My Topsy Turvy Evangelical Life

How the personal gospel and the social gospel became my top priorities

My Topsy Turvy Evangelical Life

How both the personal gospel and social gospel became my top priorities

The kind of Evangelical I am is partly the strange result of my father’s quirky twist-and-turns life of faith (at one point dealing with a very racist church), with other rather unusual influences over the years. Mixed in, of course, is my free will, as well as the unpredictable working of the Holy Spirit.  

I am one of seven children, the fifth one, to be exact. We all grew up in a fairly strong evangelical atmosphere, some of it good, some of it less so. Out of our seven siblings, we have one agnostic Marxist, four strong progressives, one moderately conservative, and me, an independent, who leans progressive, but determined to think for herself.

This is not your predictable story of a legalistic, evangelical unhappy home, that most of us rebelled against. Instead, it’s the story of a man who spent much of his life searching for God’s truth, and his family.

Our father, Royden Mott, had an unusual childhood. He was, like me, the fifth child of seven, but when he was eight years old, in 1916, his mother died. The family’s childless Methodist pastor and wife adopted our father, so he left the home of a large family to be raised in one in which he was an only child. He did learn to love his adoptive parents and they provided him with a very good education. Daddy was brilliant, always doing very well in school. He graduated college and seminary and got a master’s degree in history. Then he married an equally intelligent woman, who also had a master’s in history, and they immediately started a family.

My father was ordained in the Episcopal denomination, where he served a few years, but then he began the slow process of many changes in denominations, such as to the Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Congregationalist, and Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) churches.

I don’t know all the changes, twists and turns, but somewhere in there he became enamored with very conservative expressions of faith that expected women to only wear dresses/skirts, with conservative hair styles, no makeup or jewelry, not even my mother’s wedding ring. During most of my growing up years my father pastored in the (EUB) denomination, which, where we lived in Erie County, Pennsylvania, was a bit conservative. However, there were many positive aspects of our faith and life. I received a very strong grounding in Bible knowledge, and we had a rich family life of books, music, game nights and camping. Our father’s theology was very orthodox, in the non-denominational meaning of the word. He believed in the Apostles Creed, salvation through faith in Jesus, the continuing work of the Holy Spirit, and a straight forward interpretation of the Bible. He was an avid reader and student of the Christian forefathers, especially St. Augustine.

Leaving Pennsylvania in 1957, our family had a two year stint in the EUB home mission field in Kentucky, ending up in Knoxville, Tennessee (where there was a state university). Over the next six years, my father pastored three EUB churches in the Knoxville, East Tennessee area (one church two different times). Gradually during this time, his strict conservatism lessened. His faith became stronger in a positive way and his concern for the poor and the disenfranchised, which had always been important to him, became even stronger.

When the leaders of one church declared, in church, that no “colored” person would ever attend there, Daddy told the Bishop he could not stay at that church. It totally went against his faith and everything he believed in. Although, my father was conservative about some things, he had always been a strong believer in racial integration at all levels. Once, years earlier, he had written a letter of protest to a local YMCA which had refused admission to Black citizens. At his pastorate in Erie County, Pennsylvania, a large, poor Black family moved into our all-white community. He brought that family into our small church with little fanfare, and the church accepted them quite graciously, partly due to our father’s compassionate perspective.

After the afore mentioned bad experience with racist churchmembers in Knoxville, my father began to think back over his life career, back to when he had left the Episcopal Church, where he had been ordained. He felt he had left without adequately counseling with his Bishop about his concerns. This regret helped develop a strong desire to return to that denomination, which he did in 1966. After a probationary period, he was happily assigned to a mission church, an historically Black Episcopal Church in East Knoxville, St. Luke’s Episcopal. He and my mother loved the people and they loved my parents in return.

I believe my father’s life history has had an overall positive influence on my faith, in that in spite of some of the negative aspects, he was searching for the truth of the Gospel and showed much personal and spiritual growth. One thing about my father’s faith, that I admire and hold as important to me in my own faith walk, is that, through all the many changes in his life, he had always combined orthodox, evangelical beliefs with a strong concern for social justice. However, this is not the end of the story!

