Mardi Gras Culture in Bible Belt America
— Monday, March 7th, 2011 —
I grew up in a quirky little strip of south Mississippi, more New Orleans than Tupelo, at the bottom of the Bible Belt. With a Baptist church in a Catholic majority culture, and with half my family on both sides of that religious divide, I saw the best sides of either, and the dark sides of both.
Around me I saw Catholic casino night fundraisers and Baptist business meetings and neither looked much like the Book of Acts. When it came to the divide between Catholics and evangelicals, we knew there were some big differences which resulted in the Protestant Reformation and all, but, day to day those differences seemed to my friends and me to amount to little more than who had a black spot on the their foreheads once a year and whose parents drank beer right out in the open. For the grown-ups though (at least the grown-ups outside of my mixed together extended family), the differences mattered a lot. And much of it was summed up in Mardi Gras.
I loved (and love!) Mardi Gras. I suppose that’s because all I saw were the warm traditions and rituals, king cakes and parades and candy, rather than the full Bourbon Street experience. Some of the older Baptists in my community downright hated the whole idea of Fat Tuesday. They knew that Mardi Gras was the day before Ash Wednesday. After Mardi Gras was the beginning of Lent, the forty days of fasting rooted in Jesus’ time without food in the wilderness temptations. And they saw this party as blasphemy.
“Those Catholics, they just go out and get as drunk as they want to, eat till they vomit,” I remember one neo-Puritan naysayer lamenting. “They’re just getting it all out of their system before they have to get all somber and holy for Lent.” This never made an anti-Catholic out of me because I never saw any of my devout Catholic relatives or friend behaving that way. But it certainly was true, out there in the larger culture.
As the years have gone by, I’ve concluded that we Baptists had Mardi Gras too. This phenomenon was seen in Baptist churches dotted all over the South. Mardi Gras Protestantism didn’t celebrate a day on the yearly calendar, but on the calendar of the lifespan.
The cycle went something like this. You were born, then reared up in Sunday school until you were old enough to raise your hand when the teacher asked who believes in Jesus and wants to go to heaven. At this point you were baptized, usually long before the first pimple of puberty, and shortly thereafter you had your first spaghetti dinner fund-raise to go to summer youth camp. And then sometime between fifteen and twenty you’d go completely wild.
In many Baptist churches, the “College and Career” Sunday school class was somewhat like our view of purgatory. It might be there, technically, but there was no one in it. After a few years of carnality, you’d settle down, get married, start having kids, and you’d be back in church, just in time to get those kids into Sunday school and start that cycle all over again. If you didn’t get divorced or indicted, you’d be chairman of deacons or head of the Woman’s Missionary Union by the time your own kids were going completely wild.
It was just kind of expected. You were going to get things out of your system before you settled down. You know, I never could find that in the Book of Acts either.
In both our culturally captive Catholic culture and in our culturally captive Baptist culture, the appetites were seen, far too often, as gods to be appeased, rather than flesh to be crucified. The flesh was gotten control of, no doubt, but by sating it rather than by conforming it to the gospel.
The end result of this kind of “Christianity” is as bleak as the morning after Mardi Gras. Settling down isn’t the same as repentance. Giving up one appetite for another isn’t the same as grace.
This Tuesday I plan to eat King Cake, and I’ll listen to the festive music of my homefolk. But I will also pray for my kids, and for myself, to follow a Christ who refuses to follow the belly and who promises to feed us with his own inheritance. That’s hard to see for a world in which the appetites rule, a world in which it’s always Mardi Gras and never Easter.
Russ,
Just wanted to let you know that I read your article and you write very well. Excited to see you have writen a book also. I will check that also.
Excited to see how God is using you.
Pressing onward,
Julie Lewis
Well said!
I pray that my kids will not go through a Mardi Gras period in their lives as well.
during lent practice “hearing” one of the most important words in the bible, and ‘listening”, it will bless you!
