Christian Psychologist admits manic-depression amongst Pentecostals

Judy: I enjoyed meeting you again (I'm sure we must have crossed paths sometime during our four years at high school), and discussing some of my favorite topics. I haven't gotten a hold of your book yet, but plan to read it sometime soon and also check out your reviews. I'm sure I'll find the content very challenging!

As far as the stats on manic-depression, I cannot cite any studies I've come across, but I will forward anything I find in the future. I have a close friend in Florida who has "left the fold" of fundamentalism who also was diagnosed as bipolar. She just graduated with her masters in counseling and keeps up with more of the research on mood disorders. I will check in with her at Christmas when I visit my family in Orlando.

The stats I quoted you were from Duke University Medical Center's Epidemiologic Catchment Area survey (Meador, Koenig, Hughes, Turnbull & George, 1992) which examined the relationship between religious affiliation and major depression. The six-month prevalence of major depression among Pentecostals was 5.4 percent compared to 1.7 percent for the entire sample. Something to look into, huh?

To answer your question about the post-reunion party, I believe a group went out to a nearby restaurant/bar. Since I had my 13-year-old daughter with me, I decided to make it an early night as well as enjoy a full day on Saturday visiting friends and relatives, etc.

Gotta run for now, but I look forward to hearing from you again. Enjoy the holidays...

Sincerely,

Judy

Ed: I went to a class reunion last year where they gave away a copy of my book, Leaving the Fold, and the mention of the book interested one woman in particular who introduced herself to me and told me that she comes from a large family of Pentecostal ministers, and now works at Pat Robertson's CBN University where she is currently obtaining her master's in psychology. She used to be a "Bible counselor," but soon was at odds with the simplistic prescriptions she was dealing out to people, so she went for a genuine degree in psychology, though just how genuine it can be at CBN University is another question. Still, I had a good talk with her and she didn't run away when I told her things like, "Any religion that believes in heaven and hell is gonna be a haven for manic-depressives," and she even supplied further damning info below, including infor about a manic-depressive thread running through her entire family. (Email above).

Having been a fundamentalist I now have a joy and peace in things that I never had as a fundamentalist. My peace does not "pass all understanding," but is now equal with my understanding. As a Christian I was bi-polar. I'm more level emotionally and rationally than before. More patient, even with my most devout Christian family members and friends. Leaving the fold was also revelatory as a rite of passage just as entering it was, but in a different way. Leaving reawakened my natural curiosity (or, looked at another way, my natural curiosity awakened my itch to leave), and I learned more during the long involved arduous process of leaving than I did while entering or while in the fold. I learned more about myself and other people and the Bible and lots of other related ideas and issues. I also learned to enjoy more of life and a wider range of people, ideas, music, humor. Each testimony in the book, LEAVING THE FOLD, begins with a brief paragraph that is a synopsis of the testimony that follows. Those synopses are drawn from the testimony itself, and they often express the positive effect that leaving the fold had on each of the book's contributors.

Also, two years ago at my high school reunion where they raffled off a copy of my book, a female Christian psychologist who studies and works at Pat Robertson's university and CBN headquarters, told me how interesting the book sounded, and as we talked more she told me that she used to be a Biblical counselor, but she became dissatisfied with the simplistic Biblical answers she had to deliver at each counseling session, by the numbers, insisting that wives not leave their abusive overbearing Christian husbands, etc., and, she also told me on the sly that she was interested in the apparent connection between the most emotionally charged Christian denomination (Pentecostalism) and DEPRESSION. She cited some figures from a Methodist hospital emergency ward that placed Pentecostal christians in the highest average rank of manic-depression cases. She also saw a lot of depression in her own large family. Her Dad and brothers were Pentecostal preachers and they suffered from bi-polar depression along with her Mom. Depression ran through her family. So, she dumped the simplistic "Bible counseling" and sought a genuine psychology degree (at Pat Robertson's University where she was already working). After listening to her tell me this I commented that "any religion that teaches there's only heaven or hell is gonna be a haven for manic-depressives."

