Rebecca Hein's Page

Toward the end of my churchgoing days, while visiting friends I went to a worship service at their church. An enthusiastic pastor conducted the service, and I soon realized I was the only new person there.

This was easy to notice because she appeared to be directing everything she said to me. While speaking, she held my gaze and, when it was time for the altar call, she launched an all-out effort to get me to come…

An orchestra is just as likely as any other workplace to harbor gossips. In a conversation with Kathy, one of my casual friends, I mentioned that “I don’t set foot in any church unless God sends me there.”

I knew that Kathy’s good friend, Beryl, was an extremely churchy Baptist, and that Kathy would report what I’d said. That this had occurred became clear at the next rehearsal.

During our 15-minute…

In the days when I was attending a Fundamentalist church, I found that I couldn’t stand the pastor’s and members’ rigid convictions that only a person who believed certain specified doctrines could go to Heaven. In particular, I couldn’t stand this in reference to my mother.

She was an atheist ethnic Jew. When I became a Christian, this was hard for her, but she did let me tell her what God was doing for me.…

In the early 1980s, during the years I was reading the Bible, Fundamentalist Anita Bryant was shrilling against homosexuality all over the (radio) airwaves.

I noticed this because the Bible testifies that God requires righteousness across the board. Why, therefore, would any Protestant elevate one sin above another?

For decades this baffled me. Finally, after I’d noticed many other things about the…