The Palm Tree Thanks the Hurricane

I don’t watch a huge amount of television on a regular basis. Sure, I can get caught up in “Ace of Cakes” marathons, or “18 Kids and Counting” on demand, or cheesy Playlistisms, or “Will and Grace” reruns, or “Family Guy” episodes I personally own on DVD…. Okay, so maybe moving into a house that only has basic cable was the best thing I ever did. There is little of interest on basic cable outside of Conan O’Brien. And “American Idol.” And “So You Think You Can Dance.” And….

All that said, it’s probably a bit strange that I’ve not seen a whole lot of the show “30 Rock.” Tina Fey’s appearances on “Saturday Night Live” portraying Sarah Palin were the highlights of the 2008 election season for me, yet I’ve seen little of the show that has really launched her to national prominence. The sitcom also features Jack McBrayer as Kenneth the Page, an actor with whom I’m familiar because of hilarious appearances on Conan, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Walk Hard,” and “Talladega Nights.” Kenneth is an endlessly naïve and optimistic country rube who is a member of an unspecified conservative charismatic religious denomination. And thanks to the miracle of Facebook stalking, I discovered through a friend’s post that this character was a graduate of an institution called Kentucky Mountain Bible College.

Probably nobody is aware that KMBC is an actual college in the tiny town of Vancleve, nestled in the Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky. The 2000 census lists Vancleve’s population at about 364, with only 6 individuals being of a minority race. The average household income at the time was just over $16,000. It would seem that a Bible college located in such a place would be the perfect school to have produced such a character as Kenneth the Page.

The funniest part of all of this is the fact that most of my mother’s family attended this school, or at least attended Mt. Carmel High School, which is essentially the little sister to the college. My mother and I believe all three of her siblings, as well as a few cousins, attended Mt. Carmel. I’m not sure just which relatives attended KMBC itself, but I do know that my aunt and uncle currently live and work at the college, and all three of their sons (my cousins) attended. One can also go to the Mt. Carmel website and see a picture of my cousin Brian listed as an RA of the men’s dorm there.

So there is one portion of my heritage—Kentucky hillbilly. The community in Florida in which I was raised was really no different; it was just located a mile from the Atlantic Ocean rather than in the toothless maw of Appalachia. Both places are a part of what they call the “conservative holiness movement” (feel free to search the term on Wikipedia). One might consider it loosely a blend of the Wesleyan-Arminian theology of the Nazarene denomination with the lifestyle standards of the most conservative Pentecostals, mixed with a healthy dose of what is basically asceticism. One must actively work to free himself of all “worldliness.” Therefore women may not cut their hair or wear jewelry and makeup, and may only wear long, loose skirts; men and women may not so much as kiss or hold hands until marriage; rock music in all its forms is worldly, derived from the satanic tribal music of Africa; television is forbidden, as are nearly all movies; alcohol and cigarettes are signs of pure, unadulterated evil in a person’s soul. I actually grew up in a household much like that on “18 Kids and Counting,” just minus 15 kids and a father.

Okay, maybe I’m starting to be a bit facetious. But they do go to unusual lengths to keep themselves “unspotted from the world.” It’s an environment that creates paranoia that one might become “worldly” by accident, and therefore contact with anything outside this community is kept to a minimum. Children grow up, marry right out of high school or Bible college, and start families just around the corner from their own parents (unless they are called to be missionaries or pastors elsewhere). People work and hire within the church community as much as possible, and—much like with the Amish—pressure is (usually) implicitly but strongly levied on everyone to remain a part of the group. And funnily enough, the church I grew up in was considered to be more “liberal” within the conservative holiness movement; shirt sleeves were only required to reach the elbow, and single parent status was not considered enough of a moral failure to justify someone being fired from a school or church job.

Clearly I still have issues with my upbringing. But how can I not? Because of this environment, I had to wrestle with the minute question of the acceptability of Christian rock music with the same spiritual exertion someone else might use to understand the concept of a loving God that allows evil to reign on earth. Others might debate the idea of predestination with the same gusto with which we would debate the acceptable length of shirt sleeves.

So when I see NBC mocking this mindset via the lovably innocent character of Kenneth the Page (gulp…I even have two relatives named Kenneth), I can’t help but join in on the laughter.

I suppose there are benefits to this sort of childhood. I was never given the chance to screw my life up before I was old enough to know better—heck, I’d never been in a movie theater until I went to college, much less been allowed the opportunity to knock up a girl or careen drunkenly through a red light or overdose on anything stronger than caffeine. And I definitely have (somewhat) interesting stories to tell. And I think in some skewed way this upbringing has allowed me to be more accepting of the differences of others than I might otherwise have been. After all, my own family is out in left field compared to most of the world.

The subject of my first blog posting here was that of my aversion to risk-taking, and it’s true that I don’t like taking risks without knowing all the variables involved and making conscious recognition of what is the necessary course of action. But I think the battles I had to fight in freeing myself of this upbringing have built in me the willingness to make bold and fearless decisions once I know what is the right and necessary thing to do. It was drilled into me that rock music was the evil tool of the devil, and it was not an easy task to shed the spectre of hell every time I listened to my favorite music. It was so heavily ingrained in me. But I made the conscious decision to accept the risk that they might be right and that I might be condemning myself for wanting to write and record rock music of my own.

And so the most precious gift my upbringing has given me, I think, is the courage to abandon tradition and the resulting guilt whenever I come to understand that it is wrong. I’ve learned to weigh everything carefully, knowing that conviction is a dangerous companion that must be kept at arm’s length and readily exchanged or dismissed if truly need be. I’ve come to acknowledge the humility that is necessary when making decisions or assertions, the humility that allows me to acquiesce to fuller understanding in the future. And I’ve become good friends with Doubt, rather than enemies.

I now line up to the standards of my upbringing very little. I love and even create “evil” rock music. I work and shop and watch movies on Sundays. I wear shorts in public. I love a good beer and the occasional cigar or cigarette. I sometimes use profanity. I oppose the banning of abortion (for practical reasons, not moral reasons), and I oppose any sort of marriage amendment and favor most gay rights. I haven’t voted Republican in years. I live half-way across the country from my family for no “approved” reason, and I’m still nowhere close to getting married. And there is therefore now no condemnation on me for any of it.

So while I have accumulated a great deal of baggage from my childhood, I also have developed the ability to doubt and to question without fear of damnation. I’ve learned that my faith is about my relationship with my Father Creator, not about what lifestyle standards I adhere to aside from anything that would actually grieve Him, my dearest friend. I recently wrote a song about this very idea; the chorus includes the lines “Your purpose in life is not what you do/It’s who you love and who loves you.”

I don’t find my faith easily swayed; at the same time I don’t have it tied too tightly. I have the guts to stand firm in the face of doubt, and the guts to give in when more truth comes to light. For that I can thank the “conservative holiness movement,” in the same way the palm tree can thank the hurricane for making it need to grow strong and flexible.