r/FundieSnarkUncensored • u/Simulacry Your Sister In Chaos/Souls With Goals❤️‍🔥 • 2d ago

Generally Speaking Do CoC/ex-CoC consider THEMSELVES fundamentalists?

I have an ex who got dumped for trying to preach and convert IN MY HOUSE. Multiple times, multiple passionate sermons. Like…no. Please don’t. But they didn’t admit that the belief is fractured fundamentalism/giving cult.

“The one true church that doesn’t play instruments or have iconography. You must be baptized to reach the Gates. Women don’t serve in a prominent way. DON’T call it church. Call it ‘The Building’.”

We’re aware CoC members dislike conversations on cognitive dissonance, different rules per church, icons, origins in the Stone-Campbell movement and “the music”. So how do they see their faith? And ex-members, what was it like in there? Most I’ve been told is mention Bible study and we fall asleep.

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u/LibrarianOwl PICKLE PAUL WEARS SHORT SHORTS 2d ago edited 2d ago

I am assuming you mean Church of Christ (for any not aware). I am born and raised CoC with multigenerational history of membership on both sides of my family. CofC is a broad spectrum. I consider it like TradCaths. You can be fundamentalist in your worship and at certain churches BUT not all the churches or attendees would be considered fundamentalists. The CoC did spawn an actual cult: International Churches of Christ, if anyone wants to look that up.

The biggest thing to note is that each church can be so different in rigidity and expectations. That is why there can be 4 or 5 churches in the same small town in Tennessee. My parents’ experience was much more of a fundamental and rigid than mine, but my dad attended the progressive church and my mom attended the more conservative church.

However, we moved to a town without a strong CofC and I remember there some very conservative churches in neighboring counties we visited that parents immediately knew was not a good fit for them. We actually started our own congregation with others on the other side of the county after the church we attended built a new building 45 min away from where we lived. Starting that church made me aware of things I didn’t not know were “hard lines” for some churches.

  • serving communion each week is mandatory, but some churches do service with one cup and others pass the little trays.

  • some churches expect women to veil their head during prayer or throughout worship

  • some churches think it is sinful to have a kitchen attached to their worship area

  • some churches feel like the order of worship is supposed to be a specific way and cannot be changed. (Communion before sermon after 2 songs and a prayer type thing.)

  • some churches separate students by gender for Sunday school

  • some churches require new members to be rebaptized unless they have a proof of former membership at a church they agree with as well as anyone from another denomination

  • women do not have a voice from the stage, but some churches have worship teams with microphones for women and others have women as children’s and teen leaders

  • some churches are anti any institution being sponsored or supported by the local congregation. including universities and children’s homes. They are called non-institutional and would be the most conservative and fundamentalists.

    My small, new church was a very different experience than most CoC and that was something I was always very aware of as a teen and after moving for college.

    My parents also lived as ex-pats in another country that was not Christian when I was in college. They attended an English speaking gathering of Protestants where they were truly non-denominational. I think that really changed how they expected worship to be.

    A example anecdote on why all CoC are not the same: My dad has been a preacher and an elder. His great grandparents were CofC. He has been a CofCminister for at a public university’s campus student center. He knows all the church history and the debates. This weekend at the church where he is temporarily preaching he invited my sister to do a q & a about her experience volunteering to teach English for a year in Palestine’s West Bank because he wanted to make sure the entire church knew that the country is full of ordinary people trying to live their lives. He has been preaching about not fighting evil with evil for weeks at this point. I am just sharing this because I think it is important to know how different congregations can be.

Tl/dr: yes, some CoC are very fundamentalist like the way some Catholics are TradCaths. CoC has spawned a cult. Each church is independent and different. The “one true church” isn’t believed everywhere now though a Capella music is standard.

edit: formatting on the Reddit app will be the death of me.

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u/Simulacry Your Sister In Chaos/Souls With Goals❤️‍🔥 2d ago edited 2d ago

I hope you don’t take my shorter response as disinterest, dear, just floored. The varied congregations are staggering. There are probably six CoC’s in my old town alone 😂 So no set hardline but on a national scale? Each church has basic ground rules while doing their own thing? Focus on the voice. Don’t prioritize women. Only we can be saved. And that’s been problematically restrictive yet non-universal. How would you hold THE Church of Christ accountable for bad stuff if there is no one leader? And if they’re not progressive like your dad? I’ll be real, Christianity itself has the cult rubric and part to play. CoC is just subtler in recruitment (usually).

