bothered by how a lot of churches framed it as divine retribution. As in if you died you deserved to. I wonder how many people died because of the ministers who said that masking and getting vaccinated was defying God's will and threatened to kick out anyone who did so.

A great big shout out goes out to Pastors Malcolm and Mariah, Steffi who runs the office, and the whole glorious congregation. 

Jules Hathaway 

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