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Last night I took my elder daughter to her first basketball practice of 2006. She had taken at least a year off after a less-than-satisfying experience with a league at the nearby community college, where we’d spent a season of co-ed ball observing the coach’s silence regarding the one boy’s total ball hogging and the other boys’ refusal to pass to any girls. So when the parents of one of Kid A’s soccer teammates suggested joining her Upward team, girls only , and only one hour-long practice per week in the church gym less than a mile from our house, we thought—without checking the hotlink I just provided—it sounded good.

* * *

Your friendly, lovable GoatBoy has a rather complicated relationship with churches. I grew up going to the low-key Disciples Of Christ church with my grandparents (who deserve more than half-credit for raising me) and sometimes my mom. My grandparents were Involved, my grandfather being a deacon and my grandmother teaching adult Sunday School classes and being all up in the middle of whatever-they-call-the old-ladies’-group. It epitomized the artificial extended family that I still commend and admire about smaller churches. Then my grandfather’s cousin (who was by now the pastor’s in-law; remember that) either discovered politics or had politics pushed onto him. Either way, all of a sudden in the mid-late ‘80s our little family church was Too Liberal. Why weren’t we spending our Sundays listening to diatribes on the hottest-button rallying points: The Abortion, The Euthanasia, The Whatever-Robertson-And-Swaggart-And-Falwell-Were-On-About-This-Week? Our pastor most admirably declined to take notes on how he should run his services and on what the congregation needed to take home with them Sunday afternoons. Cue mutiny and mass exodus to reliably conservative D.O.C. church a few miles away. Not that anybody bothered to tell the early adolescent (who had served as ring bearer in the wedding that united our family with the pastor’s) why most of the congregation bailed on the kind and temperate pastor in favor of the considerably larger and noticeably more politically-minded church a few miles down the road. No word on why we traded the Beatitudes for Bootstrap Jesus. Knowing my grandfather as well as I did, I like to think he was going along with my grandmother to get along, since I missed the chance to ask him. He was a Sermon-on-the-Mount Christian through and through, collecting and distributing just shy of a million pounds of food for our city’s homeless before he died (and occasionally spending parts of some services out in the foyer, now that I think on it). Anyway, by the age of thirteen I was done going along to services after a particularly spittle-flecked and scattered ABORTION! EUTHANASIA! sermon-cum-rally. (I just got a call from my mom and she told me she had bumped into the now-retired pastor of Church B last week; I was reminded that he has a son with Down’s Syndrome—more right-wing projection...how much you want to bet he considered aborting a lot longer than was comfortable for him? And in his defense he was great at every element of his job that wasn’t that one hour every Sunday. A genuinely good man who was, let’s say, a little close to a few of the issues against which he’d rail.)

Around this same time my first cousin and her husband got The Calling. A group of students at the state agriculture college saw a charismatic, evangelical, non-denominational bible study quickly roll into a living-room, late-night church service led by a slick and relatively charming former radio D.J. Enter GoatBoy to stay for spring break. The first couple of days were fun. My cousin and her husband had a frogurt shop just off campus and a six-month-old daughter (Goatboy grew up an only child). Then came Tuesday night. Well after dinner the house began to fill with earnest, wide-eyed solicitous twentysomethings. Sometime around eleven the service commenced; tent-revival boilerplate delivered by aforementioned short and round D.J. in what couldn’t be far off from Sam Kinison’s pre-comedy style. By now I was pretty over church so I was as attentive as my daydreaming would allow. Less than an hour later the preachifyin’s over. Great! Late night TV awaits. But nobody’s leaving. The call was issued for any who were having problems or physical ailments to ask The Lord for help. A guy has a wonky wrist. Hands were laid on, praying over the wrist was joined enthusiastically. OK, laying on of hands. Pretty wacky. But I can hang. Then somebody began babbling nonsense. Babbler hit the floor rolling. Another woman began translating the babble into disjointed generic platitudes. And occasionally a congregant or two would cast a glance over at the awkward and self-conscious adolescent trying to make himself invisible at the edges of the roiling worked-up crowd. Danger! If they see I’m not getting it, they might decide I need some mortifying special attention. Crisis was at hand. Solution? Roll those eyes back a little behind half-lids and mutter some nonsense. No flopping or rolling, just enough to blend, baby. Sleep came slowly that night—apparently embarrassment can cause insomnia. My cousin’s a roller. Over the course of the remaining week a superstitious dread of a vengeful and jealous sky god was successfully installed by my cousin’s husband (who had abandoned the Farm Management studies his less-than-rich dairy farmer parents had subsidized—couldn’t find a better place to put this but it was An Issue at the time), where it remained, in steadily decreasing power, for the next five years or so. I prayed nightly for Good Things for Poor People but all motivated by the fear that neglecting to do so would doom me to eternal John The Revelator torment.

Within three years The Right Reverend Anointed Apostle Prophet D.J. had divorced his gorgeous and doting wife, seduced my cousin into a divorce from her sweet and devoted husband and formally adopted my second cousin and changed her name. The previous marriages were Not To Be Spoken Of in the now-storefront church down here in the City. For several years many Good Works ensued but all with an eye toward recruitment. The storefront was traded for an over-sized vacant church building. An abortive syndicated televised half hour was produced. Three more second cousins were born. Secular culture, including Santa and Halloween, were from Satan, but Reverend Cousin still liked his movies and video games just fine. He got skinny and he got fat with Oprah frequency. A slightly younger and attractive female member moved in as honorary family member to help with the kids where she stayed for years and years. Many winks and nudges were exchanged among we heathen members of the family (as we found out this year, justifiably). He got bored running the Jesus Con and opened a dinner theater(!) in a wing of the church where he wrote and produced all offerings and demonstrated that his talent for writing and drama matched his gifts for hustling a con—decidedly fourth-rate. He got prescription meds, some of which he might have even had the prescriptions for. He ceased going anywhere without some sycophantic goons accompanying. Lawyers were retained. My cousin is Back, rapidly discovering that there are surprising numbers of Good People outside the church (where her “family” of almost twenty years has successfully stuffed her down the memory hole already occupied by two ex-spouses).

* * *

So last night we arrived at the Big Baptist Church edifice that dominates our nearest major intersection. I was a little leery that among the Upward banners on the gym walls touting Teamwork and Sportsmanship was one with the words Memory Verse, but she wants to play basketball, she has a friend on the team, it’s one hour per week. I can hang. We didn’t arrive early and, as there were three teams practicing at once, the meager bleacher space was already mostly taken. Not so crowded that younger daughter and I couldn’t have found a seat, I’m sure, but less-than-welcoming significant glances were being sporadically cast towards the hirsute GoatBoy, of the Not-One-of-Us variety. Used to that, too, with an adult lifetime as a freethinking creative-type here in a deeply crimson state. The floor was too crowded for Kid B to be turned loose with a ball on the one and only court so we spent our time partly in the doorway and partly going outside to walk around and to sit in the car and listen to the radio (younger daughter needed reminding that we only call the loudmouths on the AM band pinheads and that he’s only President Dum Dum in our house). About thirty-five minutes into the practice, a restless daughter and I made our way back to the gym. But it’s quiet in there. Walking down the hall, we heard no balls bouncing and no shoes squeaking; the gym looked empty until we were in the doorway. Maybe they cut the practice short this first week and elder daughter was waiting for me. But as I made it to the door I saw all three teams, each seated in a circle, talking quietly. And it looked like there was a prayer in there somewhere. I tumbled to the fact that soccer friend’s parents have pulled a small fast one on us with their casual “just fun, low key” description of matters. So now your humble GoatBoy’s bath, snack, and book nighttime routine had to make room for a little Talk with elder daughter, a talk he’d gratefully avoided thus far.

“What were you guys talking about when you were all sitting down in a circle?”
“They were praying. And we were talking about our jerseys and how we’ll get stars on them for sportsmanship and stuff.” (I bet that Memory Verse will net you a star or two, sweetie.)
“So what do you do when everybody’s praying?”
“I just close my eyes and bow my head.”
“Yeah, that’s what daddy does, too. That’s a respectful and polite thing to do. I just want to make sure you know that you don’t have to change anything about who you are according to who you’re with.”
“Oh, sure. Can I try those vanilla snaps mommy brought home?”
“Yeah. They’re good, too.”

Your Tolerant Agnostic narrator goes out of his way not to step on the toes of the faithful by whom he is seemingly always surrounded. No Dawkins-style atheist evangelizing here. So, right or wrong, I get a little resentful when smiling, friendly people get that hungry look that signifies the contemplation of Working On my children. I don’t apologize for the protectiveness but neither am I necessarily proud of the resentment. I have no problem if my daughters, upon reaching an age of reason, should choose to gravitate towards an artificial extended family. But until then, hands off, creeps. This constitutes a central pillar of my Belief. And now, thanks to our slightly disingenuous soccer friends (and our trusting failure to research) I’m going to have to find a reasonable means of reinforcing that pillar. If there’s going to be a belief instilled in our children, it’s going to be one that’s come to freely, and not one that’s hammered home. And if it comes down to forfeiting the sixty bucks we already paid for the season then so be it. So this winter will find this cheerfully tolerant agnostic treading gingerly the line between ensuring nobody pushes a belief on my daughter and pushing our own worldview so hard that the alternative becomes attractive.

Pray for me.