Camillas Hemsida

Camilla Svensson
ENA 202

Advantages and Disadvantages of
Growing Up in a Deeply Religious Community

The author Jeanette Winterson was adopted into a Pentecostal family as an infant and raised in an evangelical community. Her semi-autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) is to a large extent based on her own experiences from being brought up in a deeply religious atmosphere. The main character of the novel, Jeanette, was also brought up within a Pentecostal community, and like Winterson herself, Jeanette in the novel eventually came to break with the church.
Winterson has vigorously managed to highlighten the consequences of being brought up in such a religious environment. The aim of this essay is to present some advantages as well as disadvantages with that way of raising a child.

The advantages that I could find were far less consequential than the disadvantages. The most striking advantage, though, was the strong self-confidence that both Jeanette’s mother and Jeanette herself possessed. As members of a Non-conformist community, they were in many ways different from other people and they often behaved in ways that others found weird. The belief of theirs that what they did was right never seemed to weaken, though, not even when others looked down on them or called them names. An example of this can be found on page 42 where Jeanette says, ”Everyone at school avoided me. If it had not been for the conviction that I was right, I might have been very sad.”
Another advantage is the fact that a child brought up within a religious community seems to be surrounded by more people of various ages than, may I say, ordinary children. In fact, they seem to be a part of a bigger family, which not only is good for their education but also for their sense of security. There is always someone around you to whom you can talk or find confidence in.
A third advantage seems to be the early determination or goal that is set up for these children. In Jeanette’s case, it was the goal of becoming a missionary; ”It was a good thing I was destined to become a missionary. For some time after this I put aside the problem of men and concentrated on reading the Bible. Eventually, I thought, I’ll fall in love like everybody else” (75).
The fourth and last advantage to be highlightened in this essay is the fact that Jeanette found a friend in God. After she had broken with the Pentecostal church she felt relieved and free from its tight regulations. However, she said she missed God who had become her friend and she came to the conclusion that God had not betrayed her for he was indeed good. “If God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it” (165). By these words, Jeanette had in mind those from her former religious family who had betrayed her by excluding her from the community because of the fact that they could not accept her sexual disposition.

The disadvantages on the other hand are, from my point of view, far more profound. As a consequence of being brought up in a deeply religious environment Jeanette became an outcast. Her friends at school found her odd when she talked about the devil and the doom. Jeanette was bullied and not even the teachers seemed to understand her. Since her mother disliked people who were not part of their community, and since she disliked everyting else that had nothing to do with God or the Bible, the only people that Jeanette was allowed to meet when she was young were religious. Since Jeanette was a little girl she had been taught only to believe in what the Bible said. This limited Jeanette’s knowledge about the world. It made her biased and narrow-minded, although not at all as severe as her mother and it made her very different from the other children.
A disadvantage of being raised within a deeply religious community (contrary to a less religious or a non-religious family) is also the fact that the child develops less individuality. Jeanette was in her early years brainwashed with the beliefs and the prejudices that the Pentecostalists held. She was not allowed or encouraged to have her own opinions or to make up her own mind. She was simply told to believe what the people and the Bible told her, and definitely not question its integrity. The religious dominance restrained her.
Further disadvantages are the judgmental attitudes that religious people often hold, the habit of not questioning their own behaviour in defence of the word by God and the lack of respect for other people than those of their own community. Deeply religious people also tend to see things as either black or white; that is, something is right if the answer can be found in the Bible and wrong if it can not. The many interpretative and interestingly varying shades of grey in between seem to go by these people.

I am myself religious in that way that I believe in some kind of spiritual power that can give people some sort of guidance. However, I do not like the de-individualizing power that religion have over some people. I do not, for instance, like the fact that some Chiristans follow the words of the Bible as if they did not have an opinion or a purpose of their own.  A person who is religious in a healthy way is, according to me, someone who personally determines what to do with his or her life in order to make it as nice as possible, for themselves as well as for other people. To me it is important to care about all your fellow-creatures, not just those who think and look like you do. The Christian belief that only those who believe in God should come to heaven or paradise is extremely infuriating to me. I would say, it goes without saying that all those who in some way contribute to make the world a better place will come to heaven or paradise.
 
 
 
 

Camilla Svensson

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