Don’t Dismiss the Power of Belief

Sure, I could knock out a clever little Christmas Day column (I’ve done it before), but let’s get serious for the two minutes it’ll take you to read this.

While playing the scribe last week, I had a flashback.

Suddenly, I wasn’t in Garden Grove anymore, but in a large stone building with labyrinthian hallways, one large room and several other smaller rooms filled with happy people sitting shoulder to shoulder, all seeking enrichment. Money was changing hands. Music was playing. Outside, there was a crowded parking lot and a busy street. Sometimes there was silence in the building, at other times a noticeable din.

No, I wasn’t flashing on Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Rather, I was back inside the First Baptist Church in Omaha, Neb.

My means of transport came from listening to gospel singer Tom Tipton sing hymns to a group of seniors at a retirement home.

And just as surely as if I’d attended a Rolling Stones concert this year, Tipton’s playlist sent me reeling back through the years to my boyhood.

But here’s the thing: Although I’ve heard “Satisfaction” thousands of times in 40 years on the radio and home, I can’t remember the last time I heard “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” which Tipton sang.

But, lo and behold, as he sang, I silently sang it along with him. The words poured forth as easily as if KRTH-101 had been playing the song every day during drive time.

Not to get all canonical with you, but it got me wondering why I could still pick up the echoes from such faraway sounds.

At this point, I must confess to being a lapsed churchgoer of many years’ standing. Accordingly, I have no recollection, in my adult life, of singing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” either while in the shower or bopping down the 405. Or anywhere else. Yet, when Tipton launched into it to close his program last week, its words also came back to me.

I first heard those songs and many others inside the stone walls of the First Baptist Church. While we might have sung them in Sunday school, most likely I’m remembering them from the giant sanctuary (in my memory, anyway) that had the huge organ pipes overlooking the altar.

I can only conclude that the communal voice of a couple hundred adults singing those hymns embedded them so deeply in my marrow that they couldn’t get out -- even with 40-plus years to do so. Of course, the effect of the songs was buttressed by the equally memorable Bible stories that also were drilled into our receptive minds.

Turns out, apparently, that the whole darn package represented a pretty potent one-two punch. Which is to say, they’re still there in the recesses of my mind and, perhaps, yours.

What this should remind us of is how powerful the hold of religion is on all of us. Believers, nonbelievers, it doesn’t matter.

But if a stray sheep such as me who has embraced the devil (sorry, Mick, that’s what some once called you) still hears the songs in his head, imagine their hold on the rock-ribbed believers.

It’s foolish, if not downright arrogant, to dismiss that kind of power in our neighbors and friends.

Those hymns and the stories they invoke go right to the believers’ cores. Those for whom “Satisfaction” is a religious experience need to understand why “In the Garden” rouses the same excitement in others.

This is Christmas Day, you know. In that spirit, maybe the unchurched among us could take a moment and reflect on why faith burns so brightly in so many around us. Most of us have a little Bible school in us, and the fact that an aging secularist can still remember the words to “The Old Rugged Cross” should serve as a reminder that old-time religion still governs so many lives.

You don’t have to agree with them. You don’t have to concede anything to them.

But it sure would help the public discourse to remember where they’re coming from.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.