Bible Porn

Once, when I was eight, I knelt down at my bed alongside my mother, admitted I was a sinner, and asked Jesus Christ into my heart. Once, when I was eleven, I stood up at a Bible campfire and promised my peers and elders that I would earnestly strive to bring my unsaved friend to church. And once when I was 22, among ten high school boys whose souls had been entrusted to me for a week, I sat down on the carpet and read them, for their edification, Bible porn.

"Judges 19:29-30:  When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. Everyone who saw it said, ‘Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Think about it! Consider it! Tell us what to do!’ "

These high school boys were members of what I have in the past called “My People,” a term that referred sometimes to those who accepted that a salad was to consist of, and only of, iceberg lettuce, tomato wedges, thousand island dressing, and Bacos. Sometimes the term referred to Midwesterners, sometimes to Swedish American-immigrants, sometimes to evangelicals. But mostly "My People" meant the Evangelical Covenant Church of America.

Created by a pietistic break-off of the Swedish State Lutheran church in the 19th century, the Evangelical Covenant Church is a denomination of about 100,000 members. Although they are now found in almost every state of the nation, My People cluster predominantly around Chicago and Minneapolis. Leaving the dry, empty formalism of state churches in Sweden for something more real, My People are Scandinavians with a heart for Jesus. Born again Swedes. They are evangelical enough to think that a heartfelt conversion experience is necessary to ensure your spot in the Kingdom of Heaven, but Swedish enough to not make a big fuss over it.

Migrating to the US, Covenanteers found greater religious freedom, but greater competition as well. Unable to simply baptize their infants into the state church before the kids even knew what was happening, My People now had to wait until some age of accountability and then let their kids make their own decisions. From every side – from charismatics, to archaeologists, to MTV – forces threatened to take Covenant kids from the faith of their fathers.

Hence the creation of CHIC.  Once standing for Covenant HIgh Congress, now like KFC or FedEx,CHIC stands for nothing but itself. Every three or four summers, CHIC calls every 13-17 year-old Covenant Kid from across the country to a big college campus where for a week they are bombarded with so much high-power Christian fun and high-volume Christian rock, and so many high-impact Christian speakers, that they have no choice but to dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ.

I attended CHIC in 1984, but because my mom had gone and gotten me saved seven years before, all I could do was get “recommitted.” And I had already been recommitted 19 times. So during the altar calls, while gospel music played softly and the speaker asked people to cast off their sins, come on down and accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, I sat and felt guilty for feeling nothing at all.

On the one hand it made perfect sense for me to sign up as a counselor for the 1991 CHIC held at Indiana University.  Family connections plus regular Covenant camp attendance plus having just graduated from the denomination's college, North Park, plus coordinating Covenant volunteer groups through my job with Habitat for Humanity, meant that I probably already knew 300 of the 3000 kids and counselors in attendance, and the others were probably only separated by single degree. These were My People, after all. Not to go would have been like ditching a big family reunion. But on another hand, signing up made as much sense as shaving my head and passing out the Bhagavad Gita at airports. Because I didn't really want anybody to have a conversion experience, I went to be a counselor at CHIC to save the children from being saved.