Best, Ed

Abortion and the Bible

Dr. John Collins Harvey (in "Distinctly Human," Commonweal, Feb. 8, 2002) has apparently received a religious revelation of such earthshaking importance that he could not help but blather it with the most "inviolable" authority: "The human embryo...from conception... has an inviolable dignity." Perhaps Dr. Harvey would not mind performing a little experiment to convince the rest of us of the inviolability of the truth of his recent revelation: Fill one side of a petri dish with a dollop of human sperm and the opposite side of the same dish with a dollop of human eggs, and use a glass rod to nudge the dollops nearer to one another -- nearer and nearer -- "dignity" approaching with each vanishing micro-millimeter of distance between the dollops, until the dollops meet. And there you have it, vio la, "inviolable dignity." I'm so glad the good doctor has finally cleared up for us once and for all the question of when "inviolable dignity" begins. Oh, and I'm sure that God in His inviolable wisdom made certain that such inviolable dignity would be reflected in His creation as well. Alas, God does not seem to have taken care to preserve the "inviolable dignity" of the embryo, since, as Dr. Harvey admits, "Products of conception die at either the zygote, morula, or blastocyst stage. They never reach the implant stage but are discharged in the mentrual flow of the next period...It is estimated that [this]...occurs... in more than 50 percent of conceptions...In such occurances, a woman may never even know that she has been pregnant." Never even know that the "inviolable dignity" of the human embryo has been disgraced by it's undignified expulsion "more than 50 percent" of the time? Horrors! Talk about the REAL abortion scandal! Pro-lifers should be crying their eyes out every day at figures like that, and praying with their clasped hands day and night for God to remove THAT "curse" upon the embryo's "inviolable dignity."

But I don't suppose that the Grand Fetal Executioner in the Sky is going to listen to such prayers. Indeed, anyone who cares to open an "inviolably dignified" book like the Holy Bible can read for themselves that God does not seem inviolably concerned with the fate of even full grown children and fetuses, let alone embryoes:

GOD THE ABORTIONIST
Their fruit shalt Thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men.
- Psalm 21:10

The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born?let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.
- Psalm 58:3,8

As for Israel, their glory shall fly away like a bird, and from the womb, and from the conception? Give them, O Lord: what will Thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts?they shall bear no fruit?
- Hosea 9:11-16

Notice that the prophet Hosea is pleading with God to punish the Israelites by murdering their unborn babies. The Bible never really provides a logical rationale as to why fetuses, babies, and children must be punished for the sins of their parents and others. Some would suggest that for God to kill unborn babies for their parent's sins is somewhat misdirected retribution.
- Gene Kasmar, WHY? The Brooklyn Center High School Bible Challenge. Part 1: The Evidence

THE GOD WHO DROWNS AND BASHES BABYS
Every living thing on the earth was drowned [including pregnant women, and babies - ED.]
Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
- Genesis 7:23

Thus saith the LORD? Slay both man and woman, infant and suckling.
- 1 Samuel 15:3

Joshua destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD commanded.
- Joshua 10:40

The LORD delivered them before us; and we destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones.
- Deuteronomy 2:33-34

Kill every male among the little ones.
- Numbers 31:17

The wind of the LORD shall come up from the wilderness, and his spring shall become dry, and?Samaria shall become desolate?they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.
- Hosea 13:15-16

With thee will I [the LORD] break in pieces the young man and the maid.
- Jeremiah 51:22

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
- Psalm 137:9

According to the Bible, God gave orders to kill children and to rip open the bodies of pregnant women. The pestilences were sent by God. The frightful famine, during which the dying child with pallid lips sucked the withered bosom of his dead mother, was sent by God. God drowned an entire world with the exception of eight persons. Imagine how such acts would have stained the reputation of the devil!
- Robert G. Ingersoll

WHERE ARE GOD'S PRIORITIES?
It seems odd to me that Pro-lifers want to base their views on the Bible. I suggest they study it more thoroughly. According to the God of the Bible it was more important to stone a woman to death if she should "entice you to follow after other gods," than it was to rescue the life of any fetus she may have been carrying. It was more important to stone a woman to death the day after her wedding night "if she was discovered not to have been a virgin," than it was to wait and see if she might have conceived new life that night. It was more important to stone a woman to death for "adultery," than to wait and see if she might be pregnant. It was more important to stone a woman to death for "failing to cry out while being raped within earshot of the city," than it was to spare the life she might have conceived during that ordeal, during which the rapist may have held a knife to her throat, or strangled her into silence and submission.

And what about the test of "bitter water" mentioned in chapter five of the book of Numbers? The test consisted of mixing dust from the floor of the Hebrew tabernacle with "holy water" to make a concoction that a woman drank to test whether or not she had committed adultery. If she had, it says, "her belly will swell and her thigh will rot." Scholars have pointed out that "thigh" is a euphemism for sexual organs. So if the woman had committed adultery and had conceived as a result, then the "bitter water" would induce an abortion ("her thigh would rot"). (I wonder if this means that Bible-believing women who are accused of having affairs ought to swallow some dirt from the floor of their church mixed with "holy water?" Or better yet, swallow an abortion pill like RU-486 in front of the whole congregation?)

