We Once Were Family....Until The Preacher....

The White Supremacists, Sovereign Citizen, Alleged Domestic Terrorist and Fundamental Baptist who was actually... My MOTHER!

 

She wasn’t’ really a terrorist-- at least not in any physical sense of the word.   

ALTHOUGH, she could be a terror to dissenters in her own charming, devious ways.

 
A police officer/ friend of hers informed her that her name appeared on a domestic terrorist list. No doubt, it was due to her  active membership in a militant-type, 'patriot' group. 

My Dear Mother was also vocally sympathetic to the extremest of the extreme groups, (think Ku Klux Klan) which seemed to share far too many common ideals with the Patriot group in which she was whole-heartily devoted and financially comitted.

My petite, 5 ft. 2 in. mother had obviously been radicalized. 

It actually began when she was a teen growing up deep in the heart of Sugar Land, Texas, but it was not evident in her religious/political ideologies until she was in her late fifties to early sixties.  

I did not come to this conclusion until I left the Independent, Fundamental Baptists cult my husband and I helped start and where we continued to serve for 20 years. 

This is when I began to seriously analyze my own descent  towards radicalization and search out explanations for the accelerating havoc, deconstructing the false but cemented beliefs were imposing on my life and my family's  lives.

After twenty-six years of continual research via many varied resources, I have come to understand far more than I was comfortable with. The losses have been grievous, but the understanding... worth it all!

This country’s current, aggressive conflation of politics and religion have an all-to-familiar ring for me which has compelled me to share my family of origin's history—both as a child and adult—things I have never shared publicly.  

I also want to share how religious trauma beginning with my family of origin and extending into adulthood, has heavily influenced the direction of my religious and political beliefs away from those of my family's generations-long heritage.  

And to document my family's progression--going back to grandparents, great grandparents and greater-- from religious and political views that once were extreme and fringe--but are now becoming dangerously mainstream.

 I have posted enough opposition to the Right’s coercive efforts to 'bring America back to its Christian roots' for those who know my background and were a part of my background to be wondering, “What the heck is going on with her?”

So, I will explain what is 'going on' with me. Or, perhaps, what just might finally be going 'right' with me?   It will take more than one post so I hope you will continue to read. I can promise some pretty shocking discoveries. 

So, here goes...

I grew up in a devoutly, vocally and proudly fundamental Baptist family that was as devoutly right-wing-conservative politically as it was devoutly fundamentalist religiously.

I do not exaggerate.

Unless you grew up in a devout Independent Fundamental Baptist church and family, you can't fully grasp the degree of passion, identities of 'Fundamentalist', 'Baptist' and 'Conservative Republican' can ignite.   

I must clarify that there can be a world of difference between a professing Independent Fundamental Baptist and a devoutly practicing one. 

A professing Fundamental Baptist might quietly be devoted to it but a devout, practicing one scoffs at any who do not actively practice it to the nth degree. 

As devoutly practicing fundamental Baptists, these two cooperating and even conflicting religious and political belief systems were part and parcel to my family’s very identity. 

Needless to say, it created a virtual war zone for 'we the children' of the family.

The parent who was most influential to my developing beliefs in both systems was (not surprisingly) my mother.  She was the one who loudly and proudly asserted her positions in both areas and heaven help anyone who dared disagree! 

Trust me, it could get scary!

So, let me introduce you, again, to Barbara Ann Norris Martin... my notoriously vocal, activist.... mother.

My mother's childhood was a difficult one to say the least. It was obvious to everyone close to her not only because she would say so, but her lack of emotional maturity and self-awareness was shamelessly, always on display.

 

But, first, let me tell you the ways in which she was also exceptionally gifted.

                                                                                                      

She was a classically trained soprano with at least a four-octave range.

She could read music even though she was given only a few lessons in piano.

She could draw and paint landscapes, animals and even portraits.

She was  highly intelligent and excelled in academics. 

She out-performed her high school competitors in band—making first chair on the clarinet her first year.

She was good with numbers and was able to set up and keep accounting for the successful exterminating business she and my father established in their forties

She could type a minimum of 60 words per minute with few to no errors.

She was a quick study in any new endeavor she had reason to pursue.

She was a skilled and ruthless debater

She was entirely self-sufficient, self-assured and never hindered by the possibility she could EVER be wrong about anything. 

My dad was once asked what most attracted him to my mother. He immediately replied, "She had a lot of drive!"

Indeed she did!

Not only was my mom intellectually and artistically gifted, she was extremely attractive.

Her hair was dark brown with glistening brunette highlights, her skin was olive in tone, her eyes a deep, pure, piercing azure with a petite, shapely figure to boot. 

She was often told she looked a lot like Elizabeth Taylor who was famously admired for those same lovely features.

My parents were married in December 1955 when my mom was only 18 and still in high school. In May of 1956 she walked across the Sugarland High school stage to receive her high school diploma, six months pregnant with me. 

My dad was 4 years older than my mother and had shortly before marrying her, completed 4 years of service in the army at Fort Bliss in El Paso.  The Korean War ended just weeks before he was scheduled to be deployed.

 I was born the following November, only 11 months after they married. 

My dad didn’t become a Christian until I was 3 years old which caused a significant amount of conflict between them. My mother began worrying that not taking me to church faithfully would cause me to grow up a heathen and I would end up in hell so she repented of her 'unchurchedness' and started taking me. 

My dad did not like her sudden rededication to her religious beliefs because he liked to go dancing at the clubs they used to frequent during their dating years. My mother refused to go so he threatened to 'find someone else who would'.

