I was born and raised as a C.O.E. Protestant Christian. I went to a small C.O.E. primary school in the Suburbs of North London. Back then (in the early eighties) North London was a humble place, no one expected anything from the City, so took nothing. Unemployment was high, and houses were cheap. It was not the thriving metropolis filled with some of the world’s Prime real-estate as it is today.
Anyway, back to school and the start of my Christian Journey!
We sung traditional hymns, you know the ones everyone can sing along to: ‘Keep the Oil in my lamp’ and ‘Dance then where ever you may be’ etc. We all stood up in assembly with the older children behind and the younger in front, collectively screaming at an over head projecter displaying lit transparent plastic sheet placed at an obscure angle complete with lyrics and a phallic symbol added on the bottom. There was little tonal change as we ‘sang’ along to the lonely piano in the corner quilted in a patchwork that the Year five girl’s crafted in textiles. Displaying clearly the success of the netball team. Behind the piano was a bobbing grey top of a partially blind, and deaf music teacher, sacrificing both cadence and timbre in favour of battering the old ivory keys, so her cumbersome NHS hearing aid could faintly pick up hammer on string. Every Wednesday our local vicar would come and teach us stories that had no feature in the Bible and had only a vague connection to the gospel message. At Easter we would paint eggs, Christmas make hats, Halloween hollow out pumpkins and on November the fifth stuff Granddad’s old jumper with straw, give it a balloon for a head and burn it. Looking back, it was a lovely time.
Every Sunday (my Dad being on the Golf course), my mum would dress me and my brother up in all our finery (usually matching) and take us to the schools church (which was not our Local church) to meet with the other mums and compete on what each other’s husbands did in the City, and look down upon the less fortunately dressed children. The Church was beautiful, stone walled with a tall ceiling that resonated the pipe organ and the bells perfectly, filled will golden lecterns, hand crafted pews, giant statues of local heroes and stained glass windows depicting tales I was never taught. My mum would then join the other ladies and go to the front to publically take communion.
The Mothers would then go for a coffee to compare notes and social climb in one of the Churches many rooms. Why we were shuffled off to Sunday school, to be told that dogs can go to heaven and if we do not obey our parents we would go to hell. – Fantastic.
We learnt to fear God, and that Jesus was a ‘nice guy’ but nothing more, the entire spectacle was just accepted, and at the time I thought this was Christianity. As I grew up I began to see how spurious the ceremony was, a congregation of the false ‘middle class’. Today’s equivalent of footballers wife’s, competing for who had the nicer 4x4, kitchen or holiday on the med, monitoring who put what in the collection. Everything was on show, to prove to the rest of the congregation that you were a Christian rather than proving it to God himself. All the women spent their week’s lonely and depressed turning to wine, jewellery, shoes and adultery (sadly my mum dived headfirst into all of the aforementioned). BUT it was OK because you will go to Church on Sunday, with your designer dress complete with matching accessories such as hat, handbag, earrings and the most important decoration – your children.
This was clearly not the best start ..............