Besides my father, other members of my family have had a strong influence on my faith. My oldest sister and my oldest brother had been like second parents to me growing up. They both graduated from Wheaton College, which is a non-denominational Evangelical college. My brother got his Ph.D. from Harvard in theological studies. He taught for many years at an Evangelical seminary, Gordon-Conwell Seminary where he was a professor of Christian Social Ethics and he wrote a text book, “Biblical Ethics and Social Change” (by Stephen Charles Mott). From his strong stand on social issues, he became known as the radical, social justice professor.

My oldest sister, my younger brother and my youngest sister are currently very active at St. Luke’s Episcopal, where our father had pastored until his death. They are all very strong advocates for Biblical justice and care for all poor and disenfranchised, especially the Black community. My younger brother and I worked on our master’s degrees at UT at the same time (while in our late 40’s), having many conversations about politics and the social gospel. My younger sister recently retired from working for many years at The Highlander, an organization with connections to Martin Luther King, Jr., and where Rosa Parks spent some time, just a few months before her famous bus sit down and subsequent boycott. My sister, of course, worked there at a much later date.

So, with all the strong justice-oriented family influences in my adult years, how did I develop a strong Evangelical stance? When my father switched to the Episcopal Church, I was already in college, and engaged to be married. Jack and I got married in the middle of my sophomore year of college and attended the EUB church where we had met. For me, the Episcopal Church was totally foreign to my religious mind. I partly understood the reasons, but was somewhat perplexed that Daddy would want to join it. I could remember when he used to call them Whiskeypalians!

My personal experience with faith, besides going to church all my life, started with a conversion experience that was very real to me, at age nine. I remember well my feeling of conviction that I needed salvation and that, despite being rather shy, I had to go forward. It was totally my decision. I took my faith seriously, reading the Bible nightly and wanting to be an all out Christian, even as a teenager.

Almost two years after getting married, I took a religious studies course at UT that knocked the foundation out from under my belief system. This course made a huge point of showing differences in Jesus’ presentation of the Gospel in the three synoptic gospels, particularly in Matthew and Luke as compared to the Gospel of John and the theology of Paul. These differences, presented by a skeptic who said he thought Christianity was on its last leg, influenced me to doubt the validity of the Bible. Other influences were conversations with my skeptic Marxist brother (who, I must add, never tried to turn me from my faith) and a prehistoric anthropology course. I began to feel strongly that God was just an idea that humans needed, wanted to believe in and created. I gradually found myself unable to believe in God.

The situation I was in, though, made it hard for me to just walk away from church. I had been attending church regularly with Jack. We were good friends with another couple there, and my unbelief in God was not that of rebellion. I just could not intellectually believe in God. I cared about the people in the church and didn’t want to rock their boat. Even though I was highly aware of a huge difference in education between myself and most of the members of our church, working class folk, I enjoyed the people and didn’t want them to think differently of me, so I kept attending, kind of pretending to be the same Christian I had always been.

I’m glad I kept going, because God was able to use the type of service that church had to get my attention. I have often said that this church was a city Evangelical United Brethren Church, which was more like a mountain, country Baptist, in its style of worship. The service was very free. We would sing a few hymns and often someone would stand up and spontaneously give a testimony. It was usually the same ones who gave a testimony, but not a solid expectation, and at what point in the service people were likely to speak up was not planned ahead. There was definitely a lot of freedom in expectations.

After over a year of my mind set of unbelief, one Sunday morning, after the usual people gave their testimonies, other people started to give their testimonies. It really got my attention, because these were the ones who I would call the quiet Christians who never gave their testimony and the testimonies went on and on, with more and more quiet people giving their testimonies. We never had a sermon. After the service I remember exactly where we were, when I thought to myself, “If there is a Holy Spirit, He was there today.”

A few weeks later, another unusual thing happened. At the end of the service when the pastor (who knew nothing about my doubts) would usually have a final prayer, he did something I had never seen happen before. He said, “I think the Lord wants someone to pray out loud right now.” Even though that church was very spontaneous, I had never seen a pastor doing that. The pastor, spontaneously calling on a member to pray would have been ordinary, but this was very different. My thoughts were, “He’s crazy. No one is going to pray and he will look foolish.” However, after a short wait, a young man, close to my age, stood up in the back and prayed a most humble prayer, about his need to get his life right. After he sat down, his young wife stood and prayed also. That definitely got my attention!