And what about children who "curse their parents?" The Bible says, "Kill them!" (Ex. 21:17; Lev. 20:9; Mat. 15:4; Mark 7:10) The Bible does not say how old the child has to be, but it does emphatically state that they must "surely be put to death." One of the fathers of the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin, took such a command seriously enough to have a small boy in Geneva beheaded for having struck his father.

Ah, the good old days, when God fearing people had higher priorities than "saving fetal lives." They were too busy stoning whomever enticed them to worship other gods, stoning adulteresses, stoning women who weren't virgins on their wedding night, stoning women who "failed to cry out" during rape, and stoning sassy children?to worry about "the fate of fetuses."
- E.T.B.

THEOLOGICAL OPTIONS FOR PRO-LIFERS TO PONDER
Why do some devout Christians express immense concern over whether or not a fetus is aborted? Most of them believe that an aborted fetus' soul goes directly to heaven, so dying during the fetal stage of life "saves" a soul which otherwise might have grown up and gone to hell. (If this is the case, then what's the theological problem with abortion?)

There are less cheery theological options of course. Perhaps God empties the bag of the abortionist's vacuum into eternal hellfire? (Theologians from Augustine to Jonathan Edwards considered it perfectly right for God to send dead fetuses straight to hell. Though today's pro-lifers appear uncomfortable worshiping a God who has less compassion for a dead fetus than they do.)

There is also the option that God, who ordains all things, including the deaths of fetuses, may have ordained the rise of abortion clinics and made abortion legal so that the individuals who so choose "get what God ordained and what they deserve." It's a Calvinistic idea to be sure, tied in with the one directly above it, but equally sound, theologically speaking. (So if the clinics are a means of carrying out God's judgment, why protest their existence?)

And lastly there is the option of baptizing fetuses in the womb (by having a minister or priest insert a water-filled syringe into the womb and perform a "baptismal ceremony" before the abortion takes place). This would wash away the fetus' "original sin" and ensure it goes straight to heaven after being aborted - thereby returning us to our first cheery option! (This practice was actually employed by Christians who lived in Medieval and Reformation days when the survival of a fetus was in doubt.)

It seems to me that the theological options are so varied and confusing as to make any pro-lifer (who considers them all) too dizzy to confidently wave signs outside an abortion clinic.
- E.T.B.

CONVERSATION OVERHEARD ON THE FRONT LINES AT AN ABORTION CLINIC

Pro-lifer: What if your mother had decided not to have you?

Clinic Defender: I'd be in clover, I'd be in heaven experiencing ecstasy that I never earned or deserved.
- John E. Seery, Los Angeles Times

THE REAL "ABORTION" BATTLE HAS ALREADY BEEN WON
The death rate of children under the age of 15 has fallen by 95 percent since 1900 in the United States. Parents should reflect long and hard on that statistic whenever they think life isn't treating them well these days. The child death rates in just the past 20 years have incredibly been halved in India, Egypt, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, South Korea, Israel, and scores of other nations. Almost all of the major killer diseases before 1900 - tuberculosis, typhoid, smallpox, whooping cough, to name a few - have been all but eradicated.
- Stephen Moore & Julian Simon, It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years

A FINAL THEOLOGICAL QUESTION
At fertilization clinics human sperm and eggs are mixed to produce human zygotes that are stored in a freezer, sometimes for years, before they are implanted in a woman's uterus. So if you believe that the life of our eternal souls begins at conception what does that make a frozen zygote, a "soul on ice?"
- E.T.B.

Banned Book: About Leaving the Fold by Edward T. Babinski

"The book was recently removed from the shelves of the Anderson County Public Library in South Carolina (Babinski's home state), due to complaints from patrons. The book contains nearly three dozen first-hand testimonies from former fundamentalists who have become liberal Christians, agnostics or atheists. According to Babinski, 'I've tried to get the local newspaper to interview me since writing my book, but they never had the time. Sales have been slow. Now, miracle of miracles, the book is being mentioned in newspapers, television and radio. God bless those Christians!'"

The Secular Humanist Bulletin

Your comments are welcomed!

---

Controversial Book: "Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists"

by Edward T. Babinski

This book is primarily a collection of testimonies by people who were Protestant Christian fundamentalists and who later left fundamentalism (with the exceptions of Tom Harpur and Harvey Cox, who were moderate Christians whose views underwent a broadening similar to what some fundamentalist contributors experienced).

A hard-line fundamentalist may wish to warn the authors of this book's testimonies, and anyone reading this book, that "hell" is probably their "next destination." But he will have to do better than that if he hopes to convince his former brethren to rejoin him in his "straight and narrow" appreciation of the Bible and Jesus. He may even have to read this entire book to understand where his former brethren are "coming from" rather than simply predict where he thinks they are going.

