When Pelagius read Augustine’s account of his youthful thievery, arrogance, and promiscuity in his Confessions, he was mortified, as were many others who read all the lurid details in the Bishop of Hippo’s autobiography. (Who needs ad hominem in public debate when your opponent voluntarily provides so much graphic material for you? It’s a polemicist’s dream!) Pelagius, who by all accounts was exemplary in every way as an ascetic monk, had only to quote the bishop’s own words to add a forceful jab to an otherwise serious theological point.

Perhaps I should take this as warning, then. Why would I bother to confess a sin here for the entire world read (at least, in theory)?

Yet I come from a peculiar school of public confession — undoubtedly influenced by the Augustinian model, though this indirect connection would scarcely be recognized by most of its practitioners. Ever ancient, ever new, it would seem.

Growing up in the Assemblies of God Church as a kid, where altar calls, speaking in tongues, and miracles were a weekly occurrence — actually twice a week, if you include the Wednesday night service — I heard many a new convert confess his or her sins to a background chorus of “amen,” “I hear ya, sister,” “you got that right,” and “hallelujah.” In fact, the miraculousness of the conversion was generally measured by just how sinful the penitent’s past was. If some confessants would only speak of their past obliquely, confident that God was witness to all the gory details, others were positively giddy with the opportunity to state publicly just how sordid their past really was, and thus how improbable their newly reformed ways.

Now, I’m not prepared to open up my diary and share with the world all my adolescent passions, bad judgments, and occasional petty crime. In fact, I was a pretty decent kid on the whole. But I can’t help sharing my own pear tree incident, my own five-finger discount – stealing a cassette of Night Ranger’s 1982 debut, Dawn Patrol.

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