**Names marked with an asterisk (*) have been changed for the privacy of individuals and their families**
“I hesitate to tell you this after the meeting with Pastor [Andrew] Ray, but Brother Seth Razler* brought up about your breastfeeding again,” my husband informed me apprehensively. “He said that even though the NFL football players have the freedom and right to kneel during the national anthem, Colin Kaepernick and the other football players are giving our nation and our military the [middle] finger. He said that every time you nurse in the church service, you are essentially giving our church the finger, as well.”
Seth Razler*, a benevolent military man with strong Christian values, had taken on the project of using his financial expertise to teach young couples and soon-to-be-newlyweds about becoming financially independent and establishing financial stability through retirement. Approximately once a week, he met with my husband, Matthew Olds, to discuss charts, diagrams, and courses of action while his wife and I talked and entertained my children. After watching Razler* serve faithfully at Antioch Baptist Church for years, including sitting in on several of his Sunday school classes while accompanying young visitors from Matt’s work, I had developed a reasonable level of respect for Seth Razler’s well-rounded depth of knowledge and his compassion toward his young students. Additionally, as a military brat raised in a predominately military church, I understood first-hand the sacrifices of a military family. However, just an hour after our Sunday meeting with Pastor Andrew Ray, Seth Razler* was the next one to deal out more outlandish and misogynistic blows as we struggled to get our heads above water, all because he was not comfortable with my nursing publicly in the church service. It begs the question, “Why did my family drastically shift from consistently nursing in a private room with our first child, to then nursing publicly, yet discreetly, even in a church service for the other two children? Our decision was not a matter of preference, but rather, one of life and death.
Contemplating the Unthinkable
After my first round of severe postpartum mood disorders in 2014 – including severe depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)- coupled with a child who nursed for forty-five minutes out of every hour because of an undiagnosed lip-tie and tongue-tie that still left him underweight, I could not handle the idea of being isolated away for every breastfeeding session outside of our home again. Unfortunately, throughout my second pregnancy starting at only ten months after the birth of our first, my husband and I had countless “heated discussions” about the “modesty” of breastfeeding in public because even the idea of repeating that isolation left me in an almost continuous state of panic attacks, emotional breakdowns, and severely intrusive suicidal thoughts. Matt and I finally reached a level of agreement on the subject, but after broaching the idea to a few moms I felt comfortable with from the church’s inner circle, the moms told me that breastfeeding in the service could distract the pastor or song leader, draw the men’s eyes and minds to my chest, and thus lead them to impure thoughts. Several of them also informed me that a man had previously stated he would leave the church if anyone nursed in the service. Supposedly, this man proclaimed his decision sometime after the previous pastor publicly chewed a woman out for nursing on the front pew.
Breastfeeding in a Baptist World
Upon trying to work through the situation with the same moms at the church, I discovered that their solutions had significant difficulties and downfalls that I could not justify, no matter how desperately I wanted to appease them. Their suggestions ranged from pumping (extremely painful), to formula feeding every church service (significantly disrupts supply and demand), to having a list of women to rotate out babysitting me in the mother’s room (talk about embarrassing?). Because none of those were viable options, the pastor’s wife, Lula Ray, told me that if I nursed in the service, I had to be extremely discreet, to the point that no one knew I was nursing. We attempted to use a Lillebaby carrier– a baby carrier which even comes with a head cover!- in the far back section of the church, and we attempted to use the two-shirt method, but nothing was sufficient except being isolated away in the mother’s room downstairs. One of the inner circle mothers who sat behind me in the back section “noticed I was adjusting my shirt” and approached me in the nursery to find out if I was, in fact, breastfeeding in the sanctuary. Another mom, Emily Gibson*, approached me after nursing in the baby side of the nursery and accused me of “exposing myself to the men of the church.” After our full-blown argument in the nursery and messages exchanged by our husbands, we kept our distance until she and I peacefully resolved our disagreement a few months later by apologizing and coming to an understanding of each other’s perspective. Within a week or two of that initial confrontation with Emily*, however, my own pastor, Pastor Andrew Ray, preached a message on nakedness and being “covered.” To say the least, we learned early on that it was pointless to attempt to work with anyone on acceptable alternatives or sufficient methods of modesty within the service.