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u/LibrarianOwl PICKLE PAUL WEARS SHORT SHORTS 2d ago

Oh I definitely consider many congregations to be toxic. I guess my main idea is that my parents got out of the traditional strong hold and have seen that other Christians are still Christians. I think the whole movement to create CoC was very of its time in the country as a whole. The problem is that have not continued to adapt to the changes as other denominations might.

I do hold CoC organizations like universities accountable for their teachings that are indoctrination and hateful. I also hold any so called Christian accountable for what they teach others that is angry, hateful, and ignorant.

I have never placed membership at a church since leaving for college. I can’t stand hypocrisy or judgements. I also hate small talk.

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u/LibrarianOwl PICKLE PAUL WEARS SHORT SHORTS 2d ago

Oh and my husband (raised Catholic) reminded me of what he thinks is the weirdest CoC thing- not celebrating the birth of Christ during Christmas. I grew up with grandparents that 100% considered Christmas to be secular only. The complete opposite of keeping Christ in Christmas because they reject that we can know when Christ was born. We would go to church if Christmas was on a Sunday and there would be no Christmas songs at all!

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u/providentialchef 1d ago

Oh yes! No Christmas, Easter or any other religious holidays because you should be celebrating Jesus’s birthday, death and resurrection your very hardest EVERY DAY.

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u/LibrarianOwl PICKLE PAUL WEARS SHORT SHORTS 2d ago

Sorry, I did want to say that the “only we can be saved” is not universal CoC anymore. It is more only the baptized are saved and baby baptism isn’t usually recognized. Also some churches do have women speakers, though I haven’t heard of any with full-time speakers. There are also some churches that consider the married couple to both be elders in the decision making team. That still leaves out the single woman’s voice and ties directly to why I stopped attending during college.

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u/grotgrrl 2d ago

Not the point of your very insightful post but is it not normal to celebrate the Eucharist weekly? maybe this is once again a conversation I'm too European for but I can take communion 2-3 times a week if wanted and I'm not catholic

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u/LibrarianOwl PICKLE PAUL WEARS SHORT SHORTS 2d ago

Yes, weekly on Sunday. Methodists and Baptists I know do not do it that often and find it odd that CoC do it every week.

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u/providentialchef 2d ago

I’m ex-CoC. I grew up with the term fundamentalist because we believed the Bible was literal, but I would classify my upbringing as fundie-light based on some of the other things I’ve seen on this sub.

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u/Simulacry Your Sister In Chaos/Souls With Goals❤️‍🔥 2d ago edited 2d ago

Right on. I’m proud of you for what it is worth. Seems so hard to leave. Do you feel more open to discuss this? What socializing as CoC felt like? Whenever my ex comes around, this…indescribable feeling of cultic suppression is there. Like he knows and I know, but we don’t say. Just want folks to heal.

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u/providentialchef 2d ago

I left basically when I went to college. Throughout high school I got more and more frustrated with their nonsense, especially as a female. It made no sense that I didn’t get to have any voice and that any baptized male was automatically my senior even if they were a stupid 12 year old. My dad still attends but my mum doesn’t. They both have gotten more liberal with age.

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u/Simulacry Your Sister In Chaos/Souls With Goals❤️‍🔥 2d ago edited 2d ago

Ah, your family’s outgrown them. Makes sense. And UGH, the absolute fury in silencing young girls’/women’s voices at such a crucial time. I commented snappishly to my ex. He WOULD feel comfortable speaking over me with too much self-praise or zealous worship ‘cause well, how the CoC runs. It IS weird to peer pressure us into a sexist faith space. That never went well. Women are seen as secondary and even if you’re a male feminist, conditioning is subconscious. Thanks for being brave. You did it!

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u/maefae 2d ago

Same and same.

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u/RaspberryThis 2d ago

I’m an Ex-coc, it is a church in the Duggar area. They do not consider themselves fundamentalist, too snobby to consider themselves that way, but they are in every sense. Example no musical instruments can be played inside the church. 🙄

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u/Simulacry Your Sister In Chaos/Souls With Goals❤️‍🔥 2d ago edited 2d ago

Oh, snap, Arkansas? I can only imagine the Duggars spillover at CoC’s there. That’s so accurate. Most told me, literally looking down their nose, “NO, that’s those crazies” with zero self-awareness. Did any moments stand out as “This is kinda odd” besides the glaring omission of music/New Testament focus?

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u/Numerous-Mix-9775 2d ago

Grew up coC, finally went somewhere else when the pandemic made me realize how relieved I was to have an excuse not to go to church.

I was always a bit “liberal” for the CoC anyway - wanting to be allowed to serve in ways other than teaching small children’s Bible classes because hello, Jesus died for women too.