Eventually, he was won over by a couple of men from a church nearby and became a Christian. From that day forward, he was ALL IN and I do mean ALL.  IN!!

But given the fact that my dad converted much later than my mother, he leaned on her  for much of his education on biblical and spiritual matters causing competing forces between the common sense he'd gained from his own experiences and her inherited beliefs about all the do's and don'ts.

My dad grew in his faith and became a devoted, Independent, Fundamental Baptist practitioner himself.  Sadly, that fact did not facilitate the harmony in our home promised by their main influencers, (preachers, Christian radio and Christian self-help books). 

My mother had always exhibited some problematic behaviors and it became apparent that these were not necessarily behaviors connected to inherited personality traits she was born with. 

More about her relevant issues stemming from her childhood later.

I have been for many years trying to process the profound impact my mother's mental, emotional and even spiritual troubles on my development as her oldest child. 

Being the oldest child, I was first to develop an awareness that all was not well in our family. Even though young children  normally would want to believe their parents are the best parents ever and their family is the best family ever, it became evident early on to me, that mine were not. Even still, I loved them as if they were the best ever!

 But one thing no one could ignore:

 THEY. FOUGHT.  All.  THE.  TIME! 

 
My mother was almost always angry at my dad, angry with her dad (my grandparents lived next door to us until I was 13), angry with the preacher and other church members, angry with bosses and coworkers and more I don't care to recall.

And my dad was often angry with my mom as well. 

He expected a tidy house and nice meal when he came home from work. She resented being expected to perform any task that didn't nurture her talents.

She frequently claimed fatigue as the reason she could never clean house or cook and always expected everyone to give her grace because she also had "asthma" and “emotional problems”.

Emotional problems indeed! 

My feelings about that ranged from complete contempt for her raging temper tantrums to guilt-driven sympathy for not feeling more affectionate towards her.  

The worst, though, was the gnawing, lingering fear that I would grow up to be just like her. 

I needed to know the truth though. I knew there had to be a cause and I remember looking for answers from faith-based books I was assigned to read in Christian school as well as from other resources later on as an adult. 

So, without knowing how or where to find all the answers I was needing, I inadvertently discovered a way to at least, help minimize the harms and lessen the frequency of their fighting.

 
By observing the interactions between my mother and my dad, her dad, her mother, my siblings and her siblings, I found I could influence each one’s perception of the other’s offenses away from a fight.

Another consequence for me of her constant troublemaking was I began feeling it was my mission-- my responsibility-- to mediate somehow between her and my dad.

  
It was so distressing hearing her yelling, her insults, her threats to file for divorce, her cussing and throwing things, and the general helplessness of being so entangled in the explosive conflicts. 

In time, learned I could reduce the pain for my siblings and myself by finding ways to make peace between them before tensions escalated to all-out war.

 I didn’t have the opportunity, or the courage to practice my immature peace-making skills on my dad, but I did learn what worked for my mother who was all too happy for a willing audience.

   

It was a clashing position for me because I was naturally  more sympathetic to my dad.  I understood his position better than hers because I was most like him. He did work hard and tried his best to give us all we needed to be happy and healthy so I could sympathize with his complaints. 

But all this family conflict--and I can't even begin to detail all of it--had a deeper, indiscernible-at-the-time source.

How could all their devotion and dedication to their faith practices not bring the harmony in our home as was so consistently, emphatically promised?

Since becoming a mature mother and grandmother myself, I can now understand better how the fundamental Baptist teaching regarding what was required of  women to be 'godly' triggered the resentments my mother held and expressed towards my dad and the other related men in her life. 

And those expectations were excessive. Additionally, husbands were never adequately educated to be partners with their wives nor were they informed of the special mental, emotional and physical needs of women.

Nevertheless, my peace-making attempts afforded me some level of control over what was usually a helpless situation for us.

  
 
In other words, my amateur efforts towards intervention gave me a voice, albeit a very carefully-worded voice, but one I found useful in my adult interactions. 

 
So, at the end of the day, my accidental strategy helped me a lot more than it helped them. My mother’s tendency initially was to respond to me as if I were getting through to her, but then at the next, big battle she would immediately default to her old ways of yelling, cussing, insulting, accusing and throwing breakable objects against the walls.

So, nothing really worked.

 
 
And again, my purpose for writing this lengthy introduction to my history is not to detail the dysfunctional interactions of my family of origin, but to relate what I believe are the likeliest sources and contributors to those kinds of conflicts within marriages and extended family relationships.

 I've observed two reappearing instigators:

 
 Extreme Religious beliefs and  Extreme Political positions.

Extreme, authoritarian misinterpretations that arise from these two subject areas were injected into almost all our family conversations leading to divisive lines being drawn.

Heated arguments erupted when each person believed him/herself to be absolutely right while believing the other person to be absolutely wrong as they butted heads on opposite sides of those drawn lines.

Fundamentalist indoctrination was the main culprit here as it instilled all black-or-white thinking in most all subjects they argued.

   

Fundamentalism teaches that compromise was almost always wrong because in black-or-white thinking, there is no room for compromise.

Their extreme political positions culminated from their extreme religious beliefs and they attempted to apply those principles to their physical realm.

 

In such unions, love inevitably takes the back seat because Fundamentalist values require practitioners to be RIGHT... even at the expense of a loving relationship.

But my mother was her father's daughter in no way as much as what she believed about politics.

In my next post, I will  introduce Bunyon Oco Norris, my grandfather.