Cora Moser
“Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law” (1 Corinthians 14:34).
The Apostolic Christian Church is a conservative denomination founded in 1847 and based largely in the Midwest region of the United States, although we have churches across the U.S. and, for some reason, in Japan. We sing solely a capella unless in an informal setting. We wear formal business attire—suit and tie, modest dresses—to all services, including Wednesday night sermons, holidays, and choir performances. Women must cover their head within the sanctuary. Men are the only people who could bring greetings from other churches, request hymns, and serve on inter-church committees until the year 2021. Children attend Sunday school from 3 years old until they graduate high school. I didn’t get my ears pierced until I was 18 and could legally sign for it myself, and my parents still don’t know that I got my nose pierced. I can’t imagine that I’ll ever come out all the way, one heel of my Sunday shoes caught in the closet door. If it ever comes unstuck, I fear I will fall straight on my face and no one will be there to pick me up.
My memory is lacking. I do not remember when I realized that I did not believe in God. Perhaps around the time I started to realize that the way I felt about women was “wrong,” despite the fact that I’d always felt that way. I had never even questioned it, and neither had anyone else. My belief in God has never been questioned outright, and I fear the day it is, for what am I to do? Tell the same lie that I have been telling by omission for the last several years, or face the incredulous offense my parents will inevitably respond with? Every time I’ve returned to my parents’ home since I’ve moved to campus, a Bible, my Bible, is standing up inside my closet, waiting for me to carelessly knock it over again and roll my eyes at my mother’s antics. I don’t remember the last time I was in church aside from a holiday, mostly because I edge my way out of being around and available on Sunday mornings. I don’t mean to sneak around, but it is the only way I can keep myself safe.
My freshman year of college was completely online, which was the case for thousands of students across the world in the years of the pandemic. Completely unintentionally, I signed up for the 8-week version of Philosophy 110, blissfully unaware of how overwhelming it would be to shove a full semester’s worth of coursework into half the time. Incidentally, homework for this class was always due on Saturdays and Sundays. “I just don’t want you to be getting any ideas from this class,” my mother warned. I’m sure I rolled my eyes internally, knowing I already agreed with most of them. What makes those ideas wrong, anyway, and why should anyone else get to decide that for me? Regardless of my declining belief, I was fascinated by the concept of Intelligent Design, the philosophy that conservative Christians often cite to support that God created the world because it focuses on the intricate detail within living organisms and their designs. The human brain is one of these wonders. We still don’t know everything about it. I know that mine is ill-functioning, riddled with ADHD and Anxiety from my dad and mom, respectively. I know that I wasn’t diagnosed or treated until the age of 20, and my mother was reluctant to treat either with modern medicine because of its unnatural contents. I also know that, at some point in my life, an event that I have likely forcibly erased or whited out, I developed a fear reaction to having my arms pinned to my side. My siblings and I used to play burritos when we were younger: we’d roll each other up in blankets and try to walk around while confined like that. Many years later, I tried this again, just for fun, only to find that I immediately panicked and began to hyperventilate until my arms were mobile again.
That was then. Where does it leave me now? With a crippling sense of self-doubt and repression that leads to unfortunate outbursts when things finally build up enough to break through the dam I’ve built up, taller and taller with each year I was stuck in an unhospitable habitat with no room to grow or learn beyond what they wanted me to learn. In a constant state of body dysmorphia in which I cannot feel comfortable with any part of myself because it is shameful to be a woman, no one must know that my body grew breasts, that I bleed and hurt and ache every month paying for the original Sin. Wondering what is safe to tell and who is safe to tell it to, worrying that the wrong person may find out the wrong thing. With internalized homophobia and a survivalist’s awareness of others’ perception of me. Oh, no, how others must perceive me. Short, fat, loud, annoying, nosy, dumb, slow, inattentive, unaware, unready, unprepared, unattractive, messy, poor, trying too hard, socially inept, romantically hopeless, unpure, sinful, unsaved, dirty, impulsive, on and on and on and on until the triumphant return of the King, Jesus, the mighty counselor, Lord, God, Savior, Wonderful, Merciful, Emmanuel, Yahweh, Prince of Peace, and I will fall to my sins, tip the scales, burn for eternity, suffer in Hell, break the circle, fall from grace. But what if there is nothingness? My oldest brother once sent me a song that included the line, “They promised us you were going straight to hell when you died/I don’t even think it’s a real place” (Susto, Gay in the South). He included no text. He didn’t need to. What if I could be free without worrying about eternal destiny? Without worrying about angering a God who does not hear, who does not help, who observes his creation with sick apathy? I would feel so free. So secure in myself and my future. In my safety. Maybe. Maybe there would be some other thing to worry about. What if I could be free from worrying about losing all stability? The truth would lose me everything. Financial stability: my parents pay half of my rent every month, and my phone bill, and pay for the mistakes I make. Family: their view of me would shift and warp into something ugly. Who would let me go if I opened my mouth and I spoke no lies? If I answered their daunting questions with truth?
