OC HIGH: STUDENT NEWS AND VIEWS : Bible Groups Are Not the Answer for Everyone

Not everyone involved in religious youth groups has found the answer to his or her prayers.

Seventeen-year-old Jane of Santa Ana, who preferred that her real name not be used, said she is angered by church tactics used to recruit teen-agers through youth groups.

Jane jokingly refers to herself as “born again, dead again.”

“After battling with bouts of depression and feelings of estrangement during the first three months of my junior year, I did not know where to turn for guidance,” said Jane, now a senior. “School, my family life, my social life--everything dissatisfied me.”

This dissatisfaction led her to attend a Friday night Bible study at a Santa Ana church.

“Bible study offered me a sense of belonging that I just did not feel anywhere else,” she said. “There were 20 or 30 complete strangers who invited me into their family just because we all believed in the same thing.”

But Jane said the effect of the instantaneous acceptance soon wore off, especially when she was advised to cut off contact with former friends because they were not “good Christians.”

“I had to cut off all emotional ties with people I had been friends with all of my life,” she said. “I even alienated my parents and told my mother that she was going to hell because she thought homosexuality was acceptable. My religion soon seemed to be like a drug addiction, and I had to kick the habit.”

Jane has stopped attending the Bible study sessions and has reconciled old friendships. She concedes, however, that she still believes in what she learned while she was “born again.”

“I have found a happy medium between fanaticism and atheism,” Jane said.

“I am still friends with people from my church, but I just could not handle surrounding myself with religion all of the time,” she said. “I also still believe in the Bible and the church, but I am not so consumed with it.”