Onward Christian Soldiers
Hell in a Hotbox for Jesus
The Salvation Army was an ever-present force in the American Evangelical life of the early 1960s. This ‘army’ of Christians fed the homeless, created bible camps for families in the summer, and collected money at Christmas in those familiar red buckets. They wore sharp uniforms with hats and capes and gave themselves military-style names. They were what most Americans at the time associated with the word ‘pentecostal.’
But fiery television ministries were also making inroads into a massive underclass of the barely-getting-by. These folks fell prey to every send-us-your-money-scheme imaginable as they searched for salvation and a miracle or two through the airwaves.
Besides watching televangelists scream and shout every Sunday from our black-and-white Motorola, part of being “in” with Jesus, was also attending live tent-revival meetings. Through the power of television, getting saved and being born again was suddenly big business. TV preachers like Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and Jimmy Swaggart were holding enormous revivals all over America as a way to attract even more viewers to their shows.
When he wasn’t drinking, my father’s other addiction was to Religion — more specifically to Pentecostal Evangelicalism. Binging on God was part of what this denomination demanded, and he could easily do that in a single day at one of the most significant revivals in America –The Buffalo Tent Revival –which took place every Sunday in an auditorium not very far from our rented house in Rochester.
So on many Sunday mornings, my father piled his religiously-reluctant wife and three squirming kids into a barely running 1940 blue Dodge sedan. Its paint had mostly oxidized, making it more of a literal ‘powder’ blue, and it had the annoying habit of breaking down pretty much everywhere we went.
The Buffalo Tent Revival was an all-day affair — starting in the morning and going on until sometime after 7 pm. Doors opened at 8:00 am and the auditorium quickly filled with thousands of Jesus followers. People scurried to their seats or crowded onto the Mosh Pit for Jesus — an all-day, standing-room-only praise-fest on the main floor. Various warm-up preachers, gospel singing groups, and a marquee preacher (or two) spent the entire day whipping up the assembled crowd into wave after wave of religious, born-again frenzy.
The Nurses of Jesus, a corps of mostly older African-American women, ministered to those in attendance. To keep themselves easily identifiable from the crowd of regular revival-goers, the Nurses dressed in white, from head to toe, and sported official starched nurses caps with little crosses on the front. They stood at attention, like Christian Soldiers, near their white Army cots –which were draped in color-coordinated grey blankets with fabulous crimson trim–so they could take care of those who swooned from the Spirit or fainted from the overwhelming heat.
Week after miserable week, my father dragged us to these revivals. Soon a pattern began to emerge in my 8-year-old brain: There seemed to be three distinct “activities” (or Acts) associated with a Revival, and these activities always took place in the same order. (OK, so I was just a tad undiagnosed OCD/ADHD as a child…).
Part I: Speaking in Tongues.
My father couldn’t afford the more comfortable seats, so we were always stuck in the free nosebleed seats. My siblings cried and complained, squirming in the hard plastic seats while my mother tried to comfort them with baby bottles, blankets, and snacks. After we settled in, my father would recite a quick prayer over us — and then run right down to the main floor to disappear into the Mosh Pit for Jesus.
Even in the dead of winter, as thousands of people crowded into the auditorium, the temperature began to slowly rise. The ancient ventilation system struggled to keep fresh air circulating. But soon, the extra heat thrown off by wildly gyrating Revivalists quickly overwhelmed the entire system. Steam began to rise off their bodies into the room. My mother did her best to keep us fresh, fanning us, and giving us water and ice cubes to suck on.
Try as she might to comfort us, we were stuck for the rest of the day in a Hotbox for Jesus.
From our seats, the crowd below appeared as a sea of waving arms. And it was very noisy. As the Preacher began to speak, a nearby Hammond organ played continuously under his words. The pitch and vibrato of the organ modulated higher and faster as he preached louder and even more fervently, brandishing an open Bible and ordering all present to “Repent!” Between his pleas to repent, the Preacher furiously paced the stage. Back and forth he traveled, his heavy black shoes thumping on the floorboards. the sound reverberating through the PA system. The rising heat level caused sweat to bead quickly on his face. He wiped his dripping brow with a brilliant white handkerchief, which always seemed to appear out of his suitcoat pocket suddenly, like a dove in a magic-hat trick.
As the faithful crowd became more enraptured, many started to speak softly in Tongues. My father once explained to me that, “These Tongue Speakers get possessed by something called The Spirit. The miracle of it all is that the Tongues are original biblical languages utterly unknown to the people speaking them!”
I wasn’t buying this explanation. To me, it sounded exactly like the gibberish language my siblings and I invented so that we would not be understood by any nearby adults.
Speaking in Tongues sometimes lasted for hours, rising and diminishing to the swell of both the Hammond organ and the Preacher. The ever-ready Nurses of Jesus continued their gentle ministry to those who were overwhelmed by The Spirit or the ever-rising temperature.