The third thing that happened a few weeks later from that was life changing, although I did not realize just how significant it was until much later. Sometimes at the evening service, everyone would be invited to go to the altar to pray and everyone would pray out loud at the very same time, in what is often called “concert prayer.” It’s quite common in Pentecostal Churches and many Tennessee country Baptist churches. Although this practice was not typical of EUB churches, I had got quite used to it. So, one Sunday evening we were all invited to go to the altar to pray. I didn’t feel like going up, but knowing I was probably expected to, I went up and sat down at the front pew. While sitting there, with my head bowed, I began to feel the deep emptiness of my soul. It was like I had spiritually hit bottom. What went through my mind was this thought, which I believe now was the Holy Spirit speaking to me, “These people who you look down on, have something very precious, which you have lost, your faith in God.” My reaction was to pray what was the most sincere prayer in my whole life, before and after, “God, if you exist, please show yourself to me.”

The following weeks and months were very significant in more than one respect. For one, I quit stewing over whether I believed in God or not. I just went on living, trying to figure out the next phase of life. I got pregnant, graduated from college, and we moved to Oak Ridge where Jack was already working. I believe that when I prayed that prayer that I opened the door for God to work. However, it took a while for those intellectual doubts to be dispelled and for faith to be found again. I believe God lead us to our house, where we still live and after a year there to a new church.

This church was an Oak Ridge United Methodist Church, where, through a few members, I would eventually learn about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues (amazingly protected from anyone warning me about “those fanatics,” which later I discovered usually happened to new people). After lots of reading about it, I ultimately experienced the “Baptism” on my own. I became active in these friends’ Charismatic prayer group, which was a prayer meeting like nothing I had ever experienced before. We would meet Thursday nights and sing and worship for at least three hours. The group was like a combination Pentecostal/Quaker group, with lots of listening for the voice of God, which we usually experienced through tongues with interpretation and prophecy. Often the members enjoyed simply sitting in the quiet presence of the Lord. (Incidentally, this “experience” brought my other older sister and me closer together since she and her husband had also recently experienced the same thing where they were living.)

Eventually, the prayer group formed its own home church, having home church Sunday mornings with their families. Jack and I remained with the United Methodist Church, but we attended the home church’s Sunday afternoon worship services as a family. We did this for about seven years, but I began to find it hard to be satisfied and at peace, being essentially a part of two churches, not really happy with one and not completely fitting in with the other.

Eventually, we decided to leave the Methodist Church and the home church and joined a local Pentecostal church, the Oak Ridge Church of God, now Heritage Fellowship. It seemed to suit our family well. We were members there for over 20 years. During that time, besides raising five children (all grown and Christians), I was active at church, teaching children’s classes, starting and running a food pantry/clothes closet, and other ministries. Eventually I got my Master’s degree at age 51, followed by having a career of social work and counseling.

Politics had never been a major interest of people at our church, until Donald Trump ran for President. Most people at our church were very upfront about being fans of Trump. Thankfully, the pastor did not talk about politics. Still, we were not really comfortable with the obvious pro Trump culture, but I personally resolved to focus on the unity that we could share in our worship of God and did so.

However, it seems God had other plans for us. About two and a half years ago, one Sunday when the music had been extra loud for the second Sunday in a row, painfully loud for Jack, he declared he was not going back, saying it was always too loud. He stuck to that resolve (having other issues as well), so after a few months of praying, we started attending Christ Community Church, a non-denominational, very evangelical, highly missions-oriented church, that also has quite a high number of college educated people (lots of school teachers). The best thing was that no one talked about Trump, and the pastors preached a gospel of personal salvation, as well as love and acceptance at our services for all people, regardless of race, creed or sexual orientation.

During the last several years, I have had a yearning to see the whole gospel preached: the plan of salvation and the need for justice and mercy. I believe we need a complete revival in our land of both the personal gospel and the social gospel. This yearning has become a passion to see revival from the heart that also encompasses the need to care for the poor. Church outreach needs to be more than giving out Thanksgiving baskets and food pantry/clothes closets (though good things) . How can we minister in our communities in significant ways that make a difference? We must also be concerned for the systems that contribute to poverty, such as the court system, housing, lack of medical care, low incomes and so forth. However, while pursuing these goals, we cannot forget the need for personal salvation, which we all need. Jesus died so we can have spiritually transformed lives, lives, which show their transformation by love and care for others.

In this article, I have not spoken to the “Independent” part of being “The Independent Evangelical,” but that is a subject for another day. I hope I have given you a glimpse into where I come from on a spiritual level and a few thoughts about faith to consider.