I first tried marketing this book in parts. The testimonies of those who had left fundamentalism but remained Christians were to be published by a moderate liberal Christian press; the testimonies of those who had left both fundamentalism and religion were to be published by an atheist or agnostic press. However, some testimonies, such as those by William Bagley and Ernest Heramia, did not fit easily into either category.

I contacted several moderate and liberal Christian publishing houses and found that none of them were interested in "testimonies." I think that is a defect of moderate and liberal Christian sensibilities. Perhaps they do not wish to "lower" their standards, so to speak, by copying confrontational evangelistic techniques used by conservatives and fundamentalists, one such technique being "testifying." (Can I hear an "Amen," brother?) Yet personal testimonies are remarkably effective at conveying feelings, not merely facts; deeds, not merely dogmas; and they incite people to act as well as to think. For many years evangelical Protestant Christianity has used the power inherent in a single person's "testimony" to win new converts and buoy the faith of old ones.

So, after several rejections from moderate and liberal publishing houses, I offered the testimonies to the largest free-thought press in America, Prometheus Books. At first I was skeptical whether a "free-thought" press would print testimonies by people who had remained Christians, but I was assured that promoting genuinely free thinking was more important to the press than selectively chopping up every hundred-thousand-word manuscript they bought until it resembled a ten-page primer for atheism. Prometheus has published three full-length autobiographies of people whose faith in Christianity was shattered after they had witnessed the unethical or demagogic practices of church leaders and the naivete of their followers (i.e., Salvation for Sale, Don't Call Me Brother, and Jesus Doesn't Live Here Anymore). None of the authors of those books is an atheist. Furthermore, printing only testimonies advocating atheism would be to fall into the same error as that of the fundamentalists, who feel it imperative that everyone believe exactly as they do.

I suppose that the nearest that fundamentalist Christians ever came to advocating greater diversity rather than greater uniformity was when Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, which, until its demise in 1986, focused on the moral (and political) concerns of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Considering what fundamentalist Protestants teach about the grave errors of Catholicism (not to mention Judaism), that was quite an amalgamation for a fundamentalist like Jerry Falwell to construct. But, as they say, "politics makes strange bedfellows." For that matter, so does televangelism."

(Chuckle.)

This book exemplifies how an even more diverse array of people (far more diverse than the Moral Majority) is willing to band together to speak out on an issue that has intimately affected all of them, hoping thereby to increase the volume and scope of their declarations.

Once you have read all the testimonies, certain threads linking them together become apparent: the dilemmas and fears each person faced in leaving fundamentalism behind; their gradually dawning courage to ask crucial critical questions, and to continue asking more questions; their discovery of how wonderful it can be to allow one's innate curiosity the freedom it craves; and the blossoming of their distinctive personalities and beliefs. Anyone who enjoys a novel with idiosyncratic and markedly diverse characters will enjoy reading what lies ahead.

Of course, people who have left fundamentalism can differ markedly in their reactions to it. At one end of the spectrum are those who bid fundamentalism a "fond farewell." They had fun as fundamentalists, particularly in their youth. They also remind us that belonging to a fundamentalist church is a healthy alternative to drug addiction, alcoholism, and crime. A fundamentalist church setting can provide some with the social and psychological context that helps them to legitimize and catalyze radical changes they wish to make in their lives. (Of course, individuals must also want to change in the first place. No mere context can do that for you, as groups like Alcoholics Anonymous have pointed out.)

At the other end of the spectrum are those who aim both barrels at their former fundamentalist lives and beliefs. They view fundamentalist organizations as robbing people of their money (through "tithing," "giving till it hurts," and phoney come-ons to garner more contributions than a television ministry knows what to do with); robbing people of their time (every minute involved in church activities); robbing people of their health (phoney promises made by "faith healers"); and robbing people of their individuality, their freedom of thought, or even their ability to appreciate life.

Both perspectives can undoubtedly be true, depending on each individual's personal experiences. It was left up to each contributor to discuss in whatever terms they chose their entrance into and exit from fundamentalism, and to explain where they are today.

If you are a Christian, you may be interested primarily in testimonies by former fundamentalists who remained Christians. If you are not a Christian, but open to non-Christian spiritualities (wiccan or eastern), then you may find testimonies of that nature more to your liking. If you "don't know" which part of the book you might enjoy reading first, try the testimonies of those who became agnostics. If you are an atheist, your curiosity may be peaked by that section. Or, if you are a historian, you may wish to flip to the final section of testimonies of historical figures.

Readers of all persuasions should peruse the annotated bibliography that lists further testimonies. Or, you may wish to advance directly ahead.

© 2003

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