Religious extremism and book banning

I was raised by religious extremists in southeast Grand Rapids.

Here’s my June column for the Holland Sentinel…

I was raised by religious extremists in southeast Grand Rapids. My church was once described by the New York Times as a “sect.”

My religious indoctrination began when I was in the cradle, but it picked up steam when I was in the third grade. My classmates and I were required to memorize the Heidelberg Catechism, so that as high school seniors we could recite it, word for word, to the elders at my church. I assumed at the time that eight-year-olds all over the world were doing the same thing, memorizing a sacred document from sixteenth-century Germany. Imagine my surprise when I learned that most children around the world could not answer the third question of the catechism: “Where did you learn of your sin and its wretched consequences?”

I was not home schooled, but it wasn’t necessary. I went to a Christian school where I was subjected to daily prayer and Bible reading (hymn singing too, if my teacher could play the piano). Weekly chapel in the gym, sitting on folding chairs, was also part of the experience. I was not allowed to join the Boy Scouts of America because that organization wasn’t Christian (or Christian enough). Instead, we had our own scouting organization with similar camping and knot-tying requirements, known as the Calvinist Cadet Corps.

I attended Christian schools throughout my life, and the first graduation I ever attended that did not begin with prayer was my wife’s law school graduation. I remember being shocked. I could hardly concentrate through the rest of the ceremony. No prayer?

Looking back, what surprises me most about all of this – and the reason I survived – is that my little community of religious extremists was intellectually curious. As sectarian as we were, we were also curious about the world around us.

My parents took me and my sisters on long road trips each summer so that we could see and appreciate each of the lower 48 states – and much of Canada as well. Within a month of my high school graduation, my parents took me on a three-week tour of European capitals so that I could see and appreciate cathedrals, museums, battlefields, and more. Seeing and appreciating the world was a value that they instilled in me (alongside the Heidelberg Catechism).

I was also a reader. I pedaled my bike each week during the summer to the Ottawa Hills Public Library, and I don’t remember that my parents ever looked through the books I brought home. They seemed delighted that I was reading them. By the time I was in high school, I was reading novels by all the major writers of the late twentieth century – Saul Bellow, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip Roth. Yes, all men.

As far I know, no one in my community of religious extremists ever banned a book. No one ever told me there were certain books or authors I shouldn’t read. I read every book I could find. And then I would have long conversations about them with my father after dinner while he and I were doing the dishes. He didn’t like some of the ideas that I was considering, and said so, but I remember that he supported my intellectual curiosity. He had it too.

What concerns me as I read the news is that my fellow religious extremists have abandoned their intellectual curiosity. Instead of wanting to listen and learn and travel, they have become fearful of what their children might be exposed to. The message is that the world is not to be explored. It should be feared. Too many dangerous ideas out there!

More books, in more districts, in more states, are being banned than ever before. Bans have occurred in 138 school districts, in 32 states, representing 5,049 schools and a combined enrollment of four million students.

According to PEN America, which issued a report based on its study of book banning, forty-one percent of the banned books explicitly address LGBTQ+ themes or have protagonists who are LGBTQ+. Forty percent of the banned books contain protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color.

The religious extremists who shaped and formed my Christian faith were confident that I could make sense of the world around me, if only I were given the tools I needed (including the Heidelberg Catechism) and the freedom to explore, to ask questions, to listen to a variety of voices, and to see for myself what the world outside of western Michigan looked like.

I am grateful for what I was given. And I fear for what is now being taken away.

Photos: The photos have no connection whatsoever to my column. (above) That’s me at Schiphol Airport ready for my flight back to the U.S. with a kayak paddle, not a guitar. (below) Sadly, I left my bike behind. A Japanese man from Delft bought it and pedaled it home.