It’s feeling like it’s time to revisit that staple of the first day of church camp: my spiritual journey. But this time from a new perspective: when and where and how I have “experienced the divine.” For now, I’m sticking to my childhood and teenage years. I hope later to get to later years.

I grew up evangelical and so, yes, I prayed the sinner’s prayer. (In my case, on my mother’s cutting board—on my own initiative, I had come into her room so she could help me do it—at the ripe age of eight). Looking back at my motivation then, it was more of a commitment to being a “good boy” and aligning myself to my community’s deepest held values than a lifetime commitment to evangelical Christianity. Because, really, what sin could an eight-year-old have committed and need forgiveness for?

After the Oil Bust my family slid into a more charismatic mode, with some occasional forays into fundamentalism. I still remember my parents walking down the hall of our home speaking in tongues. I too received the “gift” of tongues, for the first time at the age of ten at a children’s revival led by “Gospel Bill.” But for us, speaking in tongues was a mostly private thing best done in your “prayer closet,” or with a small group of others who did the same. Again, it was more about aligning myself to my community (and winning the approval of Gospel Bill, who was something of a celebrity in our circles).

With the onset of adolescence came the first pangs of sin consciousness. Before that I knew I was sinful but only because I had been told so. Now came a deep awareness of my own capacity for evil that went beyond fighting with my little brother or not taking out the trash. Usually it involved that stereotypical sin of adolescent boys, lust, otherwise known as healthy sexual desire.

One summer our small Methodist youth group ventured to the first ever YouthAmerica, a week-long charismatic church camp held at Oral Roberts University. My family often went to nondenominational charismatic churches for special events, and at these I learned what was meant (and expected) by “feeling the Spirit.” It meant speaking in tongues, faith healing, and being “slain in the spirit.” At YouthAmerica I appropriated these experiences as my own for the first time and led my mostly non-charismatic youth group into the same. They became my main peer group, often my only peer group.

Under my leadership, we became frustrated that the more mainstream evangelical circles our Methodist church was connected to couldn’t recreate this experience for us. A district youth event? All fun and games—not “spiritual” enough.

Although the bread-and-butter experiences of charismatic Christianity were now my own, the role they played in my adolescence can hardly be overstated. Church—which entailed all my social outlets outside fifth-hour orchestra—meant two things: hiding behind “being spiritual” and hiding behind the keys of a piano. And, when I started to compose my own “praise and worship music,” the two became one and the same. Looking back, I’d be hard pressed to say any of it was truly “experiencing the divine.” My very publicly broadcast intention to enter the ministry (a decision reached at a YouthAmerica altar call) was a shield against feared social exchanges: I started up a lunchtime bible study at school to further hide from my peers. When a cheerleader asked me to the Christmas dance, I declined because I didn’t know if she (a Southern Baptist) was truly saved. I carried at least two Bibles with me at school—one for in depth study, and smaller one for more devotional readings)—taking them out to read when my classmates were chatting.

My church split over the charismatic/evangelical divide about the same time I failed my driver’s test and earned my Eagle Scout award (from the church’s scout troop). Families fought families, and my small youth group disintegrated. I tried to find another home for my “spirituality” in Baptist and Assembly of God churches, but it was not the same. How could I know if any of them were spiritual enough? My bent toward depression flowered, and the time I had spent at church shifted to busing tables at a nearby pizza joint.

Occasionally, I hear someone share a story of going to Sunday School for a while, raising some doubt-inspired questions, and being rebuffed, perhaps quite rudely. They then relay this as a “bad experience with religion” that entitles them to special sympathy. These people are spoiled little shits, and they tempt me toward violence. What they experienced is akin to a bad run-in at the neighborhood watch. My people, “recovering fundamentalists,” formed their entire identity and social belong around religion, only to find it crumble around them. To us, anything short of that looks like whining about not being chosen Dungeon Master, and that some years after the fact. Our adolescence was used for the gratification of adults who we trusted to take care of us. You had to go looking for another clique to join. You might as well ask a recovering alcoholic to feel sorry for how you threw up that time you got really drunk.

I did manage to experience the divine somehow in the midst of all that. It happened, now and then, in small groups, laying on hands and praying for a friend who, we might later learn, was struggling with how to make sense of his mother’s alcoholism. Or in the rapturous letting go of pent-up emotions and sexuality that could sometimes take place in a “praise and worship” service in someone else’s church on the other side of town. Or when at small group in camp we would help a new friend tackle their adolescent feelings of inadequacy and failure. These were times of what I would later call community, times when we practiced what feminist theologians call “mutuality,” “relationality,” and “reciprocity.” These were times when we healed each others wounds or, if that was not possible, embraced each other’s woundedness. Any self-named faith community that does not do such things deserves to have its doors closed. Short of such healing embraces church is nothing short of a circle jerk.

Occasionally, I hear someone casually denigrate evangelical or charismatic worship practices (or their churches in general). But you weren’t there: what do you know about it? To me, it smells of jokes about eating watermelon and ribs, of jungle music and poorly contained animal urges. When I’m among my people, we’ll joke about the repetitive praise choruses, the manipulative preachers, the sexual repression, and, of course, Jan Crouch’s hair. When you make it about Powerpoint sermons and creeds and televangelists, you only demonstrate ignorance of a culture you are alien to. You weren’t one of us, so back off. You know not of which you speak, so best to say very little.

But to my fellow recovering fundamentalists I say: Be bitter. It helps.