"Chapel is the heartbeat of this college," we were told. As such, attendance was required every morning at 10 a.m.
Ten weeks in a quarter times five days in a week equals fifty. Times three quarters is 150. Times four years is 600 chapels, with five permissible cuts each quarter. Plus two summers I was taking classes. What do I remember? I was part of the crush to get to the correct inner door (each representing a range of the alphabet) to cross off my name and get credit for my attendance. The chapel checkers were paid student employees, standing at the doors, holding clipboards with lists of our names. Some roommates whose last names were far apart in the alphabet had a system so that one of them attended and crossed off both their names at different doors. Others perfected “slash and dash,” running in one door to cross off their name and out another to study or go back to bed. The organist played “Sweet Hour of Prayer” to hush us before chapel began, followed by the lights flicking on and off as final warning. The most beautiful singing followed—a thousand young voices in four-part harmony singing “A Mighty Fortress is our God” or another great hymn. The theatre seats creaked—the building, once a church and later a gym, then doubled as chapel and theatre. Some ministers—we have a different one daily—tried to set us up. “Open your Bibles and turn to Hezekiah,” they'd begin, but we wise ones sat still, knowing there was no such book; Hezekiah was a king, not a writer. It’s not his fault he sounds like one of the minor prophets. I take notes on the sermons, which are mostly “three points and a poem,” as we joked. The three points are often alliterated, the easier to outline and recall. Only rarely was I in enough of a panic to study in chapel, but others did; staring at a textbook looked like staring at a Bible. (It should go without saying that we were supposed to bring our Bibles to chapel.) No one coordinated the men who preached in chapel or approved their sermon text. One Thursday we faced the fourth Baptist pastor of the week. He didn’t understand the groaning or giggling when he announced, “Turn in your Bibles to Romans 12: 1, 2.” He was the fourth preacher in the same week to exhort us to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” For most of us, no matter how the Spirit had led, it had stopped being reasonable a few days ago. Each sermon lasted nearly forty-five minutes, just as it did during Sunday morning church services. We were grateful when one local pastor came to preach; he believed, “If you can’t strike oil in fifteen minutes, you can’t strike oil,” so we were out by 10:30, feeling wild and free.
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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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