Kit Leffler

Students sometimes find it difficult to balance student life with their religious life. Waking up for Sunday service can limit Saturday night fun.

Every Sunday, Kyle King wakes at nine or so in the morning when most of his K.K. Amini Scholarship Hall is still asleep. He showers and throws on some slacks and a polo, takes the first pick of the donuts down in the kitchen, knocks on a couple doors to see if anyone wants to come with, and heads to Christ Community Church for songs and a sermon.

The son of a Baptist preacher in rural Ness City, King’s been going to church on Sundays his entire life. The ritual is embedded into his weekly routine like school or anything else.

On this particular Sunday, he and the rest of the congregation –a disproportionate amount of which is college students – start the service by standing and singing, reading the lyrics of the selected hymns from a large projection screen that hangs on the wall. A six-member band at the front plays along to the songs. Three women belt out the vocals and three men play guitar, bass and drums.

The pervasive feeling is one of jubilation. Yet the day’s message is decidedly apocalyptic.

After a pre-sermon baptism during which a young boy is immersed in water –“Just because the water is lukewarm doesn’t mean I want you to be that way as a Christian,” the pastor says as he dunks the boy into the tub – the sermon begins.

Today’s message, “Ready or not here He comes,” is about the second coming of Christ and fabled Armageddon’s first phase, which believers refer to as The Rapture. It’s the precursor to the end of the world, when God’s people are supposedly swept up into heaven to be rescued from the impending reign of the Antichrist.

The pastor’s sermon serves as a warning extolling Christianity’s exclusive right to salvation.

“We can be sincerely wrong and sincerely headed in the wrong direction,” the pastor says of society’s emphasis on acceptance of all faiths.

But the sermon is also a declaration of hope, at least for Christians.

“Don’t dread the coming of the Lord, look forward to it,” he says.

King sits silently and absorbs the uncompromising speech, and doesn’t speak of it during the car ride home. Instead, he talks of an upcoming lit test and his aspirations of someday being a fiction writer. In person, King is anything but imposing. Bashful and bespectacled, he instead has an aura of easygoing acceptance, seemingly unlike the fundamentalist religion he adheres to.

But that implicit conflict is just part of the person King is, and it’s something he shares with the numerous other fundamentalist Christians on campus. It’s about finding individual identity in a rigid belief system and existing in a tolerant society, while espousing beliefs that most don’t consider tolerant.

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• Many Christians become wary at the mere mentioning of the word “fundamentalism.” Hesitation seeps into their voice, and their words become guarded. “How do you define it,” they’ll ask, or “what do you mean?”

Few words connote such a broad variety of meanings in contemporary society, and depending on who’s doing the defining it, fundamentalism can refer to idealism or close-mindedness. Christians want to know what label is being pinned on them.

“It started as an innocent term describing people who believe the basics,” says Lanny Maddox, executive director of the University’s Campus Christians group. “In some camps, ‘fundamentalist’ has come to mean radically illogical, highly prejudiced, hateful bigots.”

The word has been used to characterize the bombers of abortion clinics and segregationists who decry the so-called “mongrelization of the races.” Joel Carpenter, author of Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism, says the label, should only be used to describe Christians of this hostile, militant nature. He says these militant fundamentalists are fighting a “culture war to restore the country to the Christian contingent.” As for people such as King, who lives according to a strict Christian code but is not exactly militant, Carpenter labels them “conservative” Christians.

Others, like Maddox, interpret the word more generously, and on the University campus, there are non-militant Christians such as King who would describe themselves as fundamentalists. King says his idea of fundamentalism comes down to believing in the inerrancy of the Bible – that “it’s all true in one way or another,” – and believing that Christ is the only means of salvation. Timothy Miller, professor of religious studies, also emphasizes the importance of “truth” when describing fundamentalism. “Fundamentalism, if nothing else, gives answers,” he says. “It’s firm. This is it. This is the truth. No question.”

These are key ways that fundamentalism distinguishes itself from Christianity’s more progressive forms, which often interpret the Bible in a more academic way and don’t always make the same claim to heavenly exclusivity.

This fundamentalism is not an identity that restricts itself to any particular denomination, and in fact, some of these students refuse to affiliate with a denomination. “I just got to a point where I felt like that was emphasizing the differences,” says Mary Westfall, Blue Springs, Mo., senior. “The point is all those things are Christianity.”

