Edmund SearlesAttending that service was an uncomfortable experience, I later wrote
in my field notes. I felt out of place and surprisingly alienated by this
community of worshippers, considering I had attended church regu-
larly most of my life.
The creed of this church was built on a particular incantation that
all members were required to utter publicly if they were going to be-
come members of the church: “I accept Jesus Christ as my savior.” I
quickly learned that they had no interest in my faith, my prior religious
experience, my views on religion. On the contrary, they treated me as
if I weren’t Christian at all, but just another soul to be saved before
the final showdown between good and evil as prophesied in the last
chapter of the New Testament, the Revelation to John. Soon after the
service, one congregation member invited me to a private showing of
a documentary identifying itself as an authoritative interpretation of
the Revelation. The documentary was dramatic and compelling, us-
ing graphic images and utterances to portray a world divided in a fi-
nal battle between good and evil, Christ and the Antichrist. Follow-
ers of Christ would be saved, swept to heaven by an almighty lord;
followers of the anti-Christ would be left behind, awaiting a fate of
death and destruction.
I would not be allowed into heaven, my host assured me, unless “I
accepted Jesus Christ as my savior.” I decided to be true to my own
beliefs and instincts and refuse to undergo their initiation rite. In fact,
I never attended their church again. I never was able to transcend a
sense of awkwardness around them, as if we were locked in a grip of
mutual mistrust, even disgust. I decided to spend more time with an-
other non-member of the church, John Branson, a natural historian
of the park who lived alone with Sparky, his aging black Labrador
retriever. He lived in a one-room cabin he had built and heated with
wood acquired locally. He thoroughly enjoyed his solitude, and al-
though his salary was small, he had no bills and no debts. What con-
fused me was the presence of Christianity in this community. John’s
generosity toward strangers (me) and his lack of pretension and os-
tentation more closely approximated the life of Jesus and his apostles
than did the lives of any of those who attended church. They valued