I grew up in Authoritative Reactive Christianity. Not only that, I thrived within that system. I was formed with defined hierarchies, clear expectations, and an ever-growing list of things to be against and feel smugly superior about. I think this worked for me because I was good at meeting expectations, and took pride on being on the right side of any arguments. I knew the rules, I was very strategic, and I could loophole things I disagreed with and stay on the right side of it all. I was a great soldier in the culture wars, and was very good at drawing tidy but clear lines between “us” and “them”, where “we” were always on the right side of that line. In hindsight, while I KNEW Disney, proctor and gamble, credit cards, rock music, new age, dungeons and dragons and barcodes(!!!) were clearly wrong, I was very wishy washy in how much I cared, unless it provided an opportunity to be superior about it.

This construct worked well enough for me for a long time. In hindsight, I was always located close enough to power that I got to be in a version of “authority”, while not actually in charge, often used as a model example.

It wasn’t until I moved to Hume Lake that I began to actually examine this construct. Hume is a Christian camp isolated in the Sequoia National Forest in Central California. It’s not affiliated with any particular denomination, but it serves the conservative side of the spectrum of churches. We’d see a LOT of church busses with the word “Baptist” proudly painted on the side. I worked in a gap year program, which was on a school year schedule, and opposite of most of what was happening in main camp- they were busy on weekends and summers (and therefore my role was distanced). The program director and camp director who brought me on were both very innovative, creative, and pushing the boundaries of the systems in place. They brought me in because I was the same kind of thinker as them, and wanted to create a critical mass to move forward in new ways. Six months after I moved my whole life to the middle of nowhere, that camp director got fired (specifically for not firing me, but that’s another story). Five more months in and the program director quit and took another job, because he could see the writing on the wall that he was going to be fired too (not because of me this time!). So there I was, an innovative thinker, even then much more progressive than the culture I had landed in, and trying to figure out how to, well, mostly not get fired.

It really was a culture shock for me- I had moved from the Bay Area working in a ministry that had figured out what to do with women a decade or two before. I was a voice at the table, and was trusted in my areas of skill and knowledge. In that first year I learned quickly that these things that I have always brought to the table were dismissed when they were noticed at all. I was mostly expected to bring snacks and coffee to the table. I also quickly realized, during the great lay-offs of 2010 (one year in for me), that across camp the people who were seen as lay-offable, almost to a person, were women who spoke up. (there was one guy that got laid off, but nobody knew what his job was anyway). So while I wasn’t super popular in main camp, I figured my best bet was to sit quietly through program meetings and be my full self up in our gap year program. Over the years, I gained some credibility down in main camp, and as people started to know me, they realized I wasn’t the threat that they had once believed me to be and started to think of me as that nutty aunt that shows up with wacky ideas, but is generally harmless. I spent a lot of energy learning how to make myself small enough to fit into this broken system trying to gain enough credibility to influence. So much so, that it showed up on a personality test- I rated off the charts hostile, and the psychologist evaluating my graph, not knowing it was me, said “This person likely feels like they can not be true self, and spends a lot of time ‘fitting in’. Hostility probably manifests in sarcasm and passive agressiveness.” Ok, Dr.Dave, no need to tell ALL of my secrets.

I share this, because it’s the first time that this construct I was so good at navigating didn’t work for me. It actively worked against me- I was the threat it was reacting to. It was very disorienting. And it’s not that these were “bad” people. Many of them became dear friends, and I know they were doing their best to live their faith out. It’s when I began to question and deconstruct the scaffolding that had suited me so well.

Until I found myself on the underside of power, I hadn’t give much thought to why people would disagree with “Christianity” (and by this, of course I mean ARC, which is the only christianity I knew), just that they were wrong- and probably selfish. Until authority was reacting against me, it didn’t occur to me that those reaction to cultural threats could be anything other than the correct and Godly way to see things. This opened my eyes to several other things that were reactions that I now had questions about. I became aware of how very white Hume Lake is- and started looking at why. (I also started intentionally diversifying our gap year program, especially since we had a value of being a “rock tumbler” and learning from each others stories and experiences). I was no longer satisfied with the idea that white people are just who show up there, nothing we can do about it.

Interestingly, I also found myself holding quite a bit of authority in the gap year program. I quickly became second to the director, and he was very egalitarian in his leadership, so we often led together. I am ashamed to say that we actually taught the students that they should follow us without question, because how are they going to follow a God that they can’t see if they can’t follow leadership that they can see. Of course, we gave them contradictory messages of having open doors and wanting to see their side of things (which was also paradoxically true). We held them accountable and taught them discipline, and did truly love them. But looking back, I can see where we also broke some of their spirits, and created impossible situations where they couldn’t do anything other than fail and feel shame. I think we definitely grew in our leadership over the years, but it’s not until I’m outside of it all that I understand the parts that were cruel and damaging. I have had the opportunity in the years since to own that harm and apologize to several students for what I did to hurt them.

Ironically, I lived there for 8 years and did not get fired.

Here in Seattle is where I have had the chance to begin to reorient around reconciliation, in large part because of my church. Reconciliation around race has always been a core value of Quest, but even in that we’ve been learning and growing about how much more reconciliation encompasses. When our founding pastor left 4 years ago, and Pastor Gail was candidating, she made it clear that she has a firm conviction on full inclusion and affirmation of our LGBTQ siblings, and if she is voted in, that is where she would be shepherding the church. She was voted in, and spent two years working with the congregation to move in that direction. As we have worked to include these siblings, it opened our eyes to how much more holistically we could think about reconciliation- that it included race, and sexuality, and gender, but also economic realities, and abilities, and even education levels- so many hierarchies that sit unexamined. I appreciate Quest’s commitment to always be willing to hear who isn’t yet at the table, and to repent of our part in that, and to make room. It has made me aware of so many areas where ARC is rooted in deep, leaving the comfortable “us” and “them” lines drawn, and challenged me to step out of my personal comfort zone to join and understand and love people I have categorized as “them”.

I have SO MANY examples of this, but one very simple one, and one of the first, is that when I first started going to Quest, when Pastor Brenda would preach she would bring the whole Black Church experience, including gently chastising us when we sat quietly “I wish I had a church in here today!”. I would react, internally, very defensively, and make arguments in my head about ‘sure this is her culture, and that’s fine, but what if MY culture is to sit quietly in church, and not clap, and I’m an introvert, and I just need to think about things…” and on and on. To the point that I would honestly resent it a bit- until one day I realized that I was a white woman demanding that a Black leader conform themselves to my expectation of how things should be, and what would make me most comfortable, and declaring that my culture and experience and expectations were… supreme, even if I only did this in my thoughts. That was an absolute gut check, and I shifted my internal attitude to actually line up with my spoken posture of “I have so much to learn from Dr. B”, and actually took an internal posture of humility and learning and engaging even when it’s uncomfortable. Even year’s later, it’s not a natural reaction to clap or cheer or amen (because the conservative baptist runs deep in me) but I do consciously challenge myself to make some kind of noise 2-3 times any time Pastor Brenda or Pastor Gail preaches, and yes, I keep a checklist in my head about it.

Anyway, there are a million ways that Quest has challenged me in my supremacy, and I am thankful for it, nearly every day, even when it’s embarrassing or shameful or I get defensive- because I have SO MUCH to learn. This cohort is also part of how I’m reorienting and reframing things. Taking opportunities to learn and grow- not just in knowledge, but in life transformation.