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Eventually it became apparent they really didn't like anybody much, not Jews, not Catholics, not blacks, not Baptists, not hardly anybody. I learned to look at some people as if they were evil.
This was a long way from my paganistic relationship with my external reality, where there was no problem with anything except below zero winters and cowboys. I did become a bit better behaved. But at the same time I became a prude, adopting a degree of Christian superiority, but at the same time I became a coward. When I should have fought I used my Christian, 'turn the other cheek', as an excuse not to.
I remember at some point there was a big push to put an addition onto the church, which would be two floors in back perpendicular to the house of worship proper. This would be two very large rooms, upper and lower floors for large gatherings, like lectures and receptions, a better setting than the church basement. On the other side of a hallway would be two smaller rooms for meetings like the Luther League. Big drive for money and they had a big plywood thermometer on the telephone pole at the driveway entrance, indicating how much money they had raised, and at the top the goal to complete the project.
At some point after the new addition, we got a new pastor who had been an army chaplain. I was a teenager now and had started smoking. We thought he was great.
If any of us teenage newbie smokers puffed in the church basement between services, he took up smoking to back us up. He would drink beer in the local bars.
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