Last College Paper - Southern Religions & Janisse Ray

Southern Religions & Janisse Ray

Religious stereotypes are commonly known in the South; the main one is that majority of Southern families are in fact extremely religious. In the early twentieth century this knowledge about religion was generally true when most Southerners were Episcopalian, however, now only about fifty percent of Southern families attend church regularly and the predominant denomination below the Mason-Dixon is Baptist. For years professionals have worked to analyze the positive and negative effects religious affiliations have on families and family life. Douglas Abbott, Margaret Berry and William Meredith conducted a study on religious beliefs and practices looking to see if it affected families in a positive way. Abbott stated their thesis saying, “Many religions provide direct education in supportive family values, attitudes, and behaviors. Sermons and scriptural readings that teach tolerance and forgiveness, for example, could be relevant and helpful to family relationships” (444). However, how much religion is productive to family life, and at what point does it start to become destructive?

For those who don’t practice it religion can be complicated to understand, but the basic idea behind it is that it is an attempt to cope with reality and the forces of life and death. Research has suggested that religion enhances the believer’s satisfaction and aids healthy family interactions. Gregory Levine, author of On the Geography of Religion, explains religion by stating that “It is imbued with doctrine, myth, ethics, and ritual. Moreover it is experiential, part of the lived world, and, in such, is undeniably, inextricably social” (431). Levine works in his article to explore the possibility of religion having a connection with geography. He analyzes the ways in which historians, theologians, structuralists and ecologists can all use religion in their individual fields of study.

Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, amplifies the notion that religion had more negative effects than positive ones when she references stories of her father’s, and by extension, the family’s, religious background through discussion of various childhood memories. Her first cousin, Charlie Ray, son of her father Frank Ray’s brother, explains the intimidating rules of the church his extended family were participants of. As members of Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, Ray’s family exercised all the rules that were expected of followers:
“Women should wear skirts, but never pants or slacks; women should
never cut their hair; women should not wear jewelry or makeup; men
should only have short, conservative haircuts; men should not wear
facial hair; no one should own a TV; no one should watch movies at
a theater; no one should wear shorts, or anything that would expose the
legs; and, no one should go swimming in a public place” (Charlie Ray 5-6).

The amount of influence Frank Ray, Janisse Ray’s father, had on her and his other children’s upbringing with his religious beliefs seems to both bring the siblings closer throughout the memoir and yet also question the family unit as a whole. Janisse Ray explains the way her father adopted the religion from a radio show saying, “Late one night, listening to his FM radio, Daddy heard a Philadelphia preacher whose words gripped him: ‘Let us have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’ The man was Bishop Johnson, believed by his followers, who called themselves Apostolics, to be the thirteenth apostle of God” (107). After this night, Frank Ray decides that his family will be more serious about following the rules of the Bible. Religion does indeed seem to be a way for Frank Ray to feel completed in his life but Charlie Ray notes about his cousin Janisse Ray that, “realistically the legalistic and sectarian and even cultic aspects of oneness/apostolic Pentecostalism is what emotionally and psychologically damaged my cousin and ultimately turned her against Christianity” (4).

W. Bradford Wilcox, author of Religion, Convention, and Paternal Involvement, conducted a study exploring how the father’s role in the household works alongside religion in a positive way. Wilcox announces, “Recent studies have found…that parents who participate in church activities are more likely to value obedience in their children than other parents. Parents who attend church are more likely to be involved with their children’s education” (781). It is arguable that Frank Ray wanted to be the sole example of right and wrong for his children, and that is why they were restricted from playing away from home with other children who could sway the ideas he had instilled in them.

However, Abbott suggests through his research that though religion is a potential asset in helping families develop, he also recognizes, “that religion can also be harmful to individuals and their families. Human history is replete with examples of the abuse of religion to the detriment of humankind…For example, the hurtful results of extreme corporal punishment against children by fundamentalist Christian groups have been documented” (443). For the duration of the novel, Frank Ray controls his family in multiple ways and though a strong male figure at the head of the family is often beneficial, it becomes detrimental to his own children, Janisse Ray in particular.

When ill, Frank Ray turns even more strongly to religion to help him cope with his mood swings and what are later known as manic fits. Religion, however, doesn’t seem strong enough to save or help him from these fits, which Janisse Ray notices when she is around her father. The first time that she discovers her father’s delicate mental state is when she finds him in his room speaking directly to God as if they were standing face to face before jumping out of the window. Janisse Ray notes, “I stood watching a long time then rushed to find Mama. Something was wrong with him” (78). Readers later learn that Frank Ray’s illness runs in the family tree and is akin to schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, though there is no direct mention of a diagnosis in the novel.

On his illness directly, Janisse Ray seems aware even as a child that her father was in a place where he couldn’t be reached, no matter the strength of his relationship with God. “I was not afraid of my father when he got sick. He was simply unavailable to me. He was in a place none of us could reach; not even all of us collectively could pull him back. His body was at home, he’d lost his mind – for the first time I knew the two of them to be separable,” Janisse Ray admits (78).

