The local Christian school in my town had a home-schooling division, and from late elementary school on that is where my parents bought my textbooks and got my grades back. For the first few years the school gave me Accelerated Christian Education, a curriculum that was rather hokey and heavily laden with cartoons of Christian kids demonstrating specific virtues. The other kids in the cartoons would often say something like, "Thank you for being so discreet." (Yeah, I thought that was funny, too! There was also, "Ace found her shirt" when describing the genders of nouns!) Even at that age, I knew people didn't really talk like that.
How they named the characters was even worse. Pudge was the overweight kid. The "dumber" kid, to whom everyone else explained everything, and whom I presume was meant to be mentally retarded, was Happy. Everyone had last names like "Peace," "Lovejoy" and even "McMercy."
In the cartoons, there was a "black school," a "white school," and an "Asian school." There were no mixing of races in the body of Christ; they appeared to be written even before desegregation (or maybe right after, when the conservatives were still suspicious of it); in one book they taught us how to use the library's card catalog. In another, a Christian scientist was looking for a way to make food and animal fodder from soybeans (I remember thinking that that had already been done).
My favorite character was Ronny Vain, the unsaved kid. He rode a motorcycle, and was rude to the preachy Christian kids, and they just had to take it. Even at eleven, I hated the Christian school/church "system" and loved stories of people rebelling from it, though of course they eventually had to "get saved" and discover Jesus. I actually thought that He could be separated from his own system at the time, and tried to separate Him without success.
Most fucked up, probably, was the series in seventh-grade science focusing on health, specifically the sex ed book.
As I remember it, they showed the internal organs of a deer, not a human. "The waste is expelled out of the vent, or anus."
Then Racer started talking about sexual purity and marriage, first to his parents, then his grandparents. In the most disturbing scene probably in that whole series, he sits at the table eating lunch, talking with his grandpa, and his grandma is nearby, nodding and smiling. He mentions that he has been learning about sexual purity and marriage at school.
His grandpa replied, "That's right, Racer. Every part of our marriage--even the sexual part--is intended to glorify God. It's a reflection of the relationship between Christ and the Church."
And here we learn that Racer's grandparents are still sexually active. I imagine that grandfather saying, "Come on, honey, let's fuck for Jesus. He's watching, you know."
I remember they also once tried to make a case, using Biblical root-words, that voting "right" was God's will and voting "left" was evil.
Though I was really trying to be a good Christian at the time, I hated being spoon-fed my religion. My mother had always tried to be "discerning," or find her own way in her "walk with God," and encouraged me to do the same. I was proud of reading the bible for myself and having my own opinions and beliefs. I once remarked to my mother, "They think we're stupid."
And remember that all of this looked ridiculous to me when I was a Christian. I remember all of this because of the extraordinary stupidity that was blatantly obvious even to someone desperately trying to be a good Christian. It was actually quite frustrating.
So now I'm trying to make it less stupid. I have what is, to my knowledge, the very first Accelerated Christian Education fanfiction on the internet. And Pudge and Ronny are a gay couple.
I plan to make their relationship a mixed one, with Pudge being a Christian and Ronny not being one. There are also a few side plots about interracial couples, disabled and older gay people, and masturbating housewives. I'm having a lot of fun with all of it, though Pronny is the main focus. I will also never say that it has "adult content," no matter how sexual it may get, since the kids trapped in the ACE schools and homeschooled with ACE materials deserve a bit of fun at ACE's expense.
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