"A Year of Recovering From Bethlehem"

In early 2022, we were hurting and angry and miserable.  We were starting the long process of untangling ourselves from Bethlehem.  We had realized how much rot there was and wanted to flee in the opposite direction.  And we were also slowly waking up to the reality of what a rigid place Bethlehem had been in many ways.

I jokingly stuck a paper on our fridge and titled it "A Year of Recovering From Bethlehem."  (I've enjoyed a number of "Year Of..." books, so it was inspired by those.)   Whenever I thought of something that would be "so NOT Bethlehem" I would add it to the list.  It was a helpful exercise.  It helped me realize some of the unwritten rules I had been following.  And each time I added an item to the list, it was a reminder that I now had a choice whether to keep it or to reject it.

Here's my list:  "A Year of Recovering from Bethlehem"

1. Go to Hawaii
2. Read the New Living Translation
3. Read egalitarian authors
4. Stop going to Sunday morning church
5. Learn about fundamentalism
6. Buy a large house in the suburbs
7. Vote for a prochoice politician
8. Spend more money on ourselves
9. Swear
10. Try the Book of Common Prayer
11. Avoid certain words (spreading, passion, glorify, delighting, satisfied, joy)
12. Avoid feeling guilty
13. Stop praying for missionaries

Here's how I described it to a friend at the time:

"I feel like for 20 years, I've been in this rigid, fundamentalist box at Bethlehem.  It was nice and comfortable, but I'm now trying to wrench myself out of the box and find freedom.  (My Myers-Briggs type is "duty-fulfiller" so I probably gravitated to the rules by personality, e.g. it's not just Bethlehem's fault.)  I'm slowly realizing rules I didn't even know I was following, assumptions, postures of looking at the world, etc.  And I'm trying to fight against them.  I may end up keeping some of the Bethlehem values.  But I want it to be something we intentionally choose, not just something we absorbed unthinkingly from Bethlehem."

Some of the things on the list I have done.  Some of them I have not done.  Some of them I will probably never do.  After a few months I took the list down - it felt like it had served its purpose.  But just the exercise of thinking, "what is as un-Bethlehem as possible?" was freeing and eye-opening to me.  Agency is powerful, and it was helpful to realize that although I had 20 years in one system, I'm now free to choose which values I want to keep and which I want to reject.