Narrative Summary
Interview with Terri Rogers by Katy Rogers
It is a cold February evening when I arrive at the home of Terri Rogers for our interview
session. She welcomes me into her modest address and leads me down a narrow hallway to her
study/bedroom where we soon carried out Q&A sessions. There is merriment in the next room as
people are celebrating a family friend’s birthday in the kitchen. She currently lives with her sister
and her niece and nephew. There is a strong sense of family within her home, which she
attributes to her Christianity.
For all of her 41 years, she has practiced no other religion. She grew up in a Christian
household with two parents who took an active role in the church. When she was very young, her
father was a minister, but for reasons not exactly understood by her, he quit. Her family still
attended church regularly until her father, who was a construction worker, got terribly injured on
the job, and her mother had to take over the role of breadwinner for the family. As a result, they
stopped going to church altogether because neither parent had the time or strength to gather up
the children and go.
She remembered a record set, bought for her and her siblings by her parents, of Bible
stories spanning from the Old Testament to the New at a child’s level. This, she says, helped her
immensely with understanding her faith and God. She refers to God as her second father.
Growing up, there were times when she did not feel she could talk to her parents or even her
siblings. There was a lot of turmoil in her family, especially between her parents, so when she
felt she could not turn to anyone else, she would talk to God. She called him a real presence in
her life. She feels that a child needs someone who is greater than them, and she remembers when
she was afraid or upset, she would turn to God. He was like a presence in the room to her, and he
would her calm her down. To her, God was able to handle anything, and to this day she still sees
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him as a means of strength and support.
While she was a teenager, God played a lesser role in her life, and she did not focus on
her faith as much. She described going through the motions of growing up and setting her sights
on the things most teenage girls do. Being a Christian was not the thing to do. Even though most
of her friends professed a belief in Christianity, they did not talk about it. Needless to say, her
faith experiences as a teenager were not as strong as those she experienced as a child.
She feels that Christianity should be a humbling faith, especially since a central concept
to the belief system centers on the fact that people are saved by grace—Jesus died for the
unworthy so that they could spend eternity with God. She feels Christians should be the last ones
to judge people or to take from others. The life of a Christian should consist of giving one’s self,
as much he or she can, in Christ’s name. In fact, to her Christianity means service. As a
Christian, she feels it is one’s duty to serve the community, family, and fellow man. She also
believes that, above all, Christianity should mean forgiveness and grace.
When asked how she felt about Christianity and being a woman within the faith, she
replied that she knew the accepted belief was that the faith represses women. While she admits
there are passages in the Bible that speak of women being subjugated to men, she feels her faith
still holds positive roles for women. For instance, some of the most significant events in the
Bible involved women. The first person to Christ’s tomb was a woman, and so were some of his
closest followers. She feels that Jesus was very loving towards women, and that in itself gives
women an important role in the faith. She has heard of women being made to feel less in the
church for how they dress or simply for being less than their male counterparts in God’s eyes.
Terri believes that if one reads their Bible and talks to God daily, then they will see that, as a
woman, you are no less in God’s eyes than a man, and no less able to serve in any capacity.
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Overall, she feels her experiences as a woman within her faith have been positive.
I asked whether she struggles with her faith and how she handles it. She attributes most
of her struggles with her faith to daily life. She says sometimes there are parts of your life that go
wrong, and you hear about all the terrible things that are going on in the world, and you wonder
why God allows it. She says that God is removed a lot from human affairs because he gave us
free will. With free will comes great responsibility. She believes that you cannot have free will
and not take accountability for the things around you—free will does not come without
consequence.
The things that keep her faith strong are the trials and tribulations of life. She says that
being saved does not guarantee one will have a trouble-free life; in fact, it will most likely be the
opposite. When Jesus was here on earth, he lived the life of a perfect person, but his life was not
without its trials. The words of Christ provide great comfort to her because they testify that even
though your life may not be good now, it will be all right in the end. God has a plan for the
world, and at the end of all things, we will be with him. She finds strength in this promise.
If she saw someone struggling with their faith, she says she would encourage them to
read their Bible and pray, and she would try to be there for them as much as she could. With a
fellow Christian, it is often a simple matter of letting them know that she will pray for them. She
feels that attitudes towards Christians have changed in the world since she grew up, both in and
outside of the church. She feels those who attend church now do it, not to have fellowship or
worship, but they do it as a token or obligation. She also feels that those outside of her faith are
more hostile and aggressive towards it than they used to be.
Her final thoughts on faith are that she loves her faith, and knows that people tend to not
like it because it says there is only one way to Heaven, which is through Jesus. They want
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everything to be all-inclusive, but to her Christianity is. She feels that by God sending his son to
die for our sins, he is including everyone—no one is excluded from that. Christianity, in her
opinion, is man’s greatest hope.
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