These students like Mary aren’t the wild-eyed tent revivalists collapsing in fits to the ground and speaking in tongues, and they aren’t God’s warriors risen from the moral lassitude of the “flower child” ’60s to wreak the Lord’s vengeance. They are people who believe the right way to live is according to the infallible guidance of the Bible, which holds the answers to all of life’s questions.

Still, whether they proclaim their faith loudly or hold it silently in their heart, they are philosophically black sheep on the University campus, in part because their beliefs conflict with more conventional social values.

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• King’s experience coming to college is a case in point.

Ness City, where he grew up, wasn’t exactly a haven for Christian morality. King says it wasn’t uncommon, for example, to see drunks and unlicensed 14-year-olds cruising the main drag on a Friday night, and his high school, like most others around the country, had its share of problems with alcohol and drugs.

Nevertheless, on the surface at least, the dusty, no-stoplight burg southwest of Hays was full of staunch conservatives, and while people might take a kids-will-be-kids approach to underage drinking, the environment was by no means as permissive as, say, Lawrence.

So, while the University is only 330 or so miles up U.S. 283 and east on I-70 from the flat, red-brick house where King lived the last 11 years of his childhood, culturally, the divide can’t be measured in miles, and King’s three-going-on-four years of college have mellowed out his perception of certain aspects of Christian morality.

His attitude toward drinking is his first example. The first drink King ever had was on his 21st birthday just this last summer. “I went to 75th Street Brewery, and I tried some sort of wheat beer,” King says. “Then she brought out this shot of something, and I drank it much to everyone’s amazement.” Up until that point, King’s alcohol intake had been limited to Communion wine because he was convinced that ANY drinking was a sin.

Upon coming to Lawrence, however, he investigated the issue more closely in the Bible and concluded that drunkenness was the sin, not drinking per say. No other authority but the Bible could have changed his mind on the issue, because as a fundamentalist, that is where King turns to discern the truth.

So don’t expect to see King stumbling back from The Wheel on a Saturday night, blitzed out of his skull, but he doesn’t see anything wrong with the occasional beer.

Perhaps a touchier issue is King’s feelings regarding homosexuality. Among the denizens of Ness City, being openly gay was about as common as sprouting wings and flying away. In Lawrence, obviously, at the school lovingly coined “Gay U” by western Kansas homophobes, the orientation is more acceptable.

King had never even met a gay person before he came to college. Since then, he’s known a couple just within the confines of K.K. Amini.

Here, King doesn’t see the same gray area in the Bible that he discovered with drinking. He still thinks the behavior is wrong. But if nothing else, he says being in Lawrence has chinked away at his sense of self-righteousness concerning the issue.

“You see sin in other people and see what I do that the Bible says is wrong is just as bad as what they do,” King says, meaning that he sees his own sin as no less serious than the sin he considers homosexuality. King’s statement won’t soon be celebrated by any gay-rights activists, but it’s as far as he feels the Bible lets him go.

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• Besides intolerance, another social criticism commonly applied to Christian fundamentalism is that it subjugates women. It flys in the face of a culture still trying to unshackle itself from a patriarchal past. As such, the stereotypical notion of women minding the home while their fearless-leader husbands are off making all the money doesn’t sit well with most people.

Maybe that’s why it is surprising to meet Mary Westfall, who in one breath describes her dreams of earning a medical degree and being a pediatrician, and in the next, talks about how she believes in the submission model of marriage, where the wife does serve the husband.

Implicitly, she seems like a walking contradiction. On the one hand, there is nothing dainty or dependent about her. Everything from her purposeful walk to her unwavering gaze to her smooth, articulate voice conveys a sense of capability. And yet, here she is seeming to endorse an attitude that diminishes her.

Of course, she doesn’t see it that way. Sure, she says, the Bible puts the man at the head of the household, and some groups have used this to subvert the interests of women, but the Bible also says that men should respect and lay down their lives, if necessary, for their wives. There’s a give-and-take there that most people fail to notice, though Westfall doesn’t blame them for not seeing it. “People aren’t going to understand a relationship based on mutual submission,” she says. “God honors servants over all.”

Westfall hasn’t always thought that way. Toward the end of high school, actually, though she had grown up in a Christian family, she found herself gravitating away from those roots into a phase where she didn’t know what she believed. Westfall attributes her period of disillusionment mostly to the hard time she had stomaching the idea that Christians were the only ones saved.

So she came to the University and studied other religions to try and fill the void. She read texts from Buddhism and Hinduism. She hung out with people of different faiths, looking for the answers that eluded her.

As for her feelings about the relationship between men and women at this point, she didn’t think much of anything. “I point, she didn’t think much of anything. “I don’t really know a whole lot of girls reflecting on their model of marriage,” she says.