I went to a singing night at one when I was in college - literally a service on a Wednesday or Sunday night where people take it in turn to lead songs and everyone sings. By people, of course, I mean men. At this one, a woman got up between songs, made her way to the aisle, and then went to the back. Somebody joked “Ha, for a minute there I thought SHE wanted to lead a song!” General smattering of mostly male laughter followed. It made me mad - why shouldn’t she be allowed to sing?

I continued going, mostly out of habit, and because my church was “liberal” and allowed women to - HELP SERVE COMMUNION. Gasp! We literally lost a few dozen members when they made that decision. We also had a worship team - who sat in the front couple of rows off to the side, with microphones, so they weren’t drawing attention to themselves, but oof, people got mad at that too.

The funniest though was when my church had sent out a letter to the other CoCs in the area basically saying “hey, our elders studied what the Bible says, and we don’t think using music is a one-way ticket to Hell.” We were actually attending a different church at the time and I heard one of the elders say to my mom, “Well, they say that now, but what happens when their congregation walks in and there’s a brass band warming up?!” They literally forbade their congregation to even “turn around in their driveway.” That was when we switched and started going to the one with music, and in fifteen years there I never did see a brass band. We had a guitar for a Christmas service once though.

I have always considered it fundie light, because hey, at least we could wear pants.

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u/Althea0331 2d ago

My uncle was converted by his wife. He was completely normal until he met her.

And then they told my grandmother she was going to hell and that no one should have sex on Sunday.

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u/fiddlesticks-1999 2d ago edited 1d ago

I think any church can be fundie, even within otherwise open-minded wider church communities. For example the church group I come from (Sydney Anglicanism) incredibly fundie, but the wider church (Anglicanism/Episcopalian/Church of England) is, as a rule, pretty liberal and relaxed and in most places in Australia is a completely different church.

For me fundamentalism is less about denim skirts and braided hair and more about how doggedly the group sticks to its own interpretation of the bible. So Sydney Anglicanism will look like a blessed relief to a Gothardite, but you are still in the same mind prison, you're just wearing better clothes (see: Jinger Duggar Vuolo).

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u/churchofCrikey 1d ago

I grew up coc and stayed in for over 40 years. The cognitive dissonance was strong and difficult to overcome, but eventually my entire family got out. While in, we considered ourselves conservative Christians, but that was because we thought everyone else was going to hell (really, I’m not proud of that 😢).

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u/i_am_WordK 1d ago

I'd call the flavor of CoC I went to fundie lite, but as others have pointed out, individual congregations are all over the place.

Some of the "Hills Movement" churches are fairly progressive. Usually they end up dropping the Church of Christ from their names. And doing crazy things like, you know, acknowledging Christmas.

Out of curiosity, any other ex-CoC kids who did Lads to Leaders/Leaderettes?

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u/Simulacry Your Sister In Chaos/Souls With Goals❤️‍🔥 1d ago edited 1d ago

Was it awkward? The individuality part is expected yet sooo confusing for a broader understanding of CoC. No one can agree 😖 though I HAVE heard of Lads to Leaders! Never attended but my friend was hype for it. You went! What was it like?

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u/i_am_WordK 15h ago

My uncle was very involved with a Hills movement congregation. I really don't have any problem with them. I quite admire many of the decisions they've made and stood by despite criticism/retaliation from the more conservative CoCs in the area (which have a not insignificant amount of real world power locally). But I'm not Protestant at all these days.

Most of the toxicity I experienced as a teen in a center right congregation was imported from the Focus on the Family machine and not endemic to the American Restoration Movement thought.

LtL: Simultaneously fun and increasingly awkward as I grew into more of feminist. Oooo... I also got into trouble for hanging out platonically with the guys on an extremely public set of stairs by one of the main exchanges in the Opryland hotel. Obviously, we were... Idk... Thinking about dancing or something.

Ex: I'm the kind of nerd who actually enjoyed doing skits/ puppet skits at VBS, etc. Obviously, the participation rate was much lower in high school, and we'd do multiple roles. I was the 'girl' who had no problem playing a 'boy's' part (yeah, yeah... I know). This was fine until they needed a "voice of God" and Moses in the same scene. And it was just a little too much for them to have someone without a penis do either of those parts. The single guy on the team had to talk to himself. Which frankly, the theological implications of such seems rather worse than tenor/contralto Moses or voice of God. I was enough of a smartass by that time to point out the absurdity.

I was done with CoC by late high school. Haven't been to one outside of forced family outings since. Was shocked when I didn't catch on fire up on setting foot in the building.