This made me think…thank you…
We just were reading this passage in our small group and it came to mind:
“Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in question of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Chirst…These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” ~Colossians 2: 16, 17, and 23
Hi Russell,
I grew up in Picayune, MS, home of Paul’s Pastry, and I miss the king cakes tremendously. Good article - this is a really good observation - that there is in some baptist culture a built-in expectation that a conversion story will have a period of rebellion prior to a renewed commitment. All theological systems have challenges to overcome, and I think a believer’s baptism based system has this particular challenge. If paedobaptists risk nominalism, credobaptists risk antinomianism. It’s natural that in a math class, you’ll have math problems :) May God bless you as you think through these issues in your own communion.
-Jon
I know that life you just wrote about very well. Watched some of my church friends do exactly what you said. For myself, was the designated driver, straight laced and in control. Only an observer to the wildness. Haven’t been to Fat Tuesday since a guy in our youth group was chased down and stabbed to death in 1983. I think you nailed it though. Why do Baptist kids think they need a Mardi Gras in their life???
Painful, but accurate words, Dr. Moore. Now that we are back in the NorthWest (MT) I’ve been surprised that a lot of Christians up here actually have that picture of “Bible Belt” Baptists. I will pray for the many new pastors entering into church ministries there to have boldness and to proclaim a faith that reflects a better picture to the world.
Outstanding!
Dr. Moore, your Mardi Gras analogy is very well constructed and unfortunately very true to life. The tree is known by it’s fruit and the fruit of Mardi Gras is not the same as the fruit of the Spirit.
“Settling down”, as you stated, is not the same as repentance. Religiosity, in the same fashion, is also not the same as having God saving faith. By raising your hand when asked if you love Jesus and want to go to heaven, saying a prayer and asking Jesus into your heart, and then being baptized in the end turns out to be a hindrance. By going through “all of the steps”, these individuals grow up thinking that they are “saved” and do not need to hear the Gospel. They continue to live like the goats all the while thinking they are sheep. When someone does come along to share the good news, they are met with a response like, “I don’t need that, I’ve already done that…”.
I don’t say this to be mean spirited or condescending. I say this because it pains my spirit to see the Gospel mishandled and to see poor souls heading for a fate where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I hate that the god of this world has blinded the mind of the unbeliever and wish all lies could be dispelled and cast out and into darkness.
A day of redemption is coming. There will be a day when Christ will deliver His truth and cast out lies once and for all.
Praise God for His loving kindness and let’s keep our prayers going out to save the lost.
May it all be for His glory,
W.
Dr. Moore,
I know you are upset that Dr. Coppenger took a pot-shot at “Me and Jesus” but you went after the wrong guys. Dr. Whitney and Dr. Haykin would not be excited about you using the word “Puritan” as a derogatory term.
I grew in Louisiana and I’ve come to the conclussion that King Cakes are overrated. I’ve had many kinds and many flavors. I’ve eaten the cakes from the “best place in town” in many towns, but its just a glorified cinnamon roll.
I love sweets. I guess this is why the King Cake is pretty low on the totum poll on sweet list in my opinion. King Cakes seem to be more about tradition than taste.
Ray Bowman
Lousiana
Nice work here. It certainly reflects my experience growing up in the Bible Belt. Not sure that there is any way to avoid it, bit thank the Lord for our Easters!
I really like your Mardi Gras analogy. It is all too true. In that critical stage of young adults’ turning from their “Mardi Gras” to being responsible, committed Christians, some do get stuck in a season of Lent. They “give up” inappropriate areas of their lifestyles to conform to expectations of their church fellowship, and they think that their conformity is the end in itself. They never see the relational changes into which they must grow with Christ in order to progress to and live in the Easter of their lives. Hence, we see hypocritical, lethargic, powerless Christianity in full bloom. I was born again on Easter Sunday 1954 at the age of nine. At seventeen I experienced Easter at Glorieta, New Mexico and understood the gravity of the price that was paid for my salvation. Praise God! From that point I desired the pure gold of Easter over the tinsel of Mardi Gras.