Despite all the searching, Westfall eventually found herself returning to a familiar place. After a solid year of uncertainty, it was still the Bible that rang the most true to her. “It came down to me that the faith that made sense was the faith I’d left behind,” she says.

With her restored faith, Westfall studied the Bible with renewed focus, and from there, developed her conclusions about marriage and the roles of men and women. Though she admits the Bible leaves room for other interpretations, she likes this one the best because, in her mind, it is the most straightforwardly presented. It is also the model of her parents’ marriage, which resembles what she someday hopes to get for herself, though not necessarily anytime soon.

And don’t ever expect her to give up her dreams of being a pediatrician for any husband. Westfall says that’s not part of the deal. “I believe God is calling me to be a doctor,” she says.

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• There are some, like Campus Christians’ Maddox, who claim that the University environment is somewhat hostile to Christian fundamentalism. This hostility, he says, takes the form of a general attitude on campus that undermines Christian values.

Probably few would be surprised at this claim, and fewer still would complain about it. Maddox’s beef is with the University’s tolerant, “everything is OK” philosophy, which seems impossible to get around in a setting that doesn’t lay claim to any specific faith. And beyond faith, the education-oriented nature of the University can also be construed as a threat to fundamentalist values, says Professor Paul Mirecki, chairman of religious studies department. “Time at the University is a time for learning rather than solidifying,” he says.

But though the University does not endorse any specific faith, and should therefore theoretically treat them all equally, some still believe Christianity is viewed with more than its fair share of criticism.

“Christianity is the un-cool religion,” Westfall says, recalling instances where her philosophy has been called out in class, where people have called her brainwashed and a non-thinker. “As kids, we tend to be indoctrinated with ‘don’t offend Moslems, don’t offend Hindus,’ but it seems to be OK to just rip into Christianity.”

She adds that Christians have brought some of it on themselves. From money-grubbing televangelists to hypocritical moralists, people claiming to represent Christ have “done some pretty horrible things.”

Evangelizing, or spreading the Gospel, is also a way Christian fundamentalists can arouse animosity against their religion – particularly when they get in peoples’ faces and pursue aggressive confrontations about faith and being saved.

Westfall doesn’t participate in “street evangelism,” which involves confronting random people, but Lee Bickerstaff does.

Bickerstaff, Emporia senior, is co-chairman of the Campus Crusade for Christ’s evangelism committee, and frequently, he can be seen roaming the sidewalks of Wescoe Beach or some other campus locale, handing out spiritual surveys or just talking to people about Christ. Bickerstaff says he tries to minimize negative reactions by being as unimposing as possible, and for the most part, he finds people receptive to his message even if not necessarily in agreement with it.

Nevertheless, Bickerstaff has personally felt the backlash that evangelism sometimes inspires. His sophomore year, he was the centerpiece of a Christian campaign that involved a couple hundred students wearing red-tee shirts around campus that were emblazoned with yellow lettering that proclaimed, “I agree with Lee.”

What did everyone agree with Lee on? That Jesus Christ is the son of God and he died for peoples’ sins and everything else in the Christian mantra. The week-long campaign was a way for Christians on campus to show their solidarity and proclaim their faith, and also to stimulate University-wide dialogue on the subject, which is a central idea behind their evangelical efforts.

Needless to say, there were those on campus who disparaged the campaign because they said it pushed faith on people, and Bickerstaff, as the mascot of the effort, attracted many personal attacks. He says he would walk around campus and see chalked-out messages that threatened him and even insulted his family, all because of the “I Agree with Lee” tee-shirts.

But most negative reactions to evangelism, he asserts, are a good deal tamer. People usually don’t go out of their way to heckle him. Most of the time, they prefer to simply ignore him.

King’s experience with faith-based ostracism is similarly mild. The occasional weirdness he encounters with people on campus is no different or no more severe than when the Catholic kids used to make fun of him in good old Ness City.

And it’s not like people even make fun of him now. Mostly, it’s just this underlying sense of awkwardness and a guilt that people sometimes feel around him, as if he’s secretly judging every move they make, which he says is ridiculous.

But he’s used to it, and as is his way, he accepts it His fundamentalist faith, though it sometimes pushes him into conflict, is as much a part of him as his love for writing or any other aspect of his personality, and he survives the occasional struggles it brings, much like he survived being the pastor’s kid all those years growing up. He surrounds himself with some good friends, and now, his girlfriend of 18 months, and with them and his God to confide in, it’s “survivable.”