Give Her That Old-Time Religion Without the Politicking

“I’m fit to be tied,” the sweet little voice said.

When you write a newspaper column and someone calls up and says, “I’m fit to be tied,” you drop everything to listen. Often, the caller’s unhappiness is predictable or not particularly interesting. What holds my attention most is when, as the bettors say, someone goes against form.

So when the woman Friday began by saying, “I’m a registered Republican and I count myself a believer,” and then proceeded to upbraid churches for getting involved in politics, I wanted to hear why.

Part of the reason is self-serving. I long ago wearied of preacher/politicians berating the media and suggesting that we’re sadly out of step with average Americans. If it weren’t for the godless media, they’d have you believe, the church could get back into schools where it belongs.

The caller identified herself as Thelma House of Fountain Valley. She’s 73 and a retired homemaker who also worked during her career as a secretary. She was raised as a Baptist but sheepishly admits that she tends to substitute church attendance these days for watching the Rev. Robert Schuller’s television broadcast.

That’s because, she said, she worries whether there’s a place for her in church anymore.

She said she was calling about news reports that Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa--the county’s largest church--had sent pre-election questionnaires to city council and school board candidates. The seven questions for school board hopefuls, which a candidate had sent me several days earlier, have little to do with books and budgets.

Instead, five of the questions deal in some way with abortion, another with condom distribution and a seventh with parents’ involvement in “the moral and religious content of academic materials and tests.”

The church tells the candidates the “Voter Guide” will be sent to 50,000 families. The guide is designed to help voters make an “informed decision” at election time, the church says.

None of that sits well with Mrs. House. “I was raised in the conservative Baptist church,” she says, “but I find myself more and more in disagreement. The reason I disagree is that people that I always respected and agreed with are trying to legislate their opinion on everybody else. Even if I don’t believe in abortion for myself, I haven’t walked in anyone else’s shoes and shouldn’t try to legislate their religious beliefs.”

She said she’s especially miffed by the notion of tax-exempt institutions “meddling in politics.”

Two representatives came over from a neighborhood church to ask her about joining, she said. “I told them I don’t know where I belong anymore. I said I was raised in a church like theirs and that I should be running over there, and I just laid it out to them. They were a nice couple. I haven’t been over there because I don’t feel I fit in anywhere.”

What puzzles Mrs. House is that she doesn’t think she’s forsaken any of her fundamental religious beliefs. But to her ear, her religious friends have grown increasingly intolerant over the years.

“The other thing is, they’re so ornery, so mean. And it hurts me because my friends are all in their 70s and we all grew up in this together. I try to discuss it with them, but we have to leave it. They think it’s because I moved to California 40 years ago that something happened to me.”

I asked whether her discontent toward the politicized religious activists is more anger or annoyance.

“Getting angry doesn’t do it,” she said, “but, look, I’m 73, I’m a registered Republican, I’ve been a hard-shell Baptist all my life. You really can’t be what you’d call more conservative than that, but these people have gone too far. And I’m worried when I see these people who I’ve known since kindergarten and know what good people they are and see them turn into a mean-spirited, hateful attitude.”

Mrs. House would be the first to admit she’s just one person with an opinion. But if I were a religious leader, I’d ask myself how I could turn off someone like her. The church shouldn’t be losing the Thelma Houses of the world.

“I just feel we all answer to God,” she said. “Salvation is an individual matter. I don’t feel I should force it on anyone else.”

I’m glad Mrs. House called. She said it was the first time she’d ever called a newspaper on a subject. That suggests to me she’s pretty upset.

If they want to listen, the people who want to mix religion and public policy can learn something from her.

Her message is that their enemies aren’t just the media or liberal Democrats or devil worshipers.

More so than they want to admit or seem to understand, it’s people like Thelma.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.