Here We Go Again
When we found out we were pregnant with our third child about a year and half after our second, I anguished over telling anyone our wonderful news, but a sickness that nearly killed my husband bound me between a rock and a hard place of enjoying our perfect little growing secret, or reaching out for necessary support and prayers. Having felt berated, socially ostracized, and even potentially preached at from behind the pulpit while modestly breastfeeding my second child in the service, I fully anticipated tempers to soar once again. I dreaded straining, if not entirely destroying, relationships with fellow church members again, and I stressed for months about the likelihood of people approaching me again about breastfeeding. I had countless sleepless nights, agonizing over the weight that would soon be on my husband once again, and trying to figure out how to not dread going to church for my third’s child first year as I had with my second child’s entire breastfeeding journey. Nine months after the birth of our third child, however, with no outright complaints and only unexpected support from several families in the church, Seth Razler* caught us off guard as we no longer anticipated repeated confrontations from other church members.
Fingers and Finances
Razler* informed Matt during one of their Sunday financial meetings that when visitors came, they could mistakenly assume that Antioch Baptist Church was not the type of church they were expecting to visit. He proclaimed that my breastfeeding may be a turn-off to visitors who may then question if Antioch was more of a non-denominational church. In response, Matt referenced our survey trip to Africa where he realized that if God truly expected women to isolate themselves away to another room while breastfeeding, then it had to be a universal truth, but it simply was not. Men and women could not reasonably apply this rule to mothers in third-world countries where space and safety is severely lacking. When Matt brought this up to Razler*, Razler* responded that it was a “cultural issue,” and that we were in America. When Matt brought up Joel chapter two, and verse sixteen, a verse that showed that God would gather everyone together in the end times, including women that were breastfeeding, Razler* again stated that it was a “cultural issue.”
As an example, Razler* told Matt that though Kaepernick and the other athletics had the right to kneel for the national anthem to protect treatment of African Americans, the football players were giving our military and our nation the middle finger. Razler* stated, that in the same manner, I was essentially giving our church the middle finger every time I nursed. He proceeded to tell Matt that it was “a leadership issue” (in our home/marriage), and that he needed to “man-up” and say, “Woman, this is what you are going to do” (go down to the mother’s room). Razler* even went a step further to say that Matt was enabling my depression, that my claims of suicidal thoughts were all for attention, and that the “leadership issue” would hinder our church from sending us out as missionaries!
“The Men of the Church”
I lost all respect for Seth Razler* that day, but my opinion would have made no difference at our church because I was a woman, “the weaker vessel.” Surely, this is not the case in twenty-first century America, right? Bear in mind that our church constitution replaced the scriptural office of deacons with all “the men of the church,” supposedly to make all the men equal in stature. In the yearly business meetings, the men would meet following the morning service, pass the information on to their wives at home in the afternoon, and if the wives had any questions or objections, their husbands would present their wives’ inquiries or discrepancies in the church-wide business meeting following the evening service before everyone voted. According to Pastor Ray before we joined, these men’s meetings only occurred during the yearly business meetings for establishing budget, and offices including head usher, but in practice, these meetings occurred much more regularly throughout the year. One of those meetings occurred in the fall of 2017 when the Crawfords* were ripped apart and lied about before all of the men, while the information was never actually brought before the entire church. Let us not forget that these “men’s meetings” would also include private meetings with various parts of the inner circle. Seth Razler* was not just a respected military man and in-depth Sunday school teacher, but a man with the typical renown of a deacon. Unfortunately for me, even our pastor had no qualms about underhandedly attempted to coerce me back into the mother’s room.
In this series I share my thoughts and opinions concerning these ministers and the events which led to my departure. Click here to continue reading: “Blindsided: Douglas Stauffer’s Public Apology” or click on the link below.
For a list of the complete series, click here.
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