Mainline CoC Worship
I always sat with my parents at church. There was no one else my age, and I was used to that (bitterly - "of course, God doesn't want me to have any friends"). After the Sunday morning adult Bible class, there would be some time for fellowship before the worship service. I stayed in my chair; read a book. The preacher, the elders, some others would come up to me and give me a side hug. I hated it. Those older men with their huge bellies, putting on a facade of loud welcome. If I happened to be even less in the mood for hugs from these men, it was just worse. You can't say no. You can't say let's stop this hugging thing. They love shaming surly teenagers. They love getting you to smile despite your mood.
The adult classes were taught like real school classes - answer questions and fill in the blanks in your work booklets. The preacher often asked the kind of question where the answer is right in the scripture we just read, so the the answer is obvious and you think the question is rhetorical - but he's actually expecting someone to answer, and if nobody does he starts treating us like we're idiots that weren't paying attention. On Wednesday nights we had little booklets that go over a book in the Bible. On Sunday mornings I only remember the most recent classes - one was called "Equal But Different" which was about why women are deemed not intelligent enough to become preachers or do other things that only men can do (they started this one year just before I went back to college, so fortunately I didn't get to go through that whole class). The other was reading "Muscle and a Shovel" which is about someone studying the Bible with someone. Someone in the excoc Reddit did a great chapter-by-chapter of this book and its sequel.
It was very fundamentalist, of course. They worshiped the English translation of "Paul's" writings. They took it as commandment.
The singing felt heartless because I was used to clapping during half the songs, or even occasional acoustic guitar. In the ICOC, signing in worship is very upbeat, uplifting. In the mainline instruments were not aloud, including clapping because apparently that's using your hands as an instrument. I really clung to that as my number one complaint - the feel of worship was so off. It was lifeless. And every man who had ever lead singing before sang the melody instead of harmony, leaving everyone who tried to sing harmony clueless about what notes they were supposed to be singing. And I was one of two sopranos in the congregation. With all these men singing the melody, it felt like they were trying to lead us, like we couldn't be allowed to sing by ourselves. Especially on a song like "Our God, He Is Alive" when all of a sudden halfway through the sopranos start leading while the rest of the congregation echos. Can't have that.
Every year we hosted a "Ladies Day" where we invited women from other congregations and we invited a speaker and we had a theme and decorated etc. I volunteered to be the song leader. I asked the preacher's wife if I could lead a song that had clapping in it. She said some people might not clap with you, but yeah, go ahead. So I went about it the right way - I asked for permission and got it. I lead the song and it was fun, and I sat back down. It was after we ate lunch, so I did it to keep the energy up. The speaker we invited was an older lady from Tennessee, and she went back up to speak. She publicly rebuked me and everyone who had clapped during my song. I sat there and listened. I can't believe I didn't walk out. She did not make me feel bad for what I did. I guess I just reasoned that this lady is from the South, and those churches are more conservative. Self righteous bitch.