Part II: Faith Healing
After all the Speaking in Tongues died down (and after a hot dog or two my father would bring up to us from the concession stands), it was time for some good old-fashioned Faith Healing — a.k.a. The Laying On of Hands. Lots of sick people came to these revivals, hoping against hope for an instant cure from illnesses, broken limbs, or maybe even blindness. Why a talented Healer could cure even cancer! Sick people (I always wondered if these were maybe ‘plants’ in the audience that had been pre-selected and paid off by the Preacher’s staff) were summoned forward to the stage by the Healer (who was sometimes the Preacher and sometimes someone completely different). Out from the swirling masses of the faithful would emerge the disabled throng — all slowly making their way to the stage, hoping for a miracle. The Healer always bent down to first softly asked what was wrong — like a benevolent father listening to an injured child. He’d then bring the mic suddenly to his face and LOUDLY announce the whispered sickness to the crowd which always supplied a hushed-and-murmured reaction. After laying his hands back on the seekers’ shoulder and forehead, he’d chant a few words, like an ancient Pagan priest (usually a combination of English and one of the Tongues languages), and then the sick person, eyes closed in their private rapture, would fall back into the waiting arms of one of the reliable Nurses of Jesus. (I always wondered: Did they fall back, or were they maybe just “pushed” invisibly back by the Preacher’s own hands?)
The crowd would fall instantly silent, murmuring their continued wonderings, waiting for The Healing Reveal. After a few seconds, the sick person would suddenly come out of their trance, get up, shake themselves off, and maybe do a little dance to prove they’d been healed. Disappearing back into the crowd, they were surrounded by weeping family members, hands flailing and shouting with joy. The crowd roared it’s approval like a jet engine starting up for takeoff, clapping and shouting and waving their outstretched arms even higher.
This cycle of healing and falling and getting back up went on for hours as, one-by-one, the Preacher’s shills would come forward to claim their paid-for miracle.
And the auditorium got even hotter. By now, the heat and steam were condensing on the pipes above us and dripping down everywhere. The auditorium itself became a living, breathing behemoth of Salvation. (Later in life, when I first saw a picture of the seven circles of hell from Dantés Inferno, the resemblance to this remembered scene became uncanny.)
The auditorium itself became a living, breathing behemoth of Salvation.
People everywhere were sweating and fainting, and the Nurses of Jesus had their work cut out for them as they ran from cot to cot, kicking one recovered person off and putting another swooning one down to rest. From our seats, the main floor now looked more like a Disaster Relief Center, littered with cots, blankets, and used paper cups. The crowd was exhausted, and they began to quiet down now, waiting for the climax of the night.
Part III: Getting Saved.
While most people there had already been saved, many of them brought friends along who had not. Some people needed to get saved AGAIN as they had fallen off the Jesus Wagon (usually for drinking, adultery, or some other tawdry affair), and they needed to find a quick way back into the Flock.
Getting Saved was the fastest and easiest way to do this. Once they got right with Jesus, they acquired something called a Testimony, i.e., a tale to tell of how they fell off the Jesus Wagon and then got right back on again. This Testimony came in especially handy for recruiting even more followers.
The Preacher called all Sinners who felt that they were ready to accept Jesus Christ as their Personal Savior, to step forward to the Alter (which was just a bunch of risers leading up to the stage). The self-identified Sinners would begin their shuffle towards the stage and gather en masse. Once assembled, the Preacher absolved them from their sins (through some invisible authority given to him by Jesus) and declared that they were all now “Born Again.” As Born Again Christians, they would soon receive a square of cheap cloth, blessed by the Preacher and called a “Prayer Cloth”. This little miracle worker would ensure a constant flow of money and blessings into any home–all for just a small monthly donation to the ministry.
Downpayment for Redemption
The Nurses of Jesus, who had quietly disappeared during the Getting Saved portion of the evening, miraculously reappeared as the Takers of Cash Money and sat at long fold-out tables as the Born Agains dutifully filled out their monthly donation forms. The Nurses collected these forms, along with the required cash-only first payment, and handed out the Prayer Cloths.
Little did the newly re-born in Jesus know that their donations were funding the huckster Preacher and his tarted-up wife as they flew their Ministry Jet all over the country — putting on more revivals and saving even more Sinners. I felt sorry for the Sinners, knowing that the money they desperately needed to feed their own families, was going to buy expensive clothes, luxurious rooms, and lavish meals — a lifestyle that none of them could ever in their wildest dreams imagine.
As the Revival wound down, my father came up from the Mosh Pit to get us. Sweat-soaked and giddy with excitement from all he had witnessed, he talked about all the miracles he had witnessed and the deals he’d made with local Rochester preachers to come to their churches to practice his faith-healing.
It was getting late, and we were mostly just hungry and tired. After hours of sweating in the heat, looking for her husband in the Mosh Pit for Jesus, and trying to keep her three squirming kids occupied, my mother, in her usual stoic silence, bundled us all back up for the long trip back to Rochester.
We picked our way down from the sweat clouds and waddled through a sea of cars over to light pole E-5 to find the powder blue Dodge. For once, it started up on the very first attempt (a miracle in itself). We all crossed our fingers (and yes, even prayed a little) that we would not break down this time. Nothing, not even being stuck in a Hotbox for Jesus, was worse than being broken down by the side of the road while my father crawled under the car to wire up the rusted muffler for the tenth time.