My first day of public school in Wichita Falls began with the Pledge of Allegiance. Fair enough. Although the compulsory recitation of this authoritarian pronouncement had always struck me as creepy, it was something to which I had grown accustomed during my childhood in rural Iowa. But, in Wichita Falls, when contemporary Christian music immediately followed the Pledge, piped into every classroom over the antiquated PA system, a wave of uneasiness washed over my pre-pubescent psyche. For three minutes, I stood in awkward silence, soaking up the crackling synthesizers and absurdly pious lyrics. I glanced around the room, searching for signs of discomfort in my classmates. I found none.

At the end of class, I asked my teacher about the music. She confirmed that, indeed, the principal played an inspirational song each morning. When I pressed her about the possibility of non-Christian students in the school, her face tightened. “If there are,” she said, matter-of-factly, “we as Christians have a moral obligation to witness to them.”

At the time, her use of the word “moral” had thrown me for a loop, but I couldn’t articulate why. Now, 14 years and 15 credits of undergraduate philosophy later, I think I understand. In ethics, morality is defined as the process of using reason to guide one’s conduct. The choices we make and the arguments upon which we base them determine individual morality.

Superficially, it may seem that my teacher’s adherence to faith-based morality follows naturally from morality in the ethical sense. After all, she presumably believed that the souls of non-Christians end up in hell. To attempt to save them, it could be argued, was the morally prudent action. But this application is problematic. Imposing articles of faith on another person, though well intentioned, impedes morality by denying freedom of choice.

As it turned out, that exchange would set the tone for the remainder of my formative years. I was 11 when my family moved from Iowa to Wichita Falls, a North Texas city of about 100,000. Though our geographic shift spanned a relatively insignificant fraction of the planet’s surface, the effect of the move on me was nothing short of culture shock. We had arrived in the Bible Belt.

My parents are “blue-state” types – educated, progressive and unyieldingly Democratic. I was raised Lutheran, in a church that can be described as liturgical (as opposed to fundamental) – that is, there was more emphasis placed on ritual and individual virtue than on Hell and politics.

While a handful of congregations in Wichita Falls share this liturgical focus, it is my experience that many more of the 193 churches listed in the Yellow Pages lean toward fundamentalism. The largest and most conspicuous is a 9,000-member Baptist congregation with a fire-and-brimstone preacher whose syndicated TV show airs on 900 stations in 13 countries. In 2000, this minister made national headlines when he refused to return two childrens books about kids with gay parents to the public library, claiming they legitimized a lifestyle that was an abomination against God. Far from alienating the community, this move actually helped the church build momentum. In 2003, the members voted to add a $21.1 million sanctuary to a building that already included a bowling alley and a roller-skating rink. The membership directory reads like a Who’s Who of prominent locals. The mayor is a member, as are many other rich and influential people.

To see evidence of the church’s influence, one need only look at the ways that religion surfaces in the city’s public schools. One afternoon during elementary school, classes were truncated so that the entire student body could attend an assembly with the Gideons. Everyone left with a free Bible. Throughout high school, students were expected to take turns leading prayer in the mornings, at pep rallies and before football games. For the most part, the students happily complied.

The religious peer pressure in Wichita Falls nearly outweighed the pressure from authority figures. In school, you were either a fundamentalist or a freak. My lack of piety made me a pariah of sorts and was frequently addressed by classmates seeking to save me. One vigilant girl took to whispering “Jesus loves you” whenever she passed me in the hall. The autograph pages of my senior yearbook are full of treatises imploring me to seek a more fulfilling relationship with the Lord.

Growing up, I often took solace in the erroneous belief that Wichita Falls was a cultural anomaly. I naively thought that the colorful phenomenon I now know as Christian fundamentalism must have been a distinctly local invention; perhaps the alchemical product of too much chicken-fried steak and roller-skating in church. In 2000, I got the first hint that I was mistaken. According to the demographic data compiled during that year’s census, the Wichita Falls metropolitan area came closest to the national norm for ethnic balance, household size and median age. For the first time, we had a real claim to fame – Wichita Falls was the most average city in America!

Immediately, analysts and entrepreneurs began taking advantage of this data, using the city as a mid-sized test market for all sorts of products and retail locations. Somewhere between the addition of a minor league hockey team and the second Starbucks, I fled to the West Coast.

Although 2000 miles now separates me from Wichita Falls, I still keep tabs on the fundamentalists. My mother feeds my obsession, regularly sending newspaper clippings of interest. Last October, as the presidential campaign grew to a climax, she sent an article spanning the entire front page. Its subject was the aforementioned Baptist minister of gay book-stealing fame. He had delivered a sermon on why it was essential for Christians to vote, outlining the stances taken by John Kerry and George W. Bush on “moral issues” like abortion and gay marriage. Although he stopped short of an endorsement, the implication was clear – a vote for Bush was a vote for Jesus.

Later, in the aftermath of the election, the media reported that the Bush campaign had distributed information packets to evangelical congregations across America to spark discussions like these. The key to the Republicans’ strategy, it turns out, lay in convincing evangelicals that their core beliefs were under attack. The rest is history. What worked in America’s most average city proved effective elsewhere as well.

To understand the current trend toward the invocation of specific “moral issues” in American politics, it is useful to understand how fundamentalism maintains such a stronghold in places like Wichita Falls. Conversations with a number of friends who grew up in these churches gave me a handle on this phenomenon.

For people raised in these congregations, every aspect of social reinforcement comes directly from family, friends and teachers within the church. These relationships foster a sense of belonging, while discouraging exploration of concepts outside their worldview. Secondly, these denominations have intense emotional appeal. On any given Sunday, evangelicals are encouraged to experience euphoria at being filled with the Holy Spirit, pathos at the suffering of Christ, fear of the fires of Hell and anger toward those who oppose or challenge them. The liturgical church I grew up in seems bland and esoteric next to this dynamic emotional roller coaster. These churches provide a sense of continuity that is especially conducive to political conservatism. Many evangelicals were born, have lived and will die as members of the same congregation. For them, the church is living history, a portal to the past as much as a blueprint for the future.

In America today, the fundamentalists seem to have a monopoly on morality. The word is more often used to connote conservative Christian doctrines than fundamental human rights. Paradoxically, many fundamentalist positions violate other peoples’ sense of morality. Abortion and gay rights immediately come to mind, but there is a third issue I’d like to see added to the list.

Since fundamentalists believe that the end of the world is imminent, many of them see no need to preserve our natural resources or develop a sustainable energy plan. Furthermore, their apocalyptic mindset allows them to frame the War on Terror as the ultimate struggle between Good and Evil prophesied in the Book of Revelation. I’ve had the opportunity to discuss this issue at length with a number of Baptists from Wichita Falls, and I can say with a sobering degree of certitude that apocalypticism is the single greatest threat they pose to the future of civilization.

Confronted with the growing trend toward fundamentalism, the rest of us are faced with a challenge. The intuitive response is to fight back, lashing out with the same vehemence they use in attacking rationality. This is like pouring gasoline on a fire. Fundamentalists derive power from perceived persecution. Clearly the solution must involve compassion and understanding, as well as discussion about ways to make spirituality a unifying, constructive force instead of a tool for division and control.

Ultimately, we must reclaim “morality” from those who would choose to limit choice. Without choice, morality is meaningless.