Personal feelings of her father’s adamant religious practices seep into her book in sarcastic tones, recollections of their attendances at church, and through blatant explanations. Explaining strenuous fasts, cult-like circles in which the entire family repeated “Jesus” over and over for hours in a room each night, daydreaming and sleeping through long church service hours, and personal restrictions on clothing, hairstyles and makeup, she emphasizes genuine unhappiness with the religious beliefs of her father. Janisee Ray offers a memory of a visit to her father in a mental institution as one summary of her thoughts on religion saying:
“Often with visitors the conversation turned to religion, and when
religious fanatics find each other, all else is forgotten. My father
would argue for hours about the Bible. He knew it frontward and
backward and was vehement in his belief, not to mention brilliant in
his argument, and so dogmatic that I continue to associate strife and
disagreement with Christianity. If he was arguing Scripture, meals
and sleep got ignored. I dreaded the subject my father craved”
(Janisse Ray 115-116).

Janisse Ray continues to show the deteriorating effects of religion on her family when she discloses instances in which her father openly beat her and her siblings. Frank Ray being a member of the Apostolic Pentecostal faith, he believed openly in punishing his children for misbehaving by the use of corporal punishment. Some of the instances Janisse Ray mentions in her book express her father taking these beliefs too far. One moment that the reader is left in shock is a description Janisse Ray gives of herself and her brothers playing with an older boy named Clay. Clay is toeing a snapping turtle until it bites down on his boot and his attempts to free his shoe fail. Without warning Clay lifts his boot and smashes the turtle, killing it. Afterwards, when the children return home they tell Frank Ray about the incident, who questions them, asking why they didn’t stop Clay. When they have no response he whips them each with a leather belt for allowing Clay to kill. The reader is left to process how the children were supposed to interfere and how their getting beaten for doing nothing is justified to Frank Ray.

During the time of her father’s “sickness”, as Janisse Ray was trained to say instead of “mental problems”, Frank Ray pushed his family almost to the breaking point to satisfy his manic fits. Because he was the head of the household and the family was religious, they were all trained to obey Frank Ray, no matter the situation. One particular moment Janisse Ray discusses is when Frank Ray locked his wife and children in the back bedroom of the house where a six-foot freezer was stored. At the end of the day he ordered Janisse Ray’s mother to take just one item out of the freezer to feed the family. Unable to be coerced into reason to let his wife cook dinner, Frank Ray explained his rules stating, “One thing…no more no less. I’ll hold the lid for you. You have to close your eyes. That’s the way God says to feed the children. One thing” (93). Obviously it doesn’t say those guidelines anywhere in the Bible and Frank Ray was in a manic fit, but his family still had to obey his instructions of eating one frozen item after having no food or water all day.

In reflection Janisse Ray might appear to find some comfort in her father’s relationship with religion because it was helpful to him emotionally, however she rarely mentions in the book how it benefitted her personally. Holidays were off limits in the Ray household for example, because they were pagan and of the world and her family were followers only of God. One Christmas in particular, though sadly remembered in the book, is a bonding experience for Janisse Ray and her siblings. Sneaking out to an area of land behind their home seldom visited, Janisse Ray and her brothers and sister decorated a tree with popcorn chains and shelled corn before exchanging homemade gifts and candy. A sense of shame for their strict religion is evident here as she also notes that they all later made up fake lists of gifts they had received to share with their schoolmates.

As she talks about the restrictions placed upon her while living at home, Janisse Ray explains that she wasn’t allowed to do things because of her parents rules, not that she chose to live her life in that way. In the chapter where she discusses her religion and its practices in depth, Heaven on Earth, she notes, “When I was young, religion was the rock foundation on which our lives were solidly constructed. More than a life of the mind, my father desired a life of spirit…God had put us here and given us the Bible as a field guide, and my father would serve him” (105). Because he is the head of the household, children must obey their father just as in religious beliefs people obey the Lord through his word, the Bible. In Trust in Testimony: How Children Learn about Science and Religion, Paul Harris and Melissa Koenig explore the way in which children come to believe in religion and its practices. They explain after several studies that children do not actually have any direct, firsthand experiences with God but instead come to know of Him through community, claims of His existence, and explanations of immortality and powers of creation.

Also open to the idea that children are naturally spiritual, Harris and Koenig conclude, “One possible interpretation of these findings is that a belief in God as creator comes naturally to children, independent of any teaching from adults” (513). They are brought to this conclusion by examining and comparing the making of a wish to praying. Harris and Koenig state that “Both practices involve a mental process that is aimed at bringing about some desired end without recourse to ordinary means-end activity” (513). However, these practices are viewed differently among Christian society; wishing is considered superstitious, while praying is taken to be a serious practice of religion.

Janisse Ray’s novel Ecology of a Cracker Childhood “provides a respectful but critical insider’s view of significant themes of Southern history: poverty, religion, cracker culture, and the transformative power of education” (Tuten 695). Using her real life experiences and relationships, Ray gives informative advice to the reader on these topics and doesn’t hold back her personal feelings at all. Though religion doesn’t seem to have destroyed her completely, Ray was definitely affected by her family’s choices. Religion does still seep into her life as she admonishes readers, “If you clear a forest, you’d better pray continuously…God doesn’t like a clearcut” (123).