Bookfield, My Religion

I was born into the Catholic faith, but was an atheist. Though I never let on about that, early on I discovered that it was really best to lie to Mrs. Jones about my religion entirely. It only took one ‘reborn’ Christian trying to save me endlessly, for me to develop an entire fantasy religious life to prevent it from happening again. The typical conversation with the devoutly Christian Mrs. Jones went like this:

Mrs. Jones: “Dear are you saved? Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your life?”

Me, nodding sincerely: “Oh, yes Mrs. Jones.”

Mrs. Jones: “Oh, how wonderful, tell me how it happened!”

Me: “It was in high school. My boyfriend accepted Christ, and showed me the way.”

Mrs. Jones: “How beautiful! Did you marry him?”

Me: “We are waiting until we graduate from college.”

Actually, there was a kernel of truth to the lie. I did have an ex-boyfriend that was ‘saved’ after we dated. That was why we broke up.

Mrs. Jones: “What denomination are you? Will you come and pray at our church?”

Me: “We are waiting until we settle down to pick a church. I’ve been taking time to go to all of the churches in the Athens area. When is your church’s summer picnic? I would love to come and meet the pastor and congregation.” I had gotten some free food at church picnics too, which of course I never mentioned to Mrs. Jones, but I missed those held on Sunday because of sales meetings.

After the last statement about the picnic I would try to get back to the demo. But religious people dedicated to a particular denomination were a tough sell. They would always ask the denomination of our books. We were told to say that they were non-denominational, but that answer did not usually convince the devout customer.