A few romances within the youth group occurred, though most of them didn’t lead to marriage. To me, we were just a bunch of puppies playing. I remember arriving home after a youth group activity late one night, looking beyond disheveled. My father’s temper flared at what he thought had been sexual game playing. But we were just having tickle fights in the back of our youth group leaders’ station wagon. I had no idea we were just finding an acceptable outlet for our sex drives. One of the families of our youth group members had an above-ground swimming pool. On hot summer nights after Sunday evening church, we’d gather there and play ball games. One of the guys kept tossing the ball out of the pool so that he and his girlfriend could offer to go find it. Another guy, serious, athletic, griped about this, and we joked that he was the only one who thought we were really playing ball. Marrying young was not unusual; in the late sixties, young women still got married right after high school. We even had one girl who with her parents’ permission and delight, married at sixteen. We thought she was crazy. We watched couples a few years older than we were date and break up or date and marry and then break up. We all had our crushes and unrequited passions. Even in our breakups, however, we quoted Scripture. One of the guys who’d been dumped by a girl with a pixie haircut said insultingly, “You know in Corinthians it says a woman’s hair is her glory? Well, she doesn’t have any.” We teens all sat together in several front pews near the organ. One pastor told us that we should always keep the space of a Bible between us. Knowing that his intent was a Bible flat on the pew, we placed the Book on its spine, separating us by a single inch rather than the six inches he prescribed. Photo by Humble Lamb on Unsplash
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Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
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