User:KeithCantrell

Keith Cantrell was born in Lebanon, Oregon on January 10th, 1957 to Ray and Marie Cantrell of Sweet Home. He was subsequently raised in Sweet Home and went to school there.

He was raised in a Pentecostal, fundamentalist, evangelical Christian home and grew up attending the Sweet Home Assembly of God church until the age of 13. In 1970 he began attending the Sweet Home Community Chapel and became actively involved in church activities. Over the years he taught Sunday School, was a youth director, sang in the choir, led worship services, played guitar and performed gospel music and even preached an occasional sermon.

After graduation from high school he entered the U.S. Navy and served one tour of duty in California before receiving an honorable discharge in May of 1981. By that time he was also married and had two children. He was hired by the Sweet Home Christian School as a Learning Center Supervisor (Teacher) in 1981 until a severe motorcycle accident in 1983 forced his resignation. His left foot was amputated as a result of the accident and he spent two years learning to use a prosthesis. During this time he enrolled in college courses and subsequently earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education from Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. From 1988 until 1998 he was a substitute teacher in the Sweet Home, Lebanon, Albany and Corvallis school districts. In 1990 and 1991 he also worked as a legislative aide to State Representative Liz VanLeeuwen.

His family grew to include two more children but this marriage ended in divorce in 1995. In 1997 he remarried an acquantance from high school who had two children of her own from a previous marriage. Currently, between them, they have six children and seven grandchildren.

In the late 1990s he began questioning his long-held religious beliefs. After many years of research and emotional stress he came to the conclusion that the only thing that really seemed logical was agnosticism. This led to a refining of his beliefs and the desire to find something that united everyone in a common bond of love and understanding. Tolerance became the most important principle to him because he felt that only through tolerance could everyone eventually gain access to the truth about our existence in the universe. Faith and fact, he believed, are not the same thing.