I am sorry. Regardless of whether I have done anything wrong in my own eyes. Even if it wasn’t me. Even if I can’t help it, if it’s just the way I am. I apologize for myself. For being myself, that is. I cannot be what you want me to be. I cannot fit into that mold you have cut out for me. I know, I have tried. But I must, to keep my head above the water. I have been raised to be sorry. We are all, as women, socialized to take on the load of blame, shouldering others’ actions as if they were our own. We must remain gracious and agreeable, staying inside the lines an accepting the status quo. What would happen if they knew that I rejected everything they believed in just by being Cora? My siblings and I used to love watching Rhett and Link on Good Mythical Morning. It was fun and entertaining without being crass. Recently, Rhett released music under the name James and the Shame. Much of his music is centered around leaving home and religion, including the line, “Paul said that right from the start/I’d reject it in my heart/But I know you still feel I rejected you” (James and the Shame, Sorry). In return for his earlier shared music, I sent this to my brother, who knows better than anyone I know how it feels to be aware that someone feels like you’ve rejected them. He walked this road before me; I followed carefully in his footsteps, my footprints inside his own to hide the tracks. We commiserate that leaving someone behind to walk your own path can feel like failure.
I cannot fail. If I ask for help, I have already failed. If I need help, I have already failed. There is no room for failure or mistakes. I fear failure. I fear it means I am a disappointment to myself, to my parents and family, to my major. I fear one mistake cancels out all the success I have had. I fear that one day, someone will find out my secret, that I do not deserve my successes, that my triumphs are not my own. They will see that I am a fraud, that I have been faking my intelligence all this time, making up sweet-smelling bullshit to cover the shame of my incompetence. Some of them already know, and they use it against me. They condescend and patronize and talk down because they know they are much better than I, much smarter and more professional. “Aren’t we all just faking it?” Someone jokes. “Sure, yes,” I agree, sinking deeper into despair as I realize that, perhaps, what I am trying to pretend to be is just a mask.
I know you love me, and you will always, but you cannot love parts of me. But if you cannot love all of me, you do not love me. “Hate the sin, love the sinner,” they say. I have seen a grown man cry in front of our group of high schoolers while telling a story about an old friend who would not renounce his homosexuality. The discomfort I felt was insurmountable. I wondered if it was just me or if my peers felt shifty and uneasy in the pews as well. A personal characteristic is not sin. My state of being is not a sin. Would God do that? Would your kind God curse a percentage of the population with an inherent unforgivable sin that can’t be removed but has to be punished? Would your loving God direct you to force change in his creations, with electric shocks and prayer and therapy and inaction on urges and heterosexual marriage? You love the idea of me. You love Carolyn. You do not even realize the significance of Cora, and what she represents, and what she wants, or what she loves. You do not realize that I have split myself in half to handle the weight of pleasing your expectations and accepting myself.
Stop. Zoom out. Where does this leave us? The nation at large, the mixing pot, is home to many different religions. Why, then, does it seem that Christian ideology keeps worming its way into legislation? Why is it an accepted source of reasoning for putting forth or backing up certain points of view or even the passage of certain laws in the senate, the house, even the supreme court? Does it make sense to judge a whole nation of people through the myopic lens of one certain set of beliefs? No! And despite all the lobbying and raising of strong voices with pride and tenacity and ideas, nothing seems to change. In fact, any change that seems to occur propels us backward in time, back into an era that limits the rights of certain minority groups. Shortly after the overturn of Roe V. Wade, I forgot to change shirts before going upstairs and my father caught a glimpse of it. “PRO ROE,” it proclaimed. The next time we walked past each other, he muttered that I should burn it. We are struck down again and again, our voices carefully censored. So who speaks for me if not myself?
I hurt, I ache, and I can’t always explain why. It hasn’t been so long since I cared to come back and revisit the reasons, or talk about them with my brothers, with my friends, who have experienced the same thing. But I can sit here and write this and feel strangely disconnected from my own life and experiences within the church, and not cry when I remember the overwhelming emotion of praise and worship music that I later realized was an intentional manipulation of my emotions.
The more often you are told something that hurts you, the tougher your skin grows, the thicker the “word-proof” layer builds up for the words to slide off. The downside here is that the protective layer that encases you also holds you back. Consider it an exoskeleton: hard, durable, and protective? Check. Flexible, mobile, able to grow? Hardly. Another potential is that each time you are told, you grow to believe it more and more until it’s true. Some might recognize this phenomenon as the illusory truth effect, or, believing something to be true based on repeated exposure. Others might consider this being “Pavloved.” That is, classically conditioned to respond to a stimulus in a certain way. It is extremely difficult to break a conditioned response, especially when it has been positively reinforced for many, many years. I wonder, when I look at other young people in the church, including my own siblings and friends, if they cannot see it because they are still inside.
I cannot say that this exploration of my own relationship with religion is complete. I know that it isn’t, because I’ll never be free of it; it’s a part of me, knitted into the psyche, my habits, my socialization. Perhaps that means this essay is unfinished as well. Surely, I have not divulged everything about this organization and its effects. It’s likely that I don’t even know the extent to which it tinged my personhood. But acceptance is the first step toward recovery and change, and all it takes is a